001foreign tonight's leading to order uh man you can use a roll call here Falk Phil Nolan here rape here Gorman here already in motion in second to approve tonight's agenda second a thief yes hi Phil yes Nolan yes rape yes Gorman yes all right please join us as we recite the pledge of the Pledge of Allegiance of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice I'd like to thank everyone for coming out tonight and those watching at home you're making history with us by being in attendance for the first board meeting of 2023 so Dr Stern that's the Record Shop welcome everyone um we do have a director uh books with us who will be covering some board memos as well
002the comment this evening sir onto action reports I need motion second to discuss and approve the consent agenda second so your revenue and expenditure reports are in your board packet um revenues are a little bit up from last year they're at 39.35 compared to 37.04 a year ago expenditures are a little bit up 40 40 25 compared to the 39.66 a year ago um as in the last meeting I had reported that Northern cane was delayed to a lot of their payments they did come in so all of the money was received that was owed to us and all of those delayed expenditures have been paid out so we're back caught up the district received impact fees for both November and December since last board meeting so for November we had eight home starts for
00349 555.31 cents um December came in for five home starts with thirty five thousand sixty two dollars and twelve cents and no transition fees in the bills payable reports for both Northern Kane and Central are typical for January they're a lot a lot smaller all right pencil yes Nolan yes rape yes a thief yes Gorman yes next to the motion a second to discuss and approve the veterinarian affiliation agreement some second um again this is um this is with a new agency the Meadowview Veterinary Clinic of course we have to renew all of our agreements on an annual basis but this is uh this is a new partner for us info yes Nolan yes Brave yes bulk I'm sorry a thief yes Gorman yes oh we need a motion a second to discuss and approve
004the donation for the culture blast event come on second so as we're undergoing um getting ready for the culture the last event which will happen on March 4th we have some Industries out there that are willing to give us donations so this is one of our first donations we received I wanted to donate 500 toward uh the fees that we're incurring uh to purchase anything we may need for the event itself great awesome all right Nolan yes rape yes a thief yes and Phil yes Gorman yes our next motion and second required to discuss and approve the bus lease agreement and our extensions second we have go ahead go ahead Dana go ahead we have business manager flug and our director of Transportation Pam portal with us tonight so go ahead um so Midwest Transit
005um gave us quotes on um purchasing 44 new 72 passenger three new 72 passenger with the luggage for the extra storage um and then extending the current the smaller buses that we have that we need so we are recommending extending um one 54 plus two wheelchair passenger eight 28 passenger three 18 plus one wheelchair passenger and two um 14 passenger buses um included in your board packet I did a little analysis to kind of show um that they gave a two-year option and a one-year option to kind of show you the price differences between the two not really any savings except for I mean it is a hundred thousand dollars to go with a two-year um and then I kind of did extra years just to kind of see how it's been trending um and
006then interest rates just being the biggest Factor so I did call and I know director Porto called to try to negotiate some better pricing see what they can do um it's basically the interest rates they're just locked in so we've had a good relationship with them for many many years longer than my time here in 10 years and the the main benefit is that we get to keep our buses until these come so we won't be without buses and that's that's very important I think maybe the board's aware of this maybe they're not but there's some school districts there well we haven't received our buses from last year correct so from our even last year the fleet we were supposed to receive in the summer we still have not received and there's many school districts
007that are short on bussing and short on bus drivers so they're it's really great quite a bit of havoc I think this protects our interests right okay rape yes a thief yes hemp Phil yes Nolan yes Gorman yes is there any Motion in second to discuss and approved proposal to provide weighted credit for the Dual credit courses still moved second so last time I was here I gave a presentation that had a variety of different topics in it and so some of them have been subdivided so the first one tonight that I'm speaking about is directly related to weighted credit for dual credit So within the option of our changing educational pattern you know we're making more and more dual credit agreements we want to make sure that our transcript represents what's best for our
008students that are moving on one question that was posed to us was how can we make sure that our dual credit courses are somehow merited to be able to give weighted credit to those that should be getting it and one of the stipulations that we're able to come back to is the IAI marker that can go along with a course so just a quick explanation on what that is um while there is dual credit that is an agreement that our students are taking in the high school and they are getting credit at a community college that we have an agreement with uh the IAI is agreed upon uh for uh Illinois Community College Board in partnership with the Illinois Board of higher education so that some of the courses are able to get transfer credit
