January 11 School Board Meeting

001for we should be live all right just have to wait a few more minutes are we there now jul one minute with other the Nam as member pavich here oh thank you okay I have 6:30 are we ready to begin uh yep anybody who's on the call and not presenting uh we just ask everybody to except board members to turn off your cameras and everybody unless you're speaking have your microphone muted with that we can get started thank you can you call the role Mrs nidek please yes Nancy kupka present Mike Davenport here charl Fuller here Dan Nicholas here Terry pavich sorry here thank you Rick panado here Joan Vasquez Drexler present Zoe Boyd here and Sam bu Sam's on his way he just he had promis the link I'm sending it to him right

002now thank you thank you we have a quorum let's stand for the pledge I pledge allegiance un for which it stands one indivisible all okay we're going to start with student perspectives good even we're happy to have a crew of students joining us virtually tonight I think most of the board is familiar with our operation snowball that is uh conducted at both schools and actually cross town in our usual settings but like everything else they've had to reimagine what that might look like this year when only partially in person or not at all so we've got a few students here that will introduce you themselves and tell you a little bit of what they've done to make it happen this year um Miss Diana Beno our Student Assistance coordinator and one of our sponsors is

003here with the kids so I'll turn it over to them now thanks Mr Schwarz I'm gonna let the students take over thanks everyone for having us um we do have a couple slides prepared that are part of the presentation I believe so if whoever is controlling the slide deck wouldn't mind putting that on thank you very much and um I have with us tonight a few of our student directors from dgs so I'll let them introduce themselves and take it away hi I'm Mimi and I'm a senior I'm Diana and I'm also a senior I'm Natasha and I'm also a senior I'm tan and I'm also a senior I'm Anna and I'm a senior as well um can we go to the next slide please thank you um so me and Tegan uh we are

004both in charge of our social media and we have been active on social media and keeping up our students engaged in the program we post updates about our events and reminders to sign up pictures from the events so that students have a platform to view updates about um without having to check their emails so it's right away straight their phones and then if you want to go to the next slide one of the first activ activities that we did was we put together a bunch of Halloween themed goodie bags um full of treats and information about snowball and we delivered them to past and future participants um to spread the news of upcoming events and encourage these students to pass these little spooky surprises on to their friends and then go deliver it to their

005friends um the directors had a ton of fun delivering these surprising our friends with these cute little gifts um and we really enjoyed seeing it get spread throughout the community so this was our October 24th event which was we made our normal snowball into a 2-hour snowball that was split into two different two-hour events we had about 120 120 students we did a Simon Says activity and a freeze dance as our opening activities then we had a speaker which was Mr Walsh Rock who was an amazing speaker and then instead of doing our normal um um warm fuzzy necklaces and giving like out pieces of string like we would normally do at our snowball we had made um warm fuzzy bracelets and gave the students to string so then there was no like passing between

006the students and then we also um so then after the speaker we did a little debriefing along with introducing ourselves to our group and then we did some group activities that were being socially distant um the next activity that we did was on December 5th we took on the challeng of creating a zoom snowball event um for this event we provided students with a bag of supplies and a t-shirt that they picked up in a Drive-Thru prior to the event there was a total of 90 dgs students along with 125 DGM students they logged into a scheduled Zoom meeting and had a presentation from M&P presentations these speakers were really good at keeping all of our students involved throughout the whole presentation and engaged then after this we had a small group uh we had

007our own small group group Zoom meetings where we debriefed the presentation and we also did some crafts together uh such as like creating thankfulness uh holiday reefs and by writing thank you letters to teachers and healthcare workers overall the event was a huge success and many participants enjoyed being able to make new friends and participate in such a cool and different event our most recent um snowball um event that we did was um making these um really uh big uh wooden bow boards that said Tidings of Comfort and Joy and so we basically each director chose two students that they felt especially stood out in their groups and they could use an awesome gift in these rough times and then um directors then delivered these boards along with a goodie bag to the 30 students

008that we chose and we had such a great time seeing the reaction to the gift and they were really excited to see how much it made their day thanks guys I think that's all we have for you unless anybody has any questions um what did what kind of feedback did you get from the Stu the participating students first of all congratul great great program I mean you guys talk about Grace Under Pressure but what kind of feedback did you get from the students who participated um overall I believe that the feedback that we got um obviously our students are used to our our normal environment of snowball because it is really consistent throughout the years so when people do it they're expecting the same thing over and over again so people are really apprehensive about

009this new form of snowball but everyone was like very surprised at how successful we were in like creating a similar snowball environment in such a totally different way so our feedback was really great with like the ability and the things that we had to work with cool anybody else well I have to commend you because I think that shows some real adaptability and real proud of all of you thanks thank you well said Thank you thank you so much thanks for coming on you for joining us well done are we ready for our board member questions and comments yep student board member reports I know it's always on and I think Sam's Sam's with us now too okay hi H yeah I can start again um so the past couple weeks since or since I've

010seen you last um there's been plenty going on School even though we're home we actually came back last week after holiday break which was really exciting for all the students that came um some things that happened the past couple weeks um there was a virtual holiday concert and a winter art show on December 17th and they were both really cool you can still see them on the Fine Arts blog if you want to go check them out um also in Fine Arts seven students from dgs were selected to be all state musicians by Ila and we'll just have to patiently L wait and see what that'll look like this year but congrats to them um some other things going on in activities A Midsummer Night stream and the complete works of William Shakespeare were released

011reviewing um they both took a really creative spin on remote recording so you can still check those out too and on February 4th there's going to be the black history Play It's called blood at the root and that'll be available to watch then and this year's musical is also High School Musical which will be sometime in the spring and then yeah um culture of the school like I said we we came back after winter break and people seem to really enjoy their time spent in school um we understand we had to go back this week but I I think that was a nice treat coming back um overall people are a little bit overwhelmed right now I think um even as great as the hybrid schedule was it's a challenge for everyone to get into

012the swing of things coming back after break especially like a new um like a new atmosphere new climate um and with the added pressure of current events I'm sure you guys know but I also um wanted to take a moment to shout out the history and social studies teachers at dgs because um they they worked really hard the night after the Insurrection at the capital happened to compile just a list of information so that we could all have some perspective on what happened and they offered us a place to ask questions and they offered us some emotional support because it was a little difficult to deal with that amongst everything else so so yeah that's pretty much what's been going on and thanks Mike thanks Billy all right so for DG's perspective obviously similar to

013what Zoe was just saying um big changes with returning to hybrid learning I think that the general mindset seemed to be that you know students were stressed about the new schedule and obviously coming back to school is not ideal after winter break for any student I mean that's an age-old truth but I think that everybody was pretty excited to be back in school I I could see it you know from The Limited part of the face that I could see on people I could see it in their faces I could see it in their eyes when coming into school um I personally had a great time seeing people for the first time in a long while at school even if it's just for for a half day but um you know people are upset that

014we have to return to remote this week but I don't think that um anyone is blaming the the school board or the district they understand that the requirements that were set and so uh I think a lot lot of people are are just really happy with the hybrid schedule and are definitely anxious to get back as soon as possible as soon as the numbers get better um as far as Student Activities go um similar to what Zoe was mentioning the best of the year's musical was performed on Thursday December 17th right before winter break and I believe we had 19 students at dgn named uh for ilmea All State and as for clubs uh they obviously continue to meet virtually the German club and NHS actually did some community service recently uh on that same

015Thursday December 17th they went to Feed My Starving Children for two hours uh and did some packing there and NHS has also raised nearly $5,000 for Salvation Army over the last three week or the the last three weekends of December uh doing some of that bell ringing of course and as we all know uh no Sports since the last meeting but uh I was having a conversation with Miss Schwarz before and I was informed that the ihsa is having a meeting soon about that so that should definitely be something to look forward to something to to you know pay attention to with what decisions they make on that um and I was actually having a conversation um with Haley grubich the old student board representative from last year and because I I every every um

016every month before I give a student report I put out on my Instagram I say let me know if you have questions or comments let me know if there's something you want me to share with the board and I will get back to you and you know she she was interested in the Main Street intersection and what the board um has addressed and hasn't addressed with that uh obviously there's other things that are going on right now there's plenty of pressing matters uh you know covid and and obviously other things like that but she felt personally that speed limit signs the sign changes weren't necessarily working she constantly sees people speeding through that intersection no matter what and she just thought that now would be a good time to plan some changes because uh they

017can be put into action in the summer once things are rolled out so something that she was just looking uh at was you know painting the intersection because obviously um Beth dunlap's two-year anniversary uh is soon and she feels that no significant changes have been made so that is just something that she brought up and something that she you know maybe wanted to see a little bit more action being taken there but at the same time of course there's other things going on it's just something that I noticed and she noticed that that was being brought up in that in that time frame so again though um the general mindset around dgn definitely uh excited about school anxious to get back and so I think the main the main um emotion right now is just

018impatience and waiting to get back but but but obviously excited to to get back into the hybrid schedule so Zoe I have a question for you C Sam just answered the question I was going to ask both of you um mentally just from your friends or what you may hear how hard was the fact that now we got one week in and now we had to go back remote after having break and finals and all that because people were probably looking forward to a a different environment and a different experience have you heard anything just incidental or from anybody yeah for sure um well just like the people around me the people in my classes and my teachers um the vibe that I kind of got from them was it was disappointing but not unexpected

019that this is how things end ended up because um people have actually really valued being able to see the metrics change every day but that also gives us a clue into what next week's going to look like so yeah Rick I would say that while it was pretty disappointing is the vibe that I got um people expected it and they prepared for it yeah I would I would definitely say there's similar um feelings at North from that perspective I think that a lot of people were assuming that after Christmas and after New Year's the numbers would rise uh as people got together over winter break but I think that the main emotion right now apart from disappointment apart from you know wanting to get back is is just um you know trust in in the

020board and Trust in what the processes because I feel that it was laid out really um really well at that December 14th meeting now we know exactly what the numbers are uh that we want to return at we know where to go if we want to uh see the numbers and the zip codes and what's being um what's being measured in terms of what's getting us back and what specific statistics uh calculate that so I think that despite the disappointment and despite you know the impatience and and all that stuff I think that there's a greater sense of understanding and knowing what the situation is and and how the decisions are being made thank you Sam hey Sam and Zoe this is Dan um on a similar vein of questioning and I know there's been

021some emails that gone out do you get a sense and I know you can't speak for everybody it's impossible do you get a sense that you and your classmates know um who to reach out to or how to reach out if you need somebody to talk to or if you're looking for some help either academically or socially or mentally has that been articulated enough to you I know there's been several but I want to make sure that everybody feels like they know who to go to if it um if it just becomes too much yeah um for sure so at least my experience and like you said it's really hard to speak for everyone but in all of my classes my teachers have been really good about making themselves a support system and saying that

022even if they can't provide the support that we need they can direct us to the people that can so in my opinion I personally feel very supported I know where to go and who to go to um so yeah I feel like teachers are doing really good with that and you guys send out emails sometimes too so yeah I I would say that from an academic perspective there's definitely been a big boost recently with the push for paper and and I think a lot of my teachers if not all of them have had at least a five or 10 minute conversation about what paper is how it can apply to the class that the specific class that uh they teach and so I think that from the academic help perspective from the outside that's definitely

023gotten a big boost recently but in terms of the social emotional well-being um I feel that the average student definitely um is not getting the support that they once got in person of course there's endless things that are are unachievable uh remotely compared to in person but think that the academic support definitely outweighs the mental and and social emotional support right now yeah to kind of expand on what Sam was saying I think part of it too is people don't feel quite as comfortable maybe over the screen like emailing a counselor and trying to you know set up some kind of appointment so I I would agree with Sam there's a lot of academic support but maybe a little more reluctance for social emotional support he have either of you have either of your counselors

024reach out to you just to check in on you say hey how's it going or what's going on with your classes at all um me personally no but I do schedule meetings with my counselor like whenever I need to to talk about like postsecondary planning and what whatever I need to and when I do email her she reaches out and asks how how I'm doing so than yeah yeah I I would say pretty much exactly the same thing they don't necessarily reach out to us but I had extensive conversations about college with my counselor and so I feel that once the student reaches out there's definitely that that help in that conversation being had thank you thanks for sharing guys I know this isn't the best form to to share these steps of details and

025I do greatly appreciate you being so open and sharing this with us yeah of course and hidden in the chat that I don't think the public can see uh Ed Ed pointed out that Zoe was very modest in her report because she was one of the students uh that was recognized by All State ilmea so congratulations Zoe thank you and I believe Sam you have some other important news would you like to share that oh sure um well on December 18th which was the Friday uh right after school actually probably about five minutes after school uh I heard back from Northwestern and got admitted into the uh Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences so that was my big break right after school so thank you thank you very much um and just to first of

026all thank you to congratulations to both of you and thank you for your reports um and just to come back to the question Sam reached about traffic I know I talked with Hank um a little bit at the last meeting but we'll be scheduling an update on some of the traffic changes fairly soon I'm thinking because I know you were talk because he Hank's been talking to the to the Village because there's still some things going on um some changes we've requested so and also I know that the village was in the process of applying for some grants um related to Traffic Safety improvements so I I'll check back in with them now that we're you know in the in the new year and see how things are going did did that light on Spring

027side is that operational I know it's up is it operational not operational yet but it's getting close okay well thank you for following up on that I appreciate that information anything else so we've moved the public comment section earlier in the agenda uh because last time we went so long um we felt we could we lost some people so we apologize for that so we're going to hold our first reception of visitors now for public comment this is an opportunity 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 if you need more time please submit your thoughts and writing to the board secretary Mrs nidc visitors addressing the board need

028to come to the microphone and state their name their full name the proceedings are being tape recorded for the purpose of producing acurate meeting minutes and they will be they will are live streaming as we speak um I reserve the right to modify these Protocols of circumstances warrant and audience observation of these protocols is appreciated uh we have nobody in nobody in the administrative service center that wishes to address the board which is why I was able to take my mask off and uh we did receive in the uh the online form for the board 17 comments uh all of them are addressing uh concerns related to the metrics and a variety of concerns of whether they're valid whether they should be changed in some way um and an overall encouragement to the board and

029the administration to uh try to work to get students back uh to School uh as always those comments will be provided in full format to the board and will be made part of the official board minutes thank you um so then we'll move on to the workshop uh and we're going to start with a presentation on supporting our struggling students y we have a a quite a few of our staff members here and I believe Scott is the Master of Ceremonies for this yeah I'm gonna kick it off so I'm I'm honored to introduce our team that we'll be presenting to you so we have um Sarah Corrington who's our associate principal at South she'll probably be waving at you on the screen uh we have David King who's our CS department chair at North

030and then Aaron lwig our associate principle at North High and then we have Vince Walsh Rock our assistant principal at South High then Hank the next slide or Rod whoever is controlling it so we are going to talk to you a little bit about the system a support that we provide for students and then um go into the supports we're going to that we provide for struggling students and then um talk to you a little bit about the Outreach to all our stakeholders so at this time I'm going to turn it over to Sarah hi good evening thank you so much for giving us the chance to uh speak with you tonight we're obviously going to spend most of our time tonight talking about what our team does when a student struggles how we identify

031who they are how we decide what we're going to do to develop a plan to support them and when we decide and how we decide when that plan has to be adjusted but I hope you'll see over the course of tonight that student services goes far beyond just intervening in struggle we make a effort to reach out to our students in all facets of their time with us and that's why you see those three circles their academic lives their social emotional lives and their postsecondary planning in each of these areas there's tiered interventions that we can turn to when students need more help and our team will overview many of those tonight we never like to see our students struggle but we know that in struggle we often find strength when given the right support

032so that's really what our team tries to do we try to find the right support that's going to build our students up so as we maybe intervene on an academic issue we're also building social emotional resilience and that gives us a foundation then for our students well beyond high school and we know we also have students who are doing very well and they come to us incredibly academically sound and I want to make it clear that we are here for the service of all of our students each of our students needs to have somebody that's helping to guide them in their Journey so that they're ready for Life After District 99 and that's one of the goals that um our team has and we're going to talk more as well about what the post-secondary planning

