001President Harden, before you begin today's meeting, I would like to read a few announcements. Good afternoon. Welcome to the March 20th, 2025 board meeting. Before we start the meeting, I would like to share a few safety points in the next meeting announcements. Please note that the primary exit and entrance to the boardroom is the door which you you use to enter this afternoon. If you're leaving the room, please use this door. The restrooms are outside the boardroom doors to your left. During the meeting, we ask that you keep all aisles and exit exits clear. If you need any assistance during the meeting, please wave the attention of one of our security officers. Please mark your calendars for the next upcoming meeting. The next agenda review committee meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, April 9th at 10:30
002a.m. Uh, the ARC meeting will be held at the 42 West Madison Street Garden level boardroom. For details on how to register to speak or observe at the meetings and to learn about the speaker lottery process, please visit the Chicago Board of Education website, cpsb.org. If you have any questions about the registration or public participation, please contact the board office for assistance. Thank you for joining us today. President Hardin, we are now ready for you to begin the meeting. Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to the Chicago Board of Education meeting. Today is March 20th, 2025. We are holding today's board meeting in the boardroom at CPS Loop office, 42 West Madison Street, Garden Level. I'd like to note that the board members, honorary student board member, and senior leadership are physically present in the boardroom. Register
003speakers may join us in person or virtually if they've opted to do so. I'm President Shan B. Harden. On behalf of my fellow board members, thank you for joining us today. The regular meeting of Thursday, March 20th, 2025 is hereby called to order. Board secretary, please call the role. Thank you. Member Lozano, present. Member Smith, present. Member Lopez, present. Member Thomas, present. Member Bole, present. Member Wallace, present. Member Kuster, present. Member Pope, present. Member Rosenfo, present. Member Rivas, present. Member Rio Sierra, present. Member Brown, present. Thank you. Member Bannon, present. Vice President Bautista, present. Member Gutierz, who's joining us virtually via Zoom. Present. Member Biggs, present. Member Thodakura, present. Member Blae, present. Member Zachor, present. Member Deberry, present. President Harden, present. We have 21 members present. We do have a quorum. I'd also like to
004recognize Pedro Martinez, chief executive officer, Ruchi Verma, general counsel, Mcdana Shakumbova, chief education officer, Charles Mayfield, chief operating officer, and Carolina Kchie, our honorary student board member. Thank you. Um before um we move on for the record, I would like to note that RS1 resolution adopting the amended annual school budget for fiscal year 2025 and EX2. ratify the fourth renewal and amend the intergovernmental agreement with the city of Chicago for the municipal employees annuity and benefit fund have both been withdrawn from the agenda. So before we begin, I'd like to state and first acknowledge our negotiations team this morning. They met and considered progress has been made. We're very pleased about that. Uh we're extremely extremely close to settling the teachers union contract. So as a result, the budget amendment and relating items have been
005withdrawn from today's agenda and these items will be brought back to the board at a later date for consideration. We're very pleased with the progress. So steady the ship and we hope to be able to come back very soon with that resolve. So the order of the meeting will be as follows. Honoring excellence, CEO remarks, committee updates, public participation, recess or reconvening from recess, presentations including p postse secondary success options network charter and contract renewals, discussion of public agenda items, vote on public agenda items, hold session, reconvene from cold session, and then adjourn. Over the last year, we've been honored to have Caroline Carti serve as our honorary student board member. You have been a delight and at any point you could come have this seat. Member Ki has been an outstanding addition to our
006board. Her leadership helped her center student voices and taught us all how to better engage students more authentically and meaningfully on decisions that impact them. However, her term for the board will end in a couple of months and we will soon be opening up the application period for next year's honorary student board member. Carolina, can you please share the details of the application and share a little bit about your experience and what it's been like serving for us and how students who are interested may apply? Thank you, President Harden. Good afternoon. The Chicago Board of Education is looking for its next student leader to serve in the role of the honorary student board member for the 2025 to 2026 school year. The selected student will represent the interests and perspectives of all Chicago public school
007students by attending monthly board meetings. The honorary student board member will also participate in the student voice roundt initiative which provides a platform for CPS students from across the district to engage with CPS leadership and board members on various topics. This student body representative will receive a $1,000 scholarship to be used to support enrollment in a two or four-year college or university. To be eligible for this opportunity, you must be a rising junior or senior current 10th and 11th graders. Hold a 3.0 GPA or higher and demonstrate proven leadership experience. The application period opens Monday, March 24 at 10 a.m. and closes Friday, April 25, 25, 2025 at 5:00 p.m. Please visit cpsb.org where you can review, complete, and submit the application. Good luck to you all. Thank you, President Harden. You're very welcome. Thank
008you for serving. You've been a delight. Cedricoba, please proceed with honoring excellence. Thank you, President Harden, and good afternoon, everyone. I am proud to continue our tradition of honoring excellence, which today features the kind of success story we wish for in all of our schools. When he joined Farragut Career Academy last school year, Principal Verac Nanavanti immediately knew this was a community with a great potential. So he made increasing student motivation and community engagement a top priority. Two years later there is a noticeable difference in the culture and climate fair. I'll let principal and share more about that in a few minutes. But I can guarantee it's had an impact and what I want to focus on which is the incredible gains Farragut has made in postsecary success. The school's college enrollment rate is now
009at 84.5%, which is the second highest of any neighborhood high school in CPS and 14.7% higher than the district average. I have no doubt that the school's partnership with Hope Chicago has contributed greatly to this change. Knowing that the cost of college education will be covered is a huge motivator for students to graduate on time and to enroll in two or four-year college. Community partnerships like this have been key to Farragut's transformation. As a sustainable community school, Farragut receives additional funding from the district to partner with organizations that provide exciting and engagement programming for students. By partnering with Enlas and New Life, Farragut students now benefit from activities like weightlifting, open gym, and art workshops during lunch and a space in their school where students who achieve high attendance can gather to talk, play games,
010and relax. After school turing is also available for students who need extra support in English and math. and Farragut's new credit recovery program has led to far more students staying on track to graduate than in previous years. Under principal and leadership, a summer orientation program is now a standard at Farragate. This is part of his mission to connect directly with parents and work alongside them to raise expectations for their children. We are proud to have principal Nanavanti with us today along also with his wife Kirsten who works as an SEO support specialist for CPS. I'm happy to highlight full family's dedication to our district. Also joining us are assistant principal Jeff Hereda and Farragut school counselor Christristen Argillan. And finally, we welcome Stephanie, who will be graduating from Farragate this year and who principal Nanavante
011says embodies all of the positive change that his school has achieved in the past two years. I'll now invite the team from Farragut to say a few words. Good afternoon. Thank you so much for having us. I am Varagnan Navati, the proud principal at Fairgate Career Academy IB World School. Thank you, Chief Shikamova, for highlighting Fairg. And I also appreciate the support of Chief Larosa and the Network 16 team. Our remarkable college enrollment achievement results are from our collaboration with Hope Chicago. Their support has transformed college aspirations into a reality for our students. In Las Chicago, our sustainable community school partner has been instrumental in enhancing students academic experiences and enrichment opportunities. They've also fostered engagement amongst parents and the broader school community through workshops and meaningful community engagement events throughout the school year. When
012I began my tenure at Farragate last year, we prioritized listening to our students. What they desired most was a school building that felt like a true reflection of their aspirations. Thanks to my incredible staff at Farragate, their dedication, we've successfully reshaped the school climate into one of care and inspiration. Kids come to school, they do well in classes, and our building is bursting with positive energy. This year, we changed our logo from an F to an A, proudly embracing the Admirals. Along with this change, we redefined who we are as a school. The impact has been profound. A 22% increase in attendance, a 23% increase in our ninth grade on track, going from 66% to 89%. a 23% decrease in chronic absenteeism and chronic truency and a stunning 90% decrease in behavior infractions and suspensions.
013Thank you. Most importantly, our students like Stephanie have affirmed these efforts in our cultivate survey. We achieved an average growth of 10 points across all nine learning condition. a testament to the strides that we've made as a school. With that, I pass it along to Stephanie, one of our proud seniors. My name is Stephanie GL and I'm a senior at Fer Career Academy. I struggled in my junior year when and when my mom learned about my grades, she asked me how was I going to get a job without a diploma. I realized no one was going to fix my problems. This year, things are different at Fargate. Security is making sure students get into classes and there's events for us if we come to school every day. I use the student lounge to relax doing
014puzzles or work on my credit recovery. My senior seminar teacher is helping me go to Malcolm X for nursing and I'm excited for our senior activities with the school. Because my mom's encouragement, my own determination, and the support from staff at Fairgate, anything is possible. Uh, good afternoon. My name is Kirsten Argeland, school counselor at Farragate Career Academy, where I've worked for the last seven years and two decades, over two decades at Chicago Public Schools. Students like Stephanie are the inspiration for the changes Mr. Nanavati and our staff have made to improve our school climate. Our school has always been filled with students who aspire to various post-secondary pathways and enter careers that provide for themselves as well as their families. lost my with our supportive learning environment and the varied interventions we provide along
015with post-secondary initiatives students saw possibilities with the additional financial support with hope Chicago's those possibilities have become realities thank you thank you all thank you team um board members do you have any comments they're quick to walk away. You might want to stay for a little bit. Um, I am so excited to hear all of these achievements from students, from principles, and again, super excited to highlight one of our neighborhood high schools. So, um, if anyone has any questions or comments for them, please. Board member P. Yes, this is really exactly the kind of thing I spent my career working on and hoping for. Stephanie, you sound a lot like a lot of my students at Gage Park who realized after a period of time that they wanted to make changes because they did have
016a future and they could dream about what is to come. And I'm proud of you and it's very exciting to hear about the changes at Farragut and the way that the school is listening to students and growing and developing. Thanks so much for being here and inspiring us. board member Lopez. Okay, let's try this again. Thank you. Congratulations to the school. Uh very proud to have you here before me. I grew up in Pilson, went to Benito Huarees, did a lot of work in the little village area and have had and currently also have amazing colleagues in my daytime job that are proud graduates from Farragate. Uh it's a applause to the high school, to the support system for the students like Stephanie uh representing Represent Lavita and also the families and also our community
017partners and organizations and it just shows how important it comes down to. You know, we got to work together. It takes a village, right? So, thank you. Thank you, board member Lozano. I also want to congratulate the team because we know all of you together made this happen and provided for the students an environment where they could learn and they could progress. I thank you so much for that because I too am from this community and uh so just knowing that there's been such progress and the statistics that you're giving is an example for all of our schools to follow. So this formula you're using of surrounding them with with uh the resources and also the community organizations like ENS and hope and putting that all together really was the proper formula. I just want
018to congratulate you and you know you're really a testament of cudo. Thank you. Thank you former Gutierrez. Um I also want to commend the work um that Fairgate's been doing and we in my daytime job I work at in Las Chicago. So uh principal is looked at as a big leader as in our community and and sits on our quality of life plan. So uh congratulations to everyone today. Thank you again uh fair team. Uh keep going, keep growing. Go admirals. See, does that conclude your report? Yes. Okay, great. Board members, are there any comments or questions? Se Martinez, we're ready for your remarks. Thank you, President Harden. First, I want to also add my thanks to uh principal Nanabati and his team at Farragut for their extraordinary work. I'm particularly impressed by the gains
019that the school has made in college enrollment, which is consistent with much of the post-secondary success we're seeing from last school year. And just on a personal note, as a Huarez alumni, you know, when I first met uh Principal Nanavi, and in fact, we walked in the parade together last year, I I had I didn't hide it board members. I said, I am rooting for you. I know I'm going to get some looks. I I had explained it to Juan Carlos the principal Huarez but I you know when I met the principal I said this is the energy this is the leader that we've been waiting for board members I remember when I heard that uh the Farragate team beat out Lane Tech in the baseball game I thought okay something's going on at Farragate
020you know so so again congratulations principal chief Kumba will discuss also more of our trends around postsecary a bit later in the meeting but I want to highlight some of what what we're projecting for 2025. After breaking district records in the last school year, C CPS anticipates that the class of 2025 will be the largest group ever to earn early college and career credentials while still in high school. We are also on track to see a record of numbers the number of students graduating with 15 or more college credit hours and with associate degrees already in hand. So again, uh just to remind everybody, these are students that are getting their associate degrees. they actually go to their college graduation before they go to their high school graduation. So the they're earning their associates degree
021with a high school diploma. Importantly, these benchmarks are consistent across all racial groups. Board members, this is the initiative that we have no racial gaps at all. First initiative ever we've seen in the district that from the onset has been like that. So I'm extremely proud that we're closing opportunity gaps for our long exist that have long existed for our students of color and we're working hard to keep that momentum going. The data is very exciting and we look forward to sharing more detail later in today's meeting. I also want to congratulate our CPS athletic teams that have been crowned champions so far this school year. Most recently, the boys basketball team at Diet High School captured the state championship title for class 2A. Go Diet. In class 4A, the state title went to the
022girls basketball team at Kenwood Academy. This was a historic historic moment for the Broncos. It was the school's first ever state champ state championship in girls basketball. Another historic uh moment came earlier this school year when the boys cross country team from Walter Payeyton captured their own state championship, breaking the school's raceime record and in the process. And Isabella, a swimmer at Whitney Young, broke the district's record for the 50 50-yard freestyle, capturing her own state title with a time of 22.5 seconds. Any swimmers in the room? We're looking forward members to inviting our championship athletes. You'll see them in person at next board at the next board meeting. I'm also proud to recognize all of our state champ as as I'm proud of recognizing all of our state champion athletes, but I'm particularly proud
023of Isabella and the girls basketball team from Kenwood as we celebrate women's history month. I'm glad to see that schools around the district take advantage of this opportunity to uplift women and girls. Some of the schools have hosted h hands-on events to help female students explore careers in STEM where women continue to be underrepresented. Other hosted panels where students hear from successful women on everything from health to self-care to self self-care to drive and resilience. And in classrooms around the district, students have been creating projects that highlight the contributions of female artists, athletes, activists as well as well as those who have who have famously broken glass ceilings in various career fields. We want girls in CPS to feel inspired and empowered to achieve great things. Thankfully, they have tremendous role models in our schools
024to support them every step of the way. I want to thank all of the amazing, talented women at CPS, especially our inschool staff who make up the the vast majority of our workforce. It is your hard work that keeps our district going every single day. And I am constantly impressed by your skill, dedication, patience, and empathy. And I feel grateful that my daughter has so many of these women as CPS role models. Moving on, spring break begins Monday, March 24th. Our staff and students have been working hard, and I'm sure they're looking for a little bit of time off. We want our students to have fun, but also to stay safe and engaged during their time away from school. Families can visit our website at cps.edu/springbreak for a list of programs and activities that are
025available to CPS students during the break. They include our safe haven heights uh safe haven sites opp and opportunities from the Chicago public library and the Chicago park district. I encourage everyone to explore the spring break and uh the spring break web page and to find options that best fit for your families. And I look forward to seeing all of our students back in class Wednesday, April 2nd, ready to finish the school year strong. So again, families, first uh school back is April 2nd. It's Wednesday, so it's actually a seven-day spring break for our students. We also want to talk about also what something that's that's an something that's a concern that's rising across the country. We want our students to return to school as healthy as possible. Which brings me to my next topic.
026We've seen in the news that cases of measles are are on the rise around the country. Measles is a is an extremely contagious virus. If one person has it, up to nine out of 10 people who have been around them will likely be infected if they're not protected. Fortunately, we not we have not seen any cases in Chicago, but we want to make sure that our CPS community remains healthy. The best protection against measles is the misos, ms, reubella, and MMR vaccine as it provides the lifelong protection from the miso virus. This is a required vaccine for CPS and most people will have received it in childhood. But for those of those of who have not, there are many ways to access this vaccine, including our district school-based and and mobile health clinics, the Chicago
027Department of Public Health immunization centers, and local healthcare providers and pharmacies. The vaccine is free for anyone who is uninsured, underinsured, or receiving medical benefits through Medicare or Medicaid. For any family traveling internationally during the spring break, it is especially important to make sure you have protection against the measles virus before you travel. Visit cps.eduvacines or vaccines.gov for more information on accessing this potentially life-saving vaccine. Earlier this month, we also celebrated social emotional learning or seal day and national and the national uh school social work week. These two things go hand in hand because providing emotional support to students is a big part of what our social workers do from our students early days in prek to the transition to and through high school. And our our social workers strive to make sure that they
028they have safe, welcoming learning environments when where they feel valued and supported. School social workers touch all aspects of the student experience from supporting students in crisis to shaping a positive school culture and climate and to giving students as they make their plans for successful f uh futures beyond CPS. I thank them for being such a trusted presence in our schools and for helping our students achieve a deep sense of belonging. At CPS, the emotional well-being of our children is always a priority. That is why we're proud to announce a new partnership with Hazel Health United and United Healthcare to expand mental health services for our youth. Thanks to this collaboration, CPS high school students can now access highquality counseling from licensed therapists at no cost. Again, I want to repeat that our CPS high
029school students can now access highquality counseling from licensed therapists at no cost. All sessions are virtual, which means that students can access these services from the comfort of their homes. As we continue to roll out this program this spring, students will also have the option to engage in these sessions in a safe space at their school at a time when it where when it will not interfere with their learning. As a public education system, our go our goal is to give our students the tools they need to be successful. We know that this commitment goes beyond pure academics. We need to empower our children by giving them the resources to navigate life's daily challenges and to help them build a strong mental health foundation. The partnership, this partnership is a power is a powerful step
030in that direction. And I thank Hazel Health and United Care for bringing this opportunity to our district. Mr. President, this concludes my prepared remarks. Thank you, CEO, board members. Are there any comments or questions? We have no committee updates this month, so we'll proceed with today's public participation session. Thank you for joining us to share your comments with the board in compliance with the Illinois Open Meetings Act. Public participation, sometimes referred to as public comment, is a portion of the board meeting or hearing that grants district stakeholders the opportunity to address the board with their concerns and comments. Note that public participation is a time for board and CPS senior leadership to listen and hear from you rather than a time for dialogue with board members during or after your remarks. While we can't discuss
031personnel matters, public participation is a key component of transparent governance and provides us as board members as well as senior leadership an opportunity to listen to everyone who has signed to speak. This board takes equity of voice seriously. While we may not address your comments directly during public participation, CPS leadership is always present at our meetings and are able to address concerns as follow-ups after the meeting. As a district and as a board, we also have many other spaces for authentic dialogue. For example, each and every one of our board members hosts board office hours so that we can have a conversation. Please use our website cpsb.org board. If you want to meet with the board member during office hours, we encourage you to take advantage of the opportunity to meet with board members outside
032of a board meeting. Thank you for your attention and consideration. As a reminder, union representatives will be allotted 5 minutes to speak before public participation and elected officials will be allotted 5 minutes to speak after the conclusion of public participation. Board Secretary, please share the rules of public participation. Thank you, President Harden. Members of the public who registered to speak were given the option to attend in person or via an electronic format. For those who prefer to attend via an electronic format, they were given information to access this meeting by dialing a number and using their phone. We did this so that speakers with limited or no access to the internet or who may have weak internet internet connection could still participate using their phones. Also, members of the public may submit written comments for
033board of education meetings via the written comments form on the board's website at cpsboe.org or mailed to one north Dearbornne sweet 950. Written comments received between the day the public agenda was posted through 5:00 p.m. the day after the board of education meeting will be submitted to the board and published within five business days on our website at cpsboe.org. Speakers, please listen while I provide directions for public particip participation. I will call your name and number when it is your turn to speak. For speakers joining us virtually, as a reminder to unmute, please enter star six. When you once you hear your name, please state your name for the record. I will then start the two-minute timer. When there are 30 seconds remaining, I will inform you so that you can proceed to conclude your
034remarks to allow for the next speaker to begin. For anyone standing with the speaker, please stand along the glass partitions to keep the aisles clear. Thank you, President Harden. Before we begin calling speakers from the speakers list, we do have union reps who would like to address the board. We'll begin with Jen Conent, CTU Charter Division Chair. Good afternoon, members of the board. I'm Jen Conant, chair of CTu's charter division and a charter school math teacher. I see that there are many charter educators and families signed up to talk about their schools today. The Asero moms, you and they may have seen the last five months were also advocates for Asero during their renewals in the past. They were unfortunately betrayed by Asero and this renewal process when Acero announced they were closing seven of
035our schools last October despite a three-year renewal by CPS the year before. Some of the educators and families here today may be scared that their charter will not be renewed because charter operators may have told them that they should be scared. To them, I want to share that this board has fought to keep schools open, including charter schools. This board stepped in to save five schools, protecting students and families. I also want to share that a delay in renewal votes on charters does not mean that this board will not vote to renew charters eventually. I actually believe that this board should pause renewals of charters, including alternative and contract schools, until this board creates new policies that improve accountability and protections for families in the contracts between the district and charter operators. Changing board policy
036to ensure that charter contracts provide more accountability to the district and to families is urgent. It cannot be delayed. educators, families, this board and this district cannot afford another Acero disaster. Our families deserve better. Here are some of the issues and questions that this board should tackle when it comes to district contracts with charter operators. Additional information and transparency. What additional information does CPS need in order to better foresee possible closures? Absorption procedures. What absorption procedures for students and staff should be outlined in contracts if a charter operator decides to walk away from the commitments they made to CPS and our students by closing a school? CPS shouldn't have to reinvent the wheel every time an operator closes a school. Minimum notification. Should there be a minimum notification timeline for charter or contract school closures?
037And should operators ever be able to close schools mid-contract? An appropriate use of funds. How can this board ensure that public school tax dollars intended for education are not spent on campaigns against educators who choose to form a union and that money is going into the classroom and not into management fees. I also want to speak to you today about the options alternative schools up for renewal. Concerns have been raised, including by the press and CPS, noting that schools who are killed or injured by gun violence have disproportionately been at nondistrun alternative school chains such as YCCS. CPS has been investigating whether investment in district programs for atrisisk students might lower the chances of them being involved in a violent encounter. What does this board know at this point about the effectiveness of these programs?
