001even everyone would like to reconvene the Thursday March 13 2025 meeting Lake Forest Board of Education if you'd please join me for pledge of allegiance followed by m silence Al to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all thank you evening everyone welcome to those who have joined in person as well as those who have joined online just a reminder that we are streaming tonight's meeting across the internet um and uh copies of the meeting minutes and the recording will be posted to the district website once they are approved uh we'll start this evening with 2.3 roll call of board members Dr W presid Mr R here vice president starky here and president erl Dempsey serving
002as chairs here as well we have four board members present thank you all for being here we want a 2.4 approval of agenda Mr star uh motion 2.4 I um make a motion we approve resolu 2.4 approval of second I motion on the floor properly second any questions or discussion on the motion seeing none we'll move to a vote all those in favor I I any opposed any extensions motion carries 4ward zero and 2.5 minutes I make a motion we approve the minutes from the February 27 2025 meeting second a motion on floor properly seconded any questions or discussion on that motion see none will move to a vote all those in favor I I any opposed uh any extensions actually I think our Mr parliamentarian we have I think we have to have a
003three at least a three vote so motion fails can I get a motion to table this to next meeting make a motion we table resolution to point of Mo already failed you may have just bring it back as a new motion next meeting approve approve all right but we can't table motion all right that works thank you sir so if we can make sure that those minutes as well as the tonight's minutes both go in the next agenda all right sorry I didn't catch that earlier we are up to 2.7 citizens participation uh time is set aside early in each Lake Forest Board of Education meeting for citizens participation to allow members of the public to address board members on any relevant topic reading directly from board policy ke which is public concerns and complaints
004the citizens participation on the board agenda is an opportunity for members of the community to speak publicly those who wish to speak publicly to the board must complete the information form provided at the board meeting and submitted to the board secretary prior to the opening of the meeting the form should clearly State the reason for addressing the board and the public should not expect discussion or responses at this board meeting comments are limited to 3 minutes per person uh we do not have anyone signed up in person this evening so we will close public comment portion of the meeting and it will reopen again at our next meeting in two weeks with that we're up to section three reports 3.1 Financial reports Mr Kurt Kellerman welcome Mr Kellerman good evening we should have a pretty
005quick uh monthly financial report tonight for data as of the end of February 28 28th 2025 uh only one thing to highlight on the revenue side of this uh report and that's that in the state funds there the minor Capital Improvement funds we did receive are enhanced minor Capital Improvement funds so that closed out closes out the amount that we will receive this year from the state for that that function so outside of that um we're at 96% of our discretionary funds received compared to 100% last year and 88% for all funds compared 91% last year but any questions on the revenue side of the report any questions for Mr comment on this page okay moving on to the expenditure side uh really just a few items to highlight uh the first is uh a
006little bit further down than halfway the tuition reimbursements uh you can now see the effect of the that large uh submission of uh tuition reimbursement requests uh in fact it exceeded what we would kind of anticipated there so and then with the 11,207 that's in the encumbered there that's the uh the staff members that submitted but did not yet have two years of service with the district so as soon as they hit two years of service with the district they will get the remaining 50% of their tuition reimbursement so that was a new to our negotiated contract uh last year where uh new employees are eligible for tuition reimbursement they don't have to wait the the two years like previously had to uh also further down uh I mean building and grounds we're getting tight
007there I know that um expenses have gone up we had a a harsh winter uh spent about $7,500 in salt just for the buildings um and uh a lot of our custodial supplies have gone up so we're anticipating that it'll be very tight we'll probably exceed that budget this uh this year and then down in transportation for our our uh our local portion of Transportation you have see you do see that we've already exceeded the budget there uh we've had some equipment that we've had to replace on on some of the buses the GPS uh equipment and it's it's more than what we typically have to replace in a given year so but outside of that that's it for the first page and then moving down to the second page in the non-discretionary line uh
008reading an opportunity match it's about the eighth line down for uh reading an opportunity match local salaries I just wanted to point out that there was an error in the the budget amount for local salaries it did not include the O so I've since changed that budgeted amount because when I initially had the report up there it show that we had less than 10% of the uh budget remaining and I know that given the fact that we're about two-thirds into the fiscal year we should have about a third of our our salary funds left and so you can see that is a little bit closer to what we should be seeing 37% in terms of local salary funds remaining so uh that's the last of the items I wanted to highlight uh we're at 36%