033U looks like here in District 99 and what those supports are for our students so while we are in the process of identifying students it looks linear here and it's absolutely not um going back on the slide I realized this should have been a circle it's kind of like teaching and learning you do both and it just continues on forever our plans adapt as students grow and our interventions should increase or decrease they should be fluid they should never stay the same you're going to hear from the team all of the different ways that students are brought to our attention for support So this starts even before our freshmen arrive at our door we have great relationships with our Center Schools so we know what we need to do in order to help our students

034on day one when they are freshman with us and how uh we check in with them and what we need to do to make sure that they are getting everything that they need while they are here so that's one way you're going to hear about the Alpha Team process and how students kind of rise up to our teams but you're also going to hear about what we do as um a team to go out and find our kids we want to find them where they're at we want to make sure that we are getting them what they need not all students advocate for themselves we realize that and we're here to also share many of the plans that we have in place to go and and find our kids to meet their as well so

035thank you so much for your time and I'm going to turn it over to Erin lewick who is my counterpart at North High thank you Sarah we can go ahead and go to the next slide then um So within our buildings we look at a number of indicators and use different kinds of data to determine early interventions um teachers and CS members are able to monitor students in these areas on the slide using our student management system and each School uses an early warning system that is generated weekly for our problem solving teams to review for possible tier 2 interventions so Sarah mentioned that be tier interventions um next slide so once a student is identified we really try to U utilize that tiered approach um teachers are able to see students and engage with

036them often and our teachers are great at making those initial and early contacts and also giving the most specific information to the parent so they can support as well um for example if we have a student who typically has no missing assignments and all of a sudden misses a summative assessment or a few assignments the teacher will touch Bas with the student and maybe encourage them to attend office hours so they can have more specific support outside of that class time um if they observe a student struggling with a particular unit or a skill the teacher may suggest attendance to a resource period U that same initial teacher level intervention can include a contact to the parent um and then the parent can help encourage the student to engage in some of those additional supports

037um our teachers and counselors often collaborate and a lot of times the combined effort between the parent teacher and counselor team is successful in making a positive change especially in the area of academics or in helping a student identify what their social emotional needs are um a lot of the connections to strive and tutoring happen at the this tier 2 level because they have multiple caring adults sending the same message um and supporting them and getting hooked up to their supports um so teachers and counselors also work together to support the emotional needs of students and each school's developed an internal referral form um started in spring kind of because of covid but we probably will explore using it but we found that when we went into a remote learning setting we couldn't recreate those

038kind of stop in my office and tell me you're concerned about a kid's um process and so we made a referral form because we can't all be together in the building and and we've been able to track data and see some Trends from that which has been really helpful um if there's a need to look at more individualized supports or a student continues to struggle after the teacher and the parent and the counselor have started some interventions then um the Alpha Team or the assist team would convene to discuss the the case and determine appropriate next steps we can go to the next slide so a little bit about our Alpha problem solving team so those are the building uh teams used by CS um and we wanted to share a little bit about the

039interventions that these teams utilize both before the pandemic and then specifically um because of the current needs that we have so both buildings have a structure for academic groups that supports students to get back on track and stay on track um and this year we specific Al um have provided cohorts at each campus that increases a students time in the building in a socially distanc and safe way and then provide supervised support in getting them connected to their remote classes um that's for students who have really struggled to even get up get logged in some technological concerns um we've been able to use that Cort structure um we also have added an interventionist and then we have student engagement mentors that support students virtually who struggle to keep with their online schedule from home and

040maybe struggling with attendance we're really seeing a need in the area of executive functioning and just what student Behavior looks like in a remote setting so we've been able to bring in some levels of support there um this these staff along with cs have been connecting with parents um we make that a top priority and occasionally we've done some home visits when our U haven't been able to connect with calls and emails and hasn't been successful um so in both buildings we've we've done some home visits to try to get kids engaged and families engaged um finally the alpha teams also assist in getting students connected with um student support groups and those students support groups have taken place on Zoom primarily given our current restrictions so I will hand it over to Dave King

041he is the um department chair for counseling and student Support Services in the good evening everybody thank you for having me tonight uh Erin already touched on this a little bit in terms of academic supports but between the both buildings uh we have a variety of resources that are highlighted to be in that tier one intervention so tier one this is going to be support that is provided to all of our students across the board um peer tutoring office hours virtual resources and strive but to be more specific um our peer tutoring provided by our NHS uh leaders in both buildings and other interested students within uh resource periods uh Erin mentioned office hours uh our staff and our our our teachers and CS members are readily available um for office hours Aaron mentioned it's

042difficult to replicate that that drop in type of of feeling um but I know that our office hours have been used as such specifically within within CS um as as our staff at North and I'm sure at South has offered different uh office hours outside of school time for students to drop in uh ask questions as needed depending on the topic U so those office hours have become uh have been very vital in terms of supporting our students uh virtual resources uh such as strive being that after school uh tutoring uh program provided by our students and teacher leaders in the building um but those virtual resources also being provided during those academic periods throughout the day to where a student can uh be referred to this or not referred if they uh it's it's

043pushed out through their Google classrooms that students are are members of they can choose um a specific link to that uh to that tutoring session with a certified teacher within any school period of the day so those are just a few of the highlights of our tier one academic interventions uh social emotional supports um obviously this is you know being generated as we speak and and as we've learned throughout first semester um what's important to kind of highlight some more of those tier one intervention um I would I would include depression literacy as one of those tier one interventions um as we've pushed out literature information knowledge I think that it's important for students to um recognize and understand their feelings right to understand what that emotionality is that they're that they're working through um

044in so many different ways uh in a variety of ways under the current situation setting and and pandemic um and understanding what those feelings are and then providing skills and strategies throughout uh a specific example would be um you know prior to winter break uh pushing out a list of resources for students and families to access over that two- week period to where uh Cs and teachers were not as available as they typically have been uh throughout first semester and so just we had some borom Busters um some different things that families could do to stay engaged um under and stay connected during such a time of disconnection so uh just an example to teaching and learning and providing skills and strategies in a in a very unique way um support groups are typically uh

045created through um student need as we collect data and learn more and create more opportunities for students to engage with each other um in a variety of ways and then obviously the crisis processing groups that we've provided uh due to the social unrest and the different um different events that have occurred throughout the summer and first semester and obviously supporting those students that um you know have suffered and grieved through the loss of peers and Friends uh first semester as both buildings have have suffered great losses um so just to highlight some of those social emotional supports finally post-second supports uh you know Zoe I don't think I heard necessarily where you're off to uh next fall but you know Sam congratulations uh to be a wild cat you get to stay in some purple

046from what I hear so that's good um but yeah so our post-secondary supports uh what's being provided our focus at South and discover you College curriculums have gone completely virtual everything that we've provided has been done synchronously and asynchron ly whether through uh through edpuzzles through Google Classroom pushouts through pushing in and and taking um you know a little bit of instructional time from our teachers so that we have that Collective audience uh to provide the same resources that we typically would during a regular school year uh at both campuses we have a College and Career Center uh website that's up and running um being new to the district uh looking at specifically the north site um it's a wealth of information um I was thoroughly impressed uh reviewing it and looking at the different

047options and resources that are available there um that were there pre-co and and now since we've we've gone this direction just to support our students during this vital time of their uh you know of their High School tenure as they look for post-secondary planning uh faf night is one of those um evening events that we've provided on a regular annual basis um that continued to happen this fall um and we have another event plan coming up uh conquering College costs coming up this Wednesday so those events have gone virtual um and some feedback we've gathered from the event the virtual events um has been that there's been more positive uh parent and student uh uh involvement within it because they you know the comfort of their home they could stay and and be a part

048of that conversation uh without having to you know leave the home maybe they have child care issues um it's been well attended from my understanding as well so uh just some highlights for the student supports for the post-secondary planning I think I'm G to pass it off to Dr walrock thanks David just really want to thank the board for the opportunity to speak to all of you I've worked in student Support Services in District 99 for over 20 years and have seen Services be supported by the board that entire time and for that I can honestly say amongst other high schools we have some Hallmark Services we're able to offer students and so when the pandemic hit and we had to close down I remember speaking with Aaron uh on March 16th on that Monday

049after we met with our staff and we went wow what what's going to happen next what what do we need to be thinking about and one of the words that I uh that I came back to was caring and it comes from Dr the's continual annual message to our entire District 9 community that we work in a caring environment comes right out of our district 99 U mission statement and so as we've taken that community of caring out into our communities that's what that's what the that's what happened uh that's how we developed to this particular site that's in front of you this is on the District 99 uh covid response site came remember the exact term of it but uh this was out there within a week of March 16th and then Aaron and

050I continue to curate resources and push these out to students the parents and the faculty because we knew the level of impairment was going to be significant in all of those groups another really intentional thing that Aaron and I did at both campuses was we flipped our team into full crisis mode uh so that that's a really important thing to know because in crisis mode every activity shuts down everything goes into crisis response and our teams are really attuned to doing risk assessments for students and identifying those students that are struggling in that personal counseling domain in their in their own mental health uh and we continue to do that throughout that semester we also had some seniors that were graduating and had to make their plans their postsecondary plans so we did all of

051that work as well to make sure students uh got to the places that they wanted to be uh I'm sure sure it's no surprise to all of you in that postsecondary planning there were a lot of questions that students had a lot of students changed their minds about what they what they were going to do because of what was going on in their family the financial resources and their family being being at a loss for them and just really wanted to stay closer to home for for many students that process was was complicated to end the year and then in this year uh we've continued to curate this site and put resources out there and for that purpose we got to hit people in a variety of different ways uh with the services that we

052offer whether it's individual students or in this prevention mode that we're talking about now and making sure that tier one support is out there for all of our students and so I I I love this piece so we've actually learned some things uh that we may not have learned without this um and the first thing I have a specific example from today I had a parent meeting today with two parents and uh their student and a counselor and a social worker and as I was reflecting that meeting and really how well that meeting went uh and I've heard this from other staff uh at South I'm sure David has heard this at North as well is that I I don't know if we'll have uh a preponderance of in-person parent meetings during the school day

053anymore we don't need to pull parents out of work for half a day to have a parent meeting uh where they can just hop on a computer and have a really effective meeting in the moment that's really targeted uh for for their students needs so I would imagine we will continue to do that that's been a wonderful benefit of having access to Google meet and and and zoom meeting as far as reflecting on our school days supports obviously this has been a challenge uh we are a relational Department we uh survive on relationships whether it's with our staff our parents our students most importantly our students and so how do we how do we Foster Rel relationship in Virtual spaces uh one of the things that I've learned uh really from the staff itself is

054they've learned different ways that students communicate we have some students that really will only communicate via chat some students will only communicate with their cameras off some with their cameras on we have some students that will only communicate via email this is really unexpected on how students might communicate but as we've learned what works for students we've been able to differentiate our approach so that our school day supports continue to be offered in a very fluid manner based on what those students needs are and uh both campuses uh reaching out to the whole school Community uh knowing that our staff uh is struggling uh it's it's not surprising our school board struggles uh we all are struggling we all are experiencing a degree of impairment and to the degree that we care for each other

055and continue to offer that care uh really speaks to the quality of District 99 and both high school student Support Services I have a question and I'm kind of struggling I I'm kind of struggling with how I want to ask it um you know no one person speaks for the board but I think we are all in agreement this is nobody thinks this is ideal to be remote nobody thinks it's ideal to be hybrid we would all like to be back in school but we understand why we're we're not um we hear from parents we have these great resources and thank you all because I know that you guys got this you were always offering great support for our students but you had to kind of just rethink how you were going to do this

056on the dime like our all of our teachers and all of our staff did from the parents we hear from who say my child doesn't want to go to school my child uh is crying in her room in her room she just doesn't want to go here anymore um they're so disappointed I can't get them motivated what how do those how do those parents access this system if for if by chance their child has not already been identified and what kind of supports do we offer to the parent I guess I I will take the just the first part of that answer I'm sure other people can chime in um I would want any parent to know that they can reach out to the counselor or any CS member that's part of their students Alpha

057Team um we have counselor usually the easiest I think to identify on the parental interface if they looked at echool but they could also just call up to the school and ask to speak to someone in the counseling office um because we worked with Michelle kagio today and she got she called me because Dave was in my office and we got right with a student situation so I would just tell them to connect with the school and we'll get them exactly what they need um we would do an initial assessment of that student and who they've been connect with already um but if we didn't have a lot of information we would reach out immediately because we don't we don't know the level of concern that's really being expressed there um and we would we

058would connect with them as soon as possible but I would encourage them counselor but if if they don't have the time to look up all that information call the school and tell them you needed some to talk to someone to your because your student's struggling and they'll get you to the right place I'm sorry I was just gonna chime in really briefly here to uh follow up with Aon was mentioning and Nancy you mentioned um you know whether they're identified yet or not from my perspective in in the counseling office working you know so closely with our CS team it to me that whether we're whether they're identified or not as a student that is is struggling uh that needs to support I want to hear from the parent right that might not be something

059we've we've had the chance yet to um a lot of times our students will use our services and our support St our support team um you know as a way to to um work through that social emotional component um and the parents might you know not they're not sharing that information back they might not come to their mom and dad and say hey I spoke with my counselor my social worker today um you know and it's really by the by the parent reaching out let's say I was the counselor and the parent reaching out to me um you know looking for support I can support that parent too you know I can say yes I've worked with your son or daughter or thank you for bringing me this information here's what we're going to do

060next um you know so that just both levels of that support whether it's this is the first where BEC aware of the situation because you know students can keep it together throughout the day a lot of times they can it's when they go home and now they've been home so much right they they don't have that same school outlet that they that's been taken from them that's you know it's it's it's grieving I don't know if Vince mentioned this but our students are grieving because of this loss of this connection you know Sam mentioned you know the activities and the sports and hopefully learning I was a three sport athlete in high school I can't imagine you know my sports being taken away from me um as a High School junior and Senior and that's

061what's been done and I was involved with different activities throughout in clubs and having that taken away so we don't see necessarily everything that's going on at home um and so I would encourage the parent You know despite the even if they've communicated back and forth continue to call us continue to connect with us and we can continue to support the student but also support the family um through our lens of CES at North and I think I can say that on behalf of South as well I have a question um how many students does each counselor are they assigned in a given year ballpark I can speak to that we average around 270 to 280 uh for case load for counselor okay the same have the counselors been asked to maybe once a month

062check in with each one of their students that they're assigned to just like hey how you doing or hey how's this working or how's your home life environment going or just some type because at school you could call them in at lunch you could call them in during PE a class passing period and have that one two three five minute conversation with them have those calls have gone out to those students where the student hasn't called The Counselor but the counselor's called the student or the parents I can speak to that thanks Mr pavana for the question I know you asked the students the same question I'm glad that you asked Zoe and Sam that question as well uh you heard in the presentation what tiered intervention looks like and so there are some things

063that we do for all students one of the things that happened very intentionally at both campuses in March uh in beginning of April was counselors reached out to every one of their students to assess where they were at at that time to identify what those needs were and the needs were significant not just emotional needs we had students with food scarcity needs we had students with housing needs clothing needs uh more needs than we would have anticipated in a normal school year and it really became uh more of a 12 to 14 hour a day job uh in speaking to families when they were available to do that and I I know both campuses um our student Support Services really extended themselves out to make sure all of those needs were being met uh and

064I'm so thankful that we had the cas STS that we had to be able to do that so yes Mr havo we had uh many students come forward in those check-ins um and we had some students be like hey I'm fine I'm good you know I'm I'm I'm doing okay right now we did the exact same thing at the beginning of this school year we did with our freshman and our sophomore specifically and our transfer students and then we just did it again uh with with all of our students just to see who needs a check in uh where people at uh right now people are really anxious around course selection for next school year uh so that's a lot of the concern right now um but I can safely say that our tier intervention

