SD308 Board of Education (3/21/2022)

001to please join me up front to congratulate our winners so if we could just kind of stand up and come up here and we're going to actually congratulate our winners this month all right absolutely all right this is exciting it's like the old times again i know all right so tonight the board of education acknowledges our pride winners for the month of march pride stands for proudly recognizing individuals demonstrating excellence the board of education implemented this program in the fall of 2015 to recognize promote and celebrate the many contributions made by teachers and employees across the district our teachers of the month are sponsored by allied first bank which recognizes what our teachers do day in and day out for the continued growth and success of our students awardees as your name is called please

002come forward to be congratulated by the board and dr sparlin congratulations to the following teachers for having been recognized as march teachers of the month laura steele an industrial education teacher at murphy junior high school come on [Applause] okay our next winner is paisley suarez an english learner teacher at oswego east high school [Applause] by recognizing that the decisions they make today in the short term will help fulfill their long-term goals and strengthen their impact on society so that was really cool i also visited uh lakewood and um was able to speak with uh miss budd and mr lu and uh they explain a lot of the challenges um the unique challenges of today as well as acknowledging the great work that their staff does so it was it was um it was very interesting

003informative for a new school board member you know i need to catch up quick so that was great i do have an update or congratulations for the robotics team the sd 308 2338 gear forward robotics team competed this past weekend and they won and placed in the upcoming world competition in addition they finished fourth in the robotics games and that's setting a 2022 season record and they won the most prestigious award in all of the first robotics and that's the chairman's award and this award is given to the team with the most exempt that most exemplifies the principles of outreach equity and inclusion and the teams who win this award are automatically awarded a spot to compete in the world competition in houston texas so that's awesome and that's being held in april um april

00420 20th through the 23rd and our district's team includes students from oswego east high school oswego oswego high school and eighth graders from plank trauber and junior high school so congratulations to the amazing team and the coaches for all they've done and best of luck at the world competition [Applause] i just wanted to share that today is a very special day march 21st is world down syndrome day every day people with down syndrome are breaking down barriers and defying stereotypes some of the most amazing humans that i have met and grown to love who also happen to have down syndrome exhibit positivity strength fortitude grace and ability far beyond what i could ever imagine i am hopeful for a day where we don't have to highlight those with intellectual disabilities and we are instead celebrating

005everyone's abilities thank you very much i wanted to offer uh congratulations to our community and to our oswego wildcats for their win at the special olympics state basketball competition i heard the athletes play amazing and had a lot of fun the wild cat silver team received a silver medal the wildcats junior team received a bronze medal and the skills athlete andrew cy received a silver medal sd 308 is so proud of all these students hard work commitment and teamwork and congratulations again [Applause] and you know we had a really really cool send-off for the kids all the employees at the district office along with all the employees from the pathways program lined the halls all the way all the way up and down and we just cheered for them and the kids were so happy

006and so excited it was just such a wonderful moment very good yeah that's awesome and a week or so ago we had read across america week and i had the honor of reading to a special ed class a fourth grade class in a first grade class at churchill so i just wanted to say thank you to churchill and thank you to sarah catherine cafarello for organizing it and inviting me to come in and read the students it's it's always a pleasure to get to see them and to see them light up when you read to them so thank you so much for that okay anyone else with any comments all right so then we'll jump to 2.6.2 board committee reports and we'll start with policy and legislation go ahead um uh we met on march

00714th and we um acted as the parent teacher advisory council for student rights and responsibilities for the 22-23 school year the students rights and responsibilities document there was a presentation on bus safety and discipline for mr diarmand a presentation of behavioral intervention and special updates by dr hildebrand ms patterson summarized the administration administrative changes in the student handbook and the committee added feedback ms patterson also provided an overview on our law enforcement reciprocal reporting agreements our policy updates um with regard to policy for colon 60 purchases and contracts we did request that we change the dollar amount for purchases that need to go before the board for approval from 25 000 to 20 000 except in an emergency um policy for colon 6'5 the disposition of district property we talked about having a practice where

008the board is also communicated to where uh the just the district is disposing of property and we put that dollar amount around twenty thousand dollars as well we reviewed six colon 310 high school credit for non-district experiences course substitutions and re-entering students and we've asked the teaching and learning committee to please add the word accredited so that the programs that we give credit for are have some sort of accreditation around them finally seven colon third excuse me second to last seven colon thirty with student assignment and intra-district transfer residents we just had a very robust discussion around boundary changes and appropriate demographics socioeconomic um inclusion in when we were um making student assignment and intra district transfer requests and then finally we discussed a new policy eight colon six recording of iep proceedings um the

009committee just made some very minor changes we took out the word tape recording because obviously tape recording is not how it's done anymore and um that was the re that was the whole meeting it mostly centered around uh discussion of the updates to the student uh rights and responsibilities for next year i would could we also though could we send out to the whole board the dress code because we did get hung up a little bit on the new dress code policy but that kind of went around and around and around around and around so if and i know i don't feel like that often does i think you'll find it interesting but i totally forgot to ask you about that earlier so if you could send that out that would be amazing thank you

010ursula i'm gonna guess you guys will go around the same rounds we went i'm happy to skip that if you care to share you can just say yeah what they said okay lori i didn't hear you what did you say sorry about that i said i'm happy to skip having the same round and round that the policy committee had if she wants to just share what the policy committee went around and round about um it was in specifically in regards to student dress code um the policy has excuse me the rights and responsibilities is being updated to reflect that students should wear a top a bottom and shoes and we took out some references some references were suggested to be taken out that such as wearing a crop top or a shirt with spaghetti straps

011and some of that was in regards to student survey and information emails that we've received from students regarding um who that really affects and there was just discussion and difference of opinion about that that doesn't surprise me i'll just students if we're talking about this do you know have you guys covered much about student dress code in your work yet this year no not much not yet it wasn't it wasn't part of the scope yeah yeah it wasn't an initial issue brought up that was yeah that makes sense yeah it wasn't with the top issues right right right right okay but just out of mild curiosity go ahead yeah i mean like if we did happen to ask students what they thought about it i already know several students um who have very strong opinions

012about it um just like about like like you said who would really affect um who it's directed at who it helps things like that and there's so many i guess multifaceted aspects to it that i mean like if we ever did try to gain some information about that i think we'd get a lot of perspectives about it as well and we've had doctors dr sparrow you had your superintendent um um parent advisory committee well it was this one was the student student advisor okay and um we've had a couple of different um student um sessions around dress code and all of that so there is documentation out there over the last three years uh regarding what they feel and how they feel about the dress code so that can be pulled up well and and

013that's what i'm wondering did um that information feed into the concept of top bottom and shoes that's our understanding yeah they're was was it margaret that was on that committee somebody in our margarita yeah somebody in our meeting was i wasn't there talking about it i can't for the life of me right this second because we were we got stuck on the top bottom and shoes well we'll talk about we're not talking about the student handbook tonight right right no okay i would definitely be interested in more information on what feeds into the word choices and to make sure that if we're going to make changes toward choices that we are making positive changes rather than just different changes yeah well and that's what i'll be interested to learn more about all right anything more

014lady ladies no wrong sorry well give me a word give me a word that i would say doctor people all right um all right teaching and learning committee all right um we met on march 2nd similar to the last board meeting the committee was presented for with the recommendations for new elementary social studies and junior high math discussion occurred for the social social studies new curriculum shifts to inquiry and application um help students better transition to junior high in high school student voice was a big part of that curriculum it allows students to make choices in their inquiry in their projects this one of the things that uh the committee appreciated was a the rubik's rubrics are student friendly and easily adapted to allow for student choice while holding students accountable then there was the

015junior high math discussion was first and foremost we are picking math materials that align with the sd 308 math framework currently we purchase annual consumables and many teachers are creating their own materials the teacher committee agrees that we need to change so students can achieve the curriculum has 24 7 professional development tools which with each lesson modeled in a classroom video to show how show it in practice training on how to utilize new teaching techniques will be integral and it integrates well a couple other things that integrates with google classroom and students do not need to have internet to have it on their chromebook so those are um some of the things that were discussed and were considered positive about the new curriculum that was presented and that we haven't had new social studies curriculum

016since it's 21 years 2017 years okay sorry but that's not to say that every year they don't add their own and now we'll go on to 6.3 superintendent's report well good evening board the past two years have been a long and challenging ones on many different levels but with that said we've come through it and i believe we can be better and stronger for it now is the time to reconnect re-challenge ourselves and with a nude and renewed focus on safe inclusive schools climate and culture academic achievement finance and student voice as we work towards educating all students to reach their highest potential tonight the board is going to hear an update on our progress to envision 308 which you all know is our strategic plan one aspect of that plan is to have a

017balanced budget that works towards creating a 20 percent fund reserve so that we can end the long-standing practice of issuing annual tax anticipation warrants to end issuing debt service extension bonds for capital projects to begin allocating dollars to capital projects on an annual basis having an annual budget that includes a contingency and having a budget that includes the appropriate amount of dollars within each year's budget to continually update the curriculum and to provide the materials and resources that our students and our teachers need as their learning tools so as i've shared in the past this part's a little bit of a recap but in 2016 when i became superintendent we showed a do nothing scenario which meant uh we keep spending the way we were and uh if we did nothing spending at the same