038Counseling students out of CPS neighborhood schools into alternative charter schools may not be what's best for these students. Unsurprisingly, those schools are not all the same, and some of them do a much better job of meeting the educational safety and support needs of students than others. YCCS is up for renewal this year and is a charter holder that farms out management of most of its schools to charter management organizations. This structure means that CPS sends money to YCCCS for its schools which takes a chunk of that money, then sends it to the charter management organization, which takes a chunk of that money, and then it finally goes to the school. This structure means that fewer dollars make it into classrooms than in the district or in charter schools that are directly managed by the charter
039holder. Beyond that, I want to flag that YCCS has failed to land a contract with us with CTU at YCLA. Our contract there expired in 2022. We negotiated an interim agreement on compensation for school years 22 23 and 2425, but negotiations on the larger contract have been on hold for months as YCCCS has not felt urgency to land an agreement. We also want to flag that while YCCCS is supposed to be responsible for providing special education staffing and services at all of its schools, Latino youth has barely received any services. I have more concerns but don't have time for them now. I also want to flag concerns about the Excel Academy and Camelot Network. These campuses are run as subsidiaries of a national forprofit private equity-owned education corporation which owns multiple for-profit companies. And an
040investigation by the state of Connecticut found that the network um serving students with disabilities had grossly underserved students with disabilities and violated state and federal education uh special education laws. Both the Excel Camelot schools considered for renewal today, the Excel Southshore and Southwest were cited in their last renewal as having failed standards for special education students here in Chicago. Please conclude your remarks. Given all of this, I strongly encourage the board to delay any renewals until the board passes new policy on charter school contracts with the district to ensure that we never have another aserike school closure again. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Our next union rep is Kia Banks, CPAA, Chief of Staff. Good afternoon everybody. Sorry. So, we opened our meeting today talking about all of the accolades and the accomplishments
041of this district and our students that educators and school leaders have made possible. And while those things are awesome and we should celebrate those things, what's important for us to ask you all today is that we come to you today understanding that there are still some very important work and some very important discussions that have to be made. See, we understand that while there's much work being done at the bargaining tables with other unions, we also have to make sure that we're clear some of those sticking points we must say something about. We understand that there seems to be some discrepancy about how we are going to make sure that our most precious and our our most critical people in the uh well those critical educators, teachers have prep time. My question though for you,
042who's going to supervise the children? When teachers are off duty, when they have prep time, school leaders are left to figure out how to safely supervise students and protect their in instructional time. We are already struggling with the limited resources that we have to ensure that our students are safe and that they are receiving that highquality instruction that you expect from us. And so what we want to know is where's that going to happen? Who's going to supervise those children? We also understand that there's an additional sticking point about our observations. And again, while we recognize that there are fair and and and and and other options that we can consider, three years for a school leader to determine the effectiveness of the teacher standing before children is too long. We have to understand that
043a proficient rating is one step above basic. There are ranges between proficiency at different levels. And when you have a school leader who inherits a school where the majority of their staff is rated proficient, we have to have a mechanism to ensure that those teachers are performing at that level. It's important that we consider that in order for school leaders to be held accountable for the outcomes that you expect and for the education that our students deserve, you have to give us the right to be able to manage our buildings and ensure that that environment produces that safe, healthy, rigorous, joyous daily experience that we're talking about in all of our plans. School leaders are going to be evaluated every year regardless of what's going on. Change, disruption, federal cuts, budget cuts, staffing shortages, plans
044changing, leadership changing, principles and APS are evaluated every year. We're evaluated by our supervisors. We are evaluated by our LSC's. and we are accountable for providing those outcomes that you expect and the very accomplishments that you spoke about today. We have to have a system that allows those leaders who are the ones that are most accountable because see it's the LSC's that choose to decide whether or not we get a contract or not. We have to be able to have the ability to hold our teachers uh accountable for their performance. We have to have a system that allows us to ensure that we're providing the coaching, the support, the development, the opportunities for feedback and mentoring to ensure that our students are having the best possible instructional experience in CPS. I am a product of
045CPS. My daughter is a child in CPS. I have the utmost confidence in this district to produce the outcomes that you all expect. But we have to do it in a way that respects those who are responsible and liable for the outcomes. We have to make sure that when decisions are made, those people who have to clean this up and in five short months, open the doors on April, August 18th, we have to stand there and look at our students and tell them are are we have to ask ourselves, are we ready to welcome you back? Do we have the resources? Do we have the staff? Do we have a plan? We need to make sure that the right people are at the table when these discussions are being held and that those decisions take
046into account the work that has to be done so that you too can continue to tout all of the accomplishments of our great district. So, I'm asking you today, what is your plan and how are we going to put students first? Thank you. Thank you for your comments, President Harden. We are now ready to call speakers from the speakers list. And we'll start with speaker number one, Latangelo Ward, who is joining us virtually. Please enter star six to unmute. Langelo Ward, speaker number one, please enter star six to unmute. Good afternoon everyone. My name is Dr. Tantel Ward and I am a product of CPS and a dedicated CPS parent. Today I urge you to reconsider supervision structure of Chicago public school principles by repurposing the role of network chiefs. The responsibility of network chiefs
047such as developing professional development plans, TIWP support in fostering community engagement are essential that can be handled by school-based personnel like an internal leadership team. The $32 million spent on the network chief's positions. A small fraction of this cost could be better invested in enhancing in-house teams to directly benefit students. I propose that we revert to a more foundational governance structure empowering the Chicago Board of Ed, the CEO, LSC's, and ILTS with supporting and holding principles accountable. I also recommend increasing the number of LSC voting members by adding two more teaching members to the team. By doing so, we can ensure a richer, more diverse representation of educators voice in decision-making. The decent the decentralization would not only enhance accountability, but would also infuse our schools with fresh ideas and perspectives, revolutionizing the way they
048operate. Let us invest wisely in our future by reallocating a fraction of these funds back into the schools. Not only will this save a 30 seconds amount of money, this will shift the foster a nurturing environment of our schools. I sincerely urge the board of education to embrace this transformative change. Together, we can secure a brighter future for our students and ensure our schools are a supportive place where all stakeholders can thrive. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you for your comments. Our next uh group of speakers are from Interamerican Magnet School. Anna Retimo, speaker number two, joining us virtually. Lindseay Wood, speaker number seven, joining us virtually. And Jennifer Torres, speaker number 13, joining us virtually. Anna Retimal, please enter star six. Thank you. Please proceed. Hello, my name is Anna Retamal
049and I come before you as an interamerican alumni, former teacher, and parent to beg for your immediate action in addressing the issues of safety and community engagement at the school. As a student at Interamerican, I learned not only academics but also about activism and advocacy. We were taught to speak up for those who cannot, to stand up when we see injustice, and to fight for what is right. Today, we are asking you to listen, to act, and to step up to protect our children. Under principal Sai, parents are terrified to speak up, fearing retaliation, being banned from the school, or even facing legal action. Teacher and staff morale is low and it should come as no surprise that students also feel unsafe and unheard. Principal SAS has steamrolled decisions about the school's budget, staffing and
050class sizes. He has shown little regard for the input of the school community or even LSD protocols. Parents have been coming before this board for over six months asking for help, begging for change. We are not going away. We will continue to speak up. Members of the board, you were elected to hold the system accountable. Mr. Martinez, you were entrusted with the responsibility of ensuring that our schools are safe, equitable, and supportive for all students. We ask you to honor those responsibilities and hold principal accountable for failing to follow your own established protocols, policies, and procedures. The time for action is now. We need you to listen. We have 30 seconds remaining and we need you to take the steps necessary to correct the injustices that enter American. Our children deserve better and it is
051your duty to ensure that they get it. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Our next speaker is Lindseay Wood, speaker number seven. Please enter star six to unmute. Hi, my name is Lindsay Woods. I never imagined I'd be speaking at a Chicago public school board of education meeting to help spread the idea that parents are real constituents of their children's educational experience. That we have rights as parents to be informed, engaged, and supported within the school community to ensure that our children's experiences are positive, safe, and that we take an active role in the community. However, this has not been my experience and that of many other parents interame magnet school in particular under the current administration of principal Juan Carlos. In fact, many parents and staff, including myself, have experienced harassment, neglect, bullying,
052and retaliation from this administration. In fact, much of this problem could have been avoided by seeing us as partners and sharing all aspects of our children's educational experience, including any concerns regarding behavior, bullying, social emotional support, acade or academic needs upfront. This would include responding to emails of all parents with concerns or questions, informing the school community about reach of breaches of security, transparency about changes to schoolwide curriculum, and so much more. Instead, parents have been stripped of their parental rights and education. Principal Zas has neglected to communicate with parents far too often on important matters that have resulted in neglecting the rights of children and the policies in place to protect our children from such acts. As a matter of fact, on March 5th, a second incident occurred where someone tried to enter the
053school buildings. It is March 20th and Principal's eyes has yet to communicate with parents about the safety of our children and school community. Like myself, many parents have signed up in ways that would support the school community by volunteering, joining school committees, lunch and recess support, kiss and go, etc. However, parents who have been viewed as outspoken or voicing concerns have been intentionally removed from these opportunities, resulting in a shortage of staff and supervision during recess and lunch, and not only putting our children in danger, but neglecting to keep our school safe. Let me take you back to the beginning of the school year. that the LSC voted and pressed charges last October 2024 which resulted in an initial investigation against principal Juan Carlos Zas at Interamerican Magnet School. Since then, the board of education
054of the city of Chicago law department shared the following. The initial review has resulted in a formal investigation into mismanagement by principal Zas. We are working to bring this matter to a conclusion as quickly as possible, but also in a manner that ensures a thorough investigation. The investigators are diligently working to reach a fair and comprehensive conclusion. parents who are here to speak to the board have brought up specific incidences that have impacted students. Incidents of bullying, physical violence, sexual harassment, sexual violence threats that have resulted in parents contacting safety and security, speaking at LSC meetings, speaking at a board of education meeting, and filing Title 9 complaints. As a matter of fact, more incidents have occurred and Principal Z has harassed, bullied, and retaliated towards parents. He has attempted to take away our rights
055as parents in the education of our children. We urge this new board committed to improving our CPS schools to please remove principal ZAS from our school immediately while the investigation on past and now new current charges are being investigated. We ask that you honor your commitment to parent engagement parents as active for your comments of their children. Speaker Jennifer Torres, speaker number 13 who is joining us virtually. Please enter star six to unmute. Hello, my name is Jennifer Torres and I'm also a parent at Interamerican Magnet School. I'd like to acknowledge the board, President Harden, and in particular two members from district 4 where Interamerican has been located since 2006, Miss Ellen Rosenfeld and Miss Karen Zakur. The Inner American LSC first presented a plea for the removal of our principal ZAS in July 2024
056and in October voted to press charges. The initial review resulted in a formal investigation into mismanagement by principal disas. Since that time, other incidents in the school have occurred, prompting several title 9 complaints, including bullying, bullying, physical violence, sexual harassment, and threats. Principal Zas has neglected to report incidents or create safety plans or support affected students or inform parents. He ignored parent concerns and instead block parent volunteers in the classroom. This is concerning and dangerous. So today again the community of Interamerican urges this board, this president, these members and CEO Martinez to remove Principal Z immediately even as his investigation continues before any further harm is done. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Our next speaker is Winnie Williams Hall who's joining us virtually. Speaker number three. Please enter star six to unmute. Good
057afternoon. My name is Dr. Winnie Williams Hall and I'm here today as a CPS teacher, advocate, and community supporter. I have been employed with CPS for more than two decades. I currently teach at Nicholson Steel Academy and I am deeply invested in the success of our students. I am also a member of Educators for Excellence and the founder of Sped Talk. The Black Student Achievement Committee, BSAC, must be established because black students continue to face wider gaps in academic achievement, graduation rates, and post-secondary opportunities as compared to their peers. And our goal should always be to create a more equitable society, addressing historical disparities, and ensuring that all students have the opportunity to thrive. Black students in CPS deserve dedicated and ongoing support that is not subject to leadership changes or shifting priorities. A permanent
058structure like BSAC ensures that black student success is not just an initiative but a long-term committee backed by law. This committee is not an optional advisory group. It is written into law. Without this committee, we lack a permanent structure to ensure the success of black students. This should always be a priority no matter who sits in leadership. This is why we are calling on the board to stop delaying and file a resolution immediately to establish this committee. We also demand that it is added to today's agenda. Our black students deserve more than promises. They deserve our action. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your comments. Our next speakers are from Youth Connections Charter Schools. Patrice Allen, speaker number four, and Thomas Gatuso, speaker number 10. Good afternoon, CPS board members, colleagues, and community
059members. First of all, I'd like to give thanks to God for allowing me to be here before you guys. I come before you as one of the staff members of UP Connection Charter Schools. I work at Progressive Leadership Academy located in the Woodlon community, as a college and career coach, and as a mentor. I've been with I've been with you Connection Charter Schools for just about eight years. as a whole. You connection charter schools focus strongly U Connection charter schools focus strongly on uh communities, youth and partnerships in a holistic way. This approach acknowledgment the deep interconnections between social, economics, environmental and cultural aspects, ensuring that our students are not only resilient but also thriving. We par we we pri prioritize community-led initiatives and collaborations and we create environment that empowers our students as well
060as our families. Additionally, social emotional learning remains a you have 30 seconds remaining. Social emotional learning remains a cornerstone of our mission, recognizing that diverse backgrounds of our families we serve is in great need of those things. Through constant through constant uh staff training, we equip our students with critical life skills, self-awareness and and self-control and the an exceptional ability to build positive relationships. We ensure they are successful in in school, work, and beyond. We also edify life skills. Please conclude your remarks. Our commitment to these values is what make us strong and successful. With your contribution, support and continue renew. We look forward to involving and expanding our impact into the 21st century and beyond. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Our next speaker is Thomas Gatuso, speaker number 10. Good afternoon, CEO
061Martinez. Ladies and gentlemen of the school board and other members of the CPS family, my name is Dr. Thomas Gutuso. For the last 21 years, I've been the proud principal of Sullivan House High School on the great south side of Chicago and more importantly a proud member of Youth Connection Charter School. I'm here to support the renewal of Youth Connection. It is a unique and successful charter, one of the most unique in the country. Our middle name is connections. In order to succeed with students, you have to have those connections. Many of you are parents. Many of you are educators. So, you know the importance of connection, whether it be with a student or with your children. Those connections happen every day throughout our 17 campuses. happens every day since 1997. What makes us unique
062specifically is that we take students 16 to 21 who have been disengaged, discouraged, disconnected, disinterested, or just disappeared from school completely. We give them a chance to come back to school looking for a second chance, a better chance to attend a specialty charter like Youth Connection Charter School. We are successful not just with me saying so and not just 30 seconds remaining we have graduates but on every CPS matrix possible since I've been here starting with tape scores then SQRP and then the option schools metric youth connection has always performed at the highest level I'm imploring you to renew our charter to give us more money for our diverse learners as we are woefully underfunded and because we take students in at different times of the year. We take students in whose IEPs are not
063current even when they're in our school because they weren't current when they came to us. I'd like to thank the school board for your time and attention and your work towards our students. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Our next speaker is Katherine Zamaron, speaker number five. Hello, my name is Katherine Samaron. I was born and raised on the southwest side, the daughter of a bilingual preschool teacher, the granddaughter of a social worker, and I currently teach elementary school music in CPS. This semester, I teach about 600 students. They have IEPs, 504s, they are ELLs, and they speak 40 home languages. When my colleagues in their home rooms and their core content areas are on their prep, I am not babysitting them. I am educating them. Teachers in my building and across this district
064are routinely robbed of our personal time. The mental and emotional overwork of teachers is our worstkept secret. My partner knows it. My therapist knows it. Tick tock knows it. This board knows it. and so does everyone at CPS. This system only works because of our free labor. That's why we came into this contract proposing an additional 30 minutes of prep time. Time that was taken from us by CPS and the board of education when these institutions bent to the whim of Rahm Emanuel. We know how to compromise though and that's why we're counterproposing 20 minutes because we know what negotiation means. So I'm just a tired teacher who worked a full day today who's a little sick and comes through anyways and I am asking you board of education you have 30 seconds elected and
065appointed to talk to your CPS team to tell them how to negotiate and how to compromise. Meet us in the middle. We are out here every day working, helping kids tie their shoes and blow their noses and let them tell us about their bad dreams when they have them and how much they miss their mom and why they're hungry because they didn't eat the school lunch. We're doing that work and then we come here to do this work afterwards. And we go to negotiate and we figured out how to compromise and we need you to tell your team how to compromise. Thank you for your comments. The next group of speakers are from Perspectives Charter Schools. Michelle Handy, speaker number six. Victoria Henley, speaker number 20, and Troy Hollingsworth, speaker number 29. As the next
066speaker approaches the podium, I do want to um note for the record that speaker 29, Troy Haulingsworth is not here. Good afternoon. My name is Michelle Handy. I'm a proud PAC parent and a board member of Perspectives Charter Schools. As a parent, I believe every family deserves the right to choose the best education for their child. When my family was searching for a school, we wanted more than just a place for academics. We wanted a school that would help shape our children's character, instill strong values, and prepare them for life beyond the classroom. That's why we chose Perspectives Charter Schools. My twin daughters have been attending Perspectives since the seventh grade and now our high school seniors. They have been on the honor roll ever every year and which I believe is a testament to
067perspectives student academic and character building foundation. As a parent, I've been involved in my daughter's education and the school community. I see the impact of the school's values and the dedication of the teachers and staff. What makes perspective special is their they they live a disciplined life principle. These principles shape not just academics but also character and leadership skills. One one principle that resonates with me is love who you are. It teaches confidence, self-respect, and the power of embracing one's uniqueness. I've watched my daughters grow in these areas. For years, Perspectives has given families like mine the opportunity to access highquality education that meets our children's needs. School choice is about ensuring that every child child regardless of their zip code has access to the best learning environment possible. For my children, the environment is
068perspectives. They are thriving academically, growing in confidence, and learning valuable life skills that will serve them well into adulthood. This school has been a place of growth, excellence, and support for my daughters and so many other students. Please conclude your remarks to continue providing this opportunity for students. Perspect perspectives needs a 7 to 10 year renewal. A short renewal period creates uncertainty for families and teachers, making it harder for the school to plan for the future. By granting a long renewal, we can ensure that person remains a stable, highquality option for families for years to come. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Our next speaker, Victoria Henley, speaker 20. Good afternoon everyone. My name is Victoria Henley and I'm a proud alumni of Perspectives Charter School. Education was always a priority in my household.
069My mother instilled in the importance of learning and of striving for excellence. I was in a private school from preschool to about 8th grade. And when I came perspectives, I found not only that it was just a school, but they actually cared for us. at perspectives. I was a AB student, a brand ambassador, a part of the National Honor Society, and a cheerleader. I also took AP courses. So, beyond academics, one of one thing that I that really defines perspectives for me is the compassion. So the teachers and the staff, they invested in me and they pushed me to excel and made sure that I believed in myself and my potential. That support shaped me who I am today. I went on to earn my bachelor of arts at Columbia College in fashion business and
070I was the president of Alpha Cappa Alpha Sority Incorporated Beta Chapter. Today, I'm the co-founder and executive director of Grow with Grace Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to gracefully empower the growth of young girls and young women through etiquette, education, 30 seconds remaining, health and wellness, and with an appreciation for the arts. So when we thought about this Tyler program, of course, perspectives was the first option for us, me and my board members because it shaped who I was. And so I just want to give that back to the students and just pay that forward. So I come to you today to ask you about the extension of the renewal for perspectives charter schools 7 to 10 years because perspectives is a school that produces leaders and I'm living proof when you invest in students and
071when you believe in them the results speaks for themselves. Please conclude your remarks. Let's continue to give students the same opportunity to live a disciplined life. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Our next speakers are regarding the budget. Speaker number eight, Dwayne Truss and speaker number 18, Dr. Angel Alvarez right here. You want to stand here? You want to stand right here? It'll be easier. Okay. Uh good evening, President Harden, uh board members and CEO Martinez and staff. My name is Dwayne Truss. I'm a former member of Chicago Board of Education. I applaud you all here for your service to our children and the families. Uh but that being that do not balance the city of Chicago's budget on the backs of our students and families. As a board, you have a responsibility to
072properly manage CPS funds. do not borrow money or refinance any debt which my grandchildren and great great grandchildren I got plenty of grandchildren but have to pay for as I stated during my tenure on the board there needs to be a strategy to develop a fund reserve because CPS doesn't seem that you got to do it because if you have a fund reserve and when you go to the market because you've all voted on borrowing um was it TANS right temporary anticipation notes which is basically a payday loan. And if we go if the board moves forward to be fiscally responsible, it'll be cheaper for our families in the future because it be less interest that has to be paid. And also being from the west side, I got to give a plug to the
073west side, the fact that we don't have a wall to wall vacational school to go ahead and give our kids an opportunity to get on some of the future jobs. And that's another, you know, issue that we will be discussing with uh the board in the future. But the but critically though, it would be irresponsible if you would go ahead and move on as I know it was taken off the agenda. So I guess it's kind of like my pre-estimony for the April board meeting. So uh don't do it. 30 seconds remaining. No problem. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it because you're going to be bringing a lot of negative negative attention to CPS. And also I was told by someone else that we uh had uh I think former interim chief
074talent officer Lauren Cla Mlullen uh unfortunately passed away. She served CPS was 25 plus years a public servant. Uh that's a loss when anybody you know you lose anybody from the CPS family. And then my understanding that she was just only age 59. So my hearts and prayers and condolences go out to her families and I thank you very much. I guess you guys knew that you was going to have a night off or something, right? Thank you for your comments. Dr. Angel Alvarez, speaker 18. Thank you, CPS board. It's my first time getting to address you, but hopefully it won't be the last. You will get to know me. Uh CPS's finances are a horrible situation because of decades of mismanagement. We are here because the past boards failed to ask the two basic
075questions they should have to answer. How is this in the best interest of our students? And how do we avoid these problems from happening again? Let's put context in. In 2012, CPS closed 50 schools. They were facing a budget shortfall of $3.9 billion in deferred maintenance. Yet now we have over a billion dollars of annual deficit and over 14 billion dollars of deferred maintenance. Those past solutions failed to really address the problem and past boards kept ignoring underlying issues because they failed to ask important questions. I implore you to ask those questions and one simple question is what are the financial projections for each school? If you look at each annual budget, 300,000 line items, and add up what each school gets, it doesn't match what the Illinois State Board of Ed says they have.
076So CPS has different numbers in their budget and what they report to is find out why and find out how come every year we keep going over budget. Let's talk about other problems. Not only is CPS not providing accurate expenses, right, they hope that by giving you incorrect information, you're going to keep making the same mistakes as the other board. You have 30 seconds remaining. Let's look at also disparities in funding. We failed to ask important questions about what was the return on investment. Uh progress for Latino students lags behind others in the state. And English language learners fail to make gains after the fourth grade. Essentially, the longer they're in the system, the more they fall behind. I implore you, I will send you all a report. You will get to know me. I
077assure you. Please do better than the pass board. Ask hard questions and do right by our students. Thank you so much for your service. Thank you for your comments. Our next speaker is Janet Fernandez, speaker number nine, who is joining us virtually. Please enter star six to unmute. Board members, I am a parent of a student at Walter Payeyton and my child and I have witnessed numerous injustices at the school. I am demanding the immediate removal of Principal Shabbas and the chief of network 15. Parents and students should not have to endure ongoing unfair treatment. I firmly believe these persistent issues stem from a lack of strong leadership and inadequate parent support. Many parents, students, and faculty members want to speak up but remain silent out of fear of retaliation from this administration. This is
078unacceptable. The fact that students and community members are using the Instagram account Payton. voices who express their concerns speaks volumes about the urgent need for change. Additionally, I believe that the principal discretion process at Payton must be investigated. There must be a greater accountability and transparency in how decisions are made regarding admission and student support. I call for proper allocation of funding across the district to ensure students receive high the high quality education they deserve. At Payton, thousands of dollars were spent at the start of the school year on unnecessary expenses such as balloons, decorations, and DJs. During the December LSC meeting, we were told that back to school funding could only be used for balloons, decorations, DJs, inflatables, and bounty houses. Meanwhile, students are left fundraising for basic supplies and amounting in as little
079as $30 to $50 for extracurricular activities. Why is funding not being directed toward student needs? This misuse of resources must stop. Payton's high achieving students deserve adequate academic support rather than wasteful spending on non-essential items. Finally, during this month's LSC meeting, I requested the removal of principal Shabbaz and stated that the chief of network 15 should also be removed. Transparency at Payton is rapidly diminishing. Please conclude your remarks. Leadership failures must be addressed. Furthermore, I ask that you investigate the unprofessional conduct of the business man manager toward the LS to toward an LLC member. For members, I urge you to implement a plan to protect parents, students from further retaliation by this administration. Immediate action is necessary to address these critical comments. We'll move on to the next speaker. Thank you. Our next speaker, Eve
080Palmer, speaker number 11. Good afternoon everyone. My name is Eva Palmer and I'm a a parent and grandparent of two students at Elaine Lock Chart School. Can you speak into the microphone or you want me to start over? Yes, please. Can we start the timer? Thank you. My name is Eva Palmer and I'm a parent and a grandparent of two at a lame lock charter school. And I'm asking for this 10 re 10year renewal because not only have they earned that, but they deserve it as well. That graduation rate is at 100%. When they go on to high school, they also have a 100% graduation rate. And I just want to say that my youngest daughter, she's in third grade. Um, first mark and period, she struggles with math and she received an F on
081her report card. Second mark of period came out, report cards came and I was really expecting for her math grade to stay at an F or at least go up to a D, but she went up to a C and she's in third grade and she struggles. I also want to say that my granddaughter who's in fifth grade um she's doing well, but I sit in her fifth grade math class and I do some of the work as well and I take some of the tests as well because I'm a Chicago public school graduate as well. I struggled in school and nobody never took the time to explain things to me. This is one of the tests that I took in class and I passed with a B. And to be honest, the highest grade
082I ever received in school as far as math went. So, I just want to say that the teachers at the Lane, they they're doing a real bangup job with their students as far as teaching go. And I just I just feel like they really deserve this 10-year renewal. And I just feel like you all should take that into consideration. I'm 51 years old and I'm learning fifth grade math all over again. And I think that's great. I was proud of my beat. I went and showed it to the principal. Look what I got. I got a B on my math test. So I just take that into consideration. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Our next speaker is Shaina Wrencher, speaker number 12, who's joining us virtually. Please enter star six to unmute. Good
083afternoon. My name is Shauna Wrencher. I am a former CPS teacher of 16 years with diverse learners and a former CPS graduate. I'm a current teacher at Mentor Academy Chicago South. Who I am as a teacher is making a difference in students, one student at a time. I am deeply invested in the success of our students. I'm also a member and a teacher leader with Educators for Excellence. The establishment of the Black Student Achievement Committee is crucial to ensuring that our schools remain strong and supportive for all students, especially black students. We must create programs and policies that protect funding, staff, and educational resources aimed at enhancing black student achievement. Without this committee, I fear that many students will be left behind and opportunities for higher education and scholarships will be limited. Our community has
084unique needs that must be addressed in order to foster and sustain achievement. This committee is essential to ensuring that no student is overlooked and every single student has the opportunity to thrive. The BSAC is not only a necessary initiative but also a legal mandate that is very crucial. You have 30 seconds remaining change. Thank you. Black student achievement as a top priority. Without it, there is no permanent framework to guarantee continued support and progress, particularly through leadership changes. We call on the board to stop the delays and immediately file a resolution to establish the committee. We demand that it be added to today's agenda. Our black students deserve more than just promises. They deserve immediate tangible action. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Our next speaker is Jeremy Carlson, speaker number 14. Good afternoon.