065system because the well developed for so long is working and it's happening that's that's one thought and I want to speak one one comment that Nancy made uh Nancy one of the things I I've seen and uh Zoe and Sam might agree with me this time has made it difficult to connect the dots so if I'm a parent home and I'm in isolation with a student who's struggling I may not know where to go even though I might know where to go you I I've seen this where connecting to DOS is challenging so if you have parents that reach out to you please send them to us but Nancy it saddens me that maybe a parent said something to you that we didn't know about I would always want to know about it you know

066me well enough that I would do anything I can to make sure that student receive the services they and you and you don't know me that well yet but I say the same thing I feel the same way I would I would want to be the first to know so please send them our way we we have we have we have routinely and and I do appreciate the fact that you guys are there I just cannot even imagine and I actually my next question was going to be Rick's question so essentially would you say we have we we touch base sort of routinely with all of our students I'm sure there's a few we don't get and some Nancy it's in a tier one fashion where all students receiving a similar communication we have learned

067uh Dave and I talked about this too asynchronous uh push out information doesn't do real well and giving feedback it really is about stinker so we've shifted to push in lessons and classes yeah we we were in PE classes today talking the students in that tier one way to identify students that might need additional support this semester I I guess Vince the reason why I'm asking is I'm a teacher and I see 140 kids every day and I have chosen to have 10 15 maybe a 20 second conversation with each student individually when I take attendance hey how's your weekend fast slow you know just about right and you can get you can hear in the tone of their voice what's going on and and I'm doing it for 140 kids every single day and

068I guess part of me would assume that the counselors during asynchronous learning would maybe blow a phone call out to a parent or that student say hey how's it going maybe once month just to check in whether they got straight A's or whether they're they're they're not doing very well in their classes versus just focusing on the ones that are being flagged as maybe not performing well um and so part of me wonders is that happening I mean yes I lose seven minutes a a period but I just don't I choose not to do Bell work I I I choose to have conversation with the student every day it's a valuable seven minutes absolutely Vince go ahead I'm sorry I didn't me to no it's okay so I me thanks for reasing the question uh

069obviously a counselor Cas Lo feels a whole lot different than a classroom and so as I look at my case load and I'll go back to the presentation we work in a tiered intervention model so there are things we do at a tier one level for all students and we've done more of that than we ever have before to identify who those students are May Mr panado I wish that time existed to give every student a call to have an individual conversation with him that being said I know a lot of that's happened already and most of your parents we've done more parent work than we've ever done before to identify who has that level of need and that doesn't mean we just work with students that are struggling by any means right because we

070have those three domains one of them is the post-secondary domain we've still been doing all of our interventions in postsecondary planning whether it's uh F of completion identifying your first secondary pathway uh having career speaker series that's a whole different intervention system that we see a lot of students through uh and so that's how we've continued to function uh to make sure that we are giving the right level of intervention to the students that need it based on their specific needs in those domains and I just to to kind of jump in and Vince and piggyback of of what you're saying uh Rick as you posed that question I was thinking in my head um a little bit i' I've taken some notes you know certainly from from the conversation here and then Sam and

071Zoe some of the feedback that you've provided um but my work in the counseling office over my time and education you know you mentioned Rick in the classroom in the classroom as the teacher you've you're controlling that environment right you can control that seven minutes in in my environment in the counseling office the students controlling that environment it could be seven minutes for per student it could be 70 minutes per student and so that unpredictability is difficult because if I am going to as a as a clinician or a CS member if I am going to push out that uh communication to all of my students I need to be prepared for the response um you know I think from a teacher's perspective taking that time that's we've been I mean Erin and I can

072can speak to this at all levels that we have encouraged our staff members to step away from time from curriculum really focus in on the social emotional component of the of the student and really you know wrap that student around but we know and the teachers I I hope know that if it if that emotionality increases they know where to go next and that's that tiered intervention that Vince is talking about is that once we reach past that surface level and what the teacher can support in the classroom which is I mean part of me I was so excited about hybrid because I I mean I don't really know a lot of students yet because I haven't been in the building and so I really thrived on that one week of having I was in

073the Halls during passing periods and you know trying to to meet students because that's what where I thrive so you know just just to have and I'm hopefully as we continue back into a hybrid model that's that that entry that that service level of social emotional support is going to be supported even more so in the classroom by our wonderful teachers at North and South but then they know all right we've got you know the we got the people over there in c s that are ready to swoop in and support should you know that question of how are you doing today take us a different direction I would just like to add we're learn we are learning so much about how to support our students during this time um we there's some Zoom fatigue

074is real um and we strugg to get students on a zoom environment and so the times when we are in the building we are capitalizing on the ability to get with students originally we had said okay when we're in the building they need to be in every moment of their class all the time we are not going to pull them we're going to try our hardest we're going to use that resource period and students are so were so tired of being online that they weren't logging in during that resource period And so then we had to go back and problem solve like okay this student the need is so great we need to collaborate with that teacher I need five minutes out of that class because I need to connect with this kid um and

075so we're we're learning that and feedback has come from students um I've sat with some students on some different like mental health presentations and they said we're just tired and the idea of getting back online after I shut that down is really hard so kind of taking that feedback retooling what's going on because this semester we're planning on still having remote Learners at some I mean at some point to be back fully to normal with everyone in the building I I I would love to say I'm hopeful but I think we have to take what we've learned because although I think we'll be back more hybrid we're still going to have remote Learners and they're still going to have the same needs um and so we're going to need to be able to learn from

076what we we've learned already um so I just I student feedback has been amazing in regards to that okay thank you yeah and I just wanted to offer my perspective and some clarification that I probably should have given earlier when you asked the question um because even though I did appreciate the question earlier and I won't speak for Sam but I don't think that I personally am a good represent presentation in this respect of the student body for receiving counselor support only because this year in the past few years I haven't um I've been fortunate enough honestly to not really need to utilize my counselor as often for emotional support um so yeah like they said I understand that the system is totally need-based and I would actually prefer that students that need it more

077than me um receive it before me so I don't personally feel cheated for not getting consistent how are you doing messages just because um I mean another big thing that I hope anybody watching um takes is that a lot of my support comes from home so um the I feel like the best thing people could do for students right now at home is just to be there for their children because that's what's made me fortunate enough to not have to use these systems quite as much and I really appreciate that some of my friends have been able to use the systems here at school yeah Zoe I don't think you could have said expressed it any better um about students like yourself and getting the help from home um it sounds to me like all

078of you have learned by Leaps and Bounds on how to work with students remotely and you're getting better all the time um I did have one question though um because sometimes we get emails from parents who um it sounds like their students are so seriously struggling mentally are you finding some students falling into that tier three category I would say yes there's there is a marked increase in the level of tier three social emotional needs right now we are um we when we compared hospitalization numbers to last year last year I would say at North we were it felt higher than the year before we're already over where we were um but I would say and I I don't want to speak for events but in March when we looked at each other and we

079thought wow we're going to be impaired this is not surprising us when we look at the great the you know what we our whole society has been going through and that was before the social unrest that started to occur that was just in response to the pandemic so I would say yes we're seeing more students struggle at a more intense level okay thank you I have a I have a question can you guys hear me no okay um I know someone touched on but in the way of and Zoe made a good point about having the support at home do you guys have any way of just um providing any knowledge to the parents or the people the adults these children the students live with on how to support the kids because it the support

080may look a little bit different now in a covid situation than it looked prior to this so is there any way or anything that you may be providing them with just based on on our current climate in order to know how to support that student during this time absolutely um we've offered specific um parent nights around executive functioning that was one thing we heard very clearly from our parents and our students is we they were sent home to work remotely and we hadn't taught any skills on how to be a remote student and then parents were trying to support the student being a remote student but that looks different than what it was when you were an in inperson student and so we've done some very specific um nights around executive functioning and then we've

081talked a little bit about maybe doing more of a workshop format this so you did like um information pushup around that last semester but we've talked about maybe doing a workshop where we are encouraging parents to log on with their kids and maybe we can do a different format so we can do some kind of almost executive functioning boot camp and do it early we've talked about doing it here in January so like getting your student binder your virtual binder together in regards to that um and then Vince and I serve on the grit 2 board and we've been a part of conversations just with that group group around um supporting parents in conversations around anti-racism and social unrest and they're starting a book club um that I know they've pushed out to the community

082and why that's not a d99 thing I will say that it it represents um great conversations happening in our community and I would just add one more resource um is I've been in contact with a a local agency that's interested in working with the parents of our freshman students and then also parents of our senior students to almost work on parent um circles to be able to group parents together that have students that are transitioning into the building or out of the building because we know that those are unique groups of parents and they have unique needs and sometimes being able to be with other parents who are seeing the same things and feeling the same things sometimes that's some of the best support so we're also looking at trying to get that off the

083ground here as well so that's another example of that's not something something that we would maybe have thought to do before this year but I think that's something that we could look at long term as well Erin I I I think that idea you and Vince reaching out to parents is a great idea sooner rather than later because you would not believe how many parents are actually in the classroom with the kids they are there sitting at the table listening asking their kids to go do stuff um and and just getting protocol out there that hey your kids in school even though he's at home on the kitchen table there are more parents in that household than than you would think I I was shocked at how many parents are actually sitting there and the

084reason why I know is because I've gotten so much feedback with the fact that I just ask the kid a question every single day individually when I take attendance instead of doing breakout sessions or Bell work I I I it cost me seven to eight minutes every single day but just that one-on-one conversation over the computer it's it's it's it's it's changed everything because then the next 25 minutes I got their attention I blow through the material I finished two weeks ahead of everybody else in my department just by having that that that personal connection that you don't get by being remote when you're remote you don't get that personal connection unless you work at it rick we've also can I just ask a question I'm sorry are you saying parents are they supporting their

085students and helping them with their remote learning or they're interfering with their remote learning they're working from home right next to them on a computer or a laptop or they're in the they're in the home environment they are not they are not isolated in their bedroom by themselves so is it is that good or is that bad is my question a little bit of both okay maybe the good parent keeps them focused but the bad parent doesn't realize that they're in school and says hey go do this go do that thank you I'm sorry to interrupt no that's okay I just I I I I think the parents it's it's a shame that we had to wait till second semester to do this but I would say January versus march to to to get something

086out there to the parents this is proper protocol okay this is the environment we're in because some parents I think there's a there's they're not they're not allowing the student to engage in the classroom at least at the high school level from what I've seen rck we we have been communicating that from and Janice's office have been communicating it to families and to students all year so at least you know we we've established the expectations but we know you know every house is different and there's more or less space in every house and different expectations yeah and we know that we right now while we're in remote are really guests in everybody's home uh as we deliver instructions so but we we have had those conversations and have sent out those kinds of expectations all

087year long I guess that's the reason why I'm such an advocate for hybrid versus remote um there's so much more to that interpersonal relationship that develops in person yeah and I would actually like to add on to that um I think that on top of the interpersonal relationship that uh Rick was just mentioning uh I think that there's a sense safety and a sense of togetherness that comes with hybrid and obviously you can't go into remote when the the numbers are so high there's obviously a a you have to draw a line in the sand at some point where that uh you have to make an executive decision where it's not safe enough but um I think we should really be doing everything we can to get back into hybrid um I I feel that

088I I wasn't I feel I didn't Express the reality enough in my board report report I I feel like I I had a bit of a a self-realization moment after I gave that report I think that I need to do better at telling you guys how much students are struggling because I think students really are struggling do too and you know on top of academically socially emotionally um and there's only as great as the CSS uh csss department is um there's only so much they can do to help because it it's a lot of relies on the student coming to that department themselves and so I think that you know the best thing that the board can do is just do everything they can to get back into hybrid but of course there's a point

089where there's nothing the board can do if the numbers are so bad the cases are so bad that um we can't go back but I also just wanted to ask a question of um that department that is here I was wondering because I actually did a a long form feature article for the newspaper uh the Omega at North right before school got out for break and it was about um racial incidents uh obviously the one that occurred last semester was the big one that everybody heard about but uh there's definitely more subtle ones that occur all the time uh I've talked to a lot of minority students and students of color at North and they're saying that you know stuff like that occurs way more often than you'd expect it just goes unreported and and

090a lot of times it's the main word that was thrown around was fatiguing uh on top of everything that's going on I feel that it's definitely harder to be a minority student right now uh and so I was just wondering is there a specific subset or subcategory of your social social emotional approach to helping students that deals with you know issues of race uh racial um discrimination marginalization or not racial just any incidence of marginalization is is there a specific subset that that kind of takes care of that yeah I can speak a little bit to that Sam because I work with the arur inclusion councils at both buildings um so there's two things I would say that I think speak to our movement in a positive direction to address exactly what you're talking about

091in terms of student feedback around non addressed microaggressions is kind of what we had labeled it at on Friday so I met with emoa and the black student union at dgn or well I weeren a dgn I was feeling like I was a dgn we were all virtual um but we met online to talk about an upcoming lesson where student voice will be used to talk about how unaddressed microaggressions have made them feel um and then to try to then link that to our work with the equity inclusion Council on how to empower teachers not to hesitate to address things because they're afraid they're going to do it incorrectly that's some feedback that we've gotten some from some of our forums um so we're going to really Elevate student voice in regards to that and

092then the equity and inclusion councils that both building have put together a bias incident response plan because what we realized is we needed to very quickly put things into motion when we have an incident that's hurtful in that way occur um and and we were losing time in how quickly we felt like we were getting student supports off the ground because it was taking so long to coordinate things and so we put together a response plan so even um after some of the the things that have occurred we've been able to send out emails and granted their their emails right but they'll go out through through counselor classroom saying we are offering these three processing sessions for students in the next three days if you need to come and connect with other students about what

093you're feeling please come um and our president of the black student union Quinton Mills was at one today supporting other students and so I I see us moving in a positive direction um and I appreciated the article that you did I feel like we talked about that um last year as well but I I see us moving in a good direction and I also see students being involved in giving supports to other students which is ultimately where I want to be yeah and I'm just Sam I just want to to chime in to a little bit I know Sam you're going to be you know graduating here soon um so our time will be very short together um but you know this coming into as a community member right and someone that's supporting students um

094and their learning in life and and how they develop into that person you know that we all strive for them to become um you know this is a community uh that you know north south feeder schools that we need to come together um as it as it pertains to equity and inclusion and and providing the same message um you know it's it's important I think to educate and provide that that foundational knowledge for our students before they before they walk in the doors of North and South um you know to to Bas to more or less you know provide that that Foundation of of each other and that togetherness that we celebrate and that we miss so much um and so that's something that I'm very passionate about and hope to move forward once I

095figure out where all the rooms are at north um uh you know we'll work on that but you know this is certainly something that you know I'm passionate about in terms of supporting certainly our current students but then being an agent of change as we progress forward um into this uh you know into the 2020s if you will thank you sounds like our conversation on this is wrapping up so I I I wanted to uh to hit on the question that Rick asked earlier and provide a little more emphasis um that that how many how many students per counselor ratio that we have um you know 1 to 280 so you know just think about that for a moment um and this group of people really deserve some props for uh a job well done

096um and then uh understanding that last time I looked into this uh that student ratio student counselor ratio our district um does a better job with that than all the surrounding districts we have more counselors per student than most of the surrounding districts and and so that says something about our commitment as a district right um to these efforts and so uh I think we've seen the you know the result of that in in this presentation tonight uh I love the what have we learned slide I mean just and just thinking about how much better you know this is an awful experience that we're going through right now but the things that we're learning that are going to make it so much better you know going forward uh even when we get past Co so

097thank you for all the hard work well said Mike well said any other questions or comments i' I'd like to Echo Mike's uh thank you and um gratitude for the support of this department and I know we increased we added some um positions this last year so um that was just very fortuitous that we did this so thank you for all of your work thank you for your continued support thank you for everything you do for our students it is not an easy job we we appreciate each and every one of you yes we appreciate the board as well the board has dedicated additional resources to our CS department and and kind of The Wider support of that department every year in the five years that I've been here um so you know we we've