009all the way to those four-year institution and that is that IAI marker so we feel that it is best to have a recommendation for us to uh provide that weighted grade to all of our IA IAI courses sorry um so that our students can get that benefit as they choose to go down that route because it is a competitive academic uh course that merits all the way to those four-year institutions so we would be making that recommendation starting with our current graduating class but going back through all the transcripts of all current students and adjust making the adjustment because they would have currently have that on their transcript it should be retroed back to our current students that are in our building at this time it should only be current Juniors and seniors because it
010could be it could be freshmen we have some freshmen that might that are doing that could do the Dual credit some some may choose to go to ECC for summer work um or you know so you could pick up some IAI courses that are given at ECC as well on site there if we pick them up for our transcripts we only take two courses on our transcripts across their whole four years so if we pick it up as a transcripted course for us as a to take the place of something else or to add to their transcript we would say okay have we ever considered doing um instead of adding a whole point so a 4 being an a up to 5 ever 0.5 is that anything that's ever been considered I think the question
011is how do you designate that in terms of what would be a 0.5 what would be a 1.0 right I think one of the reasons we decided to go with the IDI when we talked about it is that is a credit bearing course well we're going to consider the Illinois Board of higher education has said this course qualifies for an automatic agreement to a four University we have courses we offer that don't go to a 40 they may go to a certificate program like a Career Tech education maybe welding they're getting a certificate but those can't transfer to a four-year University they're just good at ECC or get it you know for the certification for like a welding person that one we're not saying to give dual credit to it's the ones that actually transfer
012easily for post-section similar to an AP like an AP course right they automatically are guaranteed to transfer to get a three four or five on their college board test it automatically transfers to a college credit that's why they get the the honors we don't do anything with the one and twos we still give anybody take an AP regardless of their score what they we would get dual credit is still a little bit more of a variance they have to take some something's IAI and Tran and of course passed with C or higher in order to get the credit they got a gear out if they would we just hurt them I guess in their GPA but with the AP courses they need to take the test to get the three to five score for that
013pass is there anything like that with these IA of courses well the I AI courses are dual credit courses that they are following the curriculum that is provided which has Assessments in it that they're required which would make them part of passing that course at the same type of level academically and so the same thing would play out with that CBA grade currently would go for them getting that credit right but just because you get an A and an AP course you don't get that correct correct just take a test but this one as soon as they pass your seat yeah receive the credit and they would get that credit right if we don't mandate they take the test and so if they chose to not take the test they would they would still get
014the honors credit yeah they're still getting the honest credit um they're just not getting the college credit they have to get a three four five but they still everybody equally would get an honors credit it would go up to the five not a 4.5 would be the 5.0 got it so we're talking about the GPA honors credit not necessarily what's going on in post-secondary is the rationale we're using for why we're selecting that specific course to get the honors credit it has to be IAI and not IAI course would not get the honors credit so it's just balancing their brains at Central if you choose to do college versus AP which I think was one of the points last month correct okay so like in our current currently we're offering like uh German intermediate and
015Spanish intermediate um uh here at the school so with both both of those then because we're offering those those would be ones that would get that weighted grade but then but then there's probably like classes that if you're actually taking them out on the campus like if you're full-time dual enrolled like your senior year um a student might enroll in a class that isn't um an IAI but will still fulfill like an English or social studies that won't get the weighted grade correct correct got it so we we would still like the i i credit would be distincted would be a distinction whether they're a full-time student or not those Agreements are made through that college board situation and the Illinois board so that we would have that information and this provides us kind of
016a clear defined path as to which ones would be weighted and which ones would not be weighted and it doesn't this does not mean that it would only be core classes other courses have the opportunity to have IAI courses across the Dual credit situation so we're not limiting the possibility of who could go down that path and or what doors open for future students I think this is a great idea yeah okay rape yes a thief yes Hemphill yes Nolan yes Gorman yes Lexington emotion in second to uh to discuss and approve the proposal to adjust the recognition of our top students second sorry no that's it you go for it last time we talked about a few of the topics um and one of the big Ideas was creating that competitive transcript we found