085My name is Jeremy Carlson and I am a CPS parent. Um, I have a kid at Kilmer Elementary School in Rogers Park and my kids are watching on YouTube. So, hi Luke and Grace. Um, I am coming before you guys here today because, uh, Kilmer is a great school. Um, and it really needs a new playground. Um, and so I just wanted to talk to you guys about um, Kilmer and about the playground and the situation. Um, and ask for your help. Um, and then also to voice frustration that we've had with um, the facilities department trying to work on this. This all came together just in a couple of days. I we somebody mentioned it at the LSC meeting on Tuesday and I feel like I won the lottery to get up here. Um,
086I had a hard time kind of condensing my my notes. Um, but I have there should be a handout that you guys can look at. There's some pictures. Please take a look at it. Um, a couple of things about Kilmer. Um, it is the largest K through8 public school in Rogers Park. Has 810 students. 78.9% of those students are economically disadvantaged. 84% of our students are minority students. Uh, 25% of our students all have IEPs. Uh, 56% of our students are English language learners. Uh we have a large number of new arrivals and refugees, really vulnerable kids, really vulnerable families. The school's opportunity index score, which I don't know what that is, but you guys probably do, is 39. The Chicago hardship score is two, which is the 27th percentile. You have 30 seconds remaining.
087Thank you. Um yeah, our playground, it's not ADA compliant. It floods regularly. There's sewage that the kids are playing in sewage water. Um and we've been trying to work together. We've um put in foyer requests. We've got a um an architect to work with us with friends of Kilmer. Um and our foyer request for basic plans. The basic layout of the school was denied, but we were told that they would work with us. Um facilities finally after four months got our principal a copy of the plat which was from 1958. And so we're trying to work on this, but um we really need some help. So that's why I'm coming before you guys here today. So thank you for your time. Thank you for your comments. Our next speaker is Miguel Gabbera, speaker number 15.
088Good afternoon. My name is Miguel Gara. I'm from Institut Justice and Leadership Academy. Uh, born and raised in Little Village. I'm here to talk to you guys a little bit about our school. Um, we are a second chance high school that works with students that have been pushed or pulled out of other district schools or other community schools. Um, we work with students that are between 17 and 20 years old, 21 years old. Um, a lot of our students come from different neighborhoods and being familiar with the city of Chicago, you know that within those neighborhoods there are boundaries, there are organizations, there are affiliations and we have to kind of do what we can control within our school to provide a safe uh environment for them. And so one of the challenges that we
089face is um how do we what can we control And so let me just briefly share with you this story. We had a physical altercation with two students from different neighborhoods. And so I was trained doing peace circles by you all by CPS. I took the restorative justice peace circles 101 102. And so I applied that within our school. So I asked both gentlemen separately if they were willing to sit in a peace circle and they both agreed. Now, I can't go into the specifics of what the peace circle entailed, but at the end of the peace circle, okay? And not only that, but there was coexistence. And not only coexistence, they were able to work together, they were able to work together for the rest of the year. Now that is one physical altercation
090that we average a year in our school with students from different neighborhoods from different affiliations from different organizations. So if you understand the troubles that we have and the issues that we have in our city the roots and the causes then you will understand why our school is important and what we did that day and what we continue to do makes a difference. It's you're not going to find this I know uh renewal application. You're not going to find what we did in some sort of an assessment, but now this is something that we do. So, I'm asking you all take a look at what we do. Come to us, talk to us, get to know us better. Give us at least five more years for favor. We just did our new contract with the
091CTu. Give us the five years with the renewal and let's let's continue to do what we do. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you for your comments. Our next speaker is Lisa Blanchard, speaker number 16. Okay. Good evening everyone. My name is Alisa Blanchard and I am a Chicago resident born and raised. I'm a 25-y year veteran of Chicago public school special education teacher and my current role is a case manager with 2.5 positions in Little Village for Corkery Elementary School and Hammond Elementary School. Let me tell you a little bit about my time. Right now I'm on a full-time workload on a part-time schedule for two schools and it's hard. It's really, really, really hard because we need full-time case managers in these buildings. We have our team day. I have one
092of my schools with three cluster classrooms and those are our most significant populations that need the most support on a part-time schedule. I have 40% of my Mondays taken by holidays and school improvement PD days that I'm not there on a halftime schedule. Not on a full-time 40% gone. 40% gone on a halftime. My principal, Principal Gonzalez, she facilitates some of my meetings because I'm not there enough to facilitate the meetings for the students, for the kids, for the services. And she's a principal. She has whole principal duties and responsibilities. And she's supporting and facilitating meetings. We have 92 kids right now on our case load. 12 coming down the pipeline in the last 50 days of school. I don't know how we're gonna get this done. 30 seconds remaining. We need more help with
093our migrant population, our kids. We're trying to decide whether or not it's language acquisition or either a true specific learning disability and we're being forced with they need instruction in Spanish. We're being told you can't provide that because we can't obligate the district to services that we can't provide, but then we can't violate their rights by not providing it. But then we still have to write the IEPs and the services to what they need and not to what we can provide. So, we need you to fund the schools. We need you to fund special ed. We need you to fund case managers. We need you to fund dual language programs. You need to fund bilingual teachers. We need you to fund the bilingual special ed teacher that's middle school endorsed unicorn. Fund it. And I'm
094a veteran teacher. Pay me. I paid 25 years into my pension. Pay me. I shouldn't have to conclude your remarks. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Our next speaker is Mark Kaplan, speaker number 17. Good afternoon board members, CEO, staff, and guests. My name is Mark Kaplan. I am a community representative from Uplift Community High School and a member of North Side Action for Justice. I love Chicago public schools and I love public education. Both of my children are products of CPS and my son has been a teacher for 26 years. My granddaughter just graduated from CPS last year and my grandson is a junior in high school. They're all successful products of Chicago public schools because their schools were highly resourced and had dedicated staff and teachers. We're calling on you, the board,
095to do everything in your power to transform this district so that every child has the opportunity to attend schools that my children and grandchildren are able to attend. We need the board to make all the necessary moves to fully fund our schools and um and reach a just contract agreement with the Chicago Teachers Union. It allows the district to continue moving towards creating and developing schools that our children deserve in these 30 seconds. these times of a massive assault on public education by Donald Trump and the oligarchs, we are in the need for the highest quality, strongest, and most engaging community, schools, and district. We believe that the CTU's bargaining for the common good, modest demands that are still not resolved are a way to get there. These are common sense initiatives that will move
096the district towards the highquality sustainable community school district that our children, families, and communities deserve. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your comments. Our next speaker is Delanie Preston, speaker number 19, who is joining us virtually. Please enter star six to unmute. Good evening. My name is Delaney Preston and I am here today as a CPS teacher and former CPS student. I have been a teacher in CPS for two years currently at McNair School of Excellence in the Austin neighborhood and I am deeply invested in the success of our students. I am also a CTu member and a member of Educators for Excellence. The Black Student Achievement Committee must be created because the current federal administration is working to dismantle DEI initiatives that safeguard the rights of people of color, those with diverse
097abilities and individuals of all genders, both in the workplace and beyond. This poses a direct threat to our most marginalized students, leaving them vulnerable to the harmful impacts of these changes. As educators and citizens of Chicago, it is our responsibility to provide every possible opportunity for our black students, ensuring they are equipped for success in these uncertain times. Black students in CPS deserve consistency and unwavering support, one that remains steady regardless of leadership changes or shifting political priorities. Establishing a permanent body like the Black Student Achievement Committee ensures that Black Student Success is not just a temporary initiative, but a long-term commitment backed by law. This committee is not a voluntarily advisory group. It is mandated by law. Without it, we risk 30 seconds structure to guarantee that black student success remains a priority no
098matter who holds leadership positions. That is why we are calling on the board to stop delaying and file a resolution immediately to establish this committee. We also demand that it be added to today's agenda. Our black students deserve more than just promises. They deserve action. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Our next group of speakers are from North Londell College Prep. James Fields, speaker number 21, Kyra Bradley, speaker number 22, joining us virtually. Amir Richmond, speaker 23. I bet Colliemore, speaker number 25, who's joining us virtually. And Tyrone Stevenverson, speaking speaker number 26, joining us virtually. Peace. Good evening everyone. Uh my name is James Fields. I am a currently the senior director of youth councils at Mikba Challenge and a born and raised Westsider and a proud graduate of North Londale College Prep,
099the class of 2007. And I'm here today to speak about their charter renewal. Um for me growing up in North Lale, um it was a safe space, but it was also a space of empowerment. Um empowerment to learn, to be able to serve as your community, and also connect with your peers. Um, it's more than about a renewal. It's about a legacy. Um, and we have to make sure that we continue to invest in those young people that look like me, um, that come from the west side of Chicago and all across the city. I've witnessed firsthand, uh, cuz I have program at North Londale every single Monday with my middle schoolers, um, that's called a neighborhood leadership initiative. But I witnessed firsthand Principal Bradley in the hallway greeting young people, encouraging young people. I've
100witnessed firsthand administration administration in the hallway greeting young people and creating that space of belonging. I know that that's a part of CPS's 5year strategic plan. Um I know it's also something that we want all of our young people to be able to experience. I've also seen um and had conversations with the young people in North Londale about how they're feeling about their learning and how they're feeling about their experience. And one of the greatest things I've seen is that us as alumni continue to go back and serve as our school. Um, right now I know that there's um the class of 2018 who are currently teachers there and they're giving it their all every single day. You have 30 seconds. Um, I know that uh there's a lot of things that have to go
101into consideration, but I do want to just uplift that, you know, our young people need a space like North Londale inside of North Londale. The community needs it. Um, it's a safe space for everyone to be able to thrive. So, I ask you all to really consider um making sure that North Wondale's renewal is approved. Thank you so much. Thank you for your comments. Our next speaker, Kyra Kara Bradley, speaker 22, who is joining us virtually. Please enter star six to unmute. Esteemed members, my name is Kiara Bradley and I am the proud principal of North Lawndale College Press. As a Chicago native, I understand both the privilege and the disparities that exist in education. At NLCP, we are breaking down barriers to opportunity every day. For over 25 years, our school has been an
102anchor in the North Londale community, preparing students for college, careers, and leadership. We don't just educate, we empower. We are proving that access to excellence is not a privilege, it is indeed a right. Since opening our doors in 1998, we have empowered more than 1,900 students to enroll in college. Graduates of NLCP also earn college degrees at three times the rate of their surrounding communities. Programs like our innovative Phoenix Pack has provided more than $8 million in scholarships since 2015, ensuring students attend college with zero out-ofpocket costs. NLCP is more than a school. We are cornerstone of North London. Many of our alumni like James returned as educators or an influential leaders and serve the community. I joined this family six years ago and I'm not alone in making it a home here. Our staff
103and educators are here because they believe in what's possible. Once people join us in LTP, they stay. We have teammates who have been creating gener general impact for 15, 17, and even 24 years. Our community deserves work. I urge the board to to renew NLCP for four years. Such a vote will provide stability for our incoming freshmen. We cannot do this work alone and we appreciate your ongoing support in keeping NLCP as a beacon of community opportunities for Chicago's west side. Lastly, I would like to extend my gratitude to board members Blae and Brown for their visit yesterday and the meaningful dialogue they shared with our scholars. Renewing NLCP for four years in is an investment in our city future. Together we will rise. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Our next speaker is
104Amir Richmond. Speaker number 23. Good afternoon board members. My name is Amir Richmond. I am a proud junior at college prep and I'm dedicated member of peace players. I stand before you today because at at NLCP is NLCP is more than just a school. It is a home, a community and a place of transformation. At NOCP, we are not just taught academics. We are taught leadership, resilience, and the power of peace. As a peaceuer, I have learned how to diffuse conflicts, uplift my pe my peers, create a safer environment to my for my school and in my neighborhood. Sorry. In the community that faces too much violence, NCOP stands as a beacon of hope. Our teachers and our and staff see us more than stewards. Sorry. They see our potential. They push us to grow,
105to dream bigger, and to believe in ourselves. The support we we receive goes beyond the classroom. It's in the mentorship, college readiness programs, and the unre unwavering belief that we can succeed. We need NLCP. The students who can't who come after me needs NLCP and our community needs NLCP. I urge you to renew our charter because when you invest in NLCP, you invest in the future leaders, peacemakers, and change makers of Chicago. Not only did NLCP positively impact my life, it impacted others. You have the power to impact others lives if you invest into us. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your comments. Our next speaker is I bet Kymore, speaker number 25, joining us virtually. Please enter star six to unmute. Good afternoon. My name is Evette Kymore. I am a proud
106parent of Nvea Washington junior at North Londale. From the beginning, Nvea knew she wanted to attend NLCP. It was her choice, not mine. But I trusted her. Looking back, I am so grateful I did. Since she started at NLCP, I had I had never I have no worries. The school provides structure that keep her on track. They are consistently open doors for student to pursue dreams. Most important, they prepare her for college, not just with academic. Through the fitness pack, Naa has the chance to go to college without me worrying about how I will pay for it. Knowing that North London is helping means everything. Nvea is determined to be success. She's involved in Chileia, participate in leadership program with the CEO and even training with Chicago Police Academy because she's determined to become a
107homicide detector. She will be the first in my family to pursue a career in law enforcement. I am confident she will achieve the goals because of the support she get at North Londale. When the Vea need help, I know she have sta I know she have support. chief staff Miss Mau she's always there for her to help Na to push her to her full potentials and guide her and keep her on task. I am grateful for NLCP for the structure, the discipline, the opportunity, the opportunity they provide to students like Na. Because of this, she's not just dreaming of a better future. She's achieving it. It takes a village to raise a to raise our child. North Londale is changing life. That work that work must continue. Please renew chart North Londale charter schools. Thank
108you. Thank you for your comments. Our next speaker is Tyrone Steverson, speaker number 26, who is joining us virtually. Please enter star six to unmute. Good afternoon CPS board and CEO Pedro Martinez. My name is Tyrone Stevenverson. And for the past 25 years, North Londale College Prep has been more than just a workplace. It has been a community and the place where my family have thrived. I've been I've seen it firsthand how NLCP transforms students into leaders. But more than that, I have lived it. I was born and raised in North Londale in the North Londale community and I raised my daughters here. All four of them are proud NLC graduates. Each of them attended the college of their choices and today they all are successful professionals because of the foundation NLCP gave them. NLCP
109scholars are more than just members and test scores. We make sure that our scholars in the communities are seen, nurtured, given opportunities that other scholars simply other schools just simply cannot provide. The finish pack, the posy scholarship, the RBL scholarship are examples of how we create pathway to higher education that many other of our students never would thought was possible. I've watched my daughters tap into their strength and rise above the challenges that often hold young people in our communities back. For 25 years, this school has kept this promise to my family. I have had the privilege of mentoring school mentoring scholars. You have 30 seconds to have college career and comeback leader in leadership position right in North Londale. When I look at the alumni returning to come and give back, I see the
110cycle of transformation in action. For those reasons, I urge you to renew NLCP's charter for four years. Let us continue to change lives and uplift this community for generations to come. I thank you. Thank you for your comments. Our next speaker is Violet Whiteside, speaker number 24, who is joining us virtually. Please enter star six to unmute. Good afternoon members of the board, esteemed colleagues, community members. I stand before you today to strongly advi advocate for the renewal of the charter school of Catalyst Circle Rock. I am a parent of ch uh Catalyst Circle Rock, a decision that will have a profound impact on the future of our students, our families, and our city. Charter schools like ours provide families with choices, ensuring that students, regardless of their zip code, have access to a high
111quality education tailored to their unique needs. At Catalyst Circle Rock, we have demonstrated a track record of success. Our students are excelling academically. Our graduation rates are rising and we continue to close achievement gaps for underdeserved communities. Beyond test scores and statistics, our school is a hub of opportunity. We offer specialized program in STEM, art, college readiness, and other unique aspects, equipping students with the skills and knowledge they need to thrive in invol in in an involving world. We foster a culture of invocation, leadership, and community engagement. Elements that are critical in preparing our students for success beyond the classroom. The demand for our school speaks volume. Parents chooses us because they see the results. They see their children engaging, inspired, and achieving at levels they never imagined possible. Our dedicated teachers and staff go
112above above and beyond to ensure that every student receive individualized attention they deserve. Renewing our charter is not just about preserving our 30 seconds remaining. It's about investing in future of Chicago. It also reaffirm our commitment to education equip to empower families and strengthen our workforce with wellprepared graduates. I urge the board to consider impacting our schools has an impact on the lives of countless students. Let us not disrupt the progress we have made. Instead, let's continue to build upon success and reaffirm our shared belief that every child in Chicago deserves access to a great education. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Our next speaker is Lorie Turner, speaker number 27. Good afternoon, President Harden, members of the board, CEO Martinez. My name is Lori Turner and I'm with the Illinois, excuse me, the
113Illinois Network of Charter Schools. We are disappointed to see the renewal vote punted to next month. Our schools still don't know their renewal term lengths. More than 20,000 kids and their teachers futures are hanging in the balance. I will reiterate what we've shared before this board the last few months that schools should have no fewer than three-year renewals to ensure schools have stability and families have assurances their schools will remain open. In the last three months, I have visited the city's charter public schools with many of you. Thank you. And together, we have seen nurturing cultures, engaged students, and families who are committed and choose to attend our city's 119 charter public schools. Along with you, I've been amazed by the dozens of alumni who have come back to work in the schools that served
114them and afforded them amazing opportunities. You've asked questions. You've made thoughtful observations and you've shared genuine concerns. One of the biggest concerns we've heard is around the issue of accountability for charter public schools. Charters are held highly accountable not just during renewal but annually through submission of financial operational and academic data. Two seconds remaining concern you've shared with us that this board cares about are about English language and diverse learner accountability. However, there is no public data in district operated schools to rate on these same metrics. So, it makes it difficult for us to know which issues we could be working on with you together, such as teacher shortages or funding challenges, whether those are at the school level or citywide. To shorten renewal based on citywide issues, is overly punitive. In recent months, we've
115heard board members stand firm to keep charters open, while in public comment, we've heard please for short renewals. This is counterintuitive because short renewals hurt schools which ultimately hurts kids. We ask you for renewal terms no fewer than three years. Thank you very much. Thank you for your comments. Our last two speakers from the speakers list are from Jones College Prep, speaker 28, Nathan Euan, and Ed Edward McNal, speaker number 30, who is joining us virtually. Good afternoon. My name is Nathan Yun and I'm a junior at Jones College Prep High School. I'm here today because we were recently um the issue has recently come up of staffing with our band department. Our current band director, Mr. Samuel Froch, is being replaced by our previous band director, Mr. Michael Block. Currently, our students have shown
116overwhelming support for our current band teacher, Samuel Froch. We have over 300 signatures, and many students have spoken about how Mr. Frost has benefited them, not only personally, but also musically and academically. I'm not here to argue against Mr. Block returning. I'm only here to advocate for Mr. Frost and in some way for him to retain his job at Jones College Prep. Over the past year, we have gotten many comments from parents, teachers, students, and other people who believe that our Jones band department has benefited greatly from Mr. Froch's support. Mr. Frost has also helped greatly with our ACES program, which is our special education program at Jones. All of our special education aids and also our students have noticed that with Mr. Froch. The program has benefited greatly and many of the students have
117shown significant improvement. Mr. Froch has spent so much of his own resources and so much of his own time on helping all of our diverse learners and I have noticed personally as part of the ACE program seconds remaining that Mr. Froch is extremely passionate and extremely patient. I am here to ask you to please consider allowing Mr. Frost to stay in some position at Jones College Prep because I feel and all of our students and staff feel that he will bring enormous benefit to Jones College Prep. Thank you very much. Thank you for your comments. And our last speaker from the speakers list is Edward Mc Edward McNal, speaker number 30. Please enter star six to unmute. Thank you so much uh for the board for having me today. My name is Ned McN. I'm
118a proud parent and an involved parent of three children within Chicago Public Schools. Uh one currently at Jones, another one bound for Jones. We're very excited. And another one at Waters Elementary. Uh I echo all the sentiments that the previous speaker so eloquently outlined. Uh my son Jack is a freshman at Jones and we were so thrilled that he became involved into this uh band and jazz program. Uh Mr. Frost from the time we saw him at student orientation, we knew right away we were so lucky to have an involved teacher. And then once Jack got in and began working under his tutelage, we were we were just so amazed by how transformative and enthusiastic of a teacher um that that he is um for for Jack and his classmates. We were really saddened um
119on March 12th got an email from Principal Dolan about Mr. Frost being uh replaced by uh the previous band director. We were really taken back. We did we had no idea that it it was a temporary position. Um, and and we're just saddened, I think, for the reason that the the the the the uh that that the previous uh person mentioned that he he's he's an amazing teacher. The kids all love him. He's transformative. He's he's literally in the middle of transforming this program and and it really just feels like the rug is being pulled out from under these kids that that just admire him so much. So, um it's it's with uh nothing against Mr. Block. I I don't know him. I didn't know anything about him until this email on the 12th. And
120we are just so impressed by Mr. Frost and really hope that there's an opportunity for him to continue to to work at Jones uh and and help these kids because they look up to him so much and it would be an absolute shame for him to not be involved with their um academics moving on. Thank you so much um for the board for our time today. Thank you for your comments. President Hardly Harden, we also have an elected official who would like to address the board. Alderwoman Stephanie Coleman from the 16th ward who is here in person. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Thank you for responding back to uh our board uh CEO Martinez, to President Harden, to this very distinguished board members. Uh, I am the very proud alderman of the 16th ward. And in
121the 16th ward, I represent 20 Chicago public schools. And as an alderman, there are a few institutions that uh, no alderman or community should lack. Schools, hospitals, grocery stores, and Walgreens. Now, this quite isn't the platform for a closed Walgreens. However, of the 20 schools, three of those schools are in the charter network. That is Catalyst Maria, Providence Englewood, and Unbudsman South. You all, Catalyst Maria is the only school in the 16th ward that service kindergarten through 12th grade. Unbudsman South up until last year was the only high school of those 20 schools in the 16th ward. and Providence Englewood is one of the few schools in the West Englewood community. You all, all of those schools have strong community partnerships, especially Maria Catalyst in the Chicago Lawn and Marquette Park uh neighborhood with institutions
122like Holy Cross and St. Bernard. Their model of teaching minds and touching lives lives has been a true testament of communities like Marquette Park, Englewood, Back of the Yards, New City. I urge the board to please demonstrate your commitment to equitable education and strong community partnerships. Board, I know you have some dis important decisions to make. I could only imagine some of the votes that you have to take and I think you might feel like city council right now. But certainly I ask that not only for schools in the 16th ward but schools, every teacher, every principal, every special educate, every person that make up the faculty and staffs at schools on the south and west side and north sides, especially for black and brown students, that you remember that commitment and the advocacy for
123highquality education no matter what options, no matter what community. But I ask that you find in your hearts to make sure that schools like those that I've mentioned that they will not be closed. You all the the irony of the three schools that I mentioned. I have three vacant schools in my ward alone. Three vacant schools. So I ask that we write the wrongs and that students will not be another product of disinvestment on the south and west side. God bless you all. Thank you for this opportunity and know that I am praying with and for each and every one of you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. President Harden, this concludes public participation. Board members, do we have any questions or comments related to public participation? We're now moving to a
124short recess. I'm sorry. Board member Bannon. Yeah. Um CO Martinez. I just uh hoping you could address give us an update. I uh as much as you can in public on the contract negotiations we've heard a lot from we had speakers here to ask about that. Can you give the board some sort of update? I think what I would like President Bannon is um I know our chief of labor is work is going to be working on an update for you very quickly for the board. Again things are very dynamic. The only thing I'll say is that um again we can we're as close as we ever been and I think again I'm very optimistic that you know we'll have a resolution you know in the near future. Thank you President Harden. Um first I