098put resources where they they need to be to support our students not just academically but socially emotionally and and post-secondary so um and and I will mirror the boards uh thank you to all of our staff members that joined us this evening so thank you thank you guys uh I believe we're going to move on to an update dat on inperson learning yes um to this is mostly uh just some quick updates on what's happened since we met last and uh just a review of Where the metrics sit uh for uh for now uh as we learn more as as we come back so um just a reminder to to the board and everyone out there what we're looking to to try to have happen is to offer as expansive of instructional programming as we

099can and and you know we expanded that uh for second semester where our hybrid now has every student coming to school Tuesday through Friday uh for half a day and over the course of that week they see every uh one of their teachers we're trying to make that work within those safety uh strategies and protocols and uh making sure that we offer that at a time where Community transmission makes it unlikely that covid will spread uh when students are at school in this model next slide R so just some changes that have happened uh remember we provided the opportunity to all of our families to reselect if they wanted to whether they were fully remote or in the hybrid model and uh currently as of this morning uh 28% of North students have selected to

100be fully remote and 45% of our South students have chosen to be fully remote so we have a large number of students at at both campuses that are choosing the fully remote model through spring break uh and just a point of note that's the same as it was uh when we did this in the fall is that our our students of color are far more likely to be change to be choosing the fully remote model uh as you heard we had one week of in-person learning although during that week we did have many choose many that had chosen inperson learning select to stay home for that week whether it was they were traveling uh or mixing with family over break and chose to self- quarantine for that week or were concerned about others that had

101traveled or had participated in more risky activities than choosing to stay home during that week um we had a lot a higher number than we expected uh choosing to stay home uh for that first week so our numbers were down uh and the reason I point that out is because remember every week we're back we're learning um more and more about the program and the low number of students that we actually had in attendance uh for that first week doesn't make it as typical as we hope that it will be in future uh in the future weeks that we'll actually have more people in the building uh than we did during that first week of school uh We've added additional webcams for our teachers it was fun to walk the hallways and and see what

102was going on inside of the classrooms many of our teachers are concurrently teaching for some or even all of their class period so they're working with both their in-person and remote students at the same time uh it looked like uh a lot of news rooms as you walked by you know teachers were broadcasting uh to their students and uh we did some professional learning on that first day back uh from break to help uh provide some strategies for teachers uh on how to do that effect effectively uh We've hired an additional nurse at each school as we intended to uh to help with contact tracing but a great idea that came from our athletic directors was uh to add resources from our athletic training uh company since you know we don't have as much Sports

103going on well none right now because we're in tier three uh but even so we have less particip we're going to have less sporting events going on than we did in the past so we're utilizing uh our athletic trainers as additional resources to help with contact tracing um that's an area that is definitely going to be a challenge for us I believe coming back uh we had more far more uh illness that we were tracking uh that first week than we had at any point during first semester including our hybrid weeks you know the fact that every student's coming back to school on a day right all of our students that have chosen in person are coming in each day um makes it uh a far greater process to track plus parents are more likely

104I believe to report illness when students are coming into school um so we know that keeping track of illness and that's one of our Key Safety strategies to uh along with this is going to be a great task in the second semester uh we also started out the semester with uh an introduction of staff on paper and as you heard from our students um this is starting to make it out to uh to the larger student body uh We've circulated some general information from Ed and Janice and then over the next couple of uh days and weeks we'll have more specific information for students and for parents um to help them understand the resources that are have been provided there through paper so any any questions on any of those just before I move on

105because the next couple of things are just real quick review of where we're at all right so uh just to review what we're trying to do here is we're we're trying to develop programs here where were unlikely to spread uh covid at school and we've matched those up based on our experiences from the first semester and what the CDC guidelines are around those metrics so what we're working from next slide R is that we're using uh the factors of community burden which are both the number of cases per 100,000 or positivity rate you'll see once again the metrics we've sat there uh in addition to a third core indicator which is our ability to follow up and contact Trace within 24 hours and then the key mitigation strategies that are down there which are all

106of our safety strategies that are in place next slide um so I we have set those thresholds both based on as I said our experiences from first semester so first semester when we you know I know everybody knows we were only in that hybrid model for two weeks but it was a key two weeks when uh Community transmission and Community spread was on the rise and started below 5% and ended up above 8% by the end and remember we also had our special ed cohorts and small cohorts in from uh early October uh all the way through Thanksgiving so we learned a lot from students coming in in those settings as well and so the thresholds that we've selected are based you know that 9% number I know there's been a lot of talk about

107that 9% number um we really felt you know before that number was at five right when this all started and idph created metrics and and Dage County Health Department the number where they were encouraging us to move fully remote was at 5% uh we pushed that through those two weeks of hybrid because we were able to keep people safe in there and and the number had been turned more over to us as a school district and uh during that period of time between 5 to 8 we we saw that we were having difficulties keeping up with contact tracing and Staffing uh was becoming a concern and that's why we've added the contact tracing resources and the nursing resources and we've also changed some some of our staffing throughout the entire building to make sure that

108we can cover when te teachers are out sick and those kinds of things which has made me comfortable and the administrative team comfortable moving that number to nine right and uh as time goes on and we have we're back in school more often I think those numbers could move up or down based on what our experiences are in the hybrid learning and second semester you know each week is that learning opportunity for us and then there's additional new research coming out that eventually will start to coales and make its way into guidelines and recommendations that we receive from the CDC or other health agencies you know we're starting to see uh there was a major change from the CDC in quarantine periods and exclusionary guidance uh that move that 14-day down to 10 days for

109us in Dage County um so that allows us to get staff back into the building quicker uh which helps with covering classes when people are on quarantine we're starting to see studies new studies come out on the effectiveness of PPE and the various safety protocols that are out there uh we're starting to see a variety of studies on what happened in different school districts around the country as they opened during different rates of community metrics and how uh that might how opening of schools may or may not have played into uh Rising cases in schools or in the community and uh we're also seeing some specific studies based on high school rates of transmission in the impact in the community and how high schools are different than elementary schools uh I imagine all of the

110research from this will eventually start to shape uh the recommendations that we're receiving from the variety of of levels above us and then uh there's going to be vaccine and testing implications moving forward that might play uh into uh how we look at those thresholds and what we know about Community spread um so to review uh as I just said our positivity rate right now sits at n you know our threshold sits at 9% or that 125 per 100,000 um a lot of people have asked point to me in the CDC where it says 9% and it doesn't right the CDC gives us some ranges based on the risks of our uh instructional program and our instructional program is pretty robust especially for the Chicago land area in our new uh hybrid model um So

111within that you know the the CDC points to a range as we discussed last month between eight and 10 and we're comfortable with nine based on what we learned from the first semester and as we learn more we'll come back to the board and the community and talk about what we're learning and where those numbers could move also the ability to follow all of our safety protocols that we have no ongoing outbreaks at school you know that's five or more cases connected back uh and that we're able to follow up on those close cont conts in the 24-hour period which and follow those exclusionary protocols you know those quarantine periods um we should be better staffed to be able to do those things with those resources I just mentioned and then of course adequate staff

112and students being available is always a factor and as we mentioned last month you know if our whole nursing staff was to have to quarantine we wouldn't be able to to bring students back safely you know and those kinds of things uh if we're able to get subs or or any of those factors all play into to uh keeping a school open and operating and then of course in the cohorts the the key change is that we move from the 9 to the 12% that's also based on our experience from first semester when we started to see illness make its way into classrooms and uh really into into the staff uh in those small cohorts was around 12% so uh once again closely mirrors the CDC guidance uh but is also based on our experience

113so uh other things that might impact these numbers going forward uh testing we're awaiting uh the response on our Clea waiver so that we could internal testing I would imagine that uh internal testing we're we're actually using our nursing staff uh to administer a test might be used in the future uh with for students without Health Resources that don't have access to testing or to shorten staff for student quaran where we could get a test and get a response back and know are they covid positive or not um this week our team started meeting with external lab companies uh there's other schools in the area uh that are looking at these or have contracted with these uh various companies to look at actually doing some uh either whole scale testing of their entire student body

114or uh uh statistically uh significant subsamples of their student body to add another metric that could factor into uh their own internal metrics with that there's plus and minuses with that there's still things that we're hearing from idph around this testing um but we're continuing to investigate it and may have more information to bring back to the board before our next meeting on uh January 25th um and then finally vaccines uh this morning or my day really today has been filled with vaccine conversations we've spent about three hours today uh talking about vaccines and I have many more hours this week to discuss this with uh our partner Elementary uh superintendents um as we know uh group 1A is all of the health professionals but school health professionals are part of 1A as well and

115we're working to get all of them vaccinated many of our nurses have already received their first uh dose of the vaccine and some of our therapists and and other uh folks working in in roles that qualify as school health personnel we are now starting to have conversations with DuPage County about coordinating for the vaccination of all School Employees um those fall in group b and Rod if you go to the next slide you can kind of see some of the statistics that go along with this uh group onea covers about 58,000 people in Dage County and we've received in Dage County about 20 7,000 um vaccines and DuPage county is well ahead of the nation in the fact that of those 27,000 I believe they said as of today somewhere or over 70% of them

116have actually been uh ended up inside of somebody already so DuPage county is doing a great job getting vaccinations uh out um but you can see that next group is huge you know almost 270,000 people in that uh group 1B and that's where our staff including our teachers and support staff and and everybody else that works here Falls um and that's the work we're going to really be putting together over the next few weeks uh we're working very closely with our partner Elementary districts to put together a plan and a process and uh we'll need to partner with uh a healthc care provider um to uh actually administer the vaccines that's not something we could do with our Health Care staff uh so we're underway looking at the variety of different options that are out

117there between pharmacies and hospitals medical groups um or uh or um like the healthcare providers that we've used for like flu vaccines in the past so we're looking at what all of those options are and trying to put together a plan here because they believe in two to six weeks uh we'll start moving through group one 1B so that's where a lot of my work is focused uh right now so uh that's kind of the update of where we're at uh with return to school and uh any questions that board members have at this time Hank I have a question for you um next week say we come in under 10 but over nine what would your decision be to stay home at this time based on what we know from first semester uh I

118would believe that that would be the prudent thing to do nothing is nothing has yet changed in our understanding of how this works for me to recommend to the board that we expand Beyond 9% um that could change in the coming weeks if we're able to come back and learn more or if guidance changes uh from Health agencies what happens if the board did not agree with that number I would like to I would like to I would like to make a resol resolution to ask the board to raise the number from 9% to 10% I think the mental aspect outweighs the health aspect for this demographic of student I think the fact that we're going to be going in going out going in going out based on a Hardline number I I I think

119we have to do everything in our power to get these kids back in school it's not normal but it's somewhat normal based on remote learning I I I I just want the board to to just know factually that had this been the threshold for first semester if we would have known then what we know now we would have been in session all but three weeks with these metrics in the first semester um so I I think for the majority of second semester if it plays out like first semester our kids will be in school the majority of of second semester and I feel like we can keep them in there safely within the metrics that are in here now based on what we know I do not if I would have felt hold on Rick

120if I would have felt like 10 per we could set it at 10 percent and that we could have kept Kids Safe based on what we know I would have brought the board 10% but I didn't because nine is where I am confident our administrative team is confident that we can keep kids safe at school I I I I I I think the the mental aspect of this this has been it's going on almost a year where they have not been able to have a normal environment and now this 9% I I don't believe that that needs to be a firm number and I I I can probably rationalize 10.3 but if it dips down to 9.7 or 9.6 next week I say send the kids back to hybrid and I as a board member

121would like to vote on that um and maybe maybe I'm in the minority but I think as a board member we need to take that responsibility publicly I would agree with you Rick I mean I've I've had issues with these numbers and Hank I'm not blaming you plea we've had discussion last week I'm not putting any blame on on these numbers I believe you're trying to do what you think is in the best interest right of our students uh but I'm with Rick I think that the mental aspects uh of of what's impacting our students is is you know Rick uh the the 10% I you know I would second your motion or your resolution to vote on a motion on 10% but I don't like this number at all I mean this number to

122me is you're looking at a 14-day number that goes backwards 14 days and has no indication of what's going to happen next week to me I mean so a question for you is the the short amount of time we were in school were we able or did we have any cases that we could have linked back that were transmitted to kids in in our schools you won't know that for seven to 14 days Dan because of the the incubation per first semester oh in first semester we did have transmission and extracurricular activities but not during nothing linked directly back to school for those two weeks of hybrid right so to me I mean our default like I said I'll go with your your your tedrick our default should be the kid should be in school

123unless there's outbreaks in school as defined by the you know I think you mentioned five cases I don't remember the exact metrics I apologize but if we can tie transmission to school I'm fully in support of keeping the kids out remote and and being safe but if we can't tie any to school if the numberers 9 10 11 12 the kids should be in school if we don't have any cases being transmitted at school the challenge with that Dan and I I can understand that that logic right that um we should assume that school is safe until it's proven that it's not but then the risk of proving that it's not is actually transmission of a a disease that could be deadly to our students and staff at school so that's why when we talk

124to the health experts they they tell us that we should be setting thresholds where we believe that it is unlikely that outbreak will occur at school and that's the number that I've given the board um I I'm very uncomfortable as the leader of this District picking a number where I feel like there there's a reasonable chance that spread could happen at school um and that's why I brought that 9% which is a very high number in comparison to what the literature says what the DuPage County Health Department says what all of the experts I've talked to for this robust of an instructional program where we have every kid with the opportunity to come to school Tuesday through Friday that's an aggressive program an aggressive stru instructional program program and I've picked a very high number

125there with the help of the administrative team and everything that we know at nine and I I feel like I said the last time a slippery slope is we pick that number 10 then we're going to be a 10.2 and then people are going to be like well it should be 11 and without any other data to go on I I'm not comfortable saying that that's okay um but we've seen other schools be successful in this environment first not with this instructional program Rick I I don't know another school in our area that has every kid coming back to school every day and seeing every one of their teachers over a 4- day period um if we were doing an instructional program that was much smaller um then maybe but it wouldn't be as valuable

126you know and that's what we're balancing here Terry I see you waving at me yeah um my my own concern is is that I see coming towards us is that um uh the mutated uh part of the of the the virus that is much more um contagious and it's not any uh from what I've seen or not seen But heard um is that it's not as uh worse in the way of um uh symptoms symptoms but it is highly contagious and the more we have um people together whether they're wearing masks or not it it it seems to me like it will be um transmitted much faster and that could be a problem for not only our students but staff and families involved so uh you know I I I would rather um be more

127cautious then I don't know maybe I'm wrong hindsight will tell me but I'm with you Hank I I don't know ask Nancy so I you know I uh agree with Terry I um and I don't think we can vote at this meeting but we can take a straw pole we can take a straw pole so I you have to pardon me because I have to click so I don't want to get them confused so when I look at what the um uh uh DuPage County proposes they Define substantial Community transmission as a weekly positive a weekly test positivity rate of greater than eight% and when I look at the CDC they um I just want make sure I pull up the right thing wait um uh they have greater uh highest risk of transmission in

128schools as greater than 10 per. I frankly have no opinion believe it or not um about the positivity rate I don't know if eight nine or 10 or 11 or 12 or 13 or 47 is better what I do know is the guidelines from our Public Health experts we're really kind of at the top at nine and so I know there's a lot of literature out there about Transmission in schools yes there is transmission and no there is not really the reason there are guidelines are that we have people who are experts in this area who sift through all that literature and make some recommendations even the American Academy of Pediatrics which is very vocal about kids should be back in school I think we all agree kids should should be as soon as possible

129back in school I don't think anybody disagrees with that but even the American Academy of pediatri Pediatrics says you should work in areas where there are is substantial transmission you need to work with your uh local public health department to determine when it is safe to open schools so to Terry's point I agree if we're gonna air I think we should air on the side of safety so we can't have a motion tonight then it'll have to be at the next board meeting correct well we'll do a straw count tonight we can do a straw poll tonight well then I'll make the motion in two weeks then well do you want to straw pole it now and see what people say I'd like to interject go ahead uh so uh to speak to the 9%