017out that currently we have class rank that is listed on our transcript which is one of the details that we found out colleges will use that information if it is provided since our current practice is to include that on our transcript universities are going to get that what happens is universities while they may not require it and we actually found out now that most don't require it they will use it as a sorting metrics for their side as they're assessing what students they're letting into their Collegiate campuses Across the Nation so that was one area that we went back and did a little bit more research for you to make sure that you understood that side of it um we also found out that uh post-secondary uh institutions um really aren't in any way shape
018or form requiring class rank listed anywhere on their transcripts and so that it that side being removed doesn't really have an impact on our students for some type of benefit after viewing the practices of the top 30 high schools in the state of Illinois I wanted you to know that out of all of them only one High School uses class rank right now currently they're not 100 clear on how they're using it or if it's posted on their transcript but it is listed as it is part of their school district records okay most of the others that I was able to contact UM the rest of the 30 indicated they've removed it from all class records and the school does not use it for anything okay upon discussion of last year's recognition system the the
019Sumo uh lot and coomb system that was used for the recognition of those top students we went back to give you a little bit more deep detail based off those were any students 3.4 and above getting recognition we were able to find out that 130 students out of the 329 were recognized as top students in those three categories this represents 40 percent of the class and so I wanted you to have that information in that presentation I gave uh last month I talked about some of the other options that were available that districts were using one of them that was a another high priority or a higher use one was five percent ten percent fifteen percent of the class being recognized this allowed districts to have the mobility as class size fluctuates going up or
020down it still is focused on what is the definition of your top students still being recognized and still pre providing a system that will recognize uh more than than a single student for one Accolade and so um that is something that we believe is what the direction we want to go within our top five percent we would be able to uh recognize still the valedictorian salutatorian that is currently being uh happening in our district so I recommend uh removing class rank at this time from the official transcripts uh immediately starting January 2023 and continue to confer the valedictorian salutatorian class rank will be removed from the student records and it is recommended that the recognition of the top students be changed to the percentages that I just spoke about we talked about last month we
021talked about conferring valedictorian salutatorium for two more years and then doing cutting it off that's clearly what we talked about correct correct so why is it different now well uh I guess they're what we didn't find enough evidence right now to move to completely eliminate that um the board has of course the power to make a recommend adjust the recommendation to how you see fit uh that would be best for our students um I was able to get the information to clearly Express where class rank is going currently right now and the data behind why the recognition for top students that larger category being more closely aligned to our top students but so far I have not been able to come back to you with a clear definition of this is the rational reason to
022get rid of valid Victorian salutatorian um and I don't want to make that type of decision off a gut reaction and or non-backed reaction now um it is a real thing yes it's true I did share last time high schools have moved away from it um we would not be the first to do this but I don't have a compiled data to be able to defend numbers who's moved that direction at this time but and correct me if I'm wrong but just looking at the PowerPoint we kind of did look at that like didn't it look like we were one of the only high schools that still had that compared to some of the other ones that were in the area that had kind of done away with it in in our direct area yes
023that's true um it's just I had not compiled larger uh you know like example going back to the 30 top high schools you know like where we want to project our district to be you know we want to be a leader in this state uh across the board so um I think a leader would also be doing what we think is in our students best interest regardless of what other districts are doing so that to me would speak to that I I didn't bring this up last time I was talking to some friends in other states and and some of the things that they do are students pick their own speaker and then the faculty pick one speaker so the two speakers instead of salutatorian valedictorian ones chosen by faculty one's chosen by fellow students
024which I think is a really creative way to get kids who maybe might be in the 50th percentile or an athlete who was an average student right but who was a varsity however it is that the students get to pick I think that that is another interesting way to go about allowing student speakers without solely focusing on that um so again recognizing valedictory and salutatorian we talked about this last time you know if you're first and second because you can go ask but your class rank is correct that will still be an option for students to go and ask what their rank is yes um with the Assumption be that there would still be two student speakers and they would only be those two or they would just be recognized and not speaking right now