125I just want to congratulate uh the excellent work at Farragate uh and make sure it's not lost on the public that it is a sustainable community school. Uh, I want to congratulate the girls basketball team at Kinwood. Um, as a graduate of Kinwood in 1991, um, I'm proud and I think that Kinwood stands as a testament in Chicago public schools as a neighborhood school with a magnet component that's been a top 20 school for 50 years. And I don't think Kenwood is celebrated enough. But um point of personal privilege, I do want to just celebrate the fact uh and thank you uh CEO Martinez for your remarks earlier. Uh but the story of Diet winning the state championship can be a movie. Um 10 years ago at this time, Diet was closed. Not being saved
126from closure, it was closed. Uh the last year there were 13 students that died. They were called the diet 13 and a community banded together and fought for four years to say that we deserve a prek a worldclass prek through 12th grade system of education in our neighborhood. And diet stands today as a testament um to the power and beauty of folks when they are allowed to impact the institutions that affect their lives. Um from hunger strike to state champion any folks out there that can make it happen. It could be a movie. Um, I also want to just say to the folks that are concerned about the Black Student Success Plan, so are we. Uh, and we are, uh, very serious about filing a resolution. Um, to harmonize with state law, um, just ask
127for a little patience um, with a lot of the things that we have to deal with as a board. Uh but we're very serious about both filing that resolution and I have already volunteered uh to be the person that's on post uh on the board if the board would have me to be the person representing that one of the people representing that committee. Last thing I want to just report to the public, um, in the midst of, as you know, contract negotiations and everything going on, uh, a team of seven board members went to Springfield this week, um, to begin to meet with legislators around how could how could um, Illinois become the education state in 10 years being in a uh, with Chicago being a global city. It's inexcusable that for decades we were
12849th in public education. And so we met with several legislators and I just want to report that we'll be going down every two weeks on post to build a campaign to d to make sure that the state is paying its fair share to fund public education not only in Chicago but in the state of Illinois. Uh the last thing I would say on that point um that folks may have heard today that um President Donald Trump did file an executive order to disband the US Department of Education. I want to say to every principal, to every teacher, to every parent in the room, that what that's going to look like, and we may not feel it for a year, but what that is going to look like is when you get that $430,000 on your
129discretionary budget from Title One, imagine that gone. Imagine the resources that you have for a speech therapist if you have a child with special needs. Imagine that gone. So, this is a time not for spin, but for leadership. And so, uh, we're going to do our level best, um, to do our jobs as board members to try to come up with a way to make sure that we are, um, equitably funding our schools. So, um, we'll report out each board meeting to let you know that, you know, we're going and and what's happening, but just want to make sure that the public understood that. Thank you, Board Member Rosenfeld. Uh, I also want to say thank you to the brave students that come up and speak. I know it takes a lot of guts. Um,
130so I appreciate that. Congratulations to Fargate as well. Um much like today's Ben budget amendment being pulled without notice to the board. Um in terms of charter renewals, punting the ball for a second month does concern me. I I care so much about those 20,000 students. I've asked to understand why that keeps getting punted down the road and I haven't gotten an answer, but I hear you and I agree. Um that's it. Thank you, Board Member Smith. You know, uh, I know that board member Brown is my brother because he took all the words out my mouth. I want to echo the sentiments and with with board member Brown being my brother, I gotta say that uh board member Thomas is our elder and gives us a lot of guidance and thank you for the
131guidance and counsel you've given me. Uh I want to also give a big shout out to Farragate and I agree with board member Brown. Kinwood does not get enough recognition for the excellence that they produce. I want to also give uh a big warm shout out to Diet because not only is it a movie, it's a movement. With that being said, there were some people that came and spoke today that don't get a lot of recognition or any recognition at all. And while I use data as the foundation for the decisions that I make, there's nothing like visiting a school, especially the option schools that I've been visiting. and I visited Southshore XL and I saw the wonderful work that they do with our most vulnerable populations after we just voted to pass a $18
132million contract for Back to Our Future. Options uh XL is exactly the student population that that was for and I see students and options. It was a studentled tour. The school was student informed. That was the environment. It was colorful. Students who uh were underserved in other schools and that was their last option. They were thriving getting barbers licenses, getting uh security licenses and getting rigorous academic support. I just want to say how proud I am of those students. The student government that gave me the tour through the school were students from Haiti, Mexico, Brazil, and even the neighborhood of Southshore that they grew up in. I know that there is a concern about people who look at education as a predatory business. That is not what I experienced when I went through those option
133schools with those most vulnerable children who were being served. But because of that, I also want to say how proud I am of the body of this board that co-sponsoring a resolution you will see today are members from across the aisle. Member Thatakura and member Ebony De. And Maya Angelou says this, and I'll end. She says, "When you learn, you teach. When you get, you give. When you know better, you do better." Mayor Dailyaly instituted a policy of CEO over superintendent. And today, we will bring our infrastructure and our body back into place. And so, you know, as board member Brown stated, they are eroding the Department of Education. There is no time like now to make sure that Chicago ensures that whoever leads CPS understands the core work of schools and we don't lose
134that experience in education. So, I am proud of this board, proud of this body, how we're working together, and how we're all seeing the same things at the same time. Let's f follow the words of our dear Maya Angelou. Let's do better. Thank you. Thank you. I wanted to echo board member Brown's comments about um the trip that some of us were able to take earlier this week to Springfield. Um, I wanted to say especially thank you um to the staff including um chief of staff to the CEO La Lau Roman who helped us um and the IG team who facilitated some of the conversations that we had in Springfield and provided us with some resources. I think that there's a lot that we may disagree on on this board but there are definitely things
135that we agree on. One of them is that we need more resources and funding for our students. And when we were down there in Springfield having conversations both with legislators representing Chicago, who had kids in public schools, who were strong champions for public schools in the city of Chicago um and also downstate legislators um or suburban legislators, everyone that we spoke to, whether they have been vocal about it or not, mentioned the need for additional investment in public education. And right now there's a lot of competing priorities because the Department of Education is facing cuts. We're also seeing cuts to Medicaid and to housing and to social security. And so in this tight of a budget year to prioritize education, there's a lot that we are going to have to do and a lot that
136we're going to have to do in coalition with others. So um really appreciate the folks that were able to come down this week. the legislators that were able to speak with us um will be going down in the future, but the call to the public is please contact your legislators at the state level um and ask them to support funding for public schools. Um no, no matter if you're a teacher, if you're a principal, if you're a parent, if you're a student, that really matters because in a world of competing priorities, um there needs to be some pressure to advocate for education first because education is truly an investment. Um, and the other piece of that is when we're competing for limited resources, we also have to advocate for the additional revenue to make sure
137that we meet our budget needs in a sustainable way, not just a short-term fix. So, again, thank you so much to the CEO and your team that supported this, and thank you to board members um for making this a success. Any more questions or comments? I do just want to underscore and appreciate and lift up the board members who've went down to Springfield. One of the benefits of having such a large board is we get to divide and conquer and so I appreciate the leadership that you guys took last week to uh represent us and represent us well. We'll now move into a short recess. Board member Pope, do you have a motion? M1, I move that we take a 30 minute. I second the motion. Board member Pope, can you read that um motion
138back into record? Thank you. Uh I move that the board take a 30 minute recess. Now that my mic is on, I'll say it again. I move that the board take a 30 minute recess. Is there a second? I second the motion. Thank you. I'll proceed with a roll call. Member Lozano. Yes. Member Smith. Yes. Member Lopez. I. Member Thomas. I. Member Foil. Yes. Member Wallace. I. Member Kuster. I. Member Pope. Yes. Member Rosenfeld. Yes. Member Rivas. Yes. Member Rio Sierra. Yes. Member Brown. Yes. Member Bannon. Hi. Vice President Baltista. Yes. Member Gutierrez. Hi. Member Biggs. I. Member Thodakura. I. Member Blae. I. Member Zachor. Yes. Member Deberry. Yes. 20 I zero Naz. This motion is adopted by the board. This meeting will now go into a 30 minute recess. team. Can you remove the
139in recess slide? The meeting of the board of education is reconvened. We'll now proceed with the business portion of the meeting. CEO Martinez, we're ready for your presentations. Thank you, President Harden. Um, and before we start our presentation, President Harden, I wanted just to um, you know, this was mentioned by one of the public speakers. U, one of our most devoted um, retired employees passed away just suddenly. Um, it was Lauren Claire Mlen. And, uh, Lauren um, and I go way back. She was she's been in human resources and talent u all her career in CPS. And when I came as CEO for Chicago, she was our interim head of talent. She wanted to retire immediately after I came and I asked her to stay because I had just started. I was getting to know
140Ben. And so I remember how I would joke with her because I said, you know, she she died at at the young age of 59. And so I joke I joke with her about how she was too young to retire. And I just got to say, um, she was just a a quiet leader. She was she was um completely devoted to the district, to our staff. She was responsible for all the amazing recruitment gains that we gained over the last 20 years. So, um again, um if you don't mind, President Hart, if we could just have 30 seconds of silence for her and her family. Thank you, board members. And with that, uh again, we'll turn back to um talking about our postsecondary success. And we have our amazing college and career readiness team that
141are ready to present. And I believe uh Chief Hogar will probably kick it off. Thank you. Actually, I'm handing it to Deputy Rodriguez to kick it off. All right. Good afternoon, everyone. Uh good afternoon, uh board members. Uh my name is Armando Rodriguez. I'm the deputy chief office and college and career success. And before I start, I would like to thank uh board member Harden for joining us to the skill trade event yesterday. In total, we engaged 1,12 students from 78 unique schools across the four hosted at the union training centers. Also, our goal is to raise the bar for all equity access on the programs. So today we're going to talk about our success in advising the progress made from the learn plan succeed which created the foundation for this postsecondary plan. Also the
142purpose of this theory of action is to increase the students persistent. So I'm going to hand it off this to our to our amazing executive directors. Thank you. Good evening board members. Uh my name is Dr. Heidi Truax. I'm very humbled and honored to serve as the executive director of the office of school counseling and post-secondary advising. If we could go to the next slide. We wanted to start off today um actually the slide after that even I apologize. Great. Um we wanted to start off today sort of giving you a quick look at um what we want our students to be experiencing on their post-secary journey. So you'll see here sort of a map of what uh the experiences of a student are like from sixth grade through alumni status. So you'll notice that
143they should be supported by college and career instruction that starts as early as sixth grade. That post-secary individualized learning plan tasks which are done on our school links platform are paramount to their growth and understanding of the options available to them. There's high quality advising for both course selection into rigorous courses as well as post-secary across all paths exposure to college campuses um trades programs and professionally diverse representatives through career fairs and other opportunities and then experiences like work-based learning internships and rigorous coursework. As we head into our next slide, this is just a reminder from the five-year strategic vision that our five-year visionary goal is that um all students, if we can go to the next slide, sorry. Um really are earning the equivalent of a semester of college credits while they're in high
144school. That way we can ensure that each and every student in our high schools um are aware, ready, they have the access and the success in life beyond high school, whether they're seeking to do that through college or a non-deree pathway such as enlistment or trades or another experience. We know that paramount to both of um their preparation and their ultimate success in post-secary is early attainment. So, I'm going to hand it over to one of our co-executive directors to talk to you a little bit about the early attainment process. Thank you, Dr. Trex. Uh, good evening board members. I my name is Maria Busio. I'm the executive director for early college and career education. Very excited to be with you today. Uh through our career connected learning approach, we prepare students by connecting them
145to employers and industry providers uh through activities like career and technical education, which many of you may be familiar with, work-based learning, and early college. The aim here is to give students an opportunity to experience the future they aspire to while they're still with us here at CPS. uh we are committed to providing options that accelerate and support their goals and plans for life beyond high school. And so we focus a lot on skills, we focus on knowledge and we also focus on mindsets for the future. So a lot of our work is very much around that. Um I want to share a few successes beyond what you see on the screen for our CTE programming. We do have programs in 80 schools and we have 34 pathways that are represented. We are currently working
146on uh expanding the types of certificates and certifications that are recognized under our programs and we're working very closely with industry providers to ensure that those certifications that our st students are earning are industry aligned. We're also working on ensuring that our students have an opportunity to participate in team-based challenges while they're with us. In terms of work-based learning, very exciting work there happening as well. We have recorded over 8,000 experiences so far this year. Uh, and we're gearing up to kick off our summer internship programming. Last year, we were able to place over 1,400 students with workplace providers, and we hope to be able to do a lot more this year, and we're already moving in that direction. This week, we concluded a four-part series of skilled trades events. We did this in cohesion
147with hire 360 Leona laborers, the plumbers and also uh carpenters. We just did that yesterday. Very exciting. And and like deputy shared we were able to impact over,00 students. Very exciting work there. We have also uh just launched our second year with the uh laborers training program and this is through a relationship that we currently have with Leuna Chicago Laborers District Council and the Department of Streets and Sanitation. What's really unique about this program is that our students get to participate in a two-week training program that feeds into uh essentially work through the summer with the streets and stance team. Uh and then our students who then bid for the positions are able to get positions with the city. What's really exciting is that last year we were able to do this with 75 of
148our students and 55 of them did get employed by students and sanitation. Uh very exciting work and this year we'll be able to do 100 students with the hopes of doing the same and replicating even even more impact and more jobs for our students. Uh most recently, we also just graduated our third cohort with the plumbers union where our students spent 10 weeks with uh the plumbers. They sat with uh they sat for interviews with general contractors and they've got letters of commitment and they just sat for the test for the apprenticeship with plumbers. We're very excited and waiting for the results in that. Uh what I'm hearing from the plumbers folks is that our students do really really well. Uh, and I'm hoping that our students will will get picked up. We started with
14933 students this year. 30 of them went through the entire program and 29 said for the test. One of them got picked up by the elevator union. So that's why he didn't sit for the test. Very exciting work. Um, and then uh this year we are reaching our fifth year anniversary with the relationship that we have with City College of Chicago through our Chicago road map and we're getting ready to kick off Chicago Roadmap 2.0 know which will expand beyond just city colleges. It will also now include UIC, Chicago State, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, NIOU, and there are more colleges signing up to work with us in creating a smooth transition from Chicago public schools to city colleges and beyond. Uh IIT being a model to follow, uh some of our students are are working
150towards that masters and they started while they were with with us. Very exciting. Next slide if if if you will, please. Thank you. In terms of the Eric C for us, dual credit, dual enrollment and the CTE certifications do play a key role in this metric and we have seen slight increases, slight growth over time. We're currently working with networks and school leaders uh to course map and to connect with partnerships that will increase options for our students and quality programs. Um we are also seeing some growth in the dual credits across all communities and all schools. Happy to report that that's that's a big gain for us. Uh one of the things that we have been working on the the last couple of years and this started really this this May is this new
151thing that has come through ISBY. It's a statewide movement. We call it a statewide movement and it's a college and career pathway endorsement. Uh again, very exciting work happening there because it allows us to expand districtwide our career connected learning options. And in the visual that you have on screen, it shows a lot of the work that you're probably already familiar with here at Chicago Public Schools. But what's unique about this is that it brings it all together. And the focus here is to prepare students across Illinois to confidently take on life beyond high school. and it also allows us to retain our workforce. Uh last year we were approved by ISBY to provide the endorsement in five programs. I'm happy to report that as of this morning. Um we did apply for 18 programs
152and we have been approved for 16 and two are pending. Uh we are are hoping that those two will also be approved but very exciting to to to be able to share those news. Um again in our desire to make career connected learning available to all students we have organized our supports by shifting staff to the schools. Um we are very committed to having supports closest to students. In the next slide uh I did want to share a little bit with you about the early college progress that we are making. uh we are we know that if our students complete 15 or more college level credits they are more likely to persist and to graduate from college. So very exciting for us to be able to move towards that metric. Last year we recognized 65
153high schools at the milestone celebration. This year that will happen on May 20th uh which recognized students who earn 15 or more early college credits. And this year, we're still awaiting some of our final data in terms of the spring enrollments, and we are expecting that we're going to hit more than 71 schools who have who will be recognized at the milestone celebration. We're on track to double the number of graduates with 15 or more credits. And that if we look at uh school year 2022 to now, we're doubling it. Um this year, we are expecting to graduate over 200 students with an associates degree. And this again since 20 2022, school year 2022, um it's it's it's what tripled. That's a pretty big gain. Uh this year, new dual credit course uh requests went
154up by 140 I'm sorry, 184% uh in comparison to this time last year. That is over 200 new course requests across all networks um in City College campuses. And then the last thing I want to share with you is that we currently have upwards of 6,000 students who have earned at least one college credit. Again, exciting news to share with you. I know you all want to snap. That's so exciting. Uh you can tell because kept saying exciting news. It's exciting work, right? We care deeply about this work. Um so on the next slide um we do just want to sort of lift to you the ways in which um this this um post-secary work is put in front of students on the regular. So again uh we do pre really key progress monitoring of
155post-secary work through our school links platform. Um and that is the the primary college and career readiness platform for the district. It serves uh over 170,000 students again because it's serving um students from sixth through 12th grade. For every single grade level um students get the opportunity to complete a minimum of four tasks that help them build a post post-secondary portfolio and this uh vendor is newer. Um, we're in our second year, second year of implementation, first year, second year. Man, I it's all a blur, right? Um, uh, and it's been such an improvement over our previous platform where now it's actually interactive, it's visual, it's dynamic, it translates into different languages, they can use it on their phones. So, really incredible stuff happening there. Um, while simultaneously it's being supported by adults who are
156increasing their capacity and ability to really advise across all pathways. We were once a collegeonly district and we've really recognized in part because of learn plan succeed and the data that has shown us that we consistently have a group of students who confidently tell us college isn't for me. I want to go straight to a trade. I want to go military. I I'm I need to do this service year and then I might go to college, right? um really helped us understand the ways in which we need to better equip the staff to help support them on those journeys and advise while making sure that they're equipped for every single journey because we also know that young people pivot and then usually they end up going to college. So we want to make sure that
157they're prepared in every way. Um school links logs experiences career in it provides career interest uh inventories. It's a place where young people can build resumes um and complete those tasks that I talked about and that culminates in learn plan succeed which is um an unprecedented graduation requirement in Chicago public schools that's now in year five maybe um where young people are telling us what they're going to do after high school and it is no um no exaggeration to tell you that we've seen extreme benefits for our students since this graduation requirement has come to be u you're going to see that in a moment on the next slide but we've also seen it again benefit our staff because it's helped us understand ways in which we need to better support our school counselors and
158coaches in being able to advise across all pathways. On my final slide, um I do want to just lift for you our college enrollment and college persistence rates. So, um when I got into this role, I got to get some keys handed over for me from someone that had been with the office since 2004. And he said, "Heidi, when we started, we had less than half of our graduates going to college." Right? 43% of students in 2004 were going to enroll in college. That number is now a record-breaking 69.8%. Y'all, that's so huge, right? Um because nationally for districts that have comparable students to ours, comparable conditions to ours, that rate is 52%. That's how incredible Chicago public school students are. And we all know that. That's why you all are sitting here. Um, but
159it's so lovely to see it evidenced in this way. Um, I will also call out that we have lots of schools that are doing an incredible job with that. Some of whom who are um, consistently breaking the district average include Huarez, Farragut, Morgan Park, right? Um, we've also seen that persistence improvement has come. It's a little slower. That's harder work because it takes our partners with institutions of higher education. But um for the last four years we've been running two years of alumni support initiative where we um equip staff to do alum be alumni coordinators and offer first um and secondyear post-secary support and our persistence rates increase when we um do uh uh disagregation to look just at the schools who are using the alumni support initiative year round the persistence rates increase. there's
160like oh a two and a half% difference right and so more and more schools are now buying in oh this is important our work doesn't end when they graduate we're excited to support them and as their collegebound students and trade students etc um so I I do want to just call out a couple of students who have schools who have seen huge improvement in persistence because they've done such um good fidelity with the alumni support initiative so if we can please celebrate multicultural arts high school at the little village campus and von stuben who have on incredible works, increasing their persistence year-over-year. Maria and I feel incredibly honored to do this work. We're very nerdy about it, in case you can't tell. We we care about it deeply, as do deputy and chief. Um, and
161we truly appreciate your time today to allow us to share a little bit about the work that we do. Thank you. And President Harden, if I can just give a little context. Um, so the college credit work you're seeing, this is specifically students enrolled in college classes, not count and and I would tell you we're in about the third inning in a baseball analogy. Um, you know, we celebrate these students every year that get at least 15 college credit hours. The the rooms we have to get have to get bigger and bigger because there's more high schools represented and more students. That is this is not factoring in the fact that we're the most accomplished district in terms of advanced placement courses not only taken but passed that also give college credit and does not
162take into account that we have the largest one of the largest international baloria programs in the country that when students pursue the IB diploma and some of the certificate courses they also get college credit. So with that, you know, our team, it's not enough because we have many students that, by the way, want to go into a five-year apprenticeship with the plumbers or they want to be, you know, stolen away by the elevators union, which I didn't know that was a thing, but and so meanwhile, what we're what we're finding where we're really becoming really, and I really credit, you know, the team is a holistic district that really is just trying to help our students find that passion wherever it's at. And these pathways that Maria just talked about, these are pathways that are
163going to be connected not only to higher ed, to uh trade partners, to union partners, to companies. So at the end, and again, we will continue to be the model that the whole country will continue to see. Yes, it's outstanding. First, Maria, you just got to bring more passion to your presentation. We just couldn't couldn't feel it. Uh no, I just want to acknowledge Chief Hogar. I had the opportunity to to come out to the carpenters union yesterday. It was incredible to see all the students and the engagement. Uh this is one of the areas that I'm particularly interested in and so you know want to see it grow, you know, engage us to how we can be helpful. Um let's press the city to do more and let's talk about how PBC and the
164county can also be participants. Uh board member throw to core. Okay. Sure. Thank you. Um, this was this is amazing. I think even back in January with when we had training and we dived in dove into the strategic plan, it was great to see for me this was a highlight the post-secondary goals that we had because they're incredibly ambitious goals and you're giving students opportunities and resources to meet those school those goals and surpass them. So, this is incredible to see. Um, I have a couple questions. One is around I see you're tracking persistence, so not just college enrollment. How far along do you track our students? Is it through college graduation? Is it beyond? Um, that's a first question that's connected to another one. Thanks. Um, so we, uh, track as far as what
165we publicly report, we use enrollment and persistence so that they show up for the second year, right? Um, internally and what we use for to help support staff and advising. We're following them the whole way. Um, because we that completion piece is what we're absolutely interested in. We just have to at some point empower those post-secondary partners to really support our students through the journey. So we have some uh key partnerships. We have a college compact with our 35 top attended to really engage universities and how to best support CPS students because they're not designed for CPS students um to make sure that they're persisting and we've seen improvements from that. Um but that's that's our our key focus is on the persistence piece. always an eye towards completion and then looking at that to