13010% I I don't know what the right number is but I know I have a you know and I I I look at data everybody looks at data yeah um everybody's got an opinion about these things um but we have a superintendent who uh it's his job to uh con you know to to go through these looking at our unique situation and even we as board members don't really see all the layers of the onion here I mean there are just so many so many things happening here and so uh you know as Hank said in our previous meeting I mean we're we're paying him to make the tough tough decisions and and you know so he's he's come up with 9% that's the number and I would just be afraid that if we if

131we tried to change it to 10 that we'd be having a similar conversation again at you because now the number is 10.2 or something so and then and then the idea you know Dan's Dan's thought too I I've you know about the validity of the number itself and and whether or not that's the metric we should be using um I you know I've had that similar um you know thought and and it it's interesting though I mean I I I shared some of my concerns with a friend who uh you know astutely pointed out to me that yeah it's a flawed number but it's the best we've got I mean we have to no matter what number we pick you know what what metric we decide to use you can make an argument for and

132against using that as as as a number and and so uh when it comes down to it uh I you know I was advocating before for some sort of a range um you know that that maybe uh maybe it's not the best thing to draw a line in the sand and say well we go over this that's it um but I do think I do see the benefit in that and I think we heard from both Zoe and Sam tonight um the appreciation for having something that that the community can look to and and make some judgment as to what might happen and and prepare for that so that it's not necessarily A oh we're waiting on the edge of you know we're all on the edge of our seats waiting to find out what's

133what's going to happen you know some predictability is important and and and so the way we've got this set up right now I think does that and no matter what we choose to do there's going to be people that feel we're and they're absolutely convinced that we're doing things the wrong way and and and we're no different than any other community in this and so I you know we I mean we get we get emails from people telling us thank you for what we've decided to do um we saw a metric just a few minutes ago and I could I could scroll back up on my other screen here to to look at that but I mean I I was I mean wow 40 what was it 48% 45% at South uh in quarter three

134fully remote Learners 28% at North so regardless of whether we decide it's safe for for students to come back in a hybrid model there's 48% of our students at South who've said I I don't care what you what you decide we Mike I think that was a demographic 48% I don't that was not a 48% of the overall population yes it was 4 it was a demographic 48% no it's 45% of our full of our population at South of students right yes I thought it was students of color no no but the that but we were told that a large majority of those students who chose to be fully remote are are represented uh you know as as black and I see that in my district I see that wait wait wait wait wait first

135of all Mike has the floor then we'll go to Rick then we'll go to Joanne can you bring up the slide so everybody can look at that slide again just so there's no question sorry I'm looking at it right now I think it's the third it's a third slide Mike finish your point please yes so um so my my point being that you know with with nearly half of our students at South I don't care what their what their you know their um gender or race or what I mean 45% of our students at South have decided that hey I'm staying home no matter what happens uh in this third quarter and and 28% of our students in North I mean that's these These are this a large number of students and so um I

136think that we've struck a good balance here and uh I think Hank's doing the best he can um we're trying to you know he he's bent in you know his his sort of Hey listen 9% is even pushing you know that's what I was hearing from Hank is that 9% is pushing me to the absolute limit that you know I asked before what is the range and Hank said and this was at our last meeting he said well 9% is the top of my range and I I I appreciate that what so I I did want to ask a question um and that is thinking about our vaccines all right going coming forward and I heard I heard some really wonderful news that we're thinking in two to six weeks we could be vaccinating um

137our our some of our staff um I'm hoping I'm I'm I'm I'm hoping that between now and then that we're looking at how that factor might influence what we're looking at in terms of the positivity rate or or the cases per 100,000 um you know because that that that's now introduced a new variable into into what we're doing it was different from the first semester and and I I know you've you've I mean Hank you're already always one step ahead of me never ask a question so I'm sure this is something your team has started to think about so I'd be interested to hear what your thoughts are on that going forward uh well I I don't have an official thought on it I can tell you Mike that we have weighed had discussions about

138how that should weigh in that combined with increased testing and those kinds of things uh you know how that might play in what we've asked for though is for uh an opportunity to talk to the Illinois Department of Public Health to better understand how that's supposed to play in to our thinking with with the metrics right now it's just speculation that it it should impact it in some way but I have no official guidance from Health experts as to how it actually should but it sure feels like it should right and um since I have the floor before we go back to Rick I I I do want to point out uh something that I'm sure based on the amount of community members I've heard from when we point to fully remote Learners the the

139frustration that comes from people that are strongly in support of getting students back under the hybrid model and especially um feel like maybe we're being too conservative with the metrics is that people people that have chosen the fully remote model have been provided a choice and folks that would prefer to be back in the hybrid model they feel like I am forcing a choice upon them and I am because that's what I'm tasked to do here is to take the evidence in front of me and everything that I've learned over the last you know 10 months and uh our experience here that we've had at the school and try to pick something that indicates if if we're healthy or not or we're going to be healthy or not under it and absolutely could I be

140wrong yes could we look back five years from now and everybody decide that Hank was an idiot absolutely uh my family's done it many times but I can tell you that I I trust in the work that we've done as a team that we've carefully looked at this and considered it this isn't just a dart board thrown or Dart thrown at the dart board right we've we've weighed all of the factors and and tried to come up with something that we trust in will keep people safe and as soon as I feel that that number should either go up or down I will bring that recommendation immediately to the board and the public and say look based on what we've learned this should this should slide one way or another um but to this point

141based on our very limited experience in that one week I I don't have that evidence yet U and just to be just to clarify something you said um and then you know Rick's got the floor when you say I you mean you in consultation with with my administrative team the health department yes you're not sitting there making some sort of autocratic decision no no but I say lot of people who who understand this involved in it yeah and I say I because ultimately with the board and the superintendent relationship it's I am at the top of that pyramid reporting to the board yeah okay rig okay um Mike I apologize I read that second number wrong but we still have 72% and 52% of our students that want the hybrid that's enough to get you

142elected president whether you agree or not um that's a majority now I do know that demographic because I teach in that demographic we're struggling to get back to a hybrid model because of the population of my district does not want to go back but I believe and I've heard enough from parents who have kids in the system the mental toll that this is taking on them outweighs the health benefit that this demographic is going to get if they are exposed to covid the mental part we have this has been going on for almost a year it started in March and they got through it and then it was summer and then the fall there was a promise of coming back and then that was yanked out from under them and now we promised oh we'll

143be back and now the second week back here we are back and forth back and forth and I think we as a school board need to take that decision back and and publicly say what we believe one way or the other majority is the majored nobody promised that we'd be back so just to be clear there was no there was no promise made to anybody that we would definitely be back we the promise was that you know here are the are the the guidelines ahead of time uh this is what we're going to be looking at and if we're you know we're under those numbers we will be back so that was that was the promise um and I I you know the mental health side of this why I mean I I truly appreciate

144and I think we all do um you know given the amount of time dedicated in this meeting to that topic so to speak uh you know just a little bit ago um and so uh for sure I would just always keep in mind that um you know the decisions that that are being made here uh we always talk about keeping the students safe but keep in mind that you know this is a this is a virus that uh doesn't know any boundaries including you know our you know the bounds of our school buildings and uh you know the decisions that we make potentially impact uh you know the health and and well-being of of my uh you know retired elderly uh neighbors um and and so uh I know what's you know I understand that

145that that that there are trade-offs here and and that some people are certainly paying a price but you know what's a life worth and and I think in the short term we want to keep people alive and that's um you know that's that's what we're you know that's what we're trying to to do here I think uh you know I I support Hank's um you know Hank's Direction on this and where we are right now I would not support uh moving away from that nor would I support um removing from Hank um his uh his authority to based on all the conversations with the leaders and and uh decision makers uh that he's you know he's collaborating with uh to come up with the you know the right recommendation for us and and and so

146I don't I nor do I want the authority to decide that we're going to close school on a snow day you know I I mean I I think that that that Hank does a great job with that as well and and this is one of those sorts of things well oh I'm sorry Terry uh Joanna is next and then then you'll have that's okay that's okay yeah but um well pretty much you know I had wanted to say that the demographic we were talking about a lot of those families they are multigenerational and I do feel that when we're making this decision while I care so much about the student body this is about the community at large and I think if people are that concerned you know then they should maybe do better practicing

147of social distancing not be going out not traveling that would help us all to get back into school a whole lot sooner but I um am very much in agreement that Hank has he's giving us the information that we need and I want to go along with the Fig that Hank has provided for us Terry oh go ahead uh sh we haven't we haven't heard from you yet so I I just want to say there is as we've said before there is no winner in this nowhere you know the fact that we're not in school fulltime aligns with there are no winners right but it sounds like to me we're already being more more liberal in our 9% number and because if we're already being more liberal I don't know who made the point does

148do we go to 10 do we go to 11 because we're pushing the envelope to get to you know to get to get in the school open so I am with Hank I support that I feel like we're already more liberal based on what Hank reported what what Nancy has said tonight obvious viously I'm praying every day we get back to normal because that's the right answer but I think where Hank is today and what he's presented with the team that he's utilizing to get here this is now the right answer or the right number for now well basically what I was going to say is is I I agree that um we need to keep um we need to keep that that 9% I think that really is a key and I also think

149that the community um entrusted all of that with Hank to keep them safe too and you know as as uh Mike said this virus has no boundaries none it goes It goes for everybody and and we need to really remember that and and um our students want to get back to school we want them there but we also have to think about their parents their grandparents and their Nextdoor neighbors so I I think conservative is the best way to go that's basically it so we're not taking a vote tonight I understand that and it looks like straw poll is heavily in favor of sticking with Hank's numbers I would just like you know I think we should take a formal vote in two weeks if we're not back in school I look at a couple

150of things zero cases in our school directly tied to our school when they were in school last semester questionable numbers 8 n 10% what's the right number we don't know and those numbers are people getting vac vaccinated aren't going to be taking tests so those numbers are going to get even more questionable the deteriorating mental health of our students we're here to do what's best for our students and I think many of us are making this decision based on fear and based on unfounded fears of what we what might happen in the future this could happen this doesn't happen to me the only number that matters I reiterate it again is transmitted cases in our school if our kids are in school and nobody's passing it among themselves in school there's no reason we can't

151be in school and I know we talk about different models but new NE Trier Hinsdale LT weaton long list of other schools that our kids are going to be competing with in the future they're all back we're not whatever model you want to talk about different model not as good as good as ours they're in school our kids aren't so I'll I'll hold any other thoughts or arguments until a couple weeks from now when we can actually take a real vote well I would say this even if we go back to school I think I'm hearing you and Rick are proposing we take a vote which is fine we'll put it on the docket to take a vote are you also requesting that we look at is there a way we can change our model

152where we might be able to bring more K fewer kid kids in or bringing kid change that model to raise that number so like say if we went back to I mean I even thought this through but if we went back to what we did first semester would that allow us to raise the mod the the numbers so I I don't yeah I don't have the answer to that but the only that I the only thing I would say is I wouldn't be suggesting that because as we just saw 45% of students at South aren't going to go back anyway so if they're already in an AB split you're AB splitting half of the population so that number is only 25% on a daily basis in school which was the first what was the first

153plan so I'm I'm not to me the kid should be in school let me just comment on that you can't I I know it looks like then it equally distributes throughout the building and that if we're bringing in half of 55% that we have tons more space in the building than we thought but it doesn't equally distribute across classrooms so we have some classrooms last week that were absolutely packed so far as maintaining social distancing right we couldn't have fit any more students in there and we had some that were very small because although it's 55% or are coming in in that group they don't equally distribute between every class and every space right so um it it just it it works differently than just the math would seem to indicate that it should I

154just I don't want people to walk away thinking that every classroom is empty because of people selecting a large number of people at South selecting to be fully remote it's just not how kids fill into those spaces in the classroom throughout the day right but there are less students in the building because so many have opted out right so it makes things like our passing period um you know a little more comfortable for me than would because I think you guys I think the plan you put together the in school mitigations the The Mask wearing the social distancing the face Shields coming in us well think that's top-notch I think that's a great plan I just want to see that plan giv a chance to work and I want to see that plan giving our

155kids a chance to be back at school that's so do I Dan desperately I want our students back at school but not desperately enough that I'm G to just trust that it's G to work on a hope and a prayer and and roll dice that CO's not going to make its way amongst our students and staff if we bring students back at these higher numbers you know when I talk to dup page count Health Department like we're well beyond their area of comfort but I'm able to say look based on the things you just mentioned our PP the number of students in school the seriousness in which our community and our students and our staff have taken this the the one passing period uh in each group each day like all of those things make

156me say like I can sit across from a health professional and say yeah but yeah I know you're saying we shouldn't go above eight but I I feel comfortable going into nine I mean when I talk to people and I say look we're bringing in in our morning session at South High and at North High you know we're bringing in 800 students plus we have another six to 700 staff members you know in in total scattered you know so another 300 in each building so I'm bringing in over a thous people at a time at a time where Community transmission rates are are at 9 to 10% and health expert I talk to some health experts and they think I'm nuts for you know that our whole team not just me that our whole district

157is nuts to try to do this kind of a plan where where we're at now and my argument is look we we can manage this at the numbers that we've set and the program we've built and keep kids safe and um if I didn't think we could I wouldn't be recommending 9 % um but I I think we have a great instructional program I think we're taking good care of kids remotely um it's not what we want obviously but uh we're making that work the best we can and looking forward to the time when we can return students in this hybrid model and once that's up and running I think we will have the premier hybrid program in the area we just need the numbers to come down and come into a space where we

158feel like it'll be safe to do that and um I understand the perspective of just bring them back and prove let the numbers prove out if it's safe but I'm not willing to gamble with people's health and possibly even their lives that we can maintain that and keep people safe I believe it I believe it that we're going to keep people safe at these numbers or I wouldn't be bringing recommending that we bring students back where we're at can I can I interject here um uh Dan I gota I have to respond to a couple things you said um first of all uh it's not my impression that I mean I've heard this an awful lot in the media and it's a popular thing to say you know we're acting out of fear we're letting

159fear dictate you know what we do here and that's not what I'm hearing from anybody uh in the conversation so far and that's certainly not how I've been operating uh we're all doing the best we can based on the facts at hand um as much as those keep changing but you know part of what I hear you advocating for is the fact that hey um let's let's talk about that that that number let's let's say we haven't had any documented Community spread um you know from having students in our hybrid program last semester that the the two weeks that we were in um based on that then we should feel good about going forward now even you know and just toss out the numbers because that's the only thing that we should be looking at

160and I would say to you that uh if anything since March whatever when this thing started uh you know nothing is stayed the same everything keeps changing um for me to rely on data from a couple we in the first semester to be the thing that that I would rely on or even even other schools experiences you know I don't know that I can just hang my hat on that either and uh the other piece of this is that let's say that it you know sure we've had success with it um I liken it to an intersection you know do I do I put the stop sign up to prevent an accident from happening or do I wait till somebody has a big big crash and then I go oh I guess I have a

161I should have a stop sign there you know and we're and and and we're trying to figure out right now right um what data we can use um to decide where you know where and when to put that stop sign up and I think we've done a good job with that um I I but I reject outright you the notion that somehow I'm acting out of fear in my decision-making process here um so I'll I'll let you respond so Mike I I could get into specific comments that board members have made at this meeting and others that I I would make the argument they are operating out of fear I don't want to call anybody out I will say you mentioned that you didn't want to rely on two weeks of data from the first

162semester to make our decisions for us but yet that 14-day number we're relying on all of our decisions for so you're relying on what happened January 2nd to dictate what happens next week for our kids in school it's the same thing there is no relationship between the numbers that we're using and what's going to happen next week it's all a crapshoot so whether we Ed the number I'm suggesting let's see what real numbers what actually happens when they're in school if there's a transmission in school so if they go to school and there's Transmission in school go to remote until it's safe again but going back to what happened January 1st second and third and making the decision that oh I can't send them to school on the 11th or the 12th obviously they wouldn't