025my recommendation is that they're being conferred which be recognized we could open up the door to for example like your suggestion on speakers and that type of stuff we could also bring in more information of SAT scores and other things to Merit up those types of achievements to be able to match those top students at that level showing more of an all-encompassing student I have a different question um with the 5 10 15 um is that in addition to the the summa laude Magna it's in Louisville removal because of it locking in at that 3.4 uh if we continue to provide the highest academic level and um if you think about it we want to get all students to be in that sex successful realm all of our students will then end up automatically being
026labeled top students right and so to more accurately give the recognition to the students at that top percentage it creates the flexibility that narrows it down so for example if we numbers wise played with the number 400 as a graduating size you would know very quickly five percent is 20 for each category therefore you're representing roughly 60 students a large set of students getting recognized for that top recognition but not exploding it to the point of more than a third of the class or would they have some type of thinking just like we did before with special court or special stalls okay thank you I like your idea about an additional speaker I don't think speaking at graduation is even included in this so we can always change that layout down the road if we
027wanted so I personally like keeping valedictorian salutatorian just because I think it's a good Accolade that these students who work their butts off for four years deserve so I agree thank you all right okay a thief yes El yes Nolan no rape yes Gorman yes enrollment reports the enrollment report was taken from January 10th it does include um our early Grant so some of our early graduate we also experienced growth between December and January most of their growth coming in preschool through second grade with new students coming into the district um here to date we are up 151 students from this time last year and we're quickly approaching the 5000 student enrollment Market I enjoyed the throwback on the number of students from whatever year that was that was posted in social media last Thursday
028I didn't see it it was like there was a referendum and because of the growth and it was going from I don't remember the numbers but 300 to 350 or something like total enrollment was just so low and we're going to and the middle school was still the high school oh it's just it just amused me it's it's so different 35 years is a long time it is a long time but man it's a lot of students yeah it's not uncommon for us we have a long history of at least a three percent growth rate some years even higher than it should go back and look at all I appreciate it all right we'll move on to committee reports on CCC um so I was about 25 minutes late today to our meeting um but
029still focusing on grading um and kind of the policies that are in place for forever I mean just perpetually kind of in the district and how changes are difficult to come by today um four articles are provided to all the members specifically about the idea of grading and how an F encompasses 60 points out of 100 and then A's or 10 and B's are 10 and what would you do if you eliminated zeros right if a zero is a 50 so then and F has 10 percent of the K you know like there's parity then among the grades kind of like a four three two one zero system but just in like a percentage version of that um and so interesting and you know if you one of the Articles said you could pull 30
030failing grades like if you took out just missing assignments what would that do to grades um and how you know is that a measure of their you know worth and there's interesting a lot of rank or in the education system around zeros um and how a zero you know is an F but a 59 is an F2 and it ends up being the same but you can tank with one assignment you can tank a semester and lose a class because of one thing and is that fair is that an estimate of someone's effort is that an estimate of all those things and so just to continue the conversation so everyone was encouraged to read these read them a little bit talked about them briefly come back next time which is March for us we extended
031the meeting to an hour and a half as well so instead of four to five it's four to five thirty um every other month they have just longer periods of time together so our next meeting will be March continue to talk about grading and driving changes and kind of seeing what teachers are already doing um and we had our AP on a chemistry teacher um uh kind of talk about what he does in his class which is a version of kind of what one of the Articles talked about and different ways to kind of earn and demonstrate really knowledge base right can we get those articles sure I'd be curious I can forward and I'll forward them to everyone education yep yeah it was a it was good meeting a lot of feedback a lot
032of um a lot of voices at the table being heard it was it was it was really good good energetic discussion yeah we think a lot of what we talk about too is the parental component well yeah like if the kid gets to be in they're afraid to go home and tell their parents they got a B um and was very clear that the way that I approached that with my own kids is very different than the majority of parents in general especially the middle school high school level um and and that we I don't talk about grades in my house it's not something that we have and they're only fifth grade to be fair but like that they're like we don't hear that middle school and high school that like as long as you
033try and are you like going to school I'm doing the best that you can without you putting the effort in that you're capable of putting it and also again the parental component of kids are getting A's but they're it's only because of the structure and and and that's put around the kids by parents and so when I have kids who get 1500s on their sat come home and drop out their first semester of college because they didn't have the skills necessary so would you rather have a 3.5 and a kid who can persevere and have a resilience mindset and those kinds of things without just the grades and looking good because I got accepted at 10 colleges that I want to get admitted to and I think that parental component and also bringing up Central