009of our discretionary budget remaining and that matches where we were last year uh all funds were at 39% compared to 41% last year any questions any questions for Mr Kellerman on expenditures or this report or anything else all right thank you Mr K this item will come up for a vote later and that is all you have for us tonight correct correct all right thank you sir um 3.2 report card report Mr James dick and friends yeah and friend and Company brought some Heavy Hitters with me it wasn't really doing the work so as many of you have probably known we started the conversation a little bit last year with the board you guys had ask some questions um it's been about a year and a half um meeting as committees um getting a standard
010based report card ready for our K to five students making that transition over so I'm going to do a little introduction but I'm going to let uh once again the people that are serving on the committee or portion of the people serving on the committee go through the why the process that we're using um and where we're starting to land and starting to firm up a little bit and then I'll go over the next steps of of parent communication what we're going to do and everything like that as we do the BL out so there there is it working or not it's working I'm good all right so there's our committee members we pretty strategic about how we did it we wanted to pull in every school that's going to be affected by this both
011the administrators teachers different grade level levels so I'm not going to sit here and read read all the names to you um but we do have three of them we're going to have four Au gon is going to be with us tonight uh something came up at the last second so um we do have three people that are currently sitting on the committee um Tom here has graciously um offered to do au's portion of the presentation so we'll be hearing quite a bit from H tonight out don't mind talking all right so I use this slide right with the committee so things are made and at the time they serve extraordinarily well they're state-of-the-art I've asked as many tenure teachers as I run into can you remember the last time that report card was changed
012or moved around uh Nik McNair serves on the committee she's been around 26 years she's like I can't remember it she's like I remember doing the only thing I remember is doing by hand with carbon copies pulling them off so we haven't had any real changes other than kindergarten kindergarten did change around a little bit in the previous years before I set this seat but once again we need to keep up with the times right so that's where the picture is right there state-ofthe-art washing machine right if we were using that today we wouldn't be too stateof the art and one of my favorite quotes Henry for it if I asked what if I asked people what they wanted they would have said Faster Horses right not Innovative we're not going to make Faster Horses
013here we're going to build a car so the journey why why didn't we do this earlier when I took over this seat I kind of made a Visionary list of what I wanted to tackle in this position and this was one of the first things man I want to get us to a standards based report card I know it's the right thing to do and when I really reflected on I was like we're not ready for it yet so each one of those bullet points is multi-e of work high quality instructional materials forming the Committees um going through piloting process processes but really getting the top quality materials in front of people setting up interventions and things like that the ongoing professional development and coaching now that we have everything all those tools in place
014I think this district is ready for a standard based report card otherwise I think we would been trying to pound a a round Peg through a square hole so the process be the last one then I'll hand it over here we've had six meetings so far and each one of these we're going to discuss briefly about how the committee met right I went over with the committee of the change process like this is a really big change this isn't small beads it's a big change so as a committee they need to understand the change process and the committee members start to become the ambassadors within the school right this is why we're doing this when people start asking questions people get uncomfortable with change um the next thing we did was identify the audience like
015when you send a rapport card out who really is the audience for that report card and we need to tailor the wording of what we're doing to the audience that is intended for developing a purpose statement that'll sit at the top of the report card we talked about non-cognitive measures we'll get into like Behavior work ethic effort things like that the cognitive measures which is the meat uh We've analyzed other District examples what's going well what's not going well and then identifying measurable outcomes for each subject area and related arts so without further Ado I'll hand it over I can do the click if you no I won't thank you um so through the whole process of change we were talking about how change can be frightening for anybody um but it usually ends up
016being like the best thing for us so we were talking about how it can be scary for the teachers it be scary for the parents that the the differen is with the we're so used to all of our Lives any of us can think our report cards have always been ABC 90% whatever it was we always had those kind of report cards um but like the horse quote which I really like if if we hadn't if Henry Ford had waited for somebody to ask him what they wanted he wouldn't have made a car he would have just had to deal with G horses and then we wouldn't have cars and that would be horrible so change is hard but it does end up being helpful for us a lot of times so go ahead well
017I was going to say too in the middle one there I I really believe in that um and a lot of this work I should have mentioned on the first one we're not out there doing it alone there's research Thomas gusy is the guru in this he's actually turned States over that have done standards based on proart so we've kind of used the flowchart of his work um to nail the process down but he's really big on that middle quote sitting in there A lot of times you can logic people to death but you're messing with their emotion so no matter how much logic you throw at them you have to overcome this emotional response that goes into it we we've talked about that and plans for how you know when parents start to see