166help guide our advising. Thank you. And then my second question is how GED programs for our parents fit into that that strategy um for students that may not complete college but later they have kids in CPS and may be able to participate in GED programs. U I know there's only so much you can focus on because if you focus on everything, you're not focusing on anything. Um but how how does that or could that fit in? I think that's a great question and for one, our partnership with City College includes continual continuing education and GED education. Um, so we're able to work with our family and community engagement team and then schools that are sustainable community schools or community schools initiative that have parent programming to make that connection as well. We don't we don't
167have the adult education funding in in our office per se. um as some there are some districts that are organized that way and it's based that's based on the state. Um but in terms of our partnerships with all of the GED providers and city colleges is really an amazing opportunity because the way that they're organized once you start in the GED or the adult ed program it can convert to early college to college credit or the certificate programs. So GED in in and of itself is um doesn't open as many doors as if you're in that pathway and it converts directly to um college credit. Yeah. So board member just to you know so the chancellor and I have always this agreement and we we go out to community meetings together and we we talk
168about how CPS will you know in partnership with um you know the community colleges or universities we will continue to support our students but he always says the chancellor says I will also support your parents. So don't just limit yourself to the students. Students, bring your parents along, bring your uncles and aunts, whether it's a GED program, whether it's helping them with partnering with us to get their high school diploma to continue to college because it's not just the high school diploma. So just know this is a passion that the chancellor and I have, but literally he literally says, I will take care of the adults, Pedro. You take you help me with the students and then we'll do it together. Thank you, board member Rivas. Uh thank you, Mr. President. Um so first off,
169uh all all of this work is my jam. Uh if you know anything about my background, I spent uh seven years as an alumni counselor at UIC College Prep, one of the Noble Schools where that programming around alumni supports, persistence, retention, um has a long deep history and I'm really really proud of the success we've had. Um, and so one of the things about alumni coordinator, I also was called an alumni coordinator when I started that role in 2015 and we do so much more than coordinate things and I would love for them to be called counselors. Uh, but that's just a little nitpicky of me, but it's definitely incredibly important work. I'm so proud to see this. Um, we know that the data is out there and that we have the ability to be
170able to track our students through the National Student Clearing House and all the other ways that that we get this data and information. And so, uh, I'm so happy to see, um, as someone, um, who worked at a high school also doing the dual enrollment, that's a really hard piece, uh, because it's a, it's a lot harder to track a student once they're enrolled in a class at Malcolm X or whatever other city college. Um, and making sure that they're actually showing up, especially if it's an online class. And so, uh, kudos to you to be able to to continue to support those students and ensuring that they're getting those credits because it makes a huge difference. Um, as someone who is, you know, a first generation college uh, graduate, um, having um, at back
171in my time in CPS, it was called College Bridge with uh, Marcia Boyd way back when. Um, and so, College Bridge, having those classes from NEIU allowed me to be able to strategically drop classes in college to keep me on track to graduate uh, in four years. And so that's all, you know, part of this work that you've been building upon here in CPS. Um, and then I also just want to really shout out, uh, Maria, who I've known for many years, uh, another Enlas alum through, uh, Nor Eastern Illinois University. um that unless a program that helps more Latinos uh get into higher education to support our students, our black and brown students graduate from college because we know that that college that college degree or that trade program or whatever that certification is
172is going to really make that difference to help you build that generational wealth to be able to lead choicefilled lives. So, thank you Maria. Thank you to the whole team there for the amazing work you're doing for our kids and our families. or member Kuster. I too am just going to echo the thank you sentiment. Um I I think it's wonderful that we have so many different options and choices and great partnerships for our students. Um I know when I have been going around and visiting schools within my district, the principles are very excited to show me their CTE programs. Very excited to take me down and show me what the students are doing. And the students are engaged. They're excited. Um I don't even think they know I'm standing anywhere near them because they
173are just very focused on what they're doing. So, it's great that so many of our kids have so much choice um within the district. Um and I just also want to thank all of you for your passion. Like it is so clear and um that feels very good too knowing that we have people that are super passionate and super excited about what they're doing um and want to build and expand on that program for the benefit of our kids. So, thank you so much. Board member Lopez. Thank you, President. I'm also going to be adding uh to phrases. I love hearing about the partnerships that we have with the labor um you know making these opportunities accessible to individuals in the community. Um in particular hearing about all the schools um the ones name in
174the seven district and also uh I I agree with the point about the GED for the parents. I've seen this in some of our community schools. Um, thinking about the Portkali and the Little Village area and also the Little Village uh, South Landell high schools. Uh, that being said, I was wondering if you can share um because I know it's difficult to track because we don't track students immigration status. How are we supporting those students that don't have you know the proper documentation to uh you know right away go into a paid internship or more difficulty getting into a four-year because of how much they got to pay out of pocket. Let let me start team and then uh please add on. So, um, one of the wonderful gifts we have in our community is
175that every student who is a CPS student, um, and I don't remember if it's a if there's a grade requirement of a B or uh, but but regardless of immigration status, free tuition at the community colleges, point blank. Uh, and then of course there's several programs that we try to connect students with, special scholarships, and I'll let the team f, you know, so there's that's an also focus area as well. Um but the number one thing I tell especially any student who shares with me and you know in confidence that look I'm a senior I'm worried because I'm undocumented. The first thing I say and especially with our recent arrivals I go right to them I say you realize when you graduate free college immediately at the community college and you can go into medicine
176technology manufacturing what in teaching I mean and you'll continue from there. Latine. Yeah, I would just um in addition to the STAR scholarship which undocumented students and uh students from mixed um immigration status are welcome to to take advantage of um I'm very fortunate on my team to have a program manager specifically for undocumented championship uh in post-secary. Um and we've been convening for over seven years a student voice committee that was called so coalition of advocates for uh undergraduate uh student education. And those young people told us in year two of that, so six years ago, hey, adults need better training and how to advise us. No shocker there, right? Um, and so we've developed a a credential that, uh, all CPS school counselors and college and career coaches, teachers can opt into, admin
177can attend. Um, that's a one day to come in and really learn how to do advising for students that are undocumented and on the immigration spectrum, to learn about it, to learn about all the different opportunities. they get a know your rights component so that there's some protections built into the education as well. Um so that's a part of the work is is really helping equip the adults to advise students across. Um and then we're also partnering and Maria has championed a lot of this work with both higher ed and with um our other partners of how do you build out better systems to support young people that are want to access you will be incredible um parts of your community if you can create pathways, right? um you might not be able to call
178it a scholarship. So what can can you give them a stipend? Can you give them an honorarium? Right? So trying to just work the system as much as possible because if they can't do work study, what can they do? Um and making sure that we're taking advantage of the undocumented liaison that every campus is required to have by the state of Illinois to really actually be advocates on those campuses to build better pathways for students. And I would add as well that the STAR scholarship, there's a specific scholarship for students who are in options schools that has a slightly different criteria. I know our great partners from the options network are here, but um we're seeing with students who are newcomers who have a shorter runway to graduate if they are going to an option
179school. We also are really focused and counseling on the the options version of the STAR scholarship. Thank you so much and I appreciate the response and also uh some you know very thoughtfulness of how do we engage the families and the community. So thank you board member Pope. Yes. I also of course want to thank you and I want to say that it's great to hear about how much progress there has been. We had a situation when I was at Gage Park where our saludiatoran, our second in the class, found out in January when she wanted her parents to fill out the FAFSA that she had come here at the age of four months. And even though her younger brothers and sisters, who were nowhere near as academically inclined as she was were all citizens,
180she was not a citizen. And it was just heartbreaking to see what she went through and how few alternatives there were for her and that she literally ended up working at the dollar store on Kenzie Avenue just broke my heart more than almost anything else. And it's also great to hear about the partnerships that you've developed with different unions. And I'm wondering if you've done any work with women in the trades. I have some friends who are very actively involved in women in the trades and they're a great organization for supporting our young women who may want to go into uh non-traditional but very well-paying careers. Yes, thank you for raising that. And I'd love to talk about women in the trades, especially in women women's history month. when they were at all four of
181our trades events um our skilled trades events and then uh with all of the unions we currently work with because women in the trades is not a hiring organization they provide the connection um uh Latasha who is one of the our great partners at Lyona is a member of labors 101 and she's a member of women in trades so when we get our young women into the unions we get to make that connection And I think that mentoring relationship we've done. We've made a lot of progress in changing the access to uh to unions and their great jobs and we still need to make sure there's mentoring. So women in the trades does a great job with that. Higher 360 does a great job with the mentoring because we are still always going to think
182about persistence and just like we think about college persistence, maintaining that pathway in the trades uh is a really important point. So we we definitely women in tra in the trades is a great partner. Um and we appreciate all of those workforce development partners that are at the table with us as well. I'm gonna break protocol here and I just have to say I didn't talk about the CPS Dream Fund and my team will literally kick me in the shins if I don't remind you that CPS also has our own dream fund scholarship. Every year we award more than 70 students. Uh last year we honored students from I think it was 21 different countries. Um the need is so great. So if you know people with deep pockets, send them to Children's First Fund.
183Have them to look at the CPS Dream Fund. We need y'all's help. um because that is another primary way in which we are supporting our students and it's a last dollar scholarship that we award directly. VB Bautista, thank you and I mean hats off Chief Hogard. I'm so proud of all the work that you guys have done. Your team is incredible. Um I come from a bluecollar family. I have so many uh electricians, plumbers. My husband works for the railroad and um I'm this is such an just like what an opportunity for our students, our CPS students. Um and I I do have one question. Do you have the ratios of like uh male and female um students who enter the program for the trades programs? we have to manually assemble that um because we
184don't have a good mechanism with uh employment data. That's okay. I'm not I don't I don't want to put more work on your already very plate, but it's something Yeah. that I'm also really interested. Michael Madre is a electrician at Ford, a single mom and is also uh a graduate participant of the women's in the trades. And so we you know also want to talk to our our women. There's a lot of the new economy like re renewables like solar and uh wind and all the other things that are on the horizon. Well, were before Trump but um but you know there's opportunities for like also um blue collar workers to work on these like kind of sustainable jobs uh in the in the trades. So I'm really excited about that and I'm really happy
185that you um have been able to accomplish so much. Thank you. Thank you. We do recruit intentionally for all of our events. We look at our demographics. We look at the network so we can see part of the city. We look at types of schools. And um the trades where we've gotten uh we had a great cohort of young women who were successful in getting into the plumbers apprenticeship right out of high school graduation. Um and this year at that event, one of the first year apprentices who was leading is is one of the young women. Um so we we are getting a great reception from the trades where we need to continue to grow um is having young women apply. Um so that's definitely an area that that we want to focus on and
186we do know our college data is skewed more uh female as well. So I think making sure that we're really making sure everyone understands all the opportunities. Um, and we've had great response with built. I think part of this too is we need to build those opportunities. So all of these partnerships we need to build. We need the unions at the table. We need the industry partners at the table. And then with us as the education um component and I think that's the place where when we say where we can use additional support, it's making sure we get the industry partners at the table. Um the unions have been great and responsive, but they can't hire. So when we're talking about um the, you know, the Southworks development and which is also my community, we're
187saying we want to make sure that these construction jobs are representative of our our community. And then we need all of the contractors at the table to do the hiring, but then we also need the project to be funded and the unions to be there. So, it really is a dance of getting us all at the table. Wow. And just please lean on me. I would love to support you and in that effort and also with the dream fund. Uh anything that I could do if you need me to attend a meeting with with you guys or anything like that. Um my door is always open. Thank you for so much. This is this is especially a program that is really close to my heart. So, um I will definitely uh support in any way
188that I can. Or member Rosenfeld. Uh I like my fellow board members want to give you all the praise in the world. I really appreciate the work that you do. Um learn plan succeed becoming a graduation requirement was a gamecher. You know as a parent of three graduates and a junior in high school it's nice to see programs that are created and then implemented and implemented in a way that I I hear from the principal and then I hear from the school counselor and then I hear from my own child. So there's accountability which leads to success. So one of the big successes isn't just that it became a requirement but at even at the school level at the student level it's being implemented. They understand why they're doing what they're doing. They're given the
189checklist. It's really simple easy to use and look at the success. So kudos to to doing something and taking it from the beginning all the way through to my own daughter telling me to sign it off. So I appreciate your work. Yes, you deserve the applause. Bannon, um I'll set you up for an encore right here. Um like everyone said, thank you for your great work. Uh uh I agree with all that. Um I thank you for your program. I my daughter got some uh dual credit and uh um and um she went to write for a summer English class so she might graduate a semester early. So my pocketbook, thank you as well. Um but uh my question is what um what do you need from us? What what do you see your blockers?
190You you've got a great trend for success which is fantastic. maybe there's a little COVID dip or whatever, but um you know what what do you see as the main things you need to continue your success? I I mean first we need we need all of your partnerships at the table with us. I think um that's really important. We are doing a lot of look we're doing we're looking a lot at policy and where there's potentially barriers um for student access. So, that's something we'll be coming um this summer and the early fall and talking about some some policy pieces. Um I think this the 70% of students reaching a semester or more is a very ambitious goal and um like learn plan succeed. There's some folks who think it doesn't apply to all students
191or shouldn't apply to all students. So, we need we need the backing that we can do this. we can put the intentional supports in place. We we don't want to lower the bar for any students. And so I think that um as a place of of keeping making sure we have everything we need to implement this policy um and the roadmap 2.0 that we're going to talk about uh shortly with our launch of creating that seamless partnership into a 4-year university from us with zero credit loss. um is the early college credit is free, but the support that we need to have within our office to make sure we can progress monitor and get all those students over the finish line um is something we need to maintain that I think that the points around
192um it's not just a mandate of like you need to graduate with this requirement because if we would have done that without support it would have just it would eliminated a group of students who didn't have what they need. So I think always keeping the needs around post-secary success. The reason why we are successful is because we have college and career specialists. We have CTE specialists. We have more counselors in schools than we've ever had. And we we are thinking a lot about what are those supports along the way every step. Um, so what we really need is to maintain the the uh this isn't we've built the capacity and now we can walk away. Um, and we know we're in I think we all know where we are with with the budget and the
193uh national conditions. Um, but this is an area where our students need us to be there in partnership with them all the way through graduation. Yeah. And I'll just add, Megan, because um you're trying to allude to it, but I rather be direct about it. So, you know, board members um not only in Chicago, but in every district, everybody likes to marginalize our central office departments. They feel like it's bureauc bureaucracy. It's wasted funding. And I've always been really clear that everything we do in CPS, it's not perfect, but it always has a purpose. And so, there's always areas that we can improve on. We'll never say that we don't. But these additional supports for students, the systems and structures we create, we have wonderful counselors in our schools, but without a leader like Heidi,
194they're not going to be as effective. Without leaders like Maria, uh, Armando, and Megan, they're not going to be as effective. So all that to say as we think about future budgets being protective of our infrastructure because that's usually the first thing that people like to cut and marginalize and they don't realize that it is they're not in they're not independent with the structures at schools. They actually are together and the reason we get our success is because we've been at this for so long improving the structures and investing. These are all extras. I not my word board members but this is not funded by any of our formulas in terms of the state the federal government or even our our local funding. These are considered extras but in Chicago they're not extras. They're essentials
195and that's the reason we're getting the success we're getting. Can I add one thing too? I I I really we need you all to champion that our students are ready now. Like they we need youth apprenticeships to start while the students are with us. We need the roadmap to start while students are with us. We need that warm handoff from us in high school directly into the transitional programs directly to employment because if we let go of our students, it's really hard to get them back. And so this idea that our our students aren't ready that oh, they're not going to pass the apprenticeship test or oh, they need some remedial courses, we really are proving that wrong. And we've set up all of these transitional pathways. And so we need to have that language
196really shouted loud and clear from the from the mountain tops. We need the supports for our students, but they really are ready and they're amazing. Thank you very much. I'm sorry. Board member Brown. I appreciate the work that you all are doing. It it's um it's critical. And I guess as I'm listening, I'm I'm reflecting on my father. Um my father was u a machinist at Wisconsin Steel. And he allow he had a ninth grade education. He allowed us to move out of low-inccome housing and buy a little two-bedroom house on 103rd Street. And you couldn't tell me that we weren't the the Jeffersons, right? You couldn't tell me we weren't moving on up. But I grew up in a community where the person that owned the gas station looked like me. There wasn't a
197corner liquor store on every block owned by somebody else. Because in the African-American community, there was this system of economic development because a lot of us knew how to work with our hands. My father taught me how to work on cars, right? when Wisconsin steel when the steel industry collapsed. My father was an alley mechanic but you know we've seen over the last couple of decades um a lot of the services that used to be at places like Dumbar right used to actually be a school that prepared a middle school that prepared young people to go to CVS or go to Simeon or go to Dumbar. So, I guess um I just want to commend you on that work because I think losing that type of um self-sufficiency in your neighborhood has disastrous impacts. Um
198the loss of economic development, uh living in a state of like colonialism in your own neighborhood because the things that you used to know how to do for yourself is now being done by somebody else. and they do those things based on their opinions of you, not based off what your real needs are. So, I am interested in in thinking about like re like how are you all rebuilding that infrastructure even better for the 21st century that used to exist in our neighborhoods. So, the one of the investments that Maria talked about is shifting central office staff back to schools. So, our big CTE high schools and our early college STEM high schools all have a staff member that is working directly with those schools because we really do believe the school is the unit
199of change and the partnerships and the relationships are at the school level. Um, so that's one of the areas. We submitted our capital uh budget last year and we're in the the midst of some of those uh capital repairs and we're submitting our capital budget for next year with which CTE program uh spaces need that capital attention. Um I still think of Simeon as a new building. It's been there about 20 years, right? Um, and where uh I think the other place that I would add is where should we support programs with city colleges and where is it brick and mortar in our buildings? Um, Olive Harvey has amazing uh aviation and transportation and logistics at a large scale that we don't have in every school. And so where is it that students uh we
200facilitate the classes that are more like labs at all of Harvey and where is it that we do foundational work at our at our high school. So that is definitely something um that we're thinking about and one of the uh one of one of you all also spoke about student agency and really student decision making with support. I think that's another area that um we want students to be able to if you're at builds you get to try all the different trades. Um so thinking about where are places that we can have um cross training within those CTE programs. Um I think one of the other areas and I I don't know if anyone uh wants to jump in on this is that we've got a lot of interest now from students who are not
201in CT programs at all to go into trades pathways. Um, so that's another place where really the idea of the Chicago road map is that you had a lot of on-ramps and off-ramps that were flexible. And uh if if anyone uh came to the the laborers event that we had at Lyona, we had three young people or four four young people that are first year employees in the the city of Chicago. And they were the panel when they stopped speaking they were like swamped like they were rock stars by all of these young people coming up to talk with them. And it was a student from Bogan, a student from Kenwood good and oh my gosh I'm forgetting right now but it was really representative of students from around the city who had not come
202out of CT programs and had they told the other students like this is my career like I'm coming back to do the solar training or and then I'm going to move into working for this other city department. So, I think us thinking about how where are all of those flexibilities and opportunities. Um, and it really is students from across the city that are showing up for all of these opportunities. Gutierrez, uh, first and foremost, I want to thank you guys for all the great work that you guys are doing. Um, but one of the things in my in my day job, I think a lot about marketing and how do you connect those dots? And I think one of the things that in conversations that I've had with unions um is how do you connect
203how being in the trades or in different career pathways is cool. And it would be great to figure out in our schools, how do we work with um both the unions in making promotional videos and bringing in those experiences that you just talked about about those laborers who were once in those seats to make it real. And you know, the ability to be able to talk about what a what an electrician is making on average in Chicago, right? Because there's not many, right? We we a and and talking to them in in pure economics, right? Uh and that I think spurs people the opportunity to do those types of things. And um look, I'm not going to put my uh my my my colleague uh my board member uh Smith, but I'm sure that there
204could be some music in this video um that we can kind of get together to do um just that because I think it's really important um the work that's doing. The other shameless plug that I will put in uh board members is that you know we have a project uh in the development in the 8th district at Hubard kind of looking at an addition that would add some additional space for uh this type of work. So more to come on that. So Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good evening everyone, board members, CEO, Cedo, my colleagues that work for CPS. Um, my name is Richard Smith. I am the chief of the options network. Alongside me is Molly Micleek. She's the director of accountability and school options. Before I begin and uh I'm
205gonna share three points with bullets. I just want to acknowledge a couple of people in here who uh really support the options network. First one is Cedo. Thank you Cedo for really uh your vision and the development of the options network. Uh second person is board member Harden. I just want to thank you for coming to our UBV meeting. Uh it's always great to have board members come out to different uh groups to so they can participate to see what is actually going on. Uh the third person is Mr. Shay Ryfest Smith, right? Had the pleasure of meeting him this week at Excel Southshore. Great meeting. And I think you enjoyed yourself. Kids were and I hope it changed the perception what option schools look like. Students attend options. Uh so thank you for giving
206up your time to come to that to that school. Last but not least, want to acknowledge my colleague here, Molly Leche. Probably one of the smartest people that I've worked with the last 32 years. So I just want to acknowledge you with that. Um, as a chief of the options network, you know, I work with very smart group of people. Sometimes, uh, when when we're there, you're tasked with what to do. So, I've been tasked today with going over three different things. uh the options what typical characteristics of an options student uh the transition from INI to the options network and options uh academic accountability. I will begin with the transition uh from the from INI to the options network and again this was a vision CEDO at the time based on the need to
207strengthen the support for our option schools. Uh the opsis network was established in in school year 22 in the office of network support with the goal of providing educational resource and supports schools who serve our district's most vulnerable student population. When the options network was established, the role of overseeing authorization and removal process moved from the office of incubation, innovation and incubation to the options. With that, I think one of the key goals for me and that I was tasked with was ensuring that district resources were aligned to our option schools um and building trust with our operators to ensure that resources could land at the school building. Needless to say, in three years, I think we've done a solid job at building relationships and supporting school leaders uh that work in the options network.