163have been in school today I can't send to school on the 12th because on January 2nd we only had 6,000 people in Illinois take a test and we had a 20 or whatever percent positivity rate because nobody took a test so I just think that we're using a flawed number to make decisions that are greatly impacting our students lives and they've if this was the start of it I would say let's be safe let's be over cautious it's been like this for a year our kids are suffering they're I've seen it I've seen it personally our kids are suffering and I think we have to at this point take a little bit more risk that maybe we would have a year ago or that we did last March to help our kids get through this

164but Dan we are we are taking more of a risk this is far more of a risk than what we did in the fall right in the fall it was one group for half a day it wasn't two groups coming through the building in a day it wasn't at metric thresholds of what we're looking at now it it was nothing like this in the fall heck in the fall you know we had 70 cases that we had to contact trace this last week when we were in session if we would have had that in the fall I would have told you we were we should have shut school down immediately but we were able to keep up with it because of the resources we've added this is well well beyond the levels that we looked

165at returning in in the fall we have adapted and changed based on what we have learned and what we know about keeping kids safe it's just I I am not comfortable based on what I know now pushing that Beyond and yes we are looking at 14-day historical average because that's what that's what the health experts say to do is to follow the trends follow the data that's in front of you to look at Trends over a two- week period of time this is all the teachings that they have given us over the course of the year that's why we're using it and I get appreciate like look yeah could the data be flawed is it you're using the past to predict the future yes but that's what we have to do right now because we

166have nothing better to go to go on than that and I'm not I am not comfortable as the superintendent and we are not comfortable as administrative team saying roll dice bring kids in under conditions that are well beyond what the health professionals have said although I still think safe and then we'll see we'll see if something breaks out then what do I do apologize to kids saying yeah you know the health experts said we thought illness would happen and you got sick and I I'm sorry I didn't listen to the Health Care Professionals but we'll do better next time I I can't go forward with that as a leader and feel in good conscious that I am serving this District or our students or our families well and and I would agree with you with

167the exception of there are significant and there are other entire states that the kids are in school there are schools in our County that kids are in school so I I understand I mean Hank you and I disagree with this I know that I respect your opinion I understand where you're coming from I respect everybody's opinion on this it's not an easy answer but I think it's time to default the default should be the kids in school because when you look at the numbers they're out this week I believe the numbers today the 14-day average is over 11% most likely that number is not going to go down they're going to be out next week it's not going to go down enough down n so are we going to get the same thing we had

168last year they were in school for a week now again we're not voting on this I I'll drop it I won't say anything else but I think Now's the Time where we need to default for our kids being in school and that's again my opinion only so I'll just say this I I this comment of operating in fear that's not how I am operating and also I struggle to even understand what that means when we have a Ral PR mic when people are constantly running numbers I struggle to even understand what operating and fear means because it's a world pandemic so I just want to go on record to say that is not how I'm operating so that notion of that could be removed at least from my standpoint um again I'll keep saying there

169are no winners in this I mean we know what normal looks like most of us enjoy n normal and for the most part and I wholeheartly want to get back to it I would just I would just add to I have said that I am afraid of covid and I am afraid of covid am I afraid I'm Gonna Catch covid not particularly because I'm very careful but what I am afraid of we don't know the long-term impact on uh the health and well-being of adults or children or young adults from this virus that is what I am afraid of that yes are they suffering I absolutely agree it's horrible I agree but there could be really long-term consequences that nobody knows about yet we just don't know and when I when you say you're operating

170from fear that is the fear I am operating from that we are doing ultimately a larger disservice then we can anticipate I hope I'm wrong if we if if we're not too careful I I I I hope that doesn't come to fruition but that is my fear I don't also like to say just respond about the 14-day you know right now we're in a saw tooth right some days it's higher some days it's lower then it goes back up then it drops down then it comes back up that's why you want to average right over the 14 days when we start seeing a consistent Trend coming down I would anticipate we'll get different guidelines just like we had different guidelines when the trend was going up uh uh precipitously so I agree the numbers are

171flawed but they are the best numbers we have anybody else Terry did you want to say something you're on mute sorry I keep muting so that you guys don't get the football game in the background but um I agree with you Nancy that um we don't know exactly what's going to happen to the population with um what's happening with Co I mean we just don't know and uh I think being conservative is is the right answer I'm I'm with Hank and um you know there are K students in in our schools that do get Co and and can spread it and don't even realize it uh that's why we test them when they come in you know those kind of things so I think that um uh staying the course is the way to go

172and Hope hopefully hopefully fingers crossed toes crossed this is we can see the light at the end of the tunnel you know with with vaccines and and uh moving forward hopefully um this is this is this is it so let's let's move on it looks like Zoe had yeah Zoe had something to say I'm sorry I I you know what Hank I have a hard time hearing you so I hear everyone else but for some reason yours is is a lot softer so my children have that same problem too Terry oh no it's called selective deafness Zoe I think Zoe had a comment that she wanted to share my screen is froza yeah no need to apologize you didn't interrupt me but um yeah I'll said in the chat was that I know that what

173we're addressing is mental health and academics as the biggest issues that we're concerned about right now and I just wanted to bring up the point that most of you are in positions of influence and we have the ability to advocate for and amplify the resources that the counseling team was talking about the you know the emotional and mental supports that we have going at school those are some of the safest ways that we can remotely support our students so I just wanted to bring up that point that we have some control over what happens and how people handle this situation staying home or going to school Melle you're you're uh you are not muted oh it looks like I'm muted y okay it's my screen is frozen so I I can't just making sure you

174know because it didn't look like you did so no I didn't know any other comment so so to reiterate we're going to put on the next um meeting we're going to put on the agenda that we will re I I would like to take a vote on the metrics that I'm recommending at that time because it might change based on what we learn over the next few weeks right and uh I will go back to the team and talk through it it sounds like at least two board members would like for us to take another at it I'm I'm always willing to do that um and take a look at are we making the right decision is there another recommendation we can have um we'll take a look at it with fres eyes based on

175what we learned from last week there's always something learn from a week of inperson learning and uh over the next two weeks we'll come back to the board either with the same recommendation or you know it it could change or or things could change we could learn more between now and then so well and I to reiterate and I want to reiterate it is a dynamic process I mean if tomorrow the CDC said these numbers have changed we would act upon that so it's with the best available information we have at the time correct is that Dan Rick or is that does that address your desire yeah I would like to have that discussion in two weeks okay yes we'll put on the agenda yes thank you any more on this okay uh summer school

176report yep I'm gonna turn this one over to Rob all right good evening everybody uh Tim Tilton is joining us this evening and we have a very length uh two- slide presentation about this past summer with summer school um so uh Tim's going to take it away he's going to explain uh and give us a little bit of a summary of uh summer school this past summer and related to the previous conversation you all had just uh a quick reminder um this time last year as we were lining up teachers and registering students for summer school it was under the assumption that it was going to be in person and then as the pandemic evolved it quick LLY became clear that uh we had an online summer school so uh Tim's going to give us

177some updates on what happened um during summer school and then he'll pitch it back over to me and then I'll talk through our our recommendations all right thank you rob um thank you everyone for your time tonight I'm happy to report that as Rob mentioned despite the covid-19 moved to remote learning uh that began back in March District 99 was able to offer successful summer school program in 2020 I want to stop before I go any further with the with the rest of the um the details though and give a special note of thanks uh this would not have been possible without the incredible flexibility uh and the hard work of so many of the uh other people throughout the district um from the ASC staff that assisted in instituting a fully online registration process

178for the first time uh to our Tech staff uh for carrying out Chromebook and classroom supply distribution to our incoming fresh fresman and other new students that hadn't been part of summer school before um to our amazing our amazing summer school teachers that adapted the curriculum to a fully remote learning format in uh in such a short time uh truly this was a great team effort we could not have done it with without everyone working together uh so at this time I would like to give some of the highlights of the program um summer school is comprised of three main three main categories uh the academic program the driver's ed program uh and our credit recovery program um but in general summer school was held completely in a remote environment as Robin mentioned uh we

179kept the same four day a week schedule uh that we normally uh go by which is Monday through Thursday um teachers use their discretion to schedule like a consistent uh start time uh each day that included at least 90 minutes of a synchronous learning and then they structured the other learning activities uh that would take place during that day between the normal summer school the hours of 8: am to 2m uh as like we we normally would have um in our academic program we serviced almost as many students last year as we did the year before with 250 total students that participated um our consumer education program uh roared back with a huge success this year over 60 students three separate sections uh that um students were proactively able to take this subject to increase

180their schedule flexibility for the future um our freshman bridge program uh also uh was uh was offered was able to be offered for one semester uh in the summer school uh environment this allowed our incoming freshman certain incoming freshmen um that would benefit from to be prepared for the rigors of math and English at the high school level and also the introduction to Chromebook technology in our district um another program that students proactively took was the keys to academic success that ran this prep all the students who took this in this uh general study skills organizational structure note taking uh reading strategies for any type of curriculum and then also our AP chem prep chemistry prep program was again um quite used we had two full sections this year um where students were coached on

181the rigor of AP Chemistry that they were enrolled in for the upcoming school year um our next tier the the driver's ed program um serviced 55 students this summer uh we were only only allowed to offer the classroom uh course um for during the summer school time obviously due to not being able to be in person for the behind the wheel uh portion however um that was able to be accommodated later on in the uh later summer and and fall time for students who came forward after they had gotten their permits and then uh our credit recovery program uh this was offered fully remote um and 3 32 students completed total of 36 classes which helped some of them recover their Pace towards graduation uh and actually had eight students uh who were able to

182graduate that normally would not have that that school year so I would again like to thank all of the contributing members from all the Departments and the uh and the staff at both schools that helped summer school take place in a moment Rob will will uh Rob L will summarize the recommendations for the upcoming school year um but before that happens is there any questions that I can answer all right thanks Tim uh before Tim hops off the stage though um I just would like to publicly thank Tim Tim has it been 11 years is that what you told me last time I think it's 12 actually I did a Rec 12 years okay so this was the 12th year uh that Tim ran our summer school programming and uh Tim really starts with uh

183around this time of the school year in January uh doing all the planning and Logistics and and uh interacting with different parts of the organization to pull it off and then he's on site for summer school uh for a summertime uh unfortunately Tim has decided that this past summer was going to be his last summer as our coordinator our director for summer school um so we're going to miss Tim uh he's done a fantastic job but I just wanted to take this moment to thank him for uh all 12 years and also through conversations I would just also like to U let you know that Tim has committed to uh mentoring and guiding who the next person will be for summer school so um he won't be the director this upcoming summer but he will

184be behind the scenes helping out with the next person so thank you very much Tim thank you very much I appreciate it all right so the next logical question for uh off of past summer school is um what's our plan for this upcoming summer and like everything else the answer is we don't know yet um would love to have it uh fully in person but you know similar to conversations you had before we don't know how the health metrics are going to be we don't know vaccination is going to be uh there's a lot of factors that we don't know yet um but it makes it very complicated because uh people would like to know what they're signing up for before they sign up for it so we're administratively talking through that of what potentially

185summer school could look like and we're leaning towards a model of saying it could be any one of those uh the biggest burden one on families would be to be available in person to come into summer school so that's the default that we're heading towards is that we're going to run it in person unless there's a reason why we can't and we haven't had conversations yet about whether there would be a remote only option or anything like that um you know we're just we're planning for second semester here but we've got to start ramping up what uh the model is going to be for summer school uh recommendations that will come to you at the next board meeting is standard that we do every year is that we recommend the teacher stien and the director

186stien to increase by CPU uh CPI sorry uh which was 2.3% so I'm recommending that we increase the teacher stipend up to $3,122 per semester and increased the director stien up to $979 uh for both semesters we recently increased the cost for students so we're not recommending an uh increased tuition cost and then also in the attachments is the calendar that is very similar to uh the previous years the only difference with this one is that we're recommending July 5th which is a Monday off in observance of the July 4th holiday so those are recommendations that will come to you for uh the next board meeting but what questions can I answer now I guess I asked this for seven years Gina got it for seven I guess Robin Hank how serious is this District

187or will I have to be like Scott oconnell and come to every meeting how serious are you about changing the the the the the the motivation of Summer School from recovery to enrichment I saw it on the slide but that's just words on a PowerPoint all I can give you is words Rick but I've said it every year that I've been here that once the master facility plan was done and our facilities were fully available to us in the Summers then we will start immediately expanding our programming including as you saw there I want to offer the opportunity for students to not just make up credit but accelerate and maybe open up spaces in their schedule or to just take an experience that wouldn't be offered to them during the regular school year I guess

188that's my yeah I guess that's my motivation we every year we have approved in the last three four years some wonderful classes that are almost realistically impossible to get to unless you are truly motivated and are willing to sacrifice something else that maybe a high school student should not have to sacrifice we don't give PE waivers at this school at all um so that Avenue is completely denied for students who want to accelerate and we don't offer summer school at maybe the lower honors level to advance where they could then partake of an AP or an advanced engineering class so we approve these classes but there's almost almost realistically no way to ever get to them and so that's why I I've asked this for seven years I heard air conditioning I heard this I

189heard that and I guess I'm done in April because I'm not running again but do I have to come back like Scott oconnell and say sit down we're going to have a hearing on this because I've heard this for eight years promise Rick only if you promise you'll come back and celebrate when we actually do it I hope so because I I truly think that's one ball we have dropped over the last couple years um we we we have approved some phenomenal classes at the upper level but it's almost physically impossible to take those classes till you meet the requirements to take them yeah I think in some cases that's true especially in some of the CTE progressions but that's not always true like some of the courses we app the course we approved last

190week in English was just a senior level English that so it's not always the case Rick but you're right right but I tried for kids and there fouryear plan absolutely I've tried to get you more flexible on the PE waivers and that died a sudden death because I'm going to take a poll next week in my class to see how many kids in my APM class have a PE waiver and I I want to say it it's probably more than Downers Grove North or South has given in the last 10 years period um so some high schools are getting around that by allowing kids an extra opportunity uh not just an e period but actually a PE waiver to get around uh to take an advanced level class and we don't offer that summer school

191and we don't offer the PE waiver and so here we are one year again okay we're GNA do summer school and really it's just Credit Recovery Rick can I just say um uh you know I I've supported I've supported this notion as well um really since I've almost since I've been on the board and and uh I firmly believe uh that Hank is being honest about this and and that as well if we weren't if we hadn't embarked on this master facility plan a few years ago I I think that this would be something that you know would already have started to come to fruition but uh what we've you know with everything else we've got going on with the master facility plan and the disruption that that that causes um you know I I

192think that that that's been my understanding of the explanation why we're we've kind of been held holding off on this and you know and to your point Rick looking at those numbers uh in the reporting um while the overall number of students who are taking summer classes has been steadily declining over the last 15 years um the number you know the reason for taking the summer classes um particularly for enrichment purposes has increased um and so uh so I think that that's a good sign that that you know there are stud students that would be interested and and uh I'm hoping that our new improved uh and enlarged facilities are are are going to allow us to to do that in a in a really robust way so um and then the PE waiver thing

193you know there's history there um we you know we've we used to do a lot more with that um I I too wish we we were um but uh some things happened a few years back that kind of forced us into a corner of being a little more strict about whether or not we do that I I I think you I think you might recall some I do Mike and and I feel bad talking so much tonight I think I'm gonna be Mike junr please take the reins um but I just I guess I just I've seen this for so many years and and you're right the enrichment has worked but it's been for the classes to prepare the students for the class that they would have already taken the APM summer workshop and some

194of the other ones I'm talking about knocking out a requirement so that you become one year ahead and then that opens up Junior Senior Year to take some of these classes that we have put on the books totally get it I had I had I had a student that uh you know in math a couple of my daughters that you know we I even tried to make that happen you know uh for one of my daughters um coming into the high school um so you know I'm you know so I am on the board for you two years and a couple months that'll be it for me um but uh I promis to not uh to not let this one go Rick how about that thanks Mike oh and Rick please please recognize the fact