034uh apparent University and like how that could be woven and especially with our like eighth grade freshman parents um even fifth to sixth grade you think about sixth grade orientation that I'll be a part of this year um and how that gets kind of how can you you talk to parents about this idea of grades and you know the end point or just shifting what that looks like and how to grades kind of play a role in that how's that for using outcome metrics so it's tied to the learning standards to their learning targets and so they're you're literally looking at the rubric so as you're as we work with our students and everyone we work with students set their own goals as well and you're working with them you can actually see like this
035is where I fall on that rubric this is what I need to do to move from here um and that way it's it's really it's not just about an A or a B it's it's really about that learning progression so I mean you're going to get it you're still going to get your score but it's about that that real Continuum of learning so if you have a really accelerated kid in that class how are they going to progress at a rate that someone that's not doing well that seems difficult for a teacher to be able to address every student in the classroom within their plan everybody has their own IEP basically but that's what Caitlin is doing so my sister-in-law Sarah's daughter's in fifth grade you know like every kid in math you meet a
036standard you move on to the next one so it there is no doubt about it it's a different model um even than that grade school level personalized learning yeah exactly and so you just have kids that are moving at all different Paces um and so I mean would I feel like that would be a challenge moving to that model as if I were a teacher of course of course absolutely but you know when there's growing pains in caneland as they've transitioned over to this and you know if and when we get there in every classroom we want the core instruction delivered and then we took the the core plus more so you're going to differentiate like every student needs to be able to have access to that core instruction and then students who students who
037kind of they're they move across and they're there now what are what are you going to do to expand that to to pull them even farther so that they can start making connections to other things as well what we have the quarter currently available to all students correct that's the class curriculum so correct that's nothing different so it's really differentiating for like you said what about the kid who gets there and what about the other kids well you're still providing those other kids the the students that are still progressing you're providing them the core and you're providing them accommodations and interventions in your classroom and then the students that have arrived it's like what are you doing to stretch them I also think there's other instructional strategies you can use you could use a blended
038model you could use uh where you know your student or you could do the flip model you're teaching students they're looking at something at home learning material for themselves coming in and doing a little bit more work so the teacher can move across the classroom and not always doing the instruction uh part of what we're learning is that students learn better by doing right we all know that they learn better by doing that by being told so I'm getting rid of the old Mantra of you know the stage on the stage whether it's imparting information but actually having students do that learning but it's again it's a different instructional model it's a way of looking at instruction and how can you approach that from different ways we have many staff that do that we have
039staff that do a blended learning we have staff that do flip classrooms Kevin alprin's a good example of you know one that's doing more performance-based material so he's moving people along and differently in his classroom as well so I think there's a lot of teachers out there experimenting with different instructional pedagogies that are out there that can move us in that same direction where it doesn't have to be where they're managing just differentiation but it's about getting meeting them where they're at trying to group them with kids that maybe have likeness in terms of moving them along if they're gifted or they're more accelerated so they can push Beyond make connections outside of the school yard so how do you make connection on where you can use this outside what's that connection in terms of
040application you know really synthesizing the information to be able to utilize it and and apply it in a different manner than what maybe they would have in a general class just sitting and listening and doing the same thing with the whole class so it's approaching it from a different manner we've tried Blended learning we have a lot of Blended learning classes that are happening at the high school we have a couple sections at the middle school you know don't want group that's join the Blended approach there as well I've seen elementary teachers do a phenomenal job of being able to you know front load information then work in small groups so you see all that happening inside of our classrooms it's just managed differently by different teachers who are trying different approaches and getting some