208We still have a lot of work to do because as we all know, building trust is an ongoing process. We will continue to build trust to support our most vulnerable students that attend our option schools. uh characteristics of an option student. Um option students face significant barriers to educational success and graduation. Option students tend to be older students who are off track. Many many have many are dis uh disengaged or or are at risk of uh disengaging from schools. um option students are dis disproportionately students of color that experience higher rates of mobility, homelessness, uh involvement in the juvenile justice system and victimization. And many of you probably remember uh that at one time black and brown students being pushed out of schools at a high rate which increased the dropout rate. uh due to
209the options network in developing a transfer policy where we now analyze our transfers. Uh we still provide parental choice if a parent wants to send their student to an options network, but we also make sure the student their parents have options. The student have options based on sometimes it's not a good good thing for a student to transfer to an option school because they have all of their credits. uh they may be a attendance problem or academic or a behavior problem, but based on the strong MTSS interventions that are in place now with schools, we we tend to have conversations schools based on how they're supporting these students and is it the right choice for this student to transfer to an option school. So, last but not least, options accountability. Um one key distinction between
210option schools and traditional schools is the method we use to evaluate academic performance. Uh we always start and as I came into the role of the chief I had to do a lot of assessments uh and changed my mindset from being a principal for 15 years to really understanding this population. Uh and I always thought wondered how are these students being assessed and how are these students being uh really educated and I came to the conclusion along with the team that we have to really look at how we are holding schools accountable and it cannot be cannot be equitable if we are using same accountability system that traditional schools use our option students based on the problems or struggles or situations that they face every day. Um, ISB summarive designations which are used to evaluate
211traditional charter and contract schools cannot be appropriately or equitably applied to option schools. And last, in partnership with school stakeholders, CPS has implemented the options accountability policy, which uses a set of metrics that are designed to accurately evaluate the academic performance for this unique student population. Um, so what you will hear today is a three-year process where we had to develop different uh processes of going in and evaluating schools, developing what school visits and school sites, site visits look like uh to really come to this day. We talked about this three years ago uh as it relates to removal of uh for our our option schools, our charters and district and alops and things of that nature. So at this time I will pass it over to Miss to Molly so she can further indulge
212you guys in in in the day. Thank you. Thank you, Chief. Um good afternoon board members. Uh Martinez, I think you might have stepped out on CPS leadership. Uh my name is Molly Mlechek. I'm the director of authorization and school options in the options network. Um to piggy back off of what Chief said, I want to address a narrative that's been circulating regarding students that are killed or injured due to gun violence who are disproportionately enrolled in option schools. Option students by definition are our most vulnerable students in the district. As chief mentioned, they face higher rates of mobility, homelessness, involvement in the juvenile justice system, and victimization, as well as a range of other barriers to educational success. So, it's really important not to confuse cause and effect. Option schools are not the cause
213of these barriers. Rather, option schools serve as the district's last defense before students drop out. Option schools accept these students and welcome them with open arms. It's been said that counseling students out of traditional and uh traditional district-run schools may not be what's in the best interest of students. And this is absolutely true. Unfortunately, this does not always happen. We have a lot of students and families that elect to attend option schools because is it a it is a good fit for them. But unfortunately, there's a lot of students that are still wrongfully being counseledled out of our traditional schools. And option schools are there again to welcome them with open arms. Next slide. So today we are presenting the options charter and contract schools that are up for renewal this year. Um remember that
214the opt the term options refers to the student population served. So within the options network we have charter schools contract ALOP and district run but we're talking about the student population served. So to explain the the overall uh renewal process, uh the the school renewal process allows for a comprehensive review. Thank you. Um an evaluation of school or campus academics, finances, inclusive programming, and equitable systems, and organizational performance over the last three years. This year's option school cohort contains four operators with 20 campuses. After completing a thorough and comprehensive evaluation process, a final recommendation is provided to the board for consideration. There's uh several potential recommendations based on school performance. Schools might be recommended for a 5-year renewal for schools uh sorry uh five-year renewal for schools that meet expectations in all performance domains. And
215charter schools that exceed may be recommended for more than five. Um, there's a five-year term with conditions, shorten renewal terms, or non-renewal. We've already begun to engage with the board and will continue to do so to determine any changes that the board would like to see implemented related to policy changes, the renewal process moving forward, or the language in charter and contract school agreements. And the vote today is on the length of the renewal term or the number of years for each charter or contract school agreement. Next slide. Um so to provide a quick overview of the uh the renewal process and how we engage with schools. Um last April we did a kickoff meeting where we went over all the expectations for schools so they can understand what is involved in the in the
216renewal process. In April we began site visits. We did special education academic culture and climate and English learner. We started them in the fall and then continue or sorry started them in the spring and continued them in the fall. Applications were due in July and then we began to review applications and then the supplemental materials beginning in August. We had ongoing office hours and one-on-one meetings for schools that uh requested it. In the fall and September and October, the charter and contract schools hosted their own renewal state of schools meetings. Um and this was designed to uh for them to talk to students and families about the renewal process. Um then we began to generate the renewal recommendations reports in October through December. In February uh we had the options school charter and contract renewal
217public hearing. So um this allowed community members, stakeholders, aldermen to come um and either provide a verbal or written comments. Uh we had a total of 304 comments across the four option schools um all supporting our schools. Next slide. All right. So the um the renewal evaluation criteria which I'll go in more into more detail in the next couple of slides. Um so we objectively evaluate across four different domains. Academics, inclusive programming and equitable systems or IPEs, financial and organizational. Each domain has specific criteria which I'll talk about in the next couple slides. And then the performance for each domain will result in one of five ratings. So it'll range from exceed standards, meet standards, approaching, needs improvement, and need substantial improvement. Next slide. Um, under the academic performance domain, uh, we look at the
218options accountability scores from the options accountability policy. Um, so each year the schools receive, um, a rating of either good standing or intensive academic support. In school year 24, the options network also conducted an academic site visit to gain a more holistic view of the implementation of instructional practices rather than solely relying on outcomes alone. Um, and the ratings for this domain were based on um the criteria outlined in the options accountability policy as well as the academic site rubrics which are based on the Danielson framework. Next slide. Next we have the financial domain. So the ratings in this domain are based on the criteria and the key performance indicators that are outlined in the charter school agreements. And this all comes out of the annual financial audits that schools submit. Um and the ratings
219for these were normed across all of our options schools. Next slide. Next we have the organizational performance domain. Um this looks at compliance in 10 different subdomain areas. So we have legal compliance, governance, students in temporary living situations, parent issue review, admissions and enrollment, student transportation, student safety, timeliness, and then we also look at whether or not the schools met or did not meet the conditions outlined in their previous contract. Next slide. All right. And lastly, we have the inclusive programming and equitable systems domain or IPES. So this domain was previously part of the organizational domain but based on feedback from previous boards we separated this out um specifically these four subdomains um to emphasize the importance of these areas giving their direct impact on the student learning experience. So these four subdomains include diverse
220learners, English learners, discipline and teacher lensure. Uh moving to the right for teacher lensure schools are evaluated on their ability to meet or not meet teacher lensure requirements. So contract schools are required to have 100% teacher lensure and charters are required to have 75%. In each of the remaining uh remaining subdomains we uh of diverse learners, English learners and discipline um schools are evaluated on two criterias. So one is their annual compliance data and then we also conducted conducted site visits in each of these areas. So for special education we look at IEP timeliness and completion rates. For English learners we look at English learner screeners and as access testing compliance. And then for discipline we look at uh whether or not they are below the 75th percentile of out of school suspensions in comparison
221to their five closest geographic schools. Um next slide. So this year um to increase accountability um in addition to outcomes the options network launched a very robust and comprehensive site visit process to gain a holistic view of school performance. So this was the first year that most of these schools received these site visits. Um so by conducting these it's created a renew a renewed emphasis on prioritizing and improving the ways in which schools implement their educational programs as well as the systems and structures for providing services to specialized populations. Um as a result of these visits the schools have a better understanding of which areas they need to improve upon. Also, the options network has a better understanding of the areas where we need to provide more support and more monitoring. Since conducting these site
222visits, again, we've begun to see a renewed emphasis on data collection, monitoring, and professional development in order to improve instructional practices. For the academic site visits, um we do classroom observations, document review, um use student work samples, and do focus groups. And this is based on the Danielson framework for special education. This is a holistic review of IEP implementation and special education compliance. It's conducted in partnership with the office of students with disabilities. And there's four areas that we look at. School-based staffing compliance, IEP implementation, and progress monitoring and collaboration. The final ratings, excuse me, for special education site visits include evident, partially evident, and not evident. And as we talk about the schools that I'm about to go over for our recommendation, it's important to note that schools that have received a note evident
223rating does not mean that they have not done any special education services. It means that they haven't quite hit the threshold that we're looking for. I just want to highlight that. doesn't mean they haven't done anything at all, but we obviously know that we have a lot of um areas to continue to provide support and help them improve in those areas. Um for culture and climate, we reviewed structures uh related to student discipline and restorative practices. Uh this involved classroom observations and focus groups and was done in partnership with the office of social emotional learning learning using the castle framework. um the English learner program audit. This is only for schools that had 20 or more English learner students and this was done um by the office of multicultural and multilingual education. And lastly, we
224had our facilities visits um and this is a review of our independent facilities and um to better understand if if they are in compliance with ADA, life safety and municipal code requirements. And this was conducted by the office of facilities and operations and ma uh operations and maintenance. Next slide. Next slide. Thank you. Um okay. So this is an overview of the um this the option schools in this year's renewal cohort. Um so in the next few slides I'll go over the the term recommendations for each operator. Uh before doing so, I want to highlight for that for each of these operators, we've collected additional information related to their uh three-year budget projections. So, this included enrollment data, and we've had extensive conversations about their long-term financial sustainability. We've talked about their current financial health,
225enrollment projections, and we've talked about what factors that could possibly lead to financial strain. And again with a special attention to the potential for declining enrollment, we discussed strategic plans for sustainability, explored the school strategy for addressing deficits, managing costs, and how they would pivot or make adjustments to remain financially viable in the event of changes in revenue or expenses due to enrollment loss. Based on these conversations, we feel confident that each of these schools will fully remain financially viable for the duration of their upcoming contracts. Next slide. The first school um in the options network that's up for renewal is Excel Academy of Southshore. We are recommending Excel Academy of Southshore to be renewed for a 4-year term with conditions. Southshore is a contract school in the Southshore community serving about 202 students ages
22615 and up. The majority of their students are African-American. Most come from low-income families. About 12% are diverse learners. Um the school has consistently received a rating of good standing on the options accountability policy earning them an overall rating of exceeds standards in that domain. Um again highlighting this is the first year that we've done all the site visits. So um for academic and culture and climate, they received a rating of basic. Um given that this is the first year we have had no schools in the options cohort receive a rating above a basic. Um for students with disabilities or a special education site visit, they received a rating of not evident. Um however they have met or they've become or they've come very close to meeting the 95% or greater threshold for IEP timeliness
227and comp and completion in terms of annual compliance. They've consistently met annual compliance metrics for English learners over the last three years. They've met teacher lensure standards two out of the last three years and the combination of these factors has resulted in an IPS IPES rating of approaching standards. South Southshore has exceeded standards in financial performance demonstrating strong financial health and management. They met all organizational performance standards with the exception of a few um contractual conditions and this resulted in a rating of approaching standards for organizational performance. Lastly, they have consistently proven to be a very good partner engaging with the options network um to improve um their leadership and um yeah, their leadership capacity and instructional practices. Next slide. Our next school is Excel Academy of Southwest. This is um of the same operator,
228but they these are two different contracts. Uh we are recommending the Excel Academy of Southwest to be renewed for a three-year term with conditions. This is a contract school in the Chicago lawn community serving about 170 students ages 15 and up. Um, their student population is about 57% African-American and 42% Latinx. The majority of students are from low-income households and almost 21% are English learners. Southwest received an options accountability designation of good standing in two of the last three years. Um they were just on the threshold the last year but they were in intensive academic support but overall they received a rating of meet standards in the academic performance domain. Um for their site visits they received ratings of basic for academic and culture and climate. They received a rating of not evident for their
229special education visit and a rating of minimal minimal for the multicultural and multilingual learners visit. They have met standards for English learner annual compliance two out of the last three years and they have met teacher lensure standards two out of the last three years. So the combination of these factors resulted in a rating of needs substantial improvement. Um and so we know that we have a a number of areas that we'll be working to support these schools and improving. Southwest has exceeded standards in financial performance demonstrating strong financial health and management. they have met all perform uh all organizational performance standards again with the exception of a few contractual conditions uh and this resulted in a rating of approaching standards also southwest they have consistently proven to be a good partner they've engaged with the
230options network uh have attended options options school leader meetings and have been focusing on building adult leadership capacity next slide next we have institut justice and leadership Academy. We are recommending Institute of Justice to be renewed for a 2-year term with conditions. This is a charter school um and the the lower west side serving about 103 students ages 16 and up. Their student student population is almost all Latinx. About 79% of the students from low-income households and 55% are English learners. Before providing details about their performance, I want to highlight a couple key caveats about Institut. So, they're previously coming off of two one-year contracts in a row. So, despite the difficulty of showing improvement while in a one-year contract, they have shown improvements in a range of areas from curriculum and instruction, culture and
231climate, and financial oversight. Options network has worked very, very closely with the school. we've provided a lot of additional support not accorded to other schools. Um and while some of the improvements may not be easily captured um in the performance evaluations, there's there's clear performance uh performance improvement that you can feel when you walk into the building. The school has began begun implementing various strategies for improvement which includes streamlining enrollment processes, dramatically increasing attendance, focusing on professional development specifically for students uh for English learners and working to improve discipline reporting and overall school culture. Um so they received an options accountability designation of intensive de intensive academic support over the last three years which has resulted in an overall rating of need substantial improvement for academic and culture and climate. This year they received a
232rating of basic which has been improvement from last year when they received unsatisfactory in both of those areas. For students with disabilities, they received a rating of not evident and a and received a rating of minimal for multicultural and multilingual learners. Um they h excuse me I do want to highlight um again that they have a 55.3 population of English learners and compared to the district which is at 37.3% and they have taken on a very very large number of our newcomer students. Uh while it's too early to decide or to determine whether or not they've met the conditions of their current contract, they have made consistent good faith efforts to do so and are and are on the tra trajectory to meet those conditions. Um last year the collective bargaining agreement with the CTU
233resulted in higher wages for their teachers. Um they received a rating of meet standards for the financial domain which is an improvement from the last two cycles where they did not meet standards. Um, and we're we're very excited to see the improvement that's been made, but we also understand that there's still a lot of work to do to ensure that institudo is meeting the needs of the students and providing a high quality education. So, within the next two years of this contract, the options network plans to continue providing the the high levels of support to achieve this goal. Next slide. All right. And then the last option school up for renewal is Youth Connection Charter School or YCCCS. We are recommending YCCCS to be renewed for a 4-year term with conditions. Um YCCCS is a
234charter school operating 17 campuses that are predominantly on the west and south sides of the city. They are a replicating charter which means that all 17 campuses fall under one contract with YCCS. They serve about 2,291 students ages 16 and up. Their population is about 67% African-American, 30% Latinx, 90% 97% of students from lowincome households with 17% diverse learners and 15% English learners. Uh the YCCCS charter was established in 1997 and at that time they brought together various existing schools that were operated by community management organizations serving the student population. These schools had strong ties and were deeply embedded in their in their respective communities before coming under the YCCCS umbrella in 1997. And in turn the YCCCS schools have very very strong community support in their respective communities. these community man uh management organizations
235such as Sullivan House, Pilson Wellness Center, Association House, and the Greater Westtown Community Development Project, just to name a few of them. Um are organizations that provide a range of services within their communities and they partner with YCCS to be able to provide educational services to the students to uh students needing alternative educational services in their communities. Um so schools um in terms of the options accountability designation for the academic performance domain um the majority of their schools have received a rating of good standing. However, in school year 22 only nine of them did. Um I will highlight that this year um the metrics were a little bit different due to the co co 19. Um but since then their schools have improved and have majority have earned a rating of good standing. Uh this
236earned them an overall rating of meet standards. For the site visits for academics, 15 of their campuses earned a rating of basic and two earned a rating of unsatisfactory. Um since implementation of the academic site visits, we've really really seen a shift from a significant focus on to a renewed focus on professional development for instructional improvement. culture and climate. 15 campuses received basic and two received unsatisfactory. These were different campuses um from the academic site visits. For the special education visits, nine campuses received a rating of partially evident while eight campuses were not evident. And for the four campuses that received a an English learner program audit, they all received a rating of minimal. In many of the site visit focus groups, um the YCCCS school staff have cited the need for additional support and
237resources for serving the student population. And this is the exact intention and goal of the options network to provide additional supports and resources. So we welcome and we continue to encourage the YCCS leadership and school staff to participate and take advantage of the resources offered by the network and by CPS. Um across the network, uh schools have either met or were close to meeting the 95% uh threshold for meeting IEP annual compliance. The majority of campuses met standards for English learner annual compliance in the last three years. Majority of campuses have met the teacher lensure requirement in the last three years. And all these factors together combined to give a rating of needs improvement. They have exceeded standards in financial performance demonstrating strong financial health and management. And then lastly, embedded within this renewal uh
238is the relocation of YCCS progressive progressive leadership academy or PLA. So they would be moving from 6620 South Martin Luther King Drive to 6320 South Dorchester Avenue. It's located about a mile and a half away in the Woodlong neighborhood. And this would be for the start of next school year. There's no attendance boundaries, so there's very minimal disruption to any neighborhood schools. YCCS and PLA have hosted several town halls and invent and events in which they're communicating to students, parents, and the community um about the proposed relocation resulting in lots of letters of support from students, parents, community member community members, and older people. Um the new facility, while it is a little bit smaller, um it does offer distinct classrooms. Their current location, um they're they're sharing classrooms, they're sharing office spaces, and so
239this new facility will allow a distinction there. Um there'll also be a reduction in rent from 17 grand to 15 a month. So there is a little bit of a cost savings. And with the options network oversight, um YCCCS will coordinate student and parent communications, making sure all safety and transportation needs are met and ensuring that students are successfully enrolled and ready to attend classes at the new location on the first day of school. So that concludes our presentation. Um I we will turn it over to board members for any questions. Board member Smith. Thank you, Mr. President. Uh yeah, I uh visited the Southshore XL campus. Uh one of my biggest concerns right now in terms of CPS's safety and security for our students, I was very proud that when I asked uh your
240the XL students, well, are there a lot of fights in this school? And they said, no. They looked at each other confused and said, our teachers are counselors. We have counselors everywhere. If we have a problem with another student, we can actually call that student for restorative justice mediation and we usually handle it like that. And and I I thought that was very great for this population of students. My my question is in terms of children with disabilities, we heard earlier there was a critique. what what do you find is the biggest challenge with uh the uh the option schools serving this population of students? Uh that's my first question. And the second question is we just approved $18 million with Back to Our Future uh for students that uh will probably eventually attend option
241schools. What is the best way that MFS and Back to Our Future can work with uh your schools for optimal results? Yeah, thank thank you for that that question. We're very very excited. We're very excited to really begin this second process of working with Back to Our Future. I've received emails and communications from Chief Ogard, but we be we will begin to meet about what does this structure look like and how does it best serve students. My direction solely for back to our future is uh the options network will ensure the educational component students that are enrolled in the back to our future program. It's my understanding that students will spend 12 uh nine months in the back to our future program. During those nine months, it's going to be very important for us as
242the the options network to really be the liaison between back to our future and our option schools. uh because we want our option schools to understand when these students transition from back to our future to our schools, we want to make sure that we're monitoring the process, students have wraparound services, they are, you know, treated equitably where they can be in a in a in place where they can be very successful. So, as soon as those meetings start, I'm going to really push that piece for us as an options network. uh and then help out any way that I can. Uh we didn't really have that opportunity in the first session back to our future, but uh this time we're all in. We're vested. We just want to do what's right for our disengaged students.
243And and what about uh your biggest challenge with working with your uh population with disabilities? as it relates to disabilities. Um understanding the governance model, we do have four district schools which comply to all uh special ed uh directives, things of that nature in terms of co-eing models. um for our ALOV charter and uh contract schools do they do have sense of autonomy where we do send our our DR there for support uh and they know they can call at any time to request support from our DR and our our special ed department. Uh but there's a there's a thin line between autonomy and providing resources. Resources are there. Can't make schools take advantage of them. Our role is to make sure that they have the opportunity. That's what I'm big on. I want to
244make sure that all of our partners understand that these are CPS students. They're attending your school. They're they're all of our students and the resources that are in place from the district that support every other CPS school support your schools. Um I think a a big challenge is is the nature of our students, the nature of our schools. They are highly mobile. So a lot of them may have already dropped out. Um some of them are coming in with an IEP that's out of compliance. Um, and so our schools really have to be flexible in terms of being able to provide those services to students that are coming in and out of their doors on a regular basis. Um, so I would say that's a big challenge. Um, and then I also want to highlight,
245as I mentioned before, this is the first time that most of these schools have received a special education site visit. So step one is identifying those areas. So now that we have these special education site visits, we know the areas where they need to improve on. We've identified it. That's step one. Now, we can work with our DR. We can work with um you know, OSD and the schools to really pinpoint those areas. Where are the areas that we need to improve and work with them on those areas? But step one is identification. So, we've done that now and now the work begins of improving in those areas. And um yeah, the mobility is just it's an ongoing challenge that we try to work with them. Last thing, although this special ed is compliance-based, we
246try to create a narrative where when we support schools, it's stock compliance. It's typically support does a excellent job at looking at monthly data clients for special ed and and when I have my meetings with them monthly, my my first question is what have we done? So, we're continually supporting us, building relationships, and trying to stay away from compliance so much. Board member Kuster, you my question is actually about the site visit and this is just a curiosity honestly. Um, since you guys have implemented the site visit, has it helped inform um some of your previous data collection um on accountability scores? like are you seeing that reflected in what you're seeing when you go to these places? Are you seeing even more sometimes than what's being collected in the data when you go to
247visit? Like how has that really helped um you know add to how you're evaluating these schools and what you're actually physically seeing? Um, that's a great question. And at this point in time, since we just started these, we won't we won't be able to see how it's affected the outcome, like the options accountability scores until they come out next August, September. Um, I mean, we've had we've seen changes in how schools are approaching the CIWPs and what kind of professional developments they're engaging in in um, you know, just discussions that we're having with them in terms of focus groups. Um so while we we've seen improvements anecdotally, we don't have that um like the data yet because we haven't had the first round of um accountability scores to come out. Our goal is to you
248know have the resources to continue doing these so that we continue to see this focus on it. Um but just unfortunately at this point we we won't know until we get the next set of scores. Well, I think it's I think it's a great added component because it's one thing to collect a bunch of data and look at it and make a decision versus really truly being in there um and seeing it. And so I guess in this case it's almost in reverse like you can see it firsthand and now you're waiting for the data to support that. So I just it ultimately I think it's a great addition to the whole process. Member Pope. Yeah, thank you for your uh very thorough report and I do have a couple of questions. Uh I understand
249that YCCCS has 17 I think you said campuses and that each of those campuses is basically separately administered. Is that my understanding rather than really by a central body? So answer if you can answer that then I'll go on with my next part. Yeah. So YCCS is the charter holder. Um and then of the 17 campuses, 13, sorry, 14 are managed by community management organizations. So yeah, so three of them are managed directly by YCCCS and then the other 14 are community management. Okay. So I'm trying to figure out how that re affects what resources are available in the schools because I assume that YCCS gets a certain portion of the money I guess that's allocated and then is less money therefore allocated to each of these community holding organizations because I know we have
250limits on the funding that we can provide and if so what kind of an effect does that have is this a good model to be following. I'm I'm a little sort of I know it's not a Ponzi scheme or anything like that, but it just seems like there's a whole middleman component in there that might siphon off some of the money that would go otherwise to these students who are, as everybody has said, some of our most vulnerable and in need students. So maybe you could explain that a little further. Yeah. So, um, as I mentioned, prior to 1997, all these different schools existed. Um, they all serving this this population, and so they all came under the YCCCS charter. Um, that was kind of a unifying act. Um, so yes, YCCS, we we give
251them the funding directly to YCCCS. They do a lot of administrative uh administrative things. They um I know for example they hire all of their special education staff and they are responsible for making sure all of that compliance um is in order. Um yeah, they do a lot of different things in terms of overall oversight, ensuring the schools are doing what they're supposed to be doing um and general like educational management. Um then within each of the the community organizations um many of them have different funding sources from their communities. Um as I mentioned several of them offer other services their to the to their communities. So some of them I I can't speak to whether they do or not but some of them may um you know provide some additional funding to those schools.