018rate that in 2020 we not only would not have a fund balance we would have been 15 million dollars in the red so from 2016 through 2020 the board of education had to make a series of annual cuts that required difficult conversations and even more difficult decisions these were very hard conversations to have but they were needed conversations to get us to the point that we are currently at now as is and where we're at now is having projected fund balance of 25 million dollars at the end of 2022. so to some that may sound like a healthy reserve uh but not necessarily to reach our goal of having a 20 20 fund balance we need to have approximately 51 million dollars in our reserves the good news is we're just about halfway there to

019meeting that goal and that we are projected a balanced budget moving forward that includes all the things that i just mentioned earlier and during this time we will also be adding to our reserves to eventually meet that 20 goal so are we financially secure the answer is not yet have we put our district on a path that will will get us to be financially secure the answer is yes the evidence-based funding formula that was adopted by the state five years ago along with what we have done as a district have uh has created a much brighter financial future for district 308 so as long as the uh sc the evidence-based funding formula and the state continues to fund that which create which was created to help level the academic and financial field for school districts

020like 308 with the five-year projections that dr petsky has put together this will allow us to eventually reach our financial goals i'm very pleased to be able to share what i just did and i'm even more pleased to have dr petsky present those five-year projections in the very near future to the board of education so that's my report for this evening thank you very much thank you 6.4 student ambassador reports uh thank you uh colton and i have a lot to cover today regarding the specifics of the second student survey that we administered um since our last board meeting the student advisory committee along with dr waller dr sparlin mr gatewood mr grays and mrs benkowski met to discuss and divulge into the data received by the students from our second student survey there were

021a couple of key statistics and i guess conclusions that we made that we received from our students that we wanted to talk about today um first of all 94 of those who took the survey believed they could identify sexual harassment and on the contrary only 77 of survey responders believed that their peers could identify sexual harassment we discussed that this could lead to student-to-student interactions and relationships and perceptions that create an unsafe feeling in learning environments another important conclusion we derived from the survey was that the majority of students could identify very intentional acts of sexual harassment but only around half of the students could consistently identify more hidden forms of sexual harassment such as repeating messages after someone has received a negative response or repeatedly asking for a phone number after receiving a negative

022response and more we discussed that this may be related to how forms of sexual harassment students learned growing up were very explicit and obvious while subtle forms of sexual harassment weren't discussed as frequently 73 of individuals said that enough information on sexual harassment was not available to them and we were able to have discussions on programs such as mutual grounds that relate to this statistic oftentimes external sources are used to teach high school students about sexual harassment and sexual assault but how to report sexual harassment in the student's school and who to report it to isn't very prominent which causes the gap in trust from students to their schools to become even more prominent even more present the majority of students had never reported sexual harassment only 67 percent of students felt safe reporting sexual

023harassment and 665 individuals said they did not know how to report sexual harassment 52 of students said they did not think the school addresses sexual harassment properly and most people have not experienced sexual assault or harassment though many indicated that they had mostly observed it on social media in the hallways and some had also commented that they'd seen it in the locker rooms as well finally the majority of people were able to identify that sexual harassment impacted survivors through anxiety depression hard time communicating their feelings and low self-esteem as well as anxiety from social media but students were less likely to identify that sexual harassment impacted people through eating disorders substance abuse and relationships or friendships which are also causes or actually i should say effects of sexual harassment yeah and so i'll turn some

024of those percentages into numbers and minds so we recognize that over 1500 students uh felt that there is a lack of education on sexual harassment in our schools and that a sizable amount of students over 350 did not feel safe reporting instances to staff members and over 660 students didn't even know how uh now in our initial discussion we brought up the fact that amongst the student body there is a sentiment that nothing is done or things just get worse for the victim uh we we see in here that every day and over a thousand students answered that way on the survey several committee members did bring up the point that the sentiment is caused by students not being aware of policies of the district when it comes to addressing this behavior we understand the

025obvious and necessary need for confidentiality on a case basis but also could not ignore the fact that this lack of awareness is potentially causing survivors or witnesses to not report instances of sexual harassment because of fear of nothing will nothing will happen i would also like to add that in questioning one or where sexual harassment was being witnessed the major places were in areas either not under school adult supervision supervision such as social media or we're in places uh either not on i excuse me where many students navigate through like hallways where their staff members really don't have the ability to constantly monitor everything and everyone we also were able to share that many believe that the students must perceive the structure of protection from sexual harassment in our schools to feel safe and that

026should be felt that the survivor is the number one priority in any situation and has no incidence of blaming through research using wipar the student advisory committee cited from a study that students were more likely to face a larger amount of trauma from one instance of sexual sexual harassment than multiple instances of bullying moving forward transparency is key to addressing student concerns present in the results from the survey not only motivates action by students to report any acts of sexual harassment to a trusted adult knowing that it's going to be taken seriously but it also creates a safe learning environment where students can focus on education rather than being exposed to sexual harassment in any manner it has no place in our schools and we hope through the dedication from administration our committee and dr

027waller to address this students understand we feel the same way and working towards change awesome phenomenal work yeah very cool and yeah very very well said you know we have our we have our data our student data now um we have the research that was done by the students by the committee uh we have some recommendations we're now bringing more adults into the conversation as we put together a comprehensive plan for the 22-23 school year in regards to sexual harassment we're looking at the scope and sequence of the curriculum when it's taught how it's taught where the and where the gaps are and then once we have that full plan what uh dr waller and dr pajasik are putting some good time out of time in right now we're going to bring it back to

028the student committee to share with them what our what our plan is moving forward so we can get their feedback on the final on the final plan so it's been a great committee a lot of hard-working people and the students have been absolutely incredible to work with incredible and i just want to echo that that not we should be very very proud of not only colton and anya but the the committee they're super engaged super intelligent um they they i wish you guys could be in the room dr sparlin and i just looked at each other because we don't even have to say much that the way that they aggregate the data the way that they draw conclusions based on what they have it's just a phenomenal committee to be a part of you guys

029are doing a phenomenal job so we thank you for that thank you incredibly courageous too to be the voice of so many students and understand that you are now speaking for people that didn't feel like they had a voice before so thank you to the both of you and to the committee and to the administrators that are are supporting you great great job all right uh item 7.1 is a comprehensive update on our district 308 strategic uh plan in vision 308 tonight we have many people here to share a success in accomplishing everything that's been outlined for the 21-22 school year as we all know there are four quadrants to envision 308 student learning support for student learning finance and facilities and community partnerships faith allquist associate superintendent is going to start us off faith

030thanks so much as dr sparlin said there are four quadrants in areas of envision 308 but we've recently provided updates for the finance and facilities portions and also community partnerships so rather than rehash all of that which we had just done we'll just be focusing tonight on student learning and support for student learning all of the slides there are part of the process though so that when they are posted for our community they can see all of the progress at once i do have cast of thousands today so there will be people rotating through so i'd ask as you talk for the first time if you've introduced yourself and we're going to start off with student learning with shannon and lindsey good evening my name is lindsay allen i'm the director of elementary education in

031regards to student learning you can see that throughout this school year we have completed our first rounds of classroom walkthroughs focusing in on the literacy and math frameworks and looking at best instructional practices in the classroom we are almost done with our second round so we're very excited about that we've seen a lot of great things happening in our buildings you can also see that we've held many trainings not only for our building administrators but our instructional coaches and all of our staff members multiple dates in regards to the literacy and math frameworks we'll continue that through the rest of this year and also into next year and then finally there was a staff survey that was put out in february and we're very excited to be able to look at that data and find

032out what our staff believes their professional development needs are going forward shannon looters director of junior high education as lindsay said we have held numerous trainings for our building level administrators in both the literacy and math frameworks and we will continue that through next year as well we do have the two secondary instructional coaches and since late september they have every monday morning sent weekly tips about the literacy and math frameworks respectively out to the entire departments for math and ela and those have been very well received by our teachers and then as you know we have piloted a new math resource and we'll be bringing that back to you in early april good evening i'm heidi pajasik i'm the director of social emotional learning we have done quite a few things since i met

033with you and spoke with you in january about our sel framework but we have fully implemented our updated curriculum resources in grades kindergarten through eighth grade and in fact recently completed some training on the institute day for early childhood teachers on social emotional learning standards and the second step in inter-explorer curriculums we have common behavioral expectations that are in their final stages of being created for all of our schools we continue to implement lessons at the high school level and continue to learn more about tier one sel instruction and tier 1 scl instructional needs of our high school students we are continuing to review our discipline data and train various administrative groups on use of that data and not only have our district restorative practices leadership team members been identified but we have participated in

034a full two-day training with the international institute of restorative practice on restorative practices for educators and we'll begin our work in earnest internally in april we've also been working on expanding our opportunities for students to have choice and challenge on different differentiation and personalization to their interests and their needs some of the highlights there is the literacy framework where we are having our students have daily choice and time and what they are reading and practicing their literacy skills also it's part of our math framework that we have differentiation in small group time at k-8 level then most recently we've surveyed our high school students on their level of satisfaction with the amount of challenge and choice that they're getting and we'll be incorporating some of that feedback in our future planning as well so the