041really great results so it's what works works best and having a multitude of ways for teachers to be able to do it because one size fits all is not always the best approach you know personal learning is really tough I think that's probably the for the Sun but I think there are a lot of ways you can mix different pedagogy to get their from an instructional standpoint foreign school fees through next year so annually we review our registration technology fees um and our current rates are listed below these rates have not changed the last increase occurred in 2015. and um based on our current rate structure uh I'm recommending that we maintain these fees for another year um so uh what's not included on here is our food service fees um part of the federal
042guidelines tie into our food service fees so we'll we'll be coming back to the board uh with a recommendation on um milk and and the lunch fees once we receive more feedback from the federal government next is a sixth grade social studies textbook production curriculum director Steve so this textbooks right pictures of it that's right sorry so this textbook's for our sixth grade and uh some of the highlights just uh so that you're aware of where we're going with this the last book just to give you a little context where we're at is a 2004 version um and so that was one of the big contexts as it comes to this curricular area it's important for us to be providing relevant uh and current information so as you can think about of our world studies
043uh this is an important material to have up to date and also as we continue to try to move that that goal of less lecture having the students engaged in in like embedded into their learning we want to make sure that our curriculum continues to progress in that nature so uh the team went back and they reviewed uh three different versions uh and they went down to the unit level and dissected three textbooks uh the last one was uh by uh TCI a different vendor uh and but they analyzed all three of the current texts of more of today's copyright date so that we get something a little bit more accurate and they went through this one has all of the combinations of high text and visuals to capture the historical perspectives that they're looking
044at they believe that this is going to help uh not only engage the students but some of the text and combination of the maps here they uh really appreciate the value that it will relate to the students uh specifically because it is not hand sketches of of things that have been you know historically been used or illustrations and that type of stuff that type of stuff which they really like they also investigated some of the online resources that are available as texts obviously have changed and since 2004 and we would be going with an electronic version only buying the classroom sets for the four different class rooms and so that would be the textbook itself that's in the classroom for the student to utilize while in the room but still following our current policies of
045providing a text for that student through our electronic media that we have uh them carrying around through their Chromebooks so uh in grand total here we are talking about a cost of forty three thousand nine hundred fifty dollars and 80 cents that is for a six-year agreement just to make sure that you understand where that's coming for and based off the projected numbers for our incoming class this fall so this textbook if it's adopted will not go into effect until next school year with a goal of that being the text all of the units are are covered and provide um the instructions the instructional resources and some more uh which these uh three uh teachers were very happy about where this could take their teaching and the learning of the students during the um six-year
046period where the materials updated on the electronic version yes the electronic version is but of course the textbooks they won't be swapping those out for us during that six year the the hard copy we would get during that initial purchase distributed to those classrooms and then uh the electronic version only is what is updated uh during that time frame so it provides us some time on to provide consistency you know you don't want to change textbooks too rapidly also so there is a balance that needs to happen um but that would give us a time frame to kind of set us up for review appropriately um six years is is a length of time but uh with that sizable investment it should carry its its weight other questions so six year license on a book
047so if we decided it was still valid after six years or you could put supplemental materials along with the textbooks too and print off the new supplemental materials that are different yeah gotcha [Music] okay so that book will go on view for the next but our current version is almost 20 years old oh yeah 2004. so next year we had Mesopotamia in Egypt a switch between fifth to sixth grade there's lots of things all ancient history so this is a sizable jump and yeah correct material I'm looking I'm looking at this book right now online there's other stuff here like inquiry journal and topic tests and lesson quizzes that include the whole package teacher student and then these other kind of ancillary enrichment we'll call them yes or digital access to them and that's what
048the teachers were so impressed with this vendors uh kind of package yeah compared to the others the others had some quality texts uh one of them they weren't very happy with um which is the text that we currently use they have dropped the ball kind of on this specific textbook even though that vendor puts out some really good quality textbooks on some others but the other items uh to answer your question is what really made the difference uh between number one and number two their choices I opened right to the Jewish section just because I thought that was amazing share that that's information I'll come back to the organization next month textbook will be on display yep all right that concludes tonight's meeting we need a motion and second to return a new executive session
049second Falls yes Nolan yes Rabe yes a thief yes Gorman yes thanks again for coming out have a good evening [Music]