252Um, but they're the ones providing the educational services where YCCCS is kind of oversight management, making sure schools are in compliance across the board for all educational purposes. I I'm still a little baffled by exactly how that works. So, does YCS YCCS function basically as the network for them? I'm sorry, can you say that one more time? Does YCCCS function basically as the network overseeing them in that way and then you're overseeing both YCCCS and the individual campuses in your department or so so YCCS is the charter holder right um so yeah so we oversee YCCCS and then I mean as we mentioned with site visits different things we we do interact with the schools but ultimately YCCCS is responsible for making sure that each individual school or campus us is in compliance or providing
253a high quality education right and clearly some of them are in compliance on some things and not on other things etc. Thank you for member Rivas. Uh thank you Mr. President. Uh thank you uh so much for uh this thorough information. Um earlier it this month, last month, a few weeks ago, uh a few of us uh were able to meet with uh YCCS uh and learn about their model and how it works. And um I actually have a few YCCS campuses uh in my district. So Association House uh which is right down the block for me, which is really beautiful um that we, you know, we have this alternative option there and they have so many other opportunities available there. And uh and then Greater Westtown. So that was a really great opportunity to
254be able to visit these campuses. Um, one of the the um issues that I learned about that evening um was related to to actually to the funding model. And so I from my understanding of how finances work with the district, it's based on uh when we're looking at uh I'm assuming the 20th day um funding rate because this population is so highly mobile. You know, we're talking about students who are, you know, we're we're trying to get them re-engaged. You saw how much money we're putting into, you know, to to MF MFS and Back to Our Future. Um, one of the things that was brought up is that, you know, sometimes students stop out for a semester, a few weeks, um, you know, they're, uh, have a job, have a baby, something's happening, um, that
255they stop out and then come back to the school. And YCCS takes them back because that's their home, that's their student, and this student has the motivation then after whatever happened to be able to come back and and complete their education and hopefully gain some type of certification afterwards. Um, so I'm wondering then what what is it that we can do to support to ensure that, you know, if a student's not there for the 20th day and enrolls in October, stops out in December, comes back in March, but is still working toward credits to get to, you know, graduation or age 21 when they're aged out of the system. What what are we doing to ensure that we're not missing out on funding? Because I'm also assuming this is coming from not just from CPS,
256but you know, how we get money from the state, federal, things like that. what can we do to ensure that we're getting as much funding as possible so that we can provide those services to those students? Um that's a great question. I think um ultimately we would have to you know circle back with the board and figure out are there ways to change the funding structure which is you know a bigger conversation with the budget team. Um I do want to highlight a couple of things just for contextual um uh help. So, um, for all of our charters, it's 20th day. It's also 10th day of semester 2. So, there's two enrollment counts that we use. For district schools, it is just 20th day. So, I just want to highlight that because we do have
257districtrun option schools that have that same, you know, the same thing that we're talking about where it's kind of students coming and going and they don't benefit from that 10th day count. They're only bene they're only captured with the 20th day count. Um, with that being said, I mean, yes, it's definitely an area where I think we could improve, talk with the board, talk with the budget team to see, are there different ways of funding it. Um, I'm also going to be very transparent and highlight, um, we have in the past year, we've begun to look at those enrollment trends to really understand what's happening with the student population. Unfortunately, we do see a large number of students that are withdrawn right after enrollment counts are captured. Um, so that's actually one of the things
258that we want to address in the conditions. Um, because we are seeing a pattern where a lot of these students are being dropped right after they get money for them. So we want to understand what's going on here. Are these students actually leaving? Is there a reason? Are they being pushed out? Like what what is going on? This is something we've just started looking into. Um, so just transparently. Um, yeah, I think it's a conversation we need to continue with the board, but we also need to continue looking at the data and the trends that we're seeing and the enrollment patterns with our schools. And I I would also add that I've I've these same questions have been asked to mecc and I've you know as the liaison oh as the liaison between CPS and
259YCCS I've always suggested to them that there if if a meeting needs to be set up with CPS leadership to address these concerns I can do that but a lot of the a lot of the questions concerning 10day and 20-day fund and funding these are these are questions we can't answer. So I've you know I'm a liaison and my job is to support YCCS leaders. I'm open to uh setting up something so they can talk to about this. Thank you. Um, one of the other things I I wanted to mention um that uh board member uh Smith brought up is just again this idea of how can we ensure that what we're what we're putting into that back to our future that we're working together side by side so that we're not uh necessarily competing
260uh between you know options network and back to our future uh and and you know spending double the money on on on the same number of kids but rather how can we work together to ensure that we're putting all those resources is uh toward supporting students. Yay. Thank you. Sorry. I'm glad I'm still here. Um because I believe in this work, but I So, Back to Our Futures is not a school. It's not an educational uh students are not enrolled into Back to Our Futures. It is the funding and the programming to stabilize them to ensure they get back into a school. So, it is not a competition. It's with the m with the majority going to an option school. of the few that that were serviced last time. Could you repeat the with the
261few that were serviced last time, a lot of them went to the options schools. Correct. Yeah. So, I'm just trying to figure out a way where we can work together as opposed to working separately to to enroll the same students. So, we did work very closely with the options network and that's why we're continuing to discuss how we build that partnership even more strongly. There wasn't competition last time. It really was individual just like as Chief Smith was talking about the transition process that is the best practice where individual meetings and conversations are held in a transition plan is created. So we really are our intent is to continue to build that transition process for what's best for each student in partnership with the options networks and the transition specialists. Thank you. Appreciate it. That's
262it for me. Thank you, President Gutierrez. So, one of the questions that I have um given the last two months where we have had um we had some issues with the SEO um and the whole issue of short renewals and not really giving agencies a runway. um if one of those schools that um that has a lower uh renewal rate uh decides to you know what we're not going to do this. Who serves those kids? Who serves the hardto serve student that we're trying to connect, right? Because they're disconnected youth, right? How do we connect them? uh who would who what would be the the the plan um so that we potentially wouldn't end up the way we almost did um with the Assuro closing. Can can you clarify that uh clarify that question one
263more time please? What? My my my question. So So So what plans are in place if one of the current renewies that will renew tonight decides that they don't want to renew because they don't have enough runway in terms of the renewal term. The renew term, a 24-month term versus a four-year term or a fiveyear term. what where would those kids who would serve those students? Um well, I want to start by saying we're we're not anticipating that. Um I think specifically talking about Instituto, uh which is a school that's up for that we've recommended for a two-year. Um as I mentioned, they're coming off of two one-year renewals. Uh and we've worked very close closely with them. Um, I just anecdotally, we don't have any reason to believe that they would back out last
264minute um because they got a two-year renewal. With that being said, um, one of the option schools, Little Black Pearl, decided to voluntarily close last year. Um, so we worked with that school. Um, fortunately, I guess the option schools are smaller. We don't have it's not the the size of a serero, so we have aboutund stu 100 students that we would need to work with. Um, so we work with the school. We look at how the students are doing. Would they benefit from going to a traditional school, from going to another option school, we work with students and families to figure out, you know, transportation? Can you get to this new school? Is it a good fit? We've also worked with other network chiefs and traditional schools to say, you know, we had this school
265closure. Can you help us with finding homes um schools for these students? Um, so we I mean, it would look very similar to how, you know, what we did with Little Black Pearl. Um, and as I mentioned, it's because there's fewer students, we're able to engage a lot more time and effort in each and every student, making sure they find a good fit. And then digging a little deeper, uh, I think one of the with the little black pearl situation and understanding different neighborhoods that students were uh, coming from to attend the school. uh we reached out to different principles and neighborhoods and you know gave them a forefront of you may be receiving these kids due to closure voluntarily closing of uh little black pearl. So we monitor that process very closely and I
266think we had about 97% success rate in placing students schools across the district. I appreciate your thought. You guys do have a flat. So that that's what I wanted to make sure. Thank you board member Bole. Hi. Um I have an observation and then a couple questions. You know, you were talking about u I guess specifically I was looking at Excel of Southwest. Um how how the scores sometimes seem to vary from year to year up and down. And I'm wondering because the kids have such mobility that the discipline issues or the IEP issues might vary year to year because of the mobility because you are looking at a different student with a different IP or different social emotional uh needs. So I I was just wondering if in the future there could be some
267sort of um a point adjustment for the school because they have such mobility and you're not really measuring the same set of students. That's just an observation. And then my next question has to do with the site visits. I think that's great. Um, I'm wondering uh does does your department have the capacity to do follow-up site visits for for schools that you identified um that were having, you know, more difficulty and that you want to go back and see again, give them another um opportunity to demonstrate growth or, you know, like what are your needs in terms of kind of building on the site visits because I think that's super important and um one other quick thing okay the other thing would be are the schools aware of the points and the thresholds and where
268they're falling um sort of like a progress report and then they have time to um address the issues who's um so I'll comment on your observation which is an excellent idea. Uh we are we're going to start working on um a new version of the options accountability policy in the upcoming year. So that's definitely a great point that we will you know take into account and think about how we can kind of factor that in. Um because you're absolutely right. I mean it's a whole different set of students and we really try to tailor that policy to the student population. Um the second question was about about the your ability to um yeah do like the site visits. Do you have the per the the the manpower to to do the site visits? I think
269uh we questioned it at first, but we spoke with leadership and they provided the funding to really provide us with extra bodies to to do site visits. We had to do 18 of them. It was a monumental task, but in order to do it fair and equitable process, we had to get in those schools to see. So it was important to us and it was very important to Cedo and her team that funding was provided. If I can just add uh something um some components of the site visit actually are um conducted by other teams and departments. So office of students uh for students with disabilities does a special education visit. If we have bilingual students the office of multilingual and cultural education. So it's a really crossf functional team effort but definitely adoption schools
270um network been kind of holding the bigger burden on that. And just piggybacking off of you know these she's saying uh special education counseling these people are part of our staff. They sit in our offices every day, but they're from OOS Scopa special education department. So they they've hired someone and they are solely working with the options network. So in terms of site visits, those are our key people that look at special education seal work and the count postsecondary. Thanks. And and the third part of my question was do the schools have an awareness of where they are falling on the point scale and what what they need to work on for for their next renewal. Um yeah, so each year we um on an annual basis we have three different scorecards that come out.
271Well, one's not a scorecard, one is the options accountability designation. Um so they can see how they did on each of the metrics. We have an operations scorecard which has most of the components of um the organizational domain as well as some of the um like uh special education compliance and then we have a financial scorecard. So that's based on the financial audit that they submit. Um so we release that on an annual basis. We are actually working on a an updated version where it's updated on a quarterly basis and we're giving them more immediate feedback so they can address those things right away. Uh we're still working on that, hoping to get it out for fourth quarter. Um so they they are provided with that information. Um in terms of their overall ratings, um
272prior to this, you know, a little bit before this meeting, uh we didn't have the final final recommendations. Part of it is because we had to uh again this is the first time we did all the site visits. We had to complete those. We had to get all the scores back. We had to figure out how those are going to be embedded into the overall process because again this is the first time and then we had to kind of norm that across the board and like what makes sense based on how the schools have performed. So everything with the exception of the site visit scores the schools receive to understand how they're doing on an annual basis. Yeah, I had a question. Board member Loausano. Um, I understand that there's um the site visit to
273make sure enrollment like the 20th or the 10th like what you were talking about, but there needs to be kind of another site visit to kind of promote an incentive for retention. I think that's what we're trying to get at or some kind of initiate uh some kind of resources or training uh that would be around uh motivating students to stay in school because what happens is there's like a marketing and everybody's enrolling students so that they meet those benchmarks and then after that the students there's no incentive or or maybe not enough of an incentive and I visited some of these uh option schools or alternative schools that are doing well and there's incentives have always been like afterchool jobs, summer jobs, you know, like stuff like that where that they could also uh
274keep the kid the young the students motivated by using other things, you know, sports or things like that. But I was just wondering if that was something maybe another site visit would also encourage uh the schools to look into how they can have incentives to for retention. Um yeah, that's an excellent point. So we do have a couple things in place. We have um within the options accountability policy there is a stabilization metric that looks at um currently looks at do are students currently enrolled at the end of the year um or have they graduated um with the new work with CDT we're actually looking at expanding that um so it'll be students um are they enrolled or have they graduated by the end of the year are they enrolled in the same school and
275then we're also looking at um another version of the metric that looks at students that were previously inactive were you able to pull those students in and were you able to hold on to those students for you know until graduation. Um so with CDT we are working on expanding some of that. Um also um all of our all of our schools except for our charter schools. So 17 of our campuses have OS receive OST funding. So um out of school time so our schools are engaging in a lot of um you know afterchool programs and activities to get students more engaged and more connected to schools. Um but yeah. Oh go ahead. this is your area. I mean, well, I would also in addition to out of school time, all of our option students have
276access to all of our post-secary programming and support. So, at the at the skilled trades event, we specifically invited option schools. We have post-secary specialists in the in the network. Um, option network Chief Smith is a great advocate for these opportunities. So the the jobs opportunities and especially with um workplace experience and work-based learning which is during the day programming is open and accessible to all options students. So that's that's a place where we work very closely together. Um and it fits really well because of the the place where most options students are kind of age and and fit and uh mentioning builds as well. We have students in the option network that are able to access builds. We have students in the options network for the first time in CPFTA which is the police
277and fire training. We have students from the options network that are um laborers this year that were hired by the city. There there is not an exclusionary practice. It really very much is a practice of including all students and then um like with CPFTA they they specifically looked at GPA current point in time versus over history because we know if you've had negative academic experience your GPA is lower. So th this is a place where we partner very very strongly together and um want to continue to expand. We have Anushia. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Um I have a few questions. So, my first one is, are any of these um schools that are up for renewal forprofit or related to for-profit entities? Yeah, the the 2 Excel campuses are. And do you see like in
278how in your accountability work a difference in how that for-profit structure influences the education that our kids receive or any of the incentives that they have? Honestly, not at all. Um, I will say Excel is one of our best partners. Um, so yes, they are for-profit. The district decided to engage in a partnership with them about 13 years ago. Since then, they have strong um strong outcomes for students. They're serving students well. They're a very good partner. They're very great to work with. Um, so to honestly, no, they they've been a great partner. Thank you. I really appreciate that, sir. Uh and I would add that they also take advantage of several district resources which makes them a stronger stronger school. That is great to hear. Um you know just doing some googling and I
279saw that a former adviser to their previous company that turned into full bloom is Barbara Bird Bennett. So wanted to ask um another question not related to Excel to YCCS. Are the community management organizations for profit? I don't believe so. I would have to look to be sure. I'm fairly confident that none of them are, but I would have to look. I would I'd have to get back to And what exactly are the functions? I know Debbie, sorry, board member Pope asked this question like what are the functions that the community management organizations provide exactly? And can you tell how much money flows through the community management organization and how much goes to the students at the schools? Like do you have oversight on that? Sorry, what was the first part of the question again?
280What are their functions? The community management organization's functions. Um so they're hiring staff, they're running the school, they are bringing in external partners that provide additional services. So um you know like you know if there's workbased learning programs if there's um you know mentoring or counseling services that they bring in. So they're bringing in those outside services um hiring staff and you know kind of running the school um like the day-to-day operations um whereas YCCCS is serving as like uh oversight compliance special education staffing um you know providing like money for power school you know things like that like um administrative stuff um oh and yeah so they'll they'll get resources from ASN alternative schools work. Um, and then I'm sorry, what was the second part? I'm sorry. I tried to ask two questions in
281one. Um, can you see how the money flows like how much um is taken out by the sorry C CMO, community management organization and how much goes directly to each school. So CPS gives the money directly to YCCCS and then um every year we do collect a budget and then we get quarterly updates um where they report out how much money is going from YCCS to the individual campuses. Um I I don't have those numbers in front of me. I also don't know that we I'm sorry it's public though. I would have to check. I don't know. I think it is but I I think one component that I I feel like may be helpful um this individual community based organizations do not hold charters. So they're basically taking the lensure if you will from
282a charter organization. the charter that is issued is to YCCS and these individual organizations they're very involved in the management and the running of the school but technically they can't even receive the funds from the district because they're not charter organizations. So I hope that helps a little bit. So, I understand the question about whether or not they're taking too much money, but these community- based organizations wouldn't be able to run schools and to receive funding from you, from the board because they don't have a charter individually. I hope that helps a little bit. Wow. And I would just assume also, you know, for the team that they're in charge of all the credentiing of the programs, right, with the state to be a valid school to provide credit whether they're a high school or
283to provide, you know, the proper um, you know, evidence about learning if they're an elementary school. So, it is a little bit more complicated board members and this is this organization has existed for decades. Um, and so again, you know, again, it's it's just it's the structure of it and and so anyways, I I'll leave it at that. No, thank you. That's helpful because sorry, I know I have a lot of questions, so I try to cut that one out. You said the schools have existed since 1997, but it's also the organizations that are the community management organizations. They've also been in existence and running those schools since then. That is very helpful. Yeah. Long before. Long before. Okay, that is helpful. Um and then on the um the enrollment drop off that you mentioned
284after the day that you measure, do you see similar drop offs after the enrollment collection day at the district run schools? That's a great question. I have not collected that data. I think that would be great to see because you know the incentives may be different um at our district run schools versus um our other partner schools. So that would be information that would be very helpful to have. Um and then two more I swear two more. Uh one is how far in advance are the site visits announced. Um so we we had a kickoff meeting in April where we went over all the expectations what we're going to be doing. Um and then a minimum of two weeks out uh we tried to work with the schools to figure out if there are there
285any bad days that we you know that we don't we try not to just show up. um a minimum of two weeks, but we try to I mean some of them get like two months in advance, but it it varies. Thank you. Because I'm sure the site visits are very helpful. Um but in terms of you know the incentives if you know that there's a visit happening on a particular date that a lot can look different during the visit versus a different um time. And then my last question is I know that we renew the charters like the operator. They don't renew the individual schools, but there's two schools that used to be in good standing that are no longer in good standing. Could you share a little bit about the context there? And I
286we can't like we have to renew the charter operator as a whole. Yes. It's nothing about individual schools. Correct. So, it's it's one charter holder. So, all the all the campuses are kind of treated as as one school. Um so, the two campuses um that did not receive good standing. So, within the options accountability policy, there's I believe there's 10 or 12 different metrics that we look at. So, we look at STAR reading um and math growth and um well, there's there's two different metrics for each. For STAR, we look at attendance, growth in attendance, um learn plan succeed, credit attainment, one-year graduation rate. There's a few more I'm blanking on, but so there's a range of different metrics. And then depending on how well the schools do, they'll get points from one to five.
287So those schools, I don't have it in front of me, but scored lower on a ver variety of metrics. Um, and so that's that's why they were lower. And I I can get you more information specifics about um exactly how they did. Thank you. I I just want to go back to your question too about 10 and 20 day. Um, with understanding we have four districtun option schools. Two of them are detention centers. two of them the other are piecing in and that's Simpson and based on trends I have not identified 10 or 20 day drops schools thank you member Rosenfield uh so thank you for your presentation for answering all of our questions um I think these schools are super important to the ecosystem of Chicago public schools we're reaching our students furthest from
288opportunity here and that's our biggest challenge but arguably our biggest job. Um so one question are neighborhood schools in urban risk communities have the same enrollment counts so that beginning of the year and after the second semester. So if I think if I understood your question correctly, so our our district run schools enrollment counts are taken on the 20th day, right? But I thought that in urban missunities we also looked at them again. No, in in the second semester, not that you know of no not so. Okay. Um, so I did I was lucky enough to visit YCCCS, the Westtown campus and the academy and I met the staff and I um was toured through their various programs and it was an amazing tour and the professionalism and the passion that the staff there had
289despite all of their challenges was like nothing I had ever seen before. So, I just think it's important that we remember to meet these schools where they're at. They are on a different playing field and um it's our job to support them and ask them how we can support them and and understand that what they need is different than what so many other schools need. So, I appreciate you guys doing that and remaining supports to these schools. If I can help, please let me know. Or member Wilz. Thank you. I'm glad that there's new uh metrics added including the diverse learners understanding that it still needs some areas to be straightened. Um I also do agree with the point that board member Gutierrez made in particular about if there has to be a closure of
290one of the campuses uh for me will be how can we also make sure that um the option school is helping ensure with transition of students and helping the district and it you know it doesn't just fall on the district. Um the other item just went and I already had kind of imply into by other board members. Uh looking in particular the metrics that we use to measure one campus uh for renewal as opposed with for example in this case YCCS that has 17 campuses. Um you know we get the just the overall it seems the uh average of all those campuses. Um and my concern is what if you know it looks like two of those campuses might not be meeting um the metrics or you know they're a little bit lower that there's
291a support for those two particular campuses. Um so those students don't suffer or that also though you know uh the professionals there that they get the support that they need and you know and don't get disregarded just because out of those you know they are falling a little bit shorter compared with the rest of the 15 other schools. Thank you. Um yeah so there are schools that are designated as intensive academic support um we do a range of different activities with them throughout the year professional developments we work with them to ensure that they are able to improve in different areas um I'll also highlight that within um so they have a designation of good standing or intensive academic support but they have a score and so um yeah like so that kind of helps
292with averaging them together is because maybe some schools are here, maybe some schools are here. But I will say in general, YCCCS's schools are generally in the same area, we don't really see a lot of outliers. Um, but for the schools that do have do fall under intensive academic support, we do provide extra resources, extra support, work with them throughout the year. Um, make sure we're working with them specifically on their CIWP to address those areas. board member Rivas. Uh, thank you so much. Uh, so I I just wanted to clear up some confusion as best I understand it around um these school this the community- based organizations that are that are supporting these schools. And so when state law changed in 1996, I know we all love history lessons here, state law changed in
2931996 authorizing charter schools. So, these schools were already in existence. Many of them, I'm assuming, probably all of them. I don't know for sure. Uh, but these schools were in existence already to comply with the new charter law. 1996, the law passes by the Illinois General Assembly. 1997, charters, charters are created. We have now YCCCS in 1997 bringing together all of these community-based schools um under that umbrella as Bdana was saying about having the charter as the authorizer as the person receiving the funds to be able to manage these schools. Um so that's that's one thing. The other thing too about these community- based organizations, if you're really interested in the financials and where the money is going, please look them up. Um, all nonprofits have to file 990s every single year. Many of us
294here work at nonprofit organizations that have to file 990s. You're able to look up uh Guidear. Uh, I think the name has changed recently, but it used to be called Guidear. Used to be one of my favorite things to look up 990s of organizations. You can see the top 10 paid uh board members or executives of those nonprofit organizations. You can see all the money in, all the money out, how much was spent on programming, all of those things you can be can be looked up for all the nonprofit organizations that run that that are partners with YCCS to be able to run these schools. Um, so I just wanted to wanted to add that for all of our researching. Yes, thank you. Absolutely correct. Thank you. Board member Blae. Hey, thank you so much
295for um coming out and staying up so late. Um uh you're the last line of defense, right, before sometimes we lose these students forever. So, I just want to commend you on your mission. Um I know it's not easy. Um we've got lots of questions because some of us are really new to it. Um um if not for some family members of mine, I would, you know, I I would have some questions, too. But um I hope you know um even if we're throwing lots and lots of questions at you, it's coming from a sincere place, but also there's a number of really wonderful people on this board who have walked a number of lives, who have dealt with a number of populations um that can really be helpful to you. So, um um I'd
296like to stop by. I'm sure some other folks would. Um and and we'll continue the conversation. But, um thank you again. It's this this is really missionbased work. It's not easy. Um and um it's super necessary. you're the some for many many people you're the last chance before the streets take them completely or before um you know or many of them are in JTBC right you have do you have a school you have schools in the right so um it's yeah it's thank you and I'll see you anyway because on I work for Cook County Commissioner and we're doing some tours of JCDC. So, I'll I'll see you over there. Anyway, thank you. You Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Yes. Open it up now to We couldn't possibly have any more questions
297or comments though, so I'm just going to bypass that. We'll now proceed with the vote on public agenda items. Board per board secretary, please proceed. Thank you, President Harden. I'll proceed with the items on the public agenda. Read the board report numbers and brief titles. I believe board member Reevas has motion regarding record of proceedings. I move that the record of proceedings of the agenda review committee meeting of February 12th, 2025 and board meeting of February 27th, 2025 prepared by the board secretary be approved and that such records of proceedings be posted on the Chicago Board of Education website in accordance with section 2.06B of the Open Meetings Act. Is there a second? Second the motion. I'll proceed with a roll call. Member Lozano. Yes. Member Smith. I. Member Lopez. I. Member Thomas. I. Member
298Bole. I. Member Wallace. I. Member Kuster. Hi. Member Pope. Yes. Member Rosenfeld. Yes. Member Rivas. Yes. Member Rio Sierra. I. Member Brown. Yes. Member Bannon. Hi. Vice President Bautista, yes. Member Gutierrez, I. Member Biggs, yes. Member Thodicura, yes. Member Blae, I. Member Zachor, yes. Member Deberry, I. 20 eyes, zero naz. This motion is adopted by the board. President Hard will continue with items that do require a vote. Each of these items will be voted on separately. RS2, resolution of the Chicago Board of Education establishing a requirement that the leader of Chicago public schools holds a licensed superintendent credential. President Harden, this item does require a vote. Is there a motion? So moved. Is there a second? I second the motion. I'll proceed with a roll call. Member Lozano, yes. Member Smith, yes. Member Lopez, I.