035work aligned to division 308 at the high school has been focused on creativity real world problems and career paths as we've talked before we will be introducing new graduation requirements for the incoming class of 2023 built around flexibility especially in the area of electives the new courses that we will be implementing in the 2023 school year really either fill out a four-year sequence based on a career area of study or some creative outlets the four courses that we will be implementing is the project lead the way cyber security calculus three theater directing two and advanced stance and then the work that we've done on college and career pathway endorsements focus on professional learning career focused instructional sequencing and academic readiness so this year we were able to complete the academic readiness we have transitional english

036and math dual credit english and math and ap english and math also thank you we're also working on preparing our students for post-secondary life for financial and digital literacy if you recall the social studies presentation for elementary that financial literacy is a piece of that and then our junior highs have been working with that and the high school social studies committee is also looking at how do we incorporate the financial literacy standards for when we adopt new courses and materials there at six through eight we have been working on that digital literacy piece uh and what that looks like and as we develop all other courses we look at the digital literacy piece of all of our content areas we believe that it is best incorporated in there as not only just a stand-alone class

037the next piece is talking about our k-8 assessments on our goal this year was to have a new program that gave us actionable data that actually used less time than our previous system and i'm happy to say that that has happened and along with this we've started a district instructional team to model the use of data district-wide by desegregating it into different groups looking at how it falls with different demographics and seeing how that then can be shared out with our schools so we're really happy also that our new system has a way of giving us a reading level for our students in grades two through eight and that is a key part of our literacy framework good evening i am jadon waller i am the director of diversity equity inclusion and family engagement um

038and so earlier this school year the equity statements were finalized and put into this amazing formal format um in which since then we have um worked together with administrators and i've provided professional development for um principals and assistant principals um and then they then took it a step further and then they begin to have conversations around the equity statements with different scenarios attached to it the work that we've been focusing on is our ability to recognize inequities and then respond effectively most importantly by validating but then being able to open the floor for conversation and dialogue with our community and so in addition to that we have worked with the student ambassadors who have already shined tonight but that work with the student ambassadors has truly been an empowering journey for all of us and

039them and their ability to just articulate and truly understand the needs of all of our students has been life-changing so i'm super excited to see the work that we are able to continue to do with them um in addition to that um i was able to re-establish the dei committee that was previously in in position and so throughout that dei committee we have developed sub-committees from there where there's a focus group on communities and and family engagement there's a focus group that is working with our students in which we have created a student dei committee with high schoolers for now and i am slowly creeping into junior high but that group has worked very very hard to put together our event that's coming up on april 7th at oswego high school 7 p.m to 8

04030 p.m it is called amplify um and so having reestablished that dei committee and been able to have important conversations about our work within the community and our work within the district and where we want to go has truly been a nice step forward and when we have our next meeting actually the student di committee will join our adult dei committee so they can actually have a collaboration and learn from each other and so furthermore with that i actually um was thinking that i am just going crazy but i um since january 10th have done over 35 professional development with various groups throughout the district um whether it be with students i was able to teach fifth grade at both grand park and southbury that was exciting i am a high school english teacher formally

041in addition i've had just an awesome time having professional developments with principals assistant principals our special education department dean social workers so it's been quite the exciting journey to truly come together and understand that equity means love and so finally i know that the policy committee has spoken on this but we have been working closely to address the dress code policy in an effort to make it more inclusive and culturally relevant for all of our students thank you oh it's me again i'm so sorry so in addition to this and i know ken will take uh take the reins um after myself so the dei student committee actually took this amazing picture where they had these big glasses oversized because we were learning about perspectives um and so we utilized that um picture of this

042diverse group of students and created um a flyer in which we took down illinois state um and they went to north central um to really have this vision of who we are overall and that we are culturally diverse and and culturally responsive and that's who we are looking for and so i've been able to work closely with um nancy mendes who is our recruitment specialist and so we've been looking at postings and what we are including and with the um recruitment team committee that we have we have been looking at the questions that we're asking so that we can make sure that who we bring to the table is someone who um is open and ready um to address and engage in a culturally responsive environment ken miller executive director of hr and this work

043that dr waller is mentioning is absolutely critical because if our goal is to have our teachers and administrators mirror the demographics of those bachelors and master's degrees that are issued each year by illinois institutions of higher education we've got we've got a little bit of work we still need to get done and to get there we're really focusing like dr waller said on a two-way approach of both raising our visibility through community outreach events like job fairs and the open interview process that's been very successful and also working through committees to be able to eliminate some of the barriers that might be standing in the way of support staff achieving their goals to become teachers or that might be causing promising candidates to be able to look elsewhere as well that are already within our

044ranks all right so um we are currently at the end of implementing signs of suicide as a program consistently across all of our junior high schools we have started to receive data from alyssa's mission who is our provider for that program indicating the number of students and i'm excited that we have a number of students that we have been able to connect to brand new resources within the community and get them services and supports that they were not receiving prior to the program we have continued to establish and nurture relationships with a variety of local organizations for student options and that list has been linked for you in a prior presentation but we have a variety of different business partnerships for our students who are in the pathways program and working we have a lot

045of community partnerships for social services and support for our families and then are also building our network of higher education partnerships in order to provide a variety of different resources one of our most beneficial higher education partnerships is with the school of social work at aurora university not only for interns but also for opportunities for students so we currently have a student leadership group that's been established is being run by a school community resource collaborative intern who is introducing the students not only to their own skills and advocacy in order to support mental health within the community but also introduce them to the career of future pathway of social work we have completed the illinois youth survey with our eighth graders and that data once that window closes after may we will receive that data

046as a district and be able to begin desegregating that and looking for trends and information about the behaviors and things that our students are exhibit are reporting that they are engaged in in school and outside of school the supports that they have in school and outside of school and then most importantly reach out to some of our community partners for different funding and programs that come with um participation in that survey and i can let vale speak thank you valerie patterson executive director of student services so the area that i have invested here is the um the alice which the acronym is alert lock down inform counter and evaluate the instructors that we have are administrators at each building who are trained in that response um the training has undergone a lot of shifts and

047we're now working with navigate 360 which is the vendor that replaces alice institute so we've got this year we were developing materials for post crisis post evacuation procedures um that was a a really dac team effort i'm really proud of that work and there's a lot about that that's going to be very supportive for our administrative teams we do need to be sure that our alice instructors are properly certified so that process has changed and prior to the end of this school year the alice instructors that are still remaining in the district will be um preemptively recertified by our department working together with navigate 360. and we will also be planning for the training that would be available to make sure that we have the proper number of certified administration to support our staff and

048students across the district moving forward thank you i'm going to talk a little bit about professional development and while i do that if denise and renee could come up so one of our goals this year was to come up with a three-year professional development plan which i will be sharing with the board in april what we did so far this year is we wanted to come up with what are our expectations for the type of quality of staff development that we provide and it's very important to us that we model the type of instruction that we want our students to receive including differentiation including inquiry including having learning targets so we set those up they're a part of our climate for learning they're called expectations for engagement and there's the expectation that as district administrators

049when we provide trainings to staff or principals we model those when principals provide training to their staff and so on uh and then the links that are in there what we attempt to do within ed services is map out the entire year when we look at faculty meeting times school improvement times institute days if we do not do that any one of the people that has spoken in front of you today could passionately build enough trainings for the entire year so we have to be very careful that we coordinate our time and our efforts so that um there's a connected vision of how all of those pull together and that we're not overloading our staff or planning so much that there isn't possibly time to do it all and speaking of not having time we

050did look through all of our pieces of envision 308 well in advance and there are some things that we are not doing this year and made that decision early on and this piece of vision of the future of instruction is one of those pieces and we look forward to looking at that next year special education i'm sorry it's me again um so in looking at this piece um and and thinking about direct instruction um the student dei committee who has truly come together from both of the different schools i made sure to pull information from last year so that all students would have an opportunity to apply so they went through a process um and i want to just make sure that i acknowledge all the teachers from the dei committee who are supporting um

051these students groups uh diana palumbo and jamie piper have truly done a ton as well as miriam osich and michael lealy and so the group has decided that they want to be called the coalition they believe that they are a group of people from various backgrounds and different experiences who are coming together for the purpose to amplify their voices and so in working with the group this past week they have been working to create visual representation within each of their schools as a way to bring positivity and um and awareness to some contributions that various people from from non-dominant backgrounds have have contributed um to this community as well as to the united states so they they got really into it they got into these flags that was a whole another conversation um but they

052truly have been on this journey of um just learning about who they are and determining how they can utilize their voice so that they can um be bigger allies and and for each other and for themselves um and so we've spoken on the student ambassador committee so i just want to make sure that i'm not over talking but um the action plan process is what we're working on now dr podjasek and i are getting together and looking at some of the sel standards with isb looking at the different structures that we put in place to make sure that we create an action plan that can be effective and impact our students we've so much information wealth of information that the student ambassadors and the information for the survey has provided us and so we want

053to make sure that when we are doing this action plan that we are realistic but that we are effective and that we meet the needs of all of our students and so finally we just recently administered another high school survey i'm so happy the students keep taking them but this one was focused specifically on um you know cultural responsiveness student identity student religion as well as looking at sel factors as well and so we are in the process of looking at that information now uh miss douglas and dr project and myself to determine how we'll utilize that information moving forward thank you now it's special education good evening i'm denise hildebrand the executive director of special education this is really a follow-up to the report that i provided in october for you the special education