018this how we're going to educate them normally if you could sit down and educate somebody not just logic but with a little bit of emotion to it you can get over that hump so all right so the whole process we we read the book um thank You Ready set go and it was it was a great job this was by the guy that he was just speaking about that has helped all these districts and these states do it so the process was start with keeping it simple just keep the process very simple don't try to over exaggerate or try to put too much into it um to complete the tasks in order so the first thing we had to do was address why we're doing this and then we had to think about what we
019wanted to do what we wanted to evaluate how we wanted to present it to people how we wanted it to look and how we were going to communicate it with the families when we were going to be doing this and then who were the stakeholders who are the people that are going to be looking at this report guard and how is it going to be helpful for those people and then we also had to consider that importance for to tradition because like we all are used to these things and we know that it is important to keep things um somewhat traditional especially when we're changing something we don't want to completely drop everything that people are used to especially for the teachers and for the parents we didn't want to take it and just throw
020away everything um and then we also had to anticipate what kind of opposition are we going to think or that we might see as teachers we have to think all the time about what are the possible issues that we're going to see in the classroom like the misunderstandings that our kids are going to have so we had to step into that role and think about what kind of opposition might we get from just every stakeholder the parents the teachers anybody that is involved with this so so first we sat down and we did a little stand a little QR code and everybody had to put in there like things that we felt were the purpose of a report card so we talked about how ultimately it's to communicate information about students achievement to the families
021and to others whoever the stakeholders might be whether their coaches or the orthodontist who's given them points for their grades and then we had to think about the information that we wanted the kids to get and how they can use that as like a self- evaluation how they can do better um we also had to select identify and group like we knew that this report card was going to be used to help identify them for different paths or programs whether that was sports or like other academic programs within the schools um we also wanted it to be we knew that it was going to be something that provided incentive for students so they knew what they were doing how they can do better we knew that report cards were used kind of like as an
022intrinsic thing for kids so we wanted it to be like we knew that it needed to be um something they could evaluate themselves on um also the effectiveness of our instructional programs and then to provide evidence of the students effort and their responsibility because we know that their effort goes along and is almost more important than the academic side of it at times kind of like those um non-cognitive things so as we can see Educators use that report card for a lot of different reasons and they got a lot of different viewpoints on it so next one yes parents so ultimately the purpose of a report card for parents and families is to communicate information about their achievement to those families and others so we knew that ultimately the parents are going to want to
023see this report card and they just want to know how is my kid doing and a lot of parents want to know how can I help my child so so then we came up with a purpose statement to put on the report card to think about what is the purpose of our Lake Forest report card so we said the primary goal of this progress report is to communicate with families and students about both the students progress and demonstrating achievement of the state standards and qualities of a learner for each markeing period it's intended to inform families about learning successes and to guide improvements when needed so we all sat and talked about the best report cards how they clearly communicate and these were the three most important points what students are expected to learn and
024what they're supposed to be able to do how well students are going are doing these things and then whether the level of performance aligns with the learning expectations set for this grade level or whatever the course is at that time of the school year so then we sat and talked about all the non cognitive outcomes so thinking about the non-cognitive things um I I like the Martin Luther King Jr quote we must remember that intelligence is not enough intelligence plus character that is the goal of true education we know that as teachers we are teaching the curriculum we are primarily responsible for these academic things but we know that that intrinsic non-cognitive stuff is making a huge difference it's making them into good people and making them um in society as they grow up so
025we wanted to think about what those important non-cognitive things were that we could address on the report card this is a a a big one as you go through that these non-cognitive outcomes don't bleed into cognitive outcomes right you could try really hard but you're not turning in satisfactory work even though the effort is there so it's important to to recognize the effort we feel or the work ethic or the behavior or you're going to see some of the non-cognitive outcomes we're going to put on there but not let them bleed in to how you're doing in math how you're doing in ela so on and so forth so the noncognitive measures we all kind of got together and thought about what did we want in there and then we grouped together the commonality things