299Member Thomas. I. Member Bole. Yes. Member Wallace. I. Member Kuster. Hi. Member Pope. Yes. Member Rosenfo. Yes. Member Rivas. Yes. Member Rio Sierra. Hi. Member Brown. Yes. Member Bannon. I. Vice President Bautista. Yes. Member Gutierrez. Hi. Member Biggs. Yes. Member Thodura. Yes. Member Blae. I member Zachor. Yes. Member Deberry. Yes. 20 I zero naz. This matter is adopted by the board. RS3. Resolution appointing Ed Bannon to the board of trustees of the public school teachers pension and retirement fund of the city of Chicago. President Harden. This item does require a vote. Is there a motion? So moved. Is there a second? I second the motion. I'll proceed with a roll call. Member Lozano. Yes. Member Smith. Yes. Member Lopez. I. Member Thomas. I. Member Bole. I. Member Wallace. I. Member Kuster. I. Member Pope. Yes.
300Member Rosenfeld. Yes. Member Rivas. Yes. Member Rio Sierra. Hi. Member Brown. Yes. Member Bannon. I. If I can. Yes. Yes. Yes, you can vote. Vice President Bautista. Yes. Member Gutierrez. I. Member Biggs. I. Member Thorakura. Yes. Member Blae. I. Member Zachor. Yes. Member Deberry. Yes. 20 I zero naz. This matter is adopted by the board. RS4. Resolution appointing Emma Lozano to the board of trustees of the public school teachers pension and retirement fund of the city of Chicago. President Harden, this item does require a vote. Is there a motion? Lopez, I move. Is there a second? Second the motion. I'll proceed with a roll call. Member Lozano. Yes. Member Smith. Yes. Member Lopez. I. Member Thomas. I. Member Bole. Yes. Member Wallace. I. Member Kuster. Hi. Member Pope. Yes. Member Rosenfeld. Yes. Member Rivas. Yes.
301Member Rio Sierra. I. Member Brown. Yes. Member Bannon. I. Vice President Bautista. Yes. Member Gutierrez. Hi. Member Biggs. Yes. Member Thorakura. Yes. Member Blae. I. Member Zachor. Yes. Member Deberry I 20 I's zero nazs. This matter is adopted by the board. RS5 resolution authorize appointment of members to LSC's to fill vacancies. President Harden, this item does require a vote. Is there a motion? So moved. Second. I second the motion. I'll proceed with a roll call. Member Lozano. Member Smith. Yes. Member Lopez. I. Member Thomas. I. Member Bole. I. Member Wallace. I. Member Kuster. I. Member Pope. Yes. Member Rosenfeld. Yes. Member Rivas. Yes. Member Rio Sierra. I. Member Brown. Yes. Member Bannon. Hi. Vice President Bautista. Yes. Member Gutierrez. Hi. Member Biggs. Yes. Member Thorakura. Yes. Member Blae. I. Member Zachor. Yes. Member Deberry. I.
30220 eyes. zero nays. This matter is adopted by the board. EX1, transfer of funds. President Harden, this item does require a vote. Is there a motion? So moved. Second. I second that motion. I'll proceed with a roll call. Member Lozano. Yes. Member Smith. Yes. Member Lopez. I. Member Thomas. I. Member Bole. Yes. Member Wallace. I. Member Kuster. I. Member Pope. Yes. Member Rosenfeld. Yes. Member Rivas. Yes. Member Rio Sierra. I. Member Brown. Yes. Member Bannon. I. Vice President Bautista. Yes. Member Gutierrez. Hi. Member Biggs. I. Member Thodura. Yes. Member Blae. I. Member Zachor. Yes. Member Deberry. I. 20 eyes. Zero naz. This matter is adopted by the board. Ex3 authorized renewal of the Excel Academy of Southshore agreement with conditions. President Harden, this item does require a vote. Is there a motion? So moved. Is
303there a second? Motion. I'll proceed with a roll call. Member Lozano. Yes. Member Smith. I. Member Lopez. I. Member Thomas. I. Member Bole. Yes. Member Wallace. I member Kuster. I member Pope. Yes. Member Rosenfeld. Yes. Member Rivas. Yes. Member Rio Sierra. I. Member Brown. Yes. Member Bannon. Hi. Vice President Bautista. Yes. Member Gutierrez. I. Member Biggs. I. Member Thorakura. Yes. Member Blaze. I. Member Zachor. Yes. Member Deberry I 20 I's zero naz this matter is adopted by the board ex4 authorized renewal of the Excel Academy of Southwest agreement with conditions President Harden this item does require a vote is there a motion move so moved second I second the motion oppos proceed with a roll call. Member Lozano, yes. Member Smith, I. Member Lopez, I. Member Thomas, I. Member Bole, I. Member Wallace, I. Member
304Kuster, I. Member Pope, yes. Member Rosenfeld, yes. Member Rivas, yes. Member Rio Sierra, I. Member Brown, I. Member Bannon, I. Vice President Bautista, yes. Member Gutieras, I. Member Bigs, yes. Member Thodura, yes. Member Blae, I. Member Zachor, yes. Member Deberry, I. 20 eyes, zero nays. This matter is adopted by the board. EX5, authorized renewal of the Institute of Justice and Leadership Academy Charter High School agreement with conditions. President Harden, this item does require a vote. Is there a motion? So moved. Is there a second? Member Rivas. I second the motion. Thank you. I'll proceed with a roll call. Member Lozano. See I. Member Smith. I. Member Lopez. I. Member Thomas. I. Member Bole. Yes. Member Wallace. I. Member Kuster. I. Member Pope. Yes. Member Rosenfeld. Yes. Member Rivas. Yes. Member Rio Sierra. I. Member Brown.
305Yes. Member Bannon. Hi. Vice President Bautista. Yes. Member Gutierrez. Hi. Member Biggs. Yes. Member Thorakura. Yes. Member Blae. I. Member Zachor. Yes. Member Derry. I. 20. I's zero naz. This matter is adopted by the board. EX6. Authorized renewal of the youth connection charter school agreement with conditions. President Harden, this item does does require a vote. Is there a motion? Member Rivas so moved. Is there a second? I second. I'll proceed with a roll call. Member Lozano. Yes. Member Smith. I. Member Lopez. I. Member Thomas. I. Member Bole. Yes. Member Wallace. I. Member Kuster. I. Member Pope. Yes. Member Rosenfeld. Yes. Member Rivas. Yes. Member Rio Sierra. Hi. Member Brown. Yes. Member Bannon. I. Vice President Bautista. Yes. Member Gutierrez. Hi. Member Biggs. I. Member Thorakura. Yes. Member Blaze. I. Member Zachor. Yes. Member Deberry. I.
30620 eyes zero nays. This matter is adopted by the board. OP1 amend the request the public building commission of Chicago to undertake the FY22 Kenwood link and mechanical project. President Hard and this amendment is necessary to revert back to the original PBC authority of 13,950,000. I'd also like to note that for the record, Vice President Bautista, board member Blae, and board member Brown will be abstaining on OP1. This item does require a vote. Is there a motion? So move. Is there a second? I second the motion. I'll proceed with a roll call. Member Lozano. Yes. Member Smith. I. Member Lopez. I. Member Thomas. Stay. Member Bole. Yes. Member Wallace. I. Member Kuster. I. Member Pope. Yes. Member Rosenfeld. Yes. Member Rivas. Yes. Member Rio Sierra I. I noted the abstension for member Brown. Member Bannon.
307I I noted the abstension for Vice President Bautista. Member Gutierrez. I. Member Biggs. Yes. Member Thodicura. Yes. I noted the abstension from member Blae. Member Zachor. Yes. Member Deberry. I 16 eyes's four four abstensions zero nays. This matter is adopted by the board. OP2 authorize the first renewal of the lease agreement with 8300 West Addison LLC. President Harden, this item does require a vote. Is there a motion? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Thank you. I'll proceed with a roll call. Member Lozano. Yes. Member Smith. I. Member Lopez. I. Member Thomas. Hi. Member Bole. Yes. Member Wallace. I. Member Kuster. Hi. Member Pope. Yes. Member Rosenfeld. Yes. Member Rivas. Yes. Member Rio Sierra. I. Member Brown. Yes. Member Bannon. I. Vice President Bautista. Yes. Member Gutierrez. I. Member Biggs. Yes. Member Thorakura. Yes. Member
308Blaze. I. Member Zachor. Yes. Member Deerry. I. 20 eyes, zero nays. This matter is adopted by the board. OP3 authorization to purchase the former Wright College South property located at 3400 North Austin Avenue. President Harden, this item does require a vote. Is there a motion? So move. Is there a second? I second the motion. Thank you. I'll proceed with a roll call. Member Lozano. I. Member Smith. I. Member Lopez. I. Member Thomas. I. Member Bole. Yes. Member Wallace. I. Member Kuster. I. Member Pope, yes. Member Rosenfeld, yes. Member Rivas, yes. Member Rio Sierra, hi. Member Brown, yes. Member Bannon, hi. Vice President Bautista, yes. Member Gutierrez, hi. Member Biggs. Yes. Member Thorakura. Yes. Member Blae. Member Blae. I'm sorry. Member Zachar. Yes. Member Deberry I 20 I's zero nays. This matter is adopted by the
309board. PR1 authorize a new agreement with various vendors for college and career readiness services. President Harden, this item does require a vote. Is there a motion? So moved. Is there a second? I second that motion. Thank you. I'll proceed with a roll call. Member Lozano. Yes. Member Smith. I. Member Lopez. I. Member Thomas. I. Member Bole. Yes. Member Wallace. I. Member Kuster. Hi. Member Pope. Yes. Member Rosenfeld. Yes. Member Rivas. Yes. Member Rio Sierra. I. Member Brown. Yes. Member Bannon. Hi. Vice President Bautista. Yes. Member Gutierrez. I. Member Biggs. Yes. Member Thorakura. Yes. Member Blaze I. Member Zachor. Yes. Member Deberry. I. 20 eyes, zero nays. This matter is adopted by the board. PR2. Amend the pre-qualification status of a new agreements with various vendors for emergency facility restoration services. President Harden. This amendment is
310necessary to add three additional vendors to the list of pre-qualified vendors. This item does require a vote. Is there a motion? So moved. Is there a second? I second the motion. Thank you. I'll proceed with a roll call. Member Lozano. Yes. Member Smith. I. Member Lopez. I. Member Thomas. I. Member Bole. Yes. Member Wallace. I. Member Kuster. I. Member Pope. Yes. Member sorry. Member Rosenbel. Yes. Member Rivas. Yes. Member Rio Sierra. I. Member Brown. Yes. Member Bannon. Hi. Vice President Bautista. Yes. Member Gutierrez. Hi. Member Biggs. Yes. Member Thorakura. Yes. Member Blae. I. Member Zachor. Yes. Member Deberry. I. 20 eyes zero nays. This matter is adopted by the board. PR3 amend agreements with various vendors for the purchase of maintenance, repair, and operation supplies and personal protective equipment. President Harden, this amendment is necessary
311to add two additional vendors. This item does require a vote. Is there a motion? So moved. Is there Is there a second? Is that me? I second the motion. I'll proceed with a roll call. Member Lozano. Yes. Member Smith. I. Member Lopez. I. Member Thomas. I. Member Bole. Yes. Member Wallace. I. Member Kuster. I. Member Pope. Yes. Member Rosenfeld. Yes. Member Rivas. Yes. Member Rio Sierra. I. Member Brown. Yes. Member Bannon. Hi me. Vice President Bautista. Yes. Member Gutierrez. Hi. Member BGS. Yes. Member Thorura. Yes. Member Blae. I. Member Zachor. Yes. Member Deberry. I. 20 eyes's zero nazs. This matter is adopted by the board. PR4. Authorized new agreement with warehouse direct inc. DBA Midwest office interiors. President harden. This for the record. PR4 has been updated and the final will be included in the
312agenda of action. The changes have been made to the financial section. The not to exceed amount is now $15 million and fiscal year spend breakdown is as follows. FY25 1.25 million, FY26 5.5 million, FY275 million, and FY28 3.75 million. This item does require a vote. Is there a motion? So moved. Is there a second? I second the motion. I'll proceed with a roll call. Member Lozo. Yes. Member Smith. I. Member Lopez. I. Member Thomas. Hi. Member Bole. Yes. Member Wallace. I. Member Kuster. Hi. Member Pope. Yes. Member Rosenfo. Yes. Member Rivas. Yes. Member Rio Sierra. I. Member Brown. Yes. Member Bannon. Hi, Vice President Bautista. Yes, member Gutierrez. Hi, member Bigs. Yes. Member Thoro. Yes. Member Blae. I. Member Zachor. Yes. Member Deberry. I. 20 eyes, zero nays. This matter is adopted by the board.
313PR5 report on the award of construction contracts and changes to construction contracts for the board of education's capital improvement program. President Harren PR5 was drafted on agenda and the final will be included in the agenda of action. This item does require a vote. Is there a motion? So moved. Is there a second? I second the motion. I'll proceed with a roll call. Member Lozano. Yes. Member Smith. I. Member Lopez. I. Member Thomas. Hi. Member Bole. Yes. Member Wallace. I. Member Kuster. I. Member Pope. Yes. Member Rosenfeld. She stepped away. Member Rivas. I. Member Rio Sierra. I. Member Brown. Yes. Member Bannon. I. Vice President Bautista. Yes. Member Gutierrez. I. Member Biggs. Yes. Member Thorakura, yes. Member Blae, I. Member Zachor, yes. Member Deberry, yes. 19 eyes, zero nays. This matter is adopted by the board.
314PR6. Authorize a new agreement with Sentinel Technologies, Inc. President Harden. This item does require a vote. Is there a motion? Is there a second? I second the motion. I'll proceed with a roll call. Member Lozano. Yes. Member Smith. I. Member Tom. I'm sorry. Member Lopez. I. Member Thomas. Hi. Member Bole. Yes. Member Wallace. I. Member Kuster. I. Member Pope. Yes. She's not. Member Rivas. Yes. Member Rio Sierra. I. Member Brown. Yes. Member Bannon. Hi. Vice President Bautista. Yes. Member Gutierrez. Member Gutierrez. I thank you. Member Biggs. Yes. Member Thodicura. Yes. Member Blae. I. Member Zachor. Yes. Member Deberry. I. 19 eyes zero nays. This matter is adopted by the board. PR7. and authorize the first renewal agreement with Global Payments, Inc., DBA, H Heartland Payment Systems LLC. President Harden, this item does require a vote.
315Is there a motion? So moved. Is there a second? I second the motion. I'll proceed with a roll call. Member Lozano, yes. Member Smith, I. Member Lopez, I. Member Thomas, I. Member Bole, yes. Member Wallace, I. Member Kuster, I. Member Pope, yes. Member Rivas. Yes. Member Rio Sierra. I. Member Brown. Yes. Member Bannon. I. Vice President Bautista. Yes. Member Gutierrez. I. Member Biggs. Yes. Member Thorakuro. Yes. Member Blae. I. Member Zachor. Yes. Member Deberry. Yes. 19 eyes zero nays. This matter is adopted by the board. President Harden, I'll continue with additional items on the public agenda that do not require a vote. PR8, chief procurement officer delegation of authority report for January 2025 and chief financial officer officer report for January 2025. EX7 PR report on principal contracts new. EX8 report on principal contracts renewals.
316EX9 report on the chief executive officer pursuant to board rule 5-4 AR1 report on board report reisions. President Harden these items just need to be accepted by the board. Please mark received and filed. President Harden will continue with items from the general counsel that do require a vote. AR2 appoint assistant general counsel Steven Peters. AR3 workers compensation payment for lumpsum settlement for Maria Castanada. AR4, workers compensation payment for lumpsum settlement for Tashana Johnson Jenkins. AR5, approved payment of proposed settlement regarding Kyle Burke. AR6, approved payment of a proposed settlement regarding Destiny Hart, Jabari, and Jamari Champion. AR7, approve payment of proposed settlement regarding Isis Holmes. AR8, approve payment of proposed settlement regarding Lataya Lataya and Nasha Scales. AR9 approve payment of proposed settlement regarding Qatara and Kfan Tucker. AR10 approve payment of proposed settlement regarding
317Richard War and Jeriah Fletcher. AR 111 approve settlement between the board of education and Katina Woods. President Harden, these items do require a vote. Is there a motion? So moved. Is there a second? I second the motion. Thank you. I'll proceed with a roll call. Member Lozano. I. Member Smith. I. Member Lopez. I. Member Thomas. I. Member Bole. Yes. Member Wallace. I. Member Kuster. I. Member Pope. Yes. Member Rosenfeld. Yes. Member Rivas. Yes. Member Rio Sierra. Hi. Member Brown. Yes. Member Bannon. Hi. Me. Vice President Bautista. Yes. Member Gutierrez. Hi member Biggs. Yes. Member Thodicura. Yes. Member Blae. I. Member Zachor. Yes. Member Deberry. I. 20 eyes, zero nazs. These matters are adopted by the board. President Hardon will continue with an item from the chief executive officer that does require a vote. EX10 report
318on principal contract ALSC new for Rosa Jimenez at Solario High School. President Harden, this item does require a vote. Is there a motion? Lopez move. I move. Is there a second? So move, Mr. President. Thank you. I'll proceed with a roll call. Member Lozano. I. Member Smith. I. Member Lopez. I. Member Thomas. I. Member Bole. Yes. Member Wallace. I member Kuster. I member Pope. Yes. Member Rosenfo. Yes. Member Rivas. Yes. Member Rio Sierra. I. Member Brown. Yes. Member Bannon. Hi. Vice President Bautista. Yes. Member Gutierrez. I. Member BGS. Yes. Member Thorakura. Yes. Member Blae. I. Member Zachor. Yes. Member Deberry I. 20 I's zero nazs. This matter is adopted by the board. President Hard will continue with an item from the board that does require a vote. RS6 resolution approving chief of executive officer's recommendation
319to dismiss educational support personnel. President Harton. This item does require a vote. Is there a motion? So moved. Is there a second? I second the motion. I'll proceed with a roll call. Member Lozano. I. Member Smith. I. Member Lopez. I. Member Thomas. I. Member Bole. Yes. Member Wallace. I. Member Kuster. I. Member Pope. Yes. Member Rosenfeld. Yes. Member Rivas. Yes. Member Rio Sierra. I. Member Brown. Yes. Member Bannon. Hi. Vice President Bautista. Yes. Member Gutierrez. I member Vixs. Yes. Member Thorakura. Yes. Member Boyce. I member Zachor. Yes. Member Deberry. Yes. 20 eyes. Zero Naz. This matter is adopted by the board. RS7 resolution approving chief executive executive officer's recommendation to dismiss probationary appointed teacher. President Harden. This item does require a vote. Is there a motion? So moved. Is there a second? I second the
320motion. I'll proceed with a roll call. Member Lozano. Yes. Member Smith. I. Member Lopez. I. Member Thomas. Hi. Member Bole. Yes. Member Wallace. I. Member Kuster. I. Sorry. Member Pope. Yes. Member Rosenfeld. Yes. Member Rivas. Yes. Member Rio Sierra. I. Member Brown. Yes. Member Bannon. Hi. Vice President Bautista. Yes. Member Gutierrez. Hi. Member Biggs. Yes. Member Thorakura. Yes. Member Blae. I. Member Zachor. Yes. Member Deberry. Yes. 20 eyes, zero nazs. This matter is adopted by the board. President Hard. And I I believe member Lopez board member Lopez has motion MO3. I move that the board adopt the minutes of the closed session meeting of February 12, 2025 and February 27, 2025 pursuant to section 2.06 of the open meetings act where members reviewed these minutes and determined that the need for confidentiality exists. Therefore, the
321minutes of the close session meetings held February 12, 2025 and February 27, 2025 shall be maintained as confidential and not available for public inspection. Is there a second? So moved. I'll proceed with a roll call. Member Lozano. Yes. Member Smith. I. Member Lopez. I. Member Thomas. Hi. Member Bole. Yes. Member Wallace. I. Member Kuster. I member Pope. Yes. Member Rosenfeld. Yes. Member Rivas. Yes. Member Rio Sierra. Hi. Member Brown. Yes. Member Bannon. I. Vice President Bautista. Yes. Member Gutierrez. I. Member Biggs. Yes. Member Thorakura. Yes. Member Blae. I. Member Dor. Yes. Member Deberry. I. 20 eyes zero naz. This motion is adopted by the board. We will now move into executive session. Board member board, do you have a motion? MO4. I move for the passage of motion number 25-0320- M4 and the commencement of
322a closed session to consider matters permitted under section 2C of the Open Meetings Act subsection one as specified in the motion. Is there a second? So, so moved. I'll proceed with a roll call. Member Lozano. Yes. Member Smith. I. Member Lopez. I. Member Thomas. Member Bole. Yes. Member Wallace. I. Member Kuster. I. Member Pope. Yes. Member Rosenfeld. Yes. Member Rivas. Yes. Member Rio Sierra. Hi. Member Brown. Yes. Member Bannon. Hi. Vice President Baltista. Yes, member Gutierrez. I member Biggs. I member Thorakura. Yes. Member Blae. I member Zachor. Yes. Member Deberry. Yes. 20 eyes, zero nazs. This motion is adopted. This meeting will now go into close session. Tech team, can you remove the in Oh, thank you. I mean, you could. You might get some side eyes. Okay. The board meeting of the board of
323education is reconvened. Board secretary, please proceed. President Hart and I would like to note for the record that there are no items to vote on from executive session. Thank you. Is there a motion to adjurnn? So moved. Is there a second? All in favor? We are journ. Thanks everyone.