054department continues to engage in professional development activities that build capacity both in our staff and in our special education leadership we've been focusing on the instruction of executive functioning skills at all levels early childhood through to 12th grade and also in providing training to both our administrators and our case managers our teachers on local education agency or lea representative skill proficiency we have developed a four module series that we've been able to train all of our staff in at this time really feel that we have seen positive results in the quality of special education individualized education programs and plans that we're seeing thus far processes for programming within specific special education programs located at eastview academy and pathways transition program are being developed and piloted in anticipation of expanded implementation next year thank you good

055evening i'm renee sartor the director of english learners and in addition to work on the dual for him to talk through this slide all right so this is just look at where we're at and we feel overall with all the different pieces that you've heard this evening that we are solidly making progress we have quite a bit of work yet to do but we have made progress so far and then i will turn it to questions that the board may have i appreciate the fact that dr weiler says that our students are continuing to take the surveys and we know that students have been saying to us for a long time that they don't want someone surveying them and then not seeing any result from what they say and so i think it both well

056that if they're continuing to take the service that they have confidence in the fact that not only are their voices being heard but action is being taken so that's really good i've got a follow-up question of that how are we doing the surveys how are we doing i mean are they are they doing them in study halls part of the student support time we usually take a few minutes from that time to administer the surveys then i had a question on slide three so you talked briefly about um the instructional coaching i think it was miss looters right so it's been a while i don't remember the month but i remember we were on stage for it um where we talked about the avid program and how we have some avid coaches who could be

057helping out with some of this stuff at the junior high especially with literacy has that happened so the avid coaches from our that work at the district level yes yes they've been part of not only the literacy training but also the equity trainings as we've done those pieces and they've been sitting in most recently i trained some of them for the math framework on friday and they're part of developing that professional development and then pushing that to other buildings come on in they've also participated in uh building level administrator training throughout the year on avid structures collaborative structures they work very closely with the two secondary instructional coaches all right i just like i don't i don't want to i don't want them only working on avid when we have all this other stuff going

058on absolutely and avid is more of some of the instructional practices and the system work that fold into what we're doing which is why i had asked for it earlier but i was just making sure and our avid coordinator that supports elementary is also an elementary instructional coach at east view academy so she is prevalent in all of our instructional coach meetings um that meet monthly okay i just like i don't want to just like i want them out in classrooms with teachers and yes okay we agree i know that this was a time of like discovery through your walkthroughs and now i think you're in the second phase of the walk through so i'm just interested in all of this engagement like what what was your what are some of your greatest takeaways or

059surprises or things that you discovered as you were going through the process so one of the uh pieces that i hadn't anticipated on when we looked at the literacy framework and that independent reading time and independent reading time is simply having students have choice to practice their skills and when i've done this in previous districts that's a really key component but this year at the elementary and junior highs it was this calming time that students could really have almost some some break and some pieces that you could just kind of feel the room breathe so it was this great instructional piece but it also was some of those connection pieces learning targets we saw an improvement in the amount of classrooms that were displaying learning targets at junior high and high school we still have

060some fine tuning to do in the quality of some of the learning targets and how we share that but that was some of the progress and then it was very great to see even though i know we hear about there are a lot of behavioral issues and things that as our students are coming back that there were marked differences for how our students were collaborating and working on academics even from the first couple of weeks of the walkthroughs in october to the end of that time and then seeing some of that as we go through one of the side pieces that our staff gets to see that even teachers and principals may not is we bring along principals and assistant principals and people from dac to go to other schools and go with us and

061the amount of conversation that they're now having around common expectations is very different now than what they had in october and there's this oh this is how we do this and we can provide feedback and kudos to our staff i was very very cautious at the beginning said nobody can take notes nobody can do any of those things because this is not an evaluation of any of the teachers this is an evaluation of how we are doing and to my pleasant surprise people were like why aren't they taking notes why can't we talk about things why can't so um about three or four classroom walkthroughs in we changed that and now we do take notes not by specific teacher or by looking at that but then we come back and we're able to share all

062the positive things and have that spread many times our principals will say oh i gotta go back and you know talk about this at my school or i need to take this practice back so it's allowing some of that transference of some of the really good practices to happen elsewhere that it's by design that's what we wanted to have happen but it's really great that we've got instruction and it's contagious and we're making progress now that we have some common language and frameworks because our teachers were always working really really hard um and doing great work but to having some alignment to all of those pieces just helps everybody work together that's awesome sorry you can get me going i could that's exactly what i wanted that's awesome that's great great to hear you got

063any other questions oh i'm sorry okay uh one other question recruiting um i heard that we are doing the open interview process and we're looking for more uh diverse candidates but what are we doing to go where the pool of candidates are for example going to historically black colleges universities or et cetera as opposed to waiting for them to come to us and that's an excellent question and one that we are looking at for the upcoming year as we start to plan our recruitment activities for the upcoming year and the years to follow from there right now i know one of the ones that we're really excited about looking at is a job fair that's going to be coming up with the university of illinois at chicago we take a look at the demographics of

064who is uh earning education degrees there um it is a it is a very diverse population that we're looking at we've also attended job fairs at illinois state university as dr waller had said and we are going to be attending a bilingual specific one that's hosted by irc coming up here i believe actually on saturday so we've got a lot of moving pieces where we're going out we're actively trying to source within the community we're obviously looking to be able to broaden our horizons when it comes to that and we're looking forward to being able to put those pieces in motion in the years to come okay thank you i have a question um about just it was a bullet point and i just wondered if you could put a little bit more content around

065it the district restorative practices leadership team um you said that there's going to be a two day training but what is what is the intent and purpose like moving forward because obviously two days of training doesn't quite sure so with the restorative practices which is a lot about not only proactive measures but how do we fold students back in after there's been an infraction and how do we teach about that and we've had some starts to that in various schools but we uh have had some work to do in having a common shared definition of what that is so dr pjacic has brought in a common training and then to have a district level team to implement that and then looking at it for all junior highs and our high schools we decided that we

066needed to really set a good solid infrastructure of understanding on that and have some common pieces before we continue to launch and it's not that we don't have people at each of our schools that have good intentions and have been working hard at that but without a common groundwork or framework there's some possibilities for some missteps so a lot of background work so that we hopefully can have a really foundation strong foundation and then travel faster once that has been established i don't know if was anything else i think that you wanted the district our size it takes a lot to bring down to the classroom level correct and that's the goal of the restorative practices training that we went on was we're starting with a small leadership team to really establish that foundation and

067then a subset of that team will be trained as internal trainers and then we'll be able to identify what our steps are it'll be a multi-year process to really implement because like you said one of the reasons we chose the group that we did is because they look at it not only from the restorative justice and after things have happened and in the discipline office but all of those things that happen in the classroom prior to prevent us getting to that point to begin with so it's more it's about relationships it's about instructional strategies and structures that we use in the classroom and that involves a lot of people and a lot of training so this will be something that takes multiple years but we felt like that team needed to have that common understanding

068in language so then we can determine what our district definition is so when we start to roll it out there's a really clear understanding of this is what it means because there's a lot of different theories and beliefs and velocities out there this is what it means and this is how we're going to get there over the next several years and i think the end goal is always the same that we're trying to make sure that we're what that we aren't incurring those adverse childhood experiences through behavioral issues and expulsions and suspensions and all of that kind of stuff so i look forward to hearing more about that and maybe even somewhere down the road seeing that that multi-year plan would be very helpful so thank you very much i'm sorry i think i think

069i'm i may i hopefully i'm not repeating what she just said but i'm hearing a common theme i used to work common common expectations across the building i think i've heard it now from most people and i think that that's phenom a phenomenal goal i also think that it's an intentional strategy on top of everything that we're doing and so i don't know the answer to that but i know that well there's a everyone is talking about the common strategies that we're pushing across all of the schools and it's based on the frameworks and everything that we're doing but on top of just implementing this it's a level of intentionality because it's a cultural shift a level of intentionality to have common expectations and to make sure that they're implemented so i don't really have

070a question more so than are we being or are we at the same time being intentional about spreading that commonality across the board so my why of why i went into education and why i stay with this is to have find the right balance between having common expectations so that we have systems that we can build which also still have freedom and autonomy to let our students in our teachers skills and talents shine through so you'll hear us talk a lot about here's what we're tight on or here's what our expectations are but built into that is that autonomy so and you'll see when we talk at the professional development training where i share the plan with you to do complex change there's seven things that i always look through and what that is and

071one of those is having common expectations and a shared vision of where we're going because that helps everyone pull together our instructional coaches it's our belief that we as long as we can get our instructional coaches here's where we're all going they're just helping coach and support people to get there not coming in with their own opinions about this is what we should do and then it becomes a lot easier to train new staff because we have this is established of what we're doing and folding them in because real professional development and systems change isn't done a year at a time it's many many years of consistent language thank you you got me going are we again to move on to 8.2 consent agenda are there any questions on the consent agenda thank you also