026so we said uh shows consideration for and respects others um student manages own behavior and emotions uh participates cooperatively and constructively in group situations whether they're small groups or in large groups and then the student work demonstrates best effort and as you stated those are the four I was debating whether to leave this up and the presentation get too long we put them up there but the activity was the whole committee made this laundry list a great laundry list of all the behaviors we want to see in a classroom the work ethic so what you're seeing here is a very boil down okay we grouped them all into buckets and these were the overarching umbrella buckets that we came up with we didn't want to put too many on there otherwise becomes overwhelming to the
027teacher to put all of this down it also becomes overwhelming to the parent like this laundry list going down so the committee landed here um with the buckets for the non-cognitive measures so then we kept the regular cognitive measures the English language arts Math Science Social and then we also wanted to include the related arts aspect into it as well yeah up until now related arts has never appeared on a l for Arts music PE things like that so I mean and we got the related arts together a little bit last year I was like okay they're probably going to push back they haven't had to do anything in a report part they were very happy to hear it like you know my my work is worthwhile I'll be more than happy to do this
028all right we're gonna hand it over all right so for our cognitive matters that we're going to look to communicate to parents and stakeholders um through laa we looked at all the common core standards and if you've seen them there's a lot that's way too heav aable workload to put on teachers to go through one by one and communicate that on a report card it would also be very overwhelming to families as they're looking at that report card to sift through all of that and try to understand it um so we broke it down into these anchor standards and the anchor like the headings they're going to be pretty similar throughout grade level so literature and informational text you'll see that up um K through five Reading Writing speaking and listening that will be K
029through five um those smaller bulleted more specific standards that you see that's going to be a really great communication tool for the families of how the um expectations are changing for their students as they progress through each grade level so in kindergarten for literature and informational text um we're just asking students to interact with the text ask questions answer questions it's pretty cut and simple it's with prompting and support um for that same heading literature and informational text once they get up into third fourth grade they're um using text uh to support their answers and they're looking for the main idea they're using key details um so we really wanted to make sure that this is going to be effective to let parents know where their students are at in each of these smaller standards
030because right now our report cards um in reading the student could maybe have a b in reading but they can't um actually phonetically read they're just getting really great scores on listening comprehension because some things are being read aloud um depending on their grade level so by breaking it down in this way um we have their reading skills their listening comprehension and then it also breaks it into foundational skills I mean you can see in those foundational skills for example kindergarten um if we had grouped those all together student might be really high like strong in those high frequency words they might have those mapped in their brain but they might be um struggling with their letter sound relationships um so this is a really great way to break it down and give parents a
031very clear picture of what their students are succeeding in and where exactly we need to Target those supports for them both in school um and at home awesome thank you so and just to add on to before we go onto the math these slides well they're they're one page here right up here this is a massive amount of work for this committee to get to this point because looking at other districts other states where this has fallen flat um it's nor only one of two reasons it becomes overly complicated because and to each their own how they they want to do it but they list all these standards it just becomes unmanageable right there's like 30 standards for ELA 30 standards for math parents aren't going to read that the poor teachers are sitting there
032like how do it it's an overwhelming Tas and then some people make it almost too simplistic where it's not giving enough information out so I I kind of say it's walking the tight rope uh we want to pick out the most important details in every grade the most the most important in this case it's anchor standard and Report those out to parents so each report card especially in math will look different it won't stay static through the grade levels right and and that's what we have right now if you were to go back and look at our current report card it's so General in nature reads fluently knows math facts but it doesn't get to the point of exactly what they're learning in that grade and how are they performing back to those key points
033of a report card so all right math right so math was made in a very similar way as Ela so the same thing we looked at all of the standards and we quickly found that that would be way overwhelming for both parents and teachers so then we kind of zoomed out just a bit so that way we were looking at the different clusters and this allows parents to better get a handle on what their child is doing well with and what they might need additional practice with so for example I believe this is the second grade report card and if you look under measurement in data there is a standard in second grade where students can measure with rulers or various tools so a child might be doing really well in that area and their