195that I was a band director if anybody knows how tough it is for kids to fit courses into their schedules it's band directors um so trust me I I can appreciate uh the need to offer those I just didn't feel it was responsible to try to grow that program you know last year at North we absolutely had zero space to run a program and very little at South um so uh you'll just have to stay tuned for it but I'm a man of my word Rick we will grow that program thank you can you guys hear me yes yes cherelle go ahead sorry earlier my computer keeps freezing in according to my computer I was on mute but um I want I wanted to yeah I am definitely in support of enrichment and especially if

196and I don't know if it will help with this but I I've talked about on occasion the cost of college if it especially will get some students an opportunity to take courses they may that may eliminate the um affordability of college because there's less class you know less classes need to be taken but I do have a question when we are ready and we do this because you said we're going to do it um do we have the facilities support I don't mean facility faculty support do we believe we will have the teachers that are willing to teach these classes that will definitely be one of the hurdles that we'll have to cross as we get closer to that okay yeah so yeah because it sounds like we have the students we believe that we

197have students that will definitely take advantage of this I I and I don't know how we started to put a plan in place but or a conversation with staff to know this is something we're considering so that we get the students that the the teachers that are qualified to teach those hiring courses I I do think though that there are some curricular things that we're learning from this time in the pandemic that will help us in summer related courses because what really drives teachers and even students away from the summer is the idea of having to be trapped inside for part or all of their summer and I think what we're learning is we can be a little more flexible in time and space and how we offer things it's not how we want to

198run school but we better take some things away from the last year about how we can be more flexible and how we think about how teaching and learning works and where it happens and I think as we look to expand summer school we also have to maybe look at the the flexibility of that and recognize that it's occurring during the time of the year where people want to have a little more flexibility in their day and their time and maybe we should factor that in as we try to grow this program V vacations is always an issue too right so you know these kind of flexibilities are I mean I I I I think there's a lot of Promise here so I'm I'm excited about what the future holds yeah like it's not just vacations

199it's also athletic camps that uh sometimes are in conflict with it yeah this this isn't going to die Rick I even threatened to put bring out the dreaded parking lot and put it out it's notna lot please I hate the parking lot I know you do I just say any potential hurdles that we will see when we get there if we can start to kind of um road map or look at look at see what that will look like so that when we do get there we are there because we've addressed the hurdles that will come as a result of what we're trying to do good point anything more thank you so much for all of your work Mr Tilton Rob uh let's move on to dis disproportionate discipline data all right I am joined

200by a couple more of our uh associate principles that have been hanging on for a while now uh to give this presentation uh joined by Kelly zerner and Karen Taylor who are associate principles at the each of the schools and really help run um our student discipline as well as many other aspects of of their jobs they've been really digging into our disproportionate discipline data and our approaches and I've been preparing to share this with you uh this is should be thought of as a continuation of Rob's presentation on our equity and inclusion work and they're going to kind of pick up in this presentation where Rob left off so with that being said I'm going to turn it over to Karen and Kelly can you advance to the next there we go um well

201as a continuation of Rob's presentation in November and in reference to what Dr W Rock had said earlier in the Cs presentation The District 99 Mission really steers all of our decision making and planning with regard to discipline decisions um and of course we see those four bolded words in the mission state there which of course is led by caring and we appreciate uh the board for recognizing the importance of caring for students I've heard that throughout all of the conversations I've I've ever heard from the board but tonight included um and our discipline focuses center around um building restorative practices through the district which demonstrates care for students through teaching alternative means to resolve conflict rather than simply assigning a consequence and sending students on their way um restorative practices also challenge all of

202our students to be accountable for their actions through facing those they've impacted and working to try to repair any harm that they've done um these lessons that we that students learn through restorative means are are such that students will carry them throughout their life um to make Positive Choices and be responsible lifelong citizens um and so the in that way the mission really guides us and um we Embrace restorative practices it was about a year ago this time that Kelly and I were before you seeking support to hire additional FTE to better support restorative practices with the hiring of our point6 path facilitators we are very grateful for your support for that um and also grateful that we've hired some really Dynamic people who had to shift gears pretty quickly to um fill roles that

203they didn't expect to fill this year uh when we changed our instructional delivery our our path facilitators have led the way with interventions this year supporting students through tutoring social emotional um and in revamping some of the ways that we have delivered restorative practice interventions with kids next slide right so work we're doing is embedded in our District's goals as you can see outlined here and it's not a new goal for us our disproportionality and discipline procedures have been something we have continuously worked on for the past few years it's why we implemented after careful research the path program Karen just mentioned at both campuses and it's in its first year the use of five Labs also allows us to track our data in real time which provides longitudal and relational data for us it

204informs our decisions and allows us to analyze our interventions long term of course this year is unlike any other and attendance does not look quite the same for us so we are carefully reimagining our work and focusing heavily on the level of Engagement from our students in this hybrid remote learning environment next slide so where does this work take place the district 999 discipline committee is composed of our assistant superintendent for student Support Services Scott wazer both associate principles for staff and students Karen and I as well as the seven Deans we meet regularly to work on our initiatives by analyzing our data and finding ways to support our students this work is in cooperation with our mtss which is our multi-tiered systems of support committee so when we're looking at discipline we are not

205approaching it with a narrow Focus we know discipline and behavior does not stand alone a need that may manifest itself in a classroom disruption in all reality may be a cry for support it could be academic it could be social emotional so we work together to make sure we are providing a wraparound support for each of our students I really like the quote by Maya Angelou because in times like these we're continually working to improve the world in front of us while we prepare for the future as well we're doing the best best we can you basically you do the best you can until you know better and I think that could be appr propo to everything that we discussed tonight and then when we know better we do better next slide before we dive

206into the data this evening I want to Define some important terms that you'll hear us reference the first is exclusionary discipline exclusionary discipline is any technique that removes students from the school learning environment which includes suspensions and expulsions next slide disproportionate discipline is another term you'll hear from us this evening uh and dis disproportionate discipline means that one group of students is being disciplined or or suspended at a different rate than another group of students in particular this evening we're going to reference a difference in the rate at which white students are suspended from that of students of color and when looking at the data later remember that a factor of one means that all students are suspended at equal rates if it's less than one that would be skewed towards White students being suspended

207at a greater rate a rate greater than one would be students of color being suspended at a at a rate greater than others next slide annually the district reports exclusionary discipline to the Illinois State Board of Education and Illinois state law requires that ISB identify the top 20% of districts that assign suspensions the top 20% of districts that assign expulsions and also the top 20% of districts that have racial disproportionality in their exclusionary discipline this third metric here is bolded because District 99 has been identified as being within that top 20% of districts that have racial disproportionality and discipline next slide let's take a little bit of a closer look at 2019 2020 data our rate of suspensions and expulsions are in fact very low in fact it's in the bottom 25% across all districts

208in the state even though High School Districts tend to suspend at higher rates than Elementary and unit districts only 1.7% or 88 unique students out of our total enrollment of 4,858 were suspended at any point in 2020 next slide so here's a closer examination of a breakdown into subcategories for our 2019 2020 suspendable discipline data to achieve like Karen said no disproportionality the number would be at a 1.0 as Karen mentioned previously the goal is to get near 1.0 closest as as we can 1.0 reflects students being suspended done at equal rates regardless of their demographics if the number Falls below the 1.0 as Karen mentioned it would indicate that our white students were suspended at a higher rate that our students of color and conversely anything above a 1.0 would indicate that our students

209of color are suspended at a greater rate than our white students so the three categories listed have infractions or occurrences would lead to suspensions from school in our handbook for instance for all of our drug and alcohol offenses um 53.8% involves white students while 46.2 involve students of color given the makeup of our students for this category the disproportionality rate was a 13081 which means students of color are suspended at a rate of 1.3 for every one student of the total population next slide so what does our Trends start to show us we continue to be on the state disproportionate discipline data list for being in the top 20% of disproportionate suspensions and expulsions of students of color as compared to all districts across Illinois please remember this includes Elementary districts and unit districts as

210well but look to see how we have continued to improve in this year area year after year however we still remain on the list if you notice that 2020 extended is just a projection had we been in person for the whole school year so we're going to look a little bit more closely at the past three years so here's one more look larger scale of all suspensions for the past three years the rank indicates how District 99 compares to all other school districts in the state in order to no longer be identified as being in that top 20% of all disproportionate districts we need a ranking at or above 85 so this is not an area where we want to be number one it's best to be at the bottom of this list list much

211like we are on our overall exclusionary discipline so because we continue to be on the the list as a district that has distri proportionate rates of exclusionary discipline for our students of color it's particularly important to Circle back to our equity and inclusion Mission and the presentation that you heard from Dr Lang in November um when he shared the equity audit with you and the equity and inclusion mission in conjunction with the overall District Mission continues to steer our our discipline decision- making um and particularly centers around um promoting students being able to navigate the school environment while and making Positive Choices in doing so while maintaining their authentic selves we want our students to be who they are and to be respected for who they are while also feeling a sense of belonging to

212the school Community next slide and and we say that because we know that belonging is kind of the the proactive antidote to predictability um as is the case for teaching and learning predict belonging and predictability play an important role in our planning of disciplinary interventions next slide when students have a sense of belonging to the school Community they feel appreciated they feel validated they feel accepted and and treated fairly within the school environment we know that students are less likely to participate in behaviors that harm a community to which they feel they belong So Pro promoting that sense of belonging is arguably the most important proactive measure we can take to prevent Behavior infractions Uh therefore our work is grounded in restorative practices and starts with the building of inclusive communities at the classroom and

213building levels restorative practices emphasizes the creation of connection between individuals and strengthening relationships within communities it also requires students to repair any harm that they have committed against their community and their community members are expected to be able to welcome them back as individuals who belong within that community next slide if we effectively create a sense of belonging for our create a sense of community to which all students feel like they belong we decrease the likelihood that we are able to predict discipline outcomes based on student demographics schools should not be able to predict the outcomes of a student based on the student's demographic information with that in mind we build our plan so school districts that have been identified in the top 20% of any of one of the three metrics for three consecutive

214years are required to draft a plan to respond our response focuses on social emotional and Behavioral Health of our students through restorative practices and Trauma informed approaches so our next steps here's what we've already built into our practice we shifted our interventions to one where we Implement appropriate consequences with an emphasis on repairing the harm as Karen just mentioned the offender has caused within a school or classroom Community this requires the use of interventions supports and traditional consequences the restorative mindset supports the students in their growth so they can learn from their decisions and take accountability a lot of this work is embedded into our path program which provides an alternative to an out of school suspension with a head F focus on accepting responsibility getting the support needed and having followup care path is

215in its first year but as we all know we're living through a very different landscape however it should be noted that we have implemented path in an Adaptive form for our students and we look forward to its full implementation as soon as possible we'd like to take an a moment to sincerely thank the board and the community for our support of path and for for allowing us this time to share a piece of our world that means so very much in our efforts to support our students thank you any questions for Karen or Kelly or myself yeah I I have a I have a couple um uh first um are I'm very supportive of everything we're doing with this I I think it's we're obviously we're doing I think we're I mean we see the

216Improvement right in the trend data and um and I you know the path program I'm I'm I'm I've said complimentary things about that in the past as well um uh so couple couple things you know hard truths that I think we need to you know that we're not seeing in the presentation one um I think that uh you know we look look at at the data um and we're seeing you know the disproportionality rate H you know there there's an acknowledgement there's a premise there that that we should be doing better than than what we're doing uh you know otherwise we wouldn't maybe we wouldn't feel the need to to uh you know put this plan together so robustly um so accepting that premise uh you know you know I'll just have to ask the

217question do we is there an acknowledgement that you know maybe a combination of the fact that there's been um you know that we've been too quick to suspend students of color and and there are white students who shouldn't have been who should have been suspended for something and U in a similar in a similar situation we're not um and I think you know I think maybe acknowledging that that's you know that's been going on is is is important to do that that would actually be the easy answer and that's not the case because we've done an audit of students once they make it into the Dean's office how do they exit with their outcomes and there isn't disproportionate data in those outcomes the the challenge is far greater it's who gets sent to the Dean's

218office is what is the challenge in District 99 where perhaps you know you see fighting is very disproportionate and it leads me as a school leader to look at that and say okay if two white kids get in a fight in the hall are they sent to class while if two black kids get in the fight in the hall are they sent to the Dean's office and so you know that's just one example a simple example that could lay into this some of this is far more you know hidden in the way that we behave as human beings and the way that we have been conditioned to respond to certain events and that's what our Equity inclusion work is really about is getting to know ourselves as human beings and evaluate the decisions and actions

219that we're taken and um question ourselves to get better each as individuals within the school district to change these kinds of numbers but the first step to it is owning them and not being afraid that they exist we're not we're not happy they're exist they exist we're we're embarrassed by these numbers um but unless we're able to own them and recognize that this is us or there's no chance at us fixing it thank you for that hey you know really really appreciate that and and uh because we're not you know this isn't just a matter of of well uh we fell into a certain metric so you know here we are doing this and it's much more than that and I and I I felt like that needed to you know that needed to be

220said and then um and then just a quick question on the on the data itself the trend data uh the 2020 extended number how can we how can we you know am I understand right how can we really say that the 2020 extended number would be the same as we pulled some data off of there that would have made more sense which was the number of incidents is we should have pulled that whole row off but we have projected the number of actual uh infractions but for Simplicity removed it probably should have left that bottom line off so question but we are trending in the right direction correct yes absolutely yeah that that's because even Sam mentioning earlier today about earlier in the meeting about racial I don't want to say it wrong reiterate what

221you said incorrectly but that that is of a concern to and could potentially have some effect on the type of numbers we're getting I don't know for certain but that absolutely and it's it's that student experience it's that voiced student experience that gets in the way of them of our students really feeling like they belong in the school community and so it's so important that we acknowledge it that we work to address it and denounce it and build out a community where all of our students feel like they belong um and we we know that things like fighting are less likely to happen in this school Community you know when kid kids don't want to harm places they feel like they belong they don't want to um hurt people they have a connection with and

222um so we we need to really do that work so how does this all marry together with the Deep Equity work um so I think as Hank kind of mentioned before and to answer um um your question Mike about you know is it an easy fix um it's really not when we're looking at our Deep dive you know Karen and I both are pulling infractions and looking at that and doing inventories and what we're trying to uncover is the is there an implicit bias um to drive then our equity and how we approach situations and how we approach um conversations with students and how we move for them to be come um you know have that feeling of belonging and connection so all of this doesn't work in silos like it may have done 20

223years ago um and just like how we look at Behavior it's not just a behavior what do they need what's the cry for um so I think what it does for us is it it absolutely works with mtss um and the equity inclusion Council to to make informed decisions for us to really put up that mirror and say how are we meeting the needs of our students and the Deep Equity piece also works on implicit bias and how does my implicit bias impact the way I as an adult interact with a student in the hallway or the classroom or the cafeteria and how you know how is my response um escalating or de-escalating a situation plus we know that uh students are far more likely to get into fights and and be aggressive when they're

224frustrated ated or they're tired or they're stressed and look students that have to come and not be themselves or have to navigate uh a different world than they live in when they come to our schools naturally you're not going to have as much energy to navigate those stressful situations so it goes back to if we can make them feel more belonging and accepted and they are who they are when they come to our school it it's a little less likely that we're going to end up in one of those negative outcomes all right any other questions thank you Karen Kelly you got a long wait this evening I appreciate you uh putting in the work and presenting this evening it's hard work and we're we're very appreciative of you thank you so much uh the

225t99 buildout all right we have another group here to present on a a plan around t99 so I'll turn it over to this team yeah I'm going to start uh so thank you Hank um so I'm gonna introduce Lisa Balo uh director of special education uh Carolina shach is our t99 coordinator uh obviously you know Mark stalen our controller and Jim k um our team worked hard to uh put together a proposal for you on looking at the increased numbers at t99 in the near future so I'm going to turn it over I believe uh Lisa is going to start thank you um good evening everybody I'm Lisa Balo um and I've got a couple of the first slides here and then together with me um Carolina sh back our t99 coordinator we also be