072thank you thank you thank you everyone all right if there are no questions on the consent agenda can i have a motion to approve the consent agenda please i make a motion to approve all items under consent including 8.1 minutes from the board of education meeting on february 28 open and closed session and 8.2 to acknowledge the foia requests received by the district second mrs simultan aye mr gatewood aye mrs swanson aye mr siron hi mrs doyle aye mrs johnson aye motion passes 6-0 item 9.1 is information and financial statements are there any questions on what has been provided this evening adam 9.2 is in regards to our district safety plan as we continue to see a decline of cases of kova 19 in our schools and across the community we are looking to make

073some changes to our exclusionary procedures and we wanted to bring those changes to your attention teresa good evening outlined in the memo there i'm just going to highlight some of the the changes that we are proposing that would be going into effect on wednesday and really this is just addressing the chronic absences related to seasonal and chronic conditions in students such as allergies and migraines at this point that makes up the largest number of our students that are excluded from school for five days or require a test for return we want to acknowledge that and work with families and their health care providers to obtain medical documentation of those conditions that they may have what the expected symptoms would look like if somebody were to have that type of condition and allow for our nurses

074to have that clinical judgment when they're evaluating a student in the school nurse's office so that they can determine whether or not that really isn't aligned with what we would expect and again not excluding that student if we don't believe that's necessary for the safety of that student and those around them additionally we would like to expand our testing as we see the number of cases continue to decrease we believe we have the capacity at this point to allow for testing within our nurse's office so we have worked with our local health departments and obtained cases of rapid tests for each of our buildings across the district and at this time if a student excuse me not this time but moving forward wednesday and beyond if a student develops symptoms while they are at school

075and there's not a pre-existing condition or medical documentation that would indicate the reason for the symptoms as the nurse is evaluating that student and determining if there's potential suspect of covid19 rather than automatically excluding them as we have been doing up to this point really based on the capacity within the nurse's office we will be offering the option to parents to then authorize the test to happen right there in the nurse's office and avoid exclusion altogether so that process will be that the the nurse will reach out directly to the parent at that moment in time parents would provide the authorization that there'd be a rapid test there in the office 15 minutes later that students cleared and returns to class so it's just another piece of that puzzle as we talk about evaluation of

076students and who's you know safe to be in the building and who needs to be excluded so we we really feel comfortable in making these changes and again all of this is really built around that um really important goal of keeping kids in school and keeping in person learning for all of our students so happy to address any questions in regards to this recommended change i'm just very grateful as a parent of an allergy sufferer and our goal to not just keep kids in person but the continuity of letting them stay is so important even a day away is like causes um such a an issue so parents uh their provide the provider has to send in the letter yeah and for a number of our students we already have this type of documentation but

077up to this point previously based on the state recommendations at the height of the pandemic we were not accepting that documentation as a reason to avoid exclusion so for a number of our students we already have that documentation in place in our nurses office that's collected as part of their annual health survey when they start the school year but if you do not have that information on file and you wish to work with your school nurse we invite all parents and we'll include that in the information that goes out to parents tomorrow invite them to provide that information to their school nurse so it's just another resource that the the nurse can access when they're making that medical evaluation i do think it's important to point out as well if a student does call in

078if a parent calls a student in sick like they're not there at all on a day when they want to come back if they were out for an illness that does include symptoms of covid19 we do still need that student to test prior to coming back in our building that really helps to secure the safety of the students and staff in the building not bringing someone in who was actively sick and home for a period of time we don't want to become that testing source we still maintain our testing at the old traveler location that is still open three days a week moving forward so we would still encourage parents to utilize outside testing if their student has not been in attendance in school this school-based testing will really be just a quick answer for

079students who are already in the building yeah thank you for the update because this is just another venue or platform for our community to see and understand some of the changes that we're making as opposed to them just having it sent in an email which they may not open sure so i i appreciate that very much and so as it relates to the safety plan are there any things that you see um coming coming coming next as an update for us um you know we're we're kind of in a tough spot right now where um we received pretty frequent updates from the state public health department and our local health department on a pretty regular basis for a while there we had lots of written resources that's a challenge at this point as things have

080really changed for many other settings across the state in regards to covid the written guidance to schools is kind of lacking at this point and we're we've had a few phone calls with the state but they have not been able to narrow down when we could expect updates to the written guidance and schools as a result of that i think are kind of all in different places with what they may be moved forward with and what they haven't so we remain in really close contact with our local health department very frequently and talking with them about what we're comfortable moving forward with and what our current metrics look like but at this point in time i would say that's the largest challenge for us is just not having that granular guidance from the state level

081that we had kind of become accustomed to for a little while there i i think we will start to see much like we are accounting for chronic conditions that as we look to expanding that rapid testing and maybe even taking a look at the symptoms set for students and being able to hopefully come away with some of that if it's a minor single day stomachache that resolves that evening and they're fine again and those kind of things so i'm hoping that we'll be able to look at that symptom list and bring that down some so that would be my i believe my next recommendation for us as we move forward thank you thank you teresa item 9.3 is an informational and discussion item on a way to enhance our ability to be as proactive and

082responsive to emails that come from the community to the board of education communication from the community to the board is very important the board wants to hear from the community and also wants to be responsive to community questions for this reason we've developed a process that we feel will help accomplish these goals in a timely and efficient way we want the community to be assured that when emails are sent to the board those emails are not only read but the sender and the rest of the board can't see the responses to those questions so theresa committees our director of communications will walk us through some proposed changes to this process thank you dr smarlin so real briefly this is just the policy bringing it back up again so it's in front of everyone there is

083a policy in place that does direct communications to and from the board and dr sparling covered some of this we want one of the very key takeaways to be that the board in all ways still welcomes that communication from the community that's regarded as very important and that people can submit those questions you know to the school board superintendent administration we just think this really provides a vehicle for people to understand kind of where those where those questions can be directed so this is uh kind of hard to read on small paper here but these really outline the steps the five steps to this new plan so we have a group email that the community utilizes it's a simple way to provide communication to the board it's the boe at sd308.org this email address then

084copies individually each of the school board members and superintendent and recording secretary at this time what will be a little bit different is that our president mrs simultan will be sending an email back that then outlines kind of the district and board functions and how those may differ providing links for who to call on our homepage we have a great resource of you know who to call kind of a roadmap the type of you know the order of who you might need to contact for an issue so that'll be linked in there as well as a link to our full staff directory and then additionally we'll now have a link to a submit a question so if you're unsure with those two resources kind of where to direct that question or where that question might

085belong this system then provides a way for you to obtain that answer so someone will use a link to submit the question within the letter that they'll receive from our board president and they can use that to submit their question that will be then forwarded and alert the board secretary that this has come in she will then direct that to the appropriate administrator individual that can assist with helping to track down that answer and provide that to the community member as that administrator then replies our that will be copied over to our board secretary all of that information will be recorded on a google sheet which has viewing privileges for our board that's important piece so you can see the information that people are asking or sharing what our administrative reply is to those type

086of questions as well as an opportunity for us to kind of gauge themes and if there continues to be questions that we don't obviously we aren't addressing proactively somewhere on our website or in our communication we want to take those themes to help us to improve and grow and provide those kind of faqs to our community so in a brief overview you have their components of that reply we kind of covered a lot of this and what what the role is of the superintendent administration as compared to the board and then those links to the various tools that will be there this is just a screenshot of what the form looks like so when within the letter that's provided by the board president if someone does have a question and don't know where to send

087that to they'll click on the link and this will open up just a easy way for them to submit their information and how we can get back in contact with them and then this is just a screenshot not really intended for you to be able to read real clearly at this point but this gives you kind of a preview to what it'll look like in that google sheet that will be shared with each of you for viewing purposes only and you'll see here what questions were asked when they came in who asked them which administrator those were directed to and when and what that reply was so i really think it closes the gap in communication and make sure that it's visible to everyone here at this table as well as our administrative team there's

088any questions or i appreciate the fact that you know the the process empowers you know the district and and i think secondly because as the board we are to listen um for the concerns for the aspirations the desires of our community and so i love the fact that we will have themes created from all of these emails because it's really important that we continue to hear from our community but yet have places by which this information is gathered and sorted in a way that really makes it effective for us to use as board members because that's our job to listen so i appreciate it is there somewhere theresa where we can on any of these touch points of communication just caveat that you won't hear an individual response from every board member because i think

089i got a lot of frustrating emails that we didn't reply or give an answer but it is not only our policy but individually none of us represent the board it's the board secretary so even though i would say thank you for your email i think they wanted more so i believe mrs simon's done a great job of capturing that thought in the letter that she intends to utilize and replying that really does speak to the whole board and really kind of the voice of the board as a single unit and and what the role of the board is as opposed to the role of the superintendent administrators i know a lot of times people bring individual you know student concerns or staff concerns to the board that really would belong more in the administration at

090least initially until they've worked their way through that chain of command so absolutely all of that is covered in detail and that initial communication and as we start to see again the themes that come through we'll use that and proactively take those pieces of education and turn them back into like our parent newsletters and our website faqs and places that's what we learn yep i think some people had expressed that they wanted to be able to reply like do you want to speak to that yeah i don't um necessarily want to reply with answers to questions um you know that i'm not the you know authority on uh i certainly expect you guys but that's not the expectation that you would right i just would like to um you know send a note of appreciation