034parent can see that they're performing well U within that standard and then if you look at the top under operations and outright thinking that's where word problems are which are typically more tricky for students so parents can see hey my child is struggling a little bit with word problems but is doing well with measurement if you compare that to what we currently have a lot of the times those different assignments are being averaged together so a lot of really good grades in measuring things could out Overlook the problems with solving word problems and so a parent might say hey my child has a b they must be doing really well in math and then later on in the year or even when they get to a higher grade they might find that there was a
035gap within that area that they weren't aware of um so I think it just provides a lot of transparency and then from a teacher perspective we've been doing this for years this is how we teach this matches how we teach um we're very standard spaced and I think that this would just be a really good tool to help um create some two-way Communications um much more effectively between parents and teachers parents are always reaching out how can I help my child and this gives a very clear way to say this is how you can help a child this also lends itself to letting parents know how the students are going to progress even Within grade level because each marking period is going to have different standards that those students are focusing on for each subject
036like reading and math it's going to progress throughout the year and they'll be able to see that reflected right on their report card you um I'll take the next slide and then the next step science and social studies we met uh the last meeting um we wish there was more time in the day um but the main focus with you're an elementary school is we are teaching kids how to read we need literate students U math gets a fair share of the instructional time science and social studies we teach it but once again time is a finite resource um so it doesn't get as much time in there so that I told the committee we can kind of break this out like we did math or Ela or do we want to keep it a
037little more generalistic in nature and the feeling on the committee was let's keep it more generalistic in nature so you can read those there then use music PE and then the visual arts once again fairly um generalistic in nature um all right so next steps of the committee I meet with them next Friday we still got a little bit of work to do we're going to have this ready for next year we need to finalize grading practices what this looks like a lot of behind the curtain stuff what this looks like in the grade book how the grades are being entered how the standards are being Tagged so I've task the committee when we come together next time we're going to start finalizing that um develop parent handbooks so what we're doing we're working on
038it now um we've invited some parents i' reached out to the administrators inviting parents into the next meeting to look at these parent handbooks hey is this helpful is this not helpful to explain this process this change what you're looking at but we plan on making them for ELA and math parent handbooks for each grade level to go through and explain each one of those sections and then also underneath it what you can do to help your kid at home right for each one of these things things um once the hater books are done um I got my outside team there my specialist we're going to take those and turn them into videos people don't want to pick them up they just want to watch a video explaining this process you can watch QR code
039in watch a video we can send it out through remind and click on it that way and then if you just click on that real quick Mr morvin this is up and running it was a soft launch I haven't really advertised it yet um but I want to advertise it with the pair in handbook where we can link into it can you click on like the k to8 math for me but it's a family support Hub so if you were to scroll down you can go into any one of these grade levels as a family all the support materials are going to be there and they can see what they're learning in each unit and that also lines up to the curriculum and the report card so they can start to see exactly where all
040of this is coming from but we don't have to go through the whole thing but if you click on that it shows you what the kids learning in each unit each grade level what the problems are going to look like how they can help at home so on and so forth so we're building all that out also all right we're gonna have to revise some board policies my favorite one everybody's favorite one AKA grading evaluation of students so we're going to work on that as the report card committee first once we have those um revisions down where we want them then of course we'll take it to a regular board policy committee board policy committee it'll come it'll come to you for first then of course second readings so the ones I see that are
041really going to be affected are Ika ik promotion retention and acceleration of students and then ikd honor roles just how all that's defined out so um also next steps Infinite Campus we're transitioning over to that that's one of the reasons I drugged my feet a little bit last year on this I didn't want to build an echool and then I have to rebuild everything in an infinite campus I wanted to kind of streamline it all uh teacher professional development we're starting to plan that out what this is going to look like as we roll it out I didn't put it on there um but I know beginning of April I'll be meeting with the parent advisory committee going over basically the same thing I went over with the board tonight um so getting this out
042in front of parents too then we're also talking about parent Outreach um we started talking as a committee whether it's the open houses next year um but getting this in front of parents so it's no big surprise what we're doing and everybody understands the why of what we're doing at foring so without further Ado any questions uh so before we get into questions I will say thank you all very much um it's clear um I couldn't think of a a better group to have gotten up and presented this to us you guys did a phenomenal job and it's clear both here and here the the passion and support that exists so thank you I will say that for the record and for those anybody who has joined online it might be beneficial if you could