226providing some detail here for you so let's go ahead and just take a look at this graphic um I think it's pretty self-explanatory you can see uh the trend in these projections here really showing in that top uh that Top Line uh our drastic increase and really where we're seeing our students needing the district transition 99 program over the next several years um and so you sort of probably ask right like well where did all of these students come from why such a drastic increase and there's really not necessarily a reason for the DraStic increase in just that you've also seen in the last few years that we've had um significant increases at both north and South in our special education populations and the multi- needs populations where we've added programs and teachers in both

227of our buildings and those students once they exit out of their 12th grade year um coming into their postsecondary plans as many of our other students are going into their college or trade school postsecondary plans our students are coming into the transition Center at t99 um so you can just see this graphic that really just shows you um in the next four to five years the significant increase that we're going to see um needed in the current building um over there off of Bernard next slide so um again this just sort of encapsulates that that number from 61 to 76 of just from this year to next year um where that increase will occur uh requiring at least just for next year that one additional classroom we currently have five um and one additional teacher

228to occupy that classroom um and again like I said these are our building programs these are our students coming from our multi- needs building programs into um t99 as grade students so the next part um I'm going to go ahead and have Carolina um talk about the specifics of what we would be looking at on the t99 buildout proposal and I believe everybody saw in the preliminary notes the video that was created just to give everybody a fresh look on if you look at the visual on the right that's where you're coming in um the front door all the way to the large area in the back where is the current um storage which is where the majority of the buildout proposal uh is located so I'm going to go ahead and turn it over

229to Carolina to give you some more details and I'll be back with you shortly thank you Lisa I wanted to thank the board for this opportunity to speak with you so as Lisa said this is the floor plan of t99 it's all in one level and I hope you got a chance to use do the walkthrough video with me so the first circle on the right is one of our classrooms and that classroom was actually an art room so it's significantly smaller than the other four classrooms so one of the proposals is that we create sliding doors to enhance the size of the room so make it larger it would be about the same size as the other current four classrooms and then the same size as the two additional classrooms if we go ahead

230with the buildout so um we would be able to use those as barn doors and have it open and have an additional space in the multi-purpose room to expand that and then when it becomes a classroom when we get up to that larger number at 100 to close that off and then the teacher would have that as a traditional classroom but still we'd have that option if we do larger events to open it up and then um if you want to hit the next slide so there it is a little closer you see the barn door and then we're going to do we need to add more fridges because our numbers are growing so um we don't have a cafeteria and all the students bring their own lunches or cook their meals so we need

231to store all those items so we're going to add more fridges um the dishwasher we only have one right now so we're going to get another one um and so the classroom then will be expanded so it'll be 108 square feet which is about what the other ones are 110 and then you can see the bathrooms currently we were we had a line in the bathrooms um last year as people had to wait and it was kind of a struggle because students with special needs sometimes need to be transferred they need assistance they take longer in the bathroom um so we're really excited about the opportunity to have some more bathrooms and doesn't sound very exciting but in our building it's a big deal to get extra bathroom stalls right next slide so this is

232the warehouse and I showed you in the video that it's basically right now just a big open storage space that we hold miscellaneous items so um we're proposing that we add two additional classrooms and they would be fitted with you know the Smartboard type of technology and um would be pretty similar to what the other classrooms are then we have right now we have two smaller sensory rooms um and we'd like to have a larger sensory room that would be a little more fitted with items that are calming and um more usable for our students and can really get them to sensory level quickly um so we're proposing another sensory room that would be more state-ofthe-art and then like I was just sharing about the bathroom so two more stalls in each bathroom and then

233the men's would have a urinal so we would get five more uses for stalls and then a storage space because we still have a lot of items to store so that's what we would get from the back of the warehouse that space all right I'm going to turn it back to Lisa thank you so really the benefits to the buildout here obviously as Carolina had mentioned is the expanded learning space of that smaller classroom which can become a a more fully functioning classroom as well as really the bathroom expansion to accommodate the student growth um and probably the biggest piece I would say right uh serving students in our own Community as you all well know as board members the transition program um and the highlight and the purpose of a transition program is for

234students during their postsecondary education to practice life skills vocational skills in their home Community right uh which is why we have the the t99 program um as somebody who's worked in other districts and has been a part administratively of other transition programs um the t99 program in its curriculum and structure and what's offered and provided uh with the extensive vocational opportunities that we have within our own Community um it is really Second To None um when you compare them to other folks transition programs um that might be part of the problem right as I think we've discussed actually before at another uh board meeting is that um we might be inviting that but good right because how we we treat this population and get them invested into their own community and as independent as possible

235is the name of the game I mean that is what we are here to do um in Special Services um and so it allows for all of our students who come through North and South when they move into their postsecondary um years to access a very very quality transition program and we just call that the least restrictive environment um and then finally there um there is absolutely a long-term savings um from private school transition program tuition as many of you know um I also um am the case manager for about 75 students that we have districtwide that are out are educated outside of Downers Gro North and downers Gro South and some of those students are in private transition programs because maybe some of their needs cannot be met even at our transition program maybe

236for some safety concerns and such but we do have a population of students that go through 9th and 12th grade not at North and South but absolutely can benefit from our transition 99 program and so for us to be able to bring back those students into transition 99 which we've been doing a fair amount even in these last four years um we're able to not only provide them that quality transition program in their home Community but at the same time saving those PR private transition dollar next slide so this sort of reiterates a little bit of what I just said as well um but the other piece that I think is important to note as well is um you can see that 1.1 million in private tuition over the next six years so that would

237be those students that I just mentioned that would be coming back who were privately placed maybe during 9th through 12th grade um who maybe in years past went to a private transition program but now could come back to t99 9 and actually have their needs met in their home community and we would be realizing that Savings in addition um because we have such larger programs at Downers Grove North and South in our multi- needs populations we do need right a place for our students there to go and meet their postsecondary education goals right we do need a a transition program for them um and if we did not have space at t99 to be able to um accommodate those numbers that you saw on that first slide um we would potentially either be looking having

238to look for private transition programs which which would increase our private transition uh dollars or we would have to be looking at places within our home schools of North and South to provide um classroom spaces um which we we know we could we could probably come up with a class or two but we might not be able to provide that comprehensive program that we obviously are able to provide within the separate facility at transition 99 so now I think um if you go ahead Rod to the next slide um I'm going to have I'm going ahead and turn it over to Mark and or Jim to kind of talk about the financial projection right well I'll pick up um from here the U project costs are very preliminary uh there're 900 $85,000 and this is

239just building out the the third section of the t99 center so there's no expansion of the footprint it's just building out the back Center back area that we've always expected to to build out if it wasn't going to be for transition 99 there was other programs we thought we could possibly bring back and and the key here were two things one is what Lisa said so clearly is it's it's bringing kids back into their own Community which I you know we're all very proud be to offer that uh but we we can run a more efficient program uh than some of these outside tuition cost programs and so there's the net Savings of bringing bringing them in there's less Transportation costs if they're outside of our area so there there's little things that help there

240um and the funding source that we recommend using is interest income from the master facility Bond Investments you know we've we've issued some bonds uh interest rates when we're issuing them for us and our cost have been very low and we've been able we we moved up some of the um issuance dates and and issued the bonds earlier than the original projected um program with those so we've had more time with some of them earning interest the money sitting there waiting to be spent on the master facility plan and so uh even though we will be pretty much spending them out over the next year we've all already accumulated over a million dollars in interest um that we we have right now from this program and um also the obviously the million 1.15 million there

241is available for the master facility Bond program for the building but we we do have a we feel an adequate Reserve there um and we won't we still have some more interest to earn so we'll have some pad to the contingency that you see uh on a monthly basis with the master facility plan um so we won't be using up we believe all the interest and I believe both Jim and I and I think Hank take a look at that $985,000 we feel that's a pretty high estimate it's produced by white um it's it's very paded in terms of questions and we think it'll be significantly lower than than $985,000 when we build it out and just real quick to add Mark if I could so as Mark mentioned the 985 that's really just the

242concept budget number we're going to bring this back to you in two weeks to kind of move forward with because timeline we're looking at getting this work done for this summer this coming summer to have a prepared uh for the fall for students so the 985 includes all contingencies and white fees and constructions casses somewhere in the range of 700,000 but I think with the competitive market that we're seeing right now we're planning on bid bidding this out February 18th and I think that we'd get aggressive bids and really good pricing so we'll probably be coming back for approval which is a lot lower than 985 that's what I'm predicting but that's a good number to start with uh right now so there any questions I think that's it I I have two questions um

243will this build out complete that entire is that going to are we going to fill up the entire that entire back area or will there'll still be room back there besides the storage area there'll be a very small storage area back there if you look at the drawing nany but it builds up we have roughly 2500 and some odd change square footage left in that back area uh that's roughly one quarter of the building yeah so we're going to build all that out okay so my second question is you're you're you're modeling that you're gonna you're GNA almost die double right we're going to go up 50 is before we invest a million dollars in building it out is it enough is it there gonna be enough room for us over that period of time

244I can jump in Nancy and answer that um you know those are obviously those are we looked up Carolina and Lisa did a nice job of looking up every single student that's projected so that's like true student numbers every year though that fluctuates a little bit and so we're in just a an estimate or an estimate of what we might end up at is I would think we're going to end up more around 100 105 students and that would be able to be accommodated in that space and we'll continue to work on um you know programming and things that if that number Trends up or stays right on the on the Target that we'll work on different ideas to to accommodate students but we kind of feel like that we're going to be right at

245the spot where two additional classrooms and the expans of that other um which wasn't really a classroom to begin with it was more of a work room for the Arts and Crafts and you know that kind of stuff for the micro business um that room will accommodate so okay thank you Scott else I have a quick question um uh Joanne Smith um emailed me while we were having the meeting and um she wanted to know about um you know I turned her on to the straw B gardening and U the kids are really enjoying it and um she got a uh grant for uh teaching them to compost and how to turn it and all that and they've been using that area for that is there going to be an area for them to continue

246that uh to work with that Grant I would have to Terry I'd have to jump in and look at like all the specific details that are involved in that process but I mean obviously we appreciate it and I think it's been a benefit for the students with the the gardening and and the different activities that they're working on for independent living and just you know life skills so I think we would definitely need to take a look at it I don't know all the details of what that of I don't know if Carolina does but um obviously we'd want to continue anything that we've been already working on but we'd have to look at those I know you know I know she's going to need room for all of that and I I know outside

247may not be as uh conducive for you know learning as it would be to be inside like they are now so I just wanted to throw that out there something to think about no we definitely will so thank you for that all right I'm pretty confident we'll be able to we have those two storage spaces and um we're going through everything and I personally compost and I keep my compost outside so I think that we could still be able to they could do a quick turn and go outside as long as it's you know 30 degrees or below um I think they'll be room to store her items because I'm a big fan of it too we don't want to lose that component right okay just checking I just wanted to chime in on the

248uh you know follow up a little bit on your comment Nancy um you know whether or not it's worth doing if you know we need even more space down the road um you know the pre this obviously takes care of the next several years through the you know as projected and you know I I would point so I I submitted a I submitted a bunch of questions about this ahead of time uh about the whole program uh plan and I appreciate staff responding to that so I just point the rest of the board to look at that document so you can see you can see what I had to say but uh but in the short term Nancy um I mean this was a kind of a related question I had and that was and

249so just to get that out there you know we've it's already been pointed out the in the slide here about 1.1 million in private tuition over the next six years would be avoided um but if we were to not do this just uh I what was responded to me earlier today was that the outplaced increase for the 2122 class only would be $ 2.08 million over four years so you know we're we're about to use some money that we've gotten an interest on the on bond funds so it's not going to this is not going to impact our our our capital budget at all um and uh this saves us for sure much more money than we're about to spend on you know doing this um at least in the short term so even if

250we got to a point four five years down the road and said oh we still need more this still represents a good you know a smart investment short term you know saves saves US money not suggest I'm not suggesting that it's not worth it I'm just saying if we're gonna if we think we're going to have a bigger need would we want to anticipate building bigger that's my understood it was a good question I just I wanted to elaborate from my point of view and Nancy we are doing that actually we're taking Hank's uh you know philosophy and model and we are already starting to talk about those things for even after the four or five or six years so you know when when we first built t99 there was even some discussion about par

251possibly offering t99 to uh adjacent school districts so we've needed it so we haven't done that but we actually we have had one student uh that that did attend the transition program from l so we so we so that's something also that if we see the numbers you know if the numbers are a little lower than we expected we can Market out the transition program for that as well thank you anybody else thank you guys what an exciting uh an exciting time can we move on to the t99 update I mean the uh excuse me the master facility Plan update yeah and before I go in I just wanted to thank that whole team you can see uh a lot of folks collaborating together to try to meet the needs of our students creatively so

252uh Master facility plan uh monthly Financial update um you can see I I emailed the board about two things that are impacting the contingency this month um an anticipated increase in asbest this has been the NeverEnding uh supply of asbest removal throughout this project so we are moving an additional $200,000 out of Contin ency into owner budget costs to uh offset that uh anticipated cost of asbest removal over the summer uh we also have an issue we are investigating around fire alarms and whether or not we'll be grandfathered for uh a change that came in the law that's kind of made it through rul making recently uh Jim is spending a lot of time with white right now to figure out do we need to do this additional fire alarm work or not uh and

253does it need to be as extensive as what it's being presented as so just to be cautious we're holding $250,000 for that work uh but we hope to come back to the board soon with a much smaller number that would reflect that work particularly only for phase C and not a and b um so more to come on that but the these numbers reflect that uh I'll go back to we have always said that we wanted to be somewhere around $1 million heading into that last summer of work and we still remain above that we still have a lot sitting in contractor contractor allowances especially in Phase C uh that serves as that first group of contingency as we had into that last summer of work and we're finalizing we're getting really close to finalizing

254that FFN allowance and we'll know exactly where that number is but we uh don't believe that we'll go over that so uh we might have a little bit of contingency coming back from that that figure as well heading into the last summer so that's where we currently sit uh any questions the board members might have all right then I have just a couple of quick photos for you in the next couple of slides of work going on uh that's uh Auditorium uh and Commons work bottom uh the bottom right hand corner is the commons the other two pictures are Auditorium over it south and then the next slide here's some more Commons photos that include uh the bottom leftand corner is uh some of the work going on around the cafeteria if you go down

255the main hallway right now you'll see we've started to open that part of the building up uh for the the new Commons that be in place next year a lot of kids were surprised as they came back into the building uh last week and saw walls disappearing that they expected to be there uh and then over at North High you could see some of that common space uh that's what most of these pictures are bottom center is that main hallway that leads to the purple gym with new lockers and paint and flooring uh it it's really uh making the front of that building uh in an an old dark hallway look much much better uh a key hallway there at North High and then here's a picture of the North High Commons looking back towards

256uh what will eventually be the three-story glass window behind what you see in that far back lights that are there is where where the glass will be but you can start to see some of the new Windows come into place in there in the bottom uh right hand corner is that new uh Cafe that will be part of the commons uh starting to take shape so uh work continuing to to go on through the school year just as always was anticipated uh for this final year of the project so that's it for the master facility plan any questions comments okay thank you um now I'm going to ask for a motion to go into close session for the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees specific individuals who serve as independent contractors

257in a park recreational or educational setting or specific volunteers of the district or legal counsel for the district including hearing testimony on a complaint lodged against an employee a specific individual who serves as an independent contractor in a park recreational or educational setting or volunteer of the district or against legal I'm not finished here sorry I gotta I gotta do it okay or against legal council for the district to determine its validity and for litigation when an action against affecting or on behalf of the district has been filed and is pending before a court or administrative tribunal or when the district finds that an action is probable or imminent in which case the basis for the finding shall be recorded and entered into the minutes of the closed meeting so moved was that was that

258Charelle or Terry Charelle no Charelle and then Terry Terry seconds R Fuller hi kry pavich hi Rick panado hi Joanna Vasquez Drexler hi Mike Davenport hi and Dan Nicholas hi all right we're gonna go into to close session there's no action following just closing