091um so i just i want to make sure that that's not limited um acknowledge individually you know from for myself so i don't want that limited going forward um i also had uh you know a lot a lot of times it's uh you know something's on the agenda we support it they're going to get it on a reply that seems yeah that was my vibe on this too to use a phrase the kids these days would say um this feels very impersonal and when we strive to create connection with individuals who take can you talk into your microphone oh thank you sorry i usually do i appreciate your noticing that um when we're striving to make connection with individuals in our community this email reads as incredibly off-putting to me because i've taken a step

092that for arguably for many in the community who don't have familiarity with anything related to board leadership to write a letter to the school board is is hard it's it's something that you take very seriously so when you've taken it seriously enough and very often and keep in mind that we don't see the kinds of volumes of email that this might be useful for for example if you're receiving more than like 20 to 50 emails a day we don't see that we see a few um to get those few emails and have after taking all that time to really craft something that you need the board to know to get this as an auto reply when it's kind of it's long it's long it's a lot of information to take in when you're writing from

093a place that's not probably based in um it's based also an emotion two it sends the message that we're not interested in connecting with you individually this is what you ought to be doing go talk to other people and i know that that's not the intent but that it that's how it read to me um and i love the idea of the staff directory the visual road map and the link but who's to say that that can't be something that we can provide in signature lines so that individual board members as we can we have the ability to as dominic had said respond send a note of appreciation um it doesn't need to be long but this is the the tone of this is very standoffish in a time when we really really need to

094reconnect with the individuals in our community so for me i don't i don't care for this at the level of email we're getting i could see value in this for high amounts of emails such as we've seen over various topics in the past so i don't know if it would be something that could be triggered at a certain number of emails to the box per day but if we're getting one or two a week it feels like an unnecessary barrier um to connecting and and i think you know when appropriate um it's not always you know like i said sometimes it's just they're not looking for answers right you know and i think i want to make sure i clarify based on something that um mr doyle said it's not an auto reply so this

095is just a tool that we've built that your board president can utilize um i think the intent correct me if i'm wrong is that she would copy paste and drop that in as a reply this is not in any way being set up as an auto reply okay in addition to whatever comments i want to make to that person so i could totally see you replying to that as latonya um or as this is what you'd like to have standard um was this brought let me just get some background because i'm coming into this with only the email saying that this is what would be happening and then the withdrawal that we'll talk about it instead um was this a suggestion of our administration was this a suggestion by board members where tell me what

096the context of why we're talking about this now yeah so when i um became the president i realized that we needed to do a few things and i started talking to the board about it and theresa also commented that this was something that she had been interested in doing for some time right and so the collaboration was that we would work toward making it something that was a part of what she thought would be appropriate and what we as the board could think to be appropriate and then to bring it to you all for discussion that's a little different than how i first became aware of it um so i'm glad that you were having conversations with some board members about this i'm glad that you were able to get some buy-in from administrators and

097work on this i don't think that the concept of having consistency and reply is is my concern but i've expressed those already so i'm content yeah i i think yeah as long as um this is from you and it's a selective um response when appropriate and then we're all we're all you're not sending this as an auto reply no okay yeah yeah when appropriate if you would like to send it i don't have a problem if you want to send it i'm not going to send something like that to you but i know teresa you talked about there was a little verbiage that you had available that you could recommend um as something that they could send yeah if they want yeah so um kind of sort of bringing some of the components of the

098policy in the plain language because i do believe that what you said laurie about people not understanding kind of the board leadership and communication pattern and all of that and how we can't just hit reply all when a message comes in and engage in dialogue as a as a full board so um some language that really kind of educates uh the community member and that i love the idea i hadn't thought about that prior the idea of the signature line so maybe there's some statements there that just let people know you know we can't an individual can't speak on behalf of the board that the board as a whole can't communicate via email due to some restrictions in regards to the open meeting act and some things that really just kind of explain the process

099and and why because i i do think when community members email into that box knowing it goes to all seven of you in the absence of seven replies back they might wonder well how come that person or that person or that person didn't so a little bit of education on how how and why we're restricted within certain vehicles of communication but i also love the idea of having the link to the ask a question in your signatures i think that would be greatly helpful because even if you're just writing back to say thank you for taking the time to write in i did read this and i appreciate it having that link there in case they had an additional question and don't know where to route it so i'm happy to put that together and

100provide that to all of you so that you can take those components and put them in if that's helpful and i think there's also that idea of chain of command and how to understand where to go when you have a question and that i and to make sure that like we can't answer questions that have to do with and we don't yeah and so but but providing those links so that people know where to go to because it's not always easy to find on the website but making sure when you respond you know have you spoken with your school principal here's a directory to get the number so when we talk about giving instruction um tone is of significant importance the you're making an assumption when you've sent this that you understand why they're reaching

101out right because if you're assuming that they will need all of this information perhaps they know it um perhaps that's not the intent um this kind of creates kind of that again i'll say the word barrier which isn't chain of command because i would look at it more as if this is another venue in which people can reach their board members for example if you were out at a school event and someone said hey can i talk to you about xyz or you made an appointment to meet with somebody and you talked with them about it and they're very clearly sharing a student concern you wouldn't read this as the only thing you said to them and that's i think does that make sense that you would have a more personal connection and this impersonalizes

102something that i don't think we generally have the bulk to necessitate yeah i think if you if you you make the assumption that this is all they get then i could understand that but it's not going to be all that they get but we need to reinforce um for everyone whether they're what you would like to reinforce let's let's be careful how we're talking about it because we don't we're deciding if as a board we need it okay so what what i'm thinking is that for um what i've seen oftentimes our community members may need to understand where they can go where their opportunities you know to have the kind of what was it on slide number five where you can ask a question and you can put the information in there that's not been

103available it has to them before no has it i mean um it has well not in this context maybe for like colvid right that's what i'm saying we have had this is very general and that everyone gets an opportunity for whatever their situation is and we you know we talk um and i understand from the work that i did with the district how different communities communicate differently about how they approach how they approach the district these are opportunities for them to have a place to go so we're sharing information we're making it consistent for for them and i totally understand your perspective and why you think that this would be an appropriate way to go and i appreciate your opinion as a board we have a way to work through these which is what we're

104doing my concern um is that we haven't heard from all of our board members we've heard from some of us yeah my question well there there are days that are different from others and so there are some days where i may get 20 emails from individuals asking me about what to do sometimes i even get phone calls in regards to personal items that they don't know who to go to they don't know where to go and so having to go to the website or however it is i think this is very helpful to help people to direct them however i agree with you that there's always a instead of an auto reply there's always a way of softening using the person's name acknowledging who they are that's just how i reply to emails however there

105are also times as we all know that we may get a hundred emails in a in a couple days or or even a shorter period of time and it fluctuates the next day i may only get one or two but there are several emails that i get um on and i shouldn't say daily basis but let's just say a weekly basis that everyone may not be copied on and so i think that it's um and some of them are very general easy to reply back to um can i ask a clarifying question do you mean that you get emailed as eugene gatewood at sd 308 or that the boe at sd308 is emailed no no not yeah this is for boe right this because this wouldn't solve that concern that you're having um you are

106correct so but but at the same time if it's emailed to boe and that's all of us getting it then uh if i i think that it not it's already been said that's why i wasn't saying anything it was already said it's not an auto reply if it gets to the point where it is an auto reply um then i would i don't mind this i don't mind this policy as long as it's not a standard auto reply and i think that we also should also use the name of the person to acknowledge and get a better understanding of what they're actually saying um and and i think that if the email is sent and if it's not appropriate to say hey follow these procedures then i don't think it should be copied and pasted

107into the email and i'm hoping that she would be able to discern when to copy and paste and to not i do agree i mean lori that we need opportunities to connect with our community and our parents i we heard a lot during the last the last changes with the safety plan and masking that people weren't being responded to and my question is like i responded to everyone thank you free but i wonder like i guess i'm concerned that they they wanted more from each of us and maybe you gave more i there's only so much i can we can say right so how do we get over that hump of you're not we can't really tell you much more than thank you right so and that's kind of my point we can't tell well

108it is frustrating but and that's going to always be a continual source of frustration whenever you have a group of individuals governing together right so that can't be solved by an email copied and pasted by one person what what i also had found in the times um and remember the the only times we really get the volume of email that you guys have probably experienced as your norm has been coveted um and the scale of the entire time yeah your entire time on the board yeah that was like another year before that um but generally speaking this is not the norm and i know that that's hard to believe and maybe it won't be in the future but it has been my experience that except for covid this the norm is that you'll get a

109few to the boe um generally speaking when they go to the boe they they have a concern that they'd like us to hear um up thank you for your opinion i appreciate you ali every day um is that your 10 minutes were you stopping it really no i don't want to get distracted anyway so um to keep on the task at hand um if i've if i've now made that effort when i would put an auto reply on and i did actually have a lot of these same pieces available to me when i sat there to do these things during covet because we were getting thousands of emails and it was physically impossible to craft an individual reply i did put that on with links to things very similar to this the response was worse