043introduce yourself tell us I know I know tell us who you are what school you're in and and what your responsibilities are I'm Ashley H I'm at Central Elementary School I'm a fourth grade math teacher I'm Britney Campbell I'm a second grade teacher at Lake Forest South hi I'm Alex Hogs and I'm a kindergarten teacher at Lake Florida thank you very much ladies thank you uh questions from the board so you answered one of mine as you went along but then it morphed into something else so uh what we saw here as far as the standards go I find it but um you said they would this is not what each and every grade would look like consistently K so that would change by K to five yes sorry yes K to five um would
044it change at all all within a grade by marking period or would it be the the standards would be broad enough that it covers they will not be covered in some marking period so we've been working that with our coding system which is still what we're working on it's either going to be whatever the code is not not taught yet if it hasn't been covered or even I think it was uh Britney had a wonderful idea because teachers or teachers parents might get the idea not taught they're not teaching right I never thought of that just like okay we haven't taught it we'll code it that way so I'm going to work with Infinite Campus to see if something hasn't been taught for marting period if we can just gray the box out but then
045they also know that this is coming this year so yeah okay okay great thank you um anybody else anything I just really appreciate the thoroughness of everything and thinking about all of the different stakeholders and what this will require of you know our staff and really what parents want to see and it is going to be tricky I think for a lot of parents to see something that's very different than what they growing up and what they've seen so far in their kids education so the fact that um you've already thought about the policies and this amazing website just with all that information like you have made access to the curriculum for parents to help like just it's amazing so done a great job I came in with an open mind I was ready I
046was ready for anybody um no it really is now do you anticipate this being like on one sheet of paper I know that's a small thing but like just how do you anticipate I hadn't thought about that before until a couple days ago one of my specialist Andrea Hamilton she's like this a front and Backer we wanted to keep it sure we want to keep it front and back we want one page it'll be I need to go around once we get it and play with it in infinite campus the spacing of it get the lake forest logo head there behind on it I I come down to playing with font what's readable um so the question the answer is I'm not sure but we're going to make every effort to make it a front
047and back I will say kindergarten is already standard bed right now um and right now ours is only the front so but when we add maybe the related arts might turn into more than that we didn't want to send home like an eight page thing we just thought that's not going to be helpful people so we tried to think of the parents and how they would want to get this information and we were like eight pages is too much so we were like let try to PR back who tops I oh I'm sorry no i f i I just I appreciate to the the reading level that this is written in is that the right way of saying that like I mean it's accessible I think to all parents yeah and I won't say we
048started with it but that goes back to walk in the tight rope because we went back to those slides at the end of the day and I kept refocusing the committee not that they need to refocus that much they're great people is this is for the parents yeah we can't jargon this thing up so badly that the parents can't understand it but we also have to keep the spirit true to what the standards are and what we're teaching in there so so to your point we tried to make it so it was easily as easily digestible by parents and my instructions to my team out there before we bring it back into the committee is these parent handbooks anything that might be on that hairy edge of the parents then we Define that out very
049specifically in the parent handbook question so from the teachers like let's just say a parent says like what do you mean like how do you prove to them or have like proof of prob they've met these standards or haven't met these standards are there things already in place that are yes okay tell me about that so I can speak for the math side of it I'll let you guys do the ELA stuff so for the math side of it every single lesson that we teach is connected to some kind of standard and it's right there on that website that he shared out like all every lesson has some kind of standard attached to it so like when we do like a cool down or something for that lesson it's addressing that specific standard so we
050can we're hoping that somehow through Infinite Campus we can tag it in there or something or we can devise our own system to keep track of it and that way we have that evidence we even thought about like writing on each assignment like this was this standard that way they can match it to that standard on the report card and say okay I see every time that this you know using a measurement came up that they got an A on this so I know that they met that standard so just kind of providing that like evidence to them just gonna add beauly stated so this is the report card committee I have math and Ela leadership teams that we formed over the last couple of years from each bill that'll meet with myself Mrs Hamilton