110the response for having put an auto reply on was felt more strongly negatively than no reply at all or a simple short reply but having put on that reply that was just kind of a generic because this is kind of a generic which is the purpose of even copying and pasting if you copy and paste things in it's the same response to everyone um which has its good points and bad but what i found is that in our community it wasn't well received it was in fact seen as a detriment to transparency and connection and i had caution against it so based on the policy that we just said if it's not an auto reply if she is replying to all of them based on the context that that is being uh based on the

111context of the email that's being sent and it's personalized based on that response to ensure they have contextual knowledge what other objections do you now have with the with the project i don't think that it needs to be a requirement for her to extend that on behalf of all of us one two um i do get concerned continually about sharing information via google docs that are shared um we've had conversations in the past on whether or not with this board in the past on whether or not sharing information in such a way is in fact well that's what i think this was talking about with this spreadsheet right it was a it was a view of you only of the forum as it came in and ursula senate right so you would have no way

112to contribute to the form why would they fill out a form so the the point of the form is that it would go to ursula so that if the person is asking a question about totally discipline or whatnot then she would forward it so i'll use it a covey example if someone think came in about kovid she would forward it to me i would reply copy ursula on it she records that reply there and then what that allows us to do is see these are the kind of questions that people were asking that they didn't know where to direct and so then we can take some of that information and use that like theme idea to either create an faq on the board page or use that information to feed stories in the parent newsletters

113so that we're trying to stay ahead of some of the questions that are coming in again these are the questions that aren't your questions to answer it's the ones that they just didn't know where to go no i understand so here here's the point we've talked about this with the surveys a little bit ago and i'm not going to belabor this because if this is the will of the majority of the board then that's what it is and i can disagree that's okay well i'm still waiting but in any event let me just finish by saying it's we talk about not serving people not asking people for more if they've already given us an email the likelihood of filling out a link very often decreases um so if we're now using this and saying well

114they didn't fill out the link and can you talk in the microphone please the link was just a way of us getting more information yeah i think like for me um i would want to respond to every email so that our community knows that number one their information is valued that what they're sending us is important because we take that information each of us when we read these emails we are taking them into meetings with our superintendent we're taking them into meetings with each other we're taking them to places where they can be heard and that's just the message that i'm trying to send along with other helpful information that empowers our superintendent and the administration to do their job as well so if if you feel like maybe the the language needs to be

115softened i can work with teresa on that or i would well i'd be concerned about a couple things one um the content of of the email if it's going out on behalf of the members of the board we should be crafting that together rather than having it sent to us two i'm really significantly concerned about using too much administrative time for our own plans on that and i know that we've utilized each other's skills for these things in other areas and i hesitate to add more to an already pretty heavy staff load um for our own sake on this and three i just i i simply feel like if this is what you would like to send people that is great there are some things in here that would be useful for everyone if we

116can tag them on fantastic but i think that when it's not a policy that we're creating it's a process our policies don't state how we will reply or when we will reply or that we will reply this is an effort to go beyond and the effort shouldn't instead put up an unintentional barrier so that's just that's the last time i'm going to say it but i know we haven't heard ally okay um and then we'll hear from jen i don't i just i i would caution when we say we um true okay i mean yeah it's true it's at the end of the day if the goal is to get more information to teresa then well what's the heart well i mean at the end of the information to us to get themes to us

117to get but if they're not the goal is to put them on the website right to kind of preemptively kind of answer some of these questions i think that's like step two then let me ask this why can't we just add her email to the board of ed yeah to the group thing so that she can reply she can actually so that she can just kind of see the questions and without requesting them most of them are administrative related like we're not going to be able to fix what they're what they're asking about or concerned about right i understand that nobody's heard nobody's saying this is kind of brilliant that's why we see themes then why not just add her onto the tag around right so we do have ursula dr sparlin i believe you've

118been on the boe were you on you dr sparlin's also included on that um and this is how the process has informally worked i don't mind having something more formal as an expectation um but this is this is too much i i i like the idea of adding teresa onto it as well if that's the goal that you're trying to achieve and would you create the signature still with the links that are within here yeah i'm absolutely able to do that and we can put the link to the ask a question right on your board page so before they even email you if they just want to submit a generic question we can put it there it doesn't have to be just within the email but yeah i'm happy to provide and then that way

119you can pick and choose what you want and feel comfortable using either in the body of your emails or signature sounds great absolutely and dominic should never be afraid to respond to anybody about anything exactly yeah i just want to make sure that this wasn't uh yeah i don't know the intent i mean as long as you say you're speaking for you and not the whole board no yeah oh definitely and i think that that's that's a standard practice amongst board members i think is to say that when i'm replying i'm replying on behalf of myself even as a board president i would clarify when i was speaking on behalf of the board because those circumstances are limited and sometimes you're applying as yourself as an individual board member so clarifying is really important i

120i have nothing i just have a lot of thoughts but we can talk about it this is just information okay thank you guys for the conversation all right let's see item 9.4 is an informational item on an intergovernmental agreement with valley education for employment system dr kincade our executive director of high school and accountability is here to walk you through this answer any questions you have on valleys so good evening we are currently involved with valleys through an intergovernmental agreement uh valleys is the valley education for employment system they're the regional delivery system of cte programs in the state of illinois so their focus is really on strengthening cte statewide illinois school code requires an iga the last time that ours was updated was in the 1990s so um we were provided the iga that

121you have now received from valleys every district within valleys is required to adopt the same iga we are currently in our regional um organization with 17 other districts including fox valley career center indian valley vocational center and the plano area special ed cooperated the focus of the iga is really approval and oversight of the operating budget which includes both ctei and perkins grant funds also talks about assessing and evaluating the requirements of the reauthorization of perkins 5 really focusing on program compliance our values also structures our advisory committees of which our staff participates in as long as well as professional learning most recently we had both students and staff present at the county-wide institute day and then valleys also on behalf of the districts within the collaborative works with post-secondary institutions mainly wabonzi to award

122articulated credit for the students that achieve a's and b's in approved courses so really the focus you should have in your board packet not only the updated iga but also a redline copy of the iga the new things are focusing on the reauthorization of perkins five so it includes things based on the programs talks about the programmatic data review that we're required to do for the state of illinois also references the local needs assessment which is required for our perkins and cti funding we have recently completed both the pdr and the lna and then also references the program realignments any questions i just had a conversation with somebody talking about this service being provided in will county for a specific like a vet tech kind of pathway is this similar to the will county offerings

123that offer these different kinds of technical education paths yes so we offer courses in all of the different career and technical education pathways our students we tend to send students in cna and also emt they go to fox valley career center so our students have the opportunity to attend the career center we try to right now though offer most of the pathways within our our own schools so but yeah anya had had you participated in this i thought in some way shape or form you did the cna program uh yes i did it through invona healthcare and then i got my state certification in uh i think july of 2021 and did you were you able to take advantage of that through something you'd learned here um was it do you i don't know if

124you would know necessarily where it came from yeah that you had the opportunity i do know that i think like yeah the school could do like a cna program but i personally did it outside of school just because i had more time during the summer that makes sense but yeah thank you but it's an important pathway for kids who may not be headed to college it is an employable skill i'm sure you're in high demand once you graduate at some point no yeah it's definitely helpful i'm glad like because i know a lot of people have asked me about it because they also want to do the whole cna program they don't have time over the summer or they can't afford it and there's a lot of other factors so i think yeah i think

125it's really important to have some sort of foundation in schools thank you i think you covered the question i had but just if you can uh for the community explain cte cti all the acronyms that you used so absolutely um cte is career and technical education so we are awarded two different grants one is a state flow through and one is a federal so ctei is our state uh grant money and then perkins is our federal so the state and the nation support strongly supports career and technical education where we provide additional funding for culinary for woods for autos for engineering for our childhood it helps run our preschool at both of our schools so we are able to not only support our students through both professional learning for our teachers and supplies and materials

126we just replaced a bunch of the appliances at oswego high school for the culinary program we're able to use the funds to update and really have relevant access to technology we replace devices in both our graphics program and our engineering pathways so it really affords us the opportunity to make sure that we have relevant access to industry-based technology we've been able to [Music] award and pay for some of the industry credentials we currently do osha 10 and the pro safe so the safe sanitary sanitization certification so we really try to align our funds to really the student needs to effectively run programs very cool do we still have the acronym list on the website for all of these things too we can link it in our board emails yeah the answer yes we do yeah

127i thought so i know mrs croner had been pretty adamant also like you when she'd started that this is a lot of acronyms it is i mean it's in the document that it was provided but putting a plug-in for the acronym list on the website is what i'm doing thank you dr k thank you i have 9.5 as a first read an update on five policies are there any questions on the five policies that have been presented to the board this evening i do want to point out that the board or the committee suggested expenditures in excess of 20 000 instead of 25. can you share information on why 20 000 was chosen as opposed to say 10. oh we talked all the way down to five i'm sure you did that's why i was

128like the board of education does not have that much time to do go all the way down to five i was still mad about the buses right so that's why i'm asking did she answer it for you no no i i get that you probably did i just don't i don't understand i guess what i'm looking for is clarification on because we don't have time at five definitely but um we've had conversations at so many different levels for so many years that i'm curious how 20 was settled upon what was the deciding factor at 20 we thought we'd try 20 and then if we needed to lower it to 15 we would that is a reason and same with disposition as well that we'd like to know if we're getting rid of huge assets well

129and that's the next thing is how are we valuing the used assets when we dispose of them because if you start to get into what could qualify as twenty thousand theoretically an entire school district's worth of old textbooks might not currently be valued at the market value of twenty thousand they might be valued at ten dollars but it will just be a memo to the board that says this is what's being disposed of so it's it's just like oh and then ali provided a very specific situation that happened that right um she would have liked to know that that was because it affects others definitely i totally agree down the road right just got rid of something so i'm just questioning how are we asking them to value the disposal this disposed property are we

130doing it at like an appreciated value or uh because to me if if i were no longer going to use like my phone my phone is now worth zero dollars however what we intend is when i replace this phone it's going to be a thousand dollars right or whatever it is next time but um to me then getting rid of this phone is going to cost me a thousand dollars so i was wondering if because i think that that was the intent you were getting to is yeah we didn't get it in policy we assumed that we could trust the administration to understand that we were trying to discourage the totally agree but if we can settle on how that is it could be a potential way to avoid a misstep in miscommunicating well i

131mean technically we valued it at ten dollars because we couldn't sell it for ten dollars versus we're going to have to spend 20 000 to replace that would be more procedure than policy but would it i don't know well it's replacement value that's that's uh yeah that's a common term replacement value market value depreciated value we just need to settle on one of those names when we're getting rid of say a certain year of chromebooks what is the i mean those are least so that's a terrible example but what when you do when you are doing that what is the disposition value with the depreciation value how do you how would you market in your books would you mark it as the cost to replace or the fair market value of that actual item i

132think it depends on the resource uh what we're looking at because you're right in some cases a five-year-old chromebook if you look at what we paid for it five years ago it was worth three hundred dollars but now that five-year-old chromebook doesn't work it can't support the operating system it's useless so you're right there is a replacement cost which i would consider a refresh cost that's kind of the balance that you guys are talking about is what what is that balance between acquiring a resource and then depreciating it and then it's in its life cycle getting rid of it i think you need both right we can think back to committee yeah let's yeah let's talk more about that elsewhere but yeah i can i think i think i know what i i remember the

133circumstance you're speaking of i think i understand if i remember correctly it was about vans i think you need both i think in every situation we have to do both no matter what we have because there are some instances where you may not reply i don't care no i totally agree with you what i'm saying is this doesn't say which one they should use as the kind of gatekeeper to where they will put it on the list what makes it put on the list which one of those yeah because we're talking about dollar spent i would say replacement failure would be i would think so as well yeah that's kind of the point yeah because you're looking at future expenditures basically we can we can pull it take it back to committee got it but

134i think it i think it almost needs to have both because think about it and i know we can keep going but it's it's an asset that's yeah you're disposing of an accident that has value yeah that has value then we want to know that as well can you tell who other people are that like the number yeah so you guys want replacement value and and appreciate it yes and that's on policy it is on policy for colon 60. all right so i'm going to pull two policies four colon 60 and four colons 65. i'm like where are my glasses point six five four points i could write it on a piece of paper i'm gonna pull them both okay i'll make a motion to pull sorry sometimes though their information yes they're just the

135disposition is about right letting the board know that in the future you might be getting a request for an expenditure you we just told you whereas right now we have no idea kind of what's going out the door or what happens to say like if there is a pile of of curriculum that we're getting rid of to take some new curriculum and what happens to that yes um and how are we making sure that we're aware of what has happened yeah yeah that's a good that's a good thing to know they i'm pretty sure they don't of course i just i feel like there might be a law that avoids that like sometimes i would hate to see everything go up in a bonfire in the parking lot also right the other um policies that

136are for first read or highlighted changes from the teaching and learning committee i spoke about earlier that we just would like accredited in front of tech program and distance learning courses so that they're not just you know the jen johnson online learning program from oswego that there's some accreditation around it and really giving the um administrators that that power to to see that and make sure that they're appropriate and then i think there was under exemption or 7.260 there was a legal update on that policy re-entering students and 8.65 is new and that talks about a document that will be with parents yeah i like that yeah i'm i'm really i'm really excited to have seen that come in to be honest with you i know that that's an area where parents continue to feel

137a little confused and say well i didn't think i heard that in the meeting and it's not in the notes so having the ability to hear what was said during a time when there's a lot of people in the room i really appreciate that that's being added for those of us that are deaf and hard of hearing it it's nice to be able to go and listen to it afterwards but both part all parties need to know that they're being recorded oh yeah okay anything else we're going to move on to 10.1 action item approval of bills for payment can i have a motion please i make a motion to authorize the payment of bills in the amount of four million six hundred and seventy one thousand four hundred and seventy four dollars and seven

138cents as presented second mr cerrone yes mrs johnson aye mr gatewood aye mrs swanson aye mrs doyle aye mrs simonton aye motion passes 6-0 um action item 10.2 approval of bus trust lease agreement can have a motion please i make a motion to approve the bus trust lease agreement with midwest transit equipment inc and santander leasing llc as presented second mrs doyle aye mrs swanson aye mr cyrone aye mrs similton aye mr gatewood aye mrs johnson aye motion passes 6-0 action item 10.3 approval of boilers and chillers project can i have a motion please i make a motion to approve the recommendation to accept the base bid and alternates number one and number two from helm mechanical in the amount of two million ninety five thousand dollars second mrs simultan aye mrs swanson aye mrs

139doyle aye mrs johnson aye mr cyron aye mr gatewood aye motion passes 6-0 action item 10.4 approval of board policies can i have a motion please i make a motion to approve the following board policies section 2 school board 2 colon 120 2 colon 220 section 3 general school administration 3 colon 40 section 4 operational services 4 colon 175 section 5 general personnel 5 colon 30 5 colon 125 5 colon 200 section 6 instruction 6 colon 60 6 colon 135 6 colon 180 section 7 students 7 colon 240 7 colon 250 7 colon 7 colon 290 7 colon 310 and 7 colon 315 second hey but can you please tell rob thank you for staying till 9 30. mr sorel aye mrs johnson aye mr gatewood aye mrs swanson aye mrs doyle with a with

140a a nod to the continued use of myspace as a social media app mrs simultan hi motion passes six zero seven action item ten point student disciplinary case twenty twenty one twenty two two can i have a motion please i make a motion to expel student 2022-2 through the 2022-23 school year pursuant to the board's written findings and decision as discussed in closed session second mr gatewood aye mrs doyle aye mrs johnson aye mr cyrone aye mrs simultan aye mrs swanson aye motion passes six zero action item 10.6 student student disciplinary case 2021-22-3 can i have a motion please i make a motion to transfer student 2022-3 to an alternative regional safe school selected by the administration pursuant to article 13 a of the school code for the remainder of the 21 22 school year

141in accordance with the board's written findings and decision discussed in closed session second mrs simonton aye mr gatewood hi mrs swanson aye mr ciron hi mrs doyle aye mrs johnson aye motion passes 6-0 action item 10.7 student disciplinary case 2021-22-4 can i have a motion please i make a motion to uphold the one-day out-of-school suspension of student 2022-4 second mrs doyle aye mrs swanson aye mr sirone aye mrs simultan aye mr gatewood aye mrs johnson aye motion passes 6-0 action item 10.8 resolution authorizing dismissal and non-re-employment of first-year probationary teachers can have a motion please i make a motion to approve the resolution authorizing dismissal and non-re-employment of first-year probationary teachers as presented second mrs swanson aye mrs simultan aye mr cyron aye mr gatewood aye mrs doyle aye mrs johnson aye motion passes six

142zero action item 10.9 resolution authorizing dismissal and non-reemployment of second year probationary teachers can have a motion please and make a motion to approve the resolution authorizing dismissal and non-re-employment of second-year probationary teachers as presented second mr gatewood aye mrs johnson aye mrs doyle aye mrs swanson aye mrs simultan aye mr cyran hi motion passes 6-0 action item 10.10 resolution authorizing dismissal and non-reemployment of probationary part-time teachers and teachers hired under a temporary contract can i have a motion please i make a motion to approve the resolution authorizing dismissal and non-re-employment of probationary part-time teachers and teachers hired under a temporary contract mrs doyle aye mrs simultan aye mrs johnson aye mr gatewood aye mr silvan mrs swanson aye motion passes 6-0 action item 10.11 approval of district administrator contract can i have a motion

143please i make a motion to approve the district administrator contract as presented second mrs simultan aye mr gatewood aye mrs swanson no mr cyrone aye mrs toriel aye mrs johnson aye motion passes 5-1 action item 10.12 approval of personnel report can i have a motion please i make a motion to approve the personnel report as presented second mr cyrone aye mrs johnson aye mr gatewood aye mrs swanson no mrs doyle aye mrs simultan aye motion passes five zero uh and one sorry five one that's what i meant 11.1 can i have a motion to adjourn closed session oh yes you may have a motion to return to close session i make a motion to under closed session under statute five ilcs 120-2c3 the selection of a person to fill a public office as defined in

144the open meetings act including a vacancy in a public office when the public body is given power to a point under law or ordinance or the discipline performance or removal of the occupant of a public office when the public body is given power to remove the occupant under law or ordinance second mrs simonton aye mrs swanson aye mrs doyle aye mrs johnson aye mr siron aye mr gatewood aye