051or Mrs soner so some of their work that they're starting now with these leadership teams outside of the report card committee is to make sure all the scope and sequences within our curriculum are tagged in these report cards so it's not a guessing game for our staff like oh when should I grade this when does this go into the report card they'll have guiding documents right in front of them that say okay this is what I'm grading this is how it tags in this is how I'm going to report out so basically taking the scope and sequence of all the correc s and tag them to what we have on the report C and how do you provide feedback throughout the marking period leading up to that so that parents have a real time understanding
052of how their kids are doing we'll still have like interms and progress reports but I do think like as staff a lot of us do have very open communication with parents and I know for kindergarten we are standards based so as we're like assessing these standards throughout the marking period all that is going home if students are struggling we're reaching out to parents um so we're still going to have like that data that right in front of us like how these kids are doing so we we'll catch it if they're not um making progress and still take the same approach that we do with like interventions and all those things that we do right now Mr um so a few questions I have the standard-based uh this this portal card where are other districts in
053the state at in terms of the same type of thing um top of my head I have my notes on who I have aint led the charge years and years ago with this in the state there's oh 100 Kate K's there Cesar Rodney's rolling it in Milford working on it right now um Smyrna if I didn't already say Smyrna definitely Colonial I've been working with a lot of the Mes in those districts like tell me lesson learned please like don't let me walk into a wall that led me to my at least my next question was what type of utilization did you use of those different to kind of get their pros and cons of how their process went and how things are going for them and that was one of the things we did
054with in the first year as I brought in all the districts that have made this move over we spread out all their report cards some of their pair and handbooks and it was a kind of what do we like what do we not like what do you think our community is going to like what is our community not going to like once again all of that work is kind of bubbled down into into what you what you saw this evening that's that point sometimes we do the same thing as the board because we try to utilize what other people have done before us to make sure that we're not getting pck and making the mistakes that let them make the mistakes ahead of us so um some other questions um and for the record I
055enjoy policy sessions as much as you do espe your your curriculum website when don't you T me pushing that out it's it's live know it's live but in terms of like letting people know because I I want to do it with a parent handbook QR code it and there's still a little tweaking we want to do to it but I feel like it's good enough right now to offer it out for anybody that clicks on our curriculum website for parents but I didn't want to do a hard launch I want to push all this communication out at once parent handbook parent videos a curricular site so they can see how everything is working together I think the idea and the information is great so I'm glad to hear that uh and then the last two
056questions two other questions one I assume all this would take place at a the same board meeting in terms of approval policies official launch that's the Hope yeah I got a timeline in my book over there of everything out and to make sure we we hit all timelines and if there's any put a little extra time in there in case we snag up on any policies or anything like that um so we should be ready to rock and roll for the next school year so the timeline's laid out and then last question for me and I appreciate your time and all the effort you put in this but um have you seen any push back from people not on the committee or any of the staff members that would I personally have not but I'm
057not living in the buildings just curious I brought it up to my team and other teachers I've talked to and they were actually pretty relieved because it's so aligned to what we're currently doing in the classroom okay good to hear thank you uh so if no other questions I'll just close with a a high level observation from the 30,000 foot level sitting in this chair um the amount of as I'm sitting here what I'm really thinking I'm hearing your content but what I'm really thinking is thank God we have finally gotten to a place as a district that we can tackle things like this and we can strategically take a step back from dare I say the the mundane of everything that we have to go through each day to look at this from a
058strategic perspective so uh I think that you know that goes to the board to District administration to our school administration to our teacher leaders to all of our teaching staff right it's just uh just the amount of pride looking at this topic and hearing holy cow we're actually doing big things so thanks to everybody involved thank you great job thank you all all right guys are more than welcome to stay all right we're up to 3.3 superintend Dr Lucas good evening Spartan family just always like to start with some celebrations first like to congratulate all our winter athletes we wrapped that up the winner season about about a week ago um so big thanks to our coaches athletes and of course our parents for another successful season uh we did have several teams go on
059to postseason play including boys basketball wrestling and of course our cheer squads uh High School wrestler Jerusalem Howard was the cape and lopin Conference champ State runnerup uh high school girls captured second place at their uh final meet and Chipman cheer I believe they captured the state championship again yes third is that the third fourth year in a row so next year they get one for the thumb um let's see uh I also want to congratulate Mrs reell in the high school for their great work on SAT prep and the SAT they ran four consecutive Saturday prep sessions and then just yesterday uh they ran the SAT for 11th graders and the PSAT for 10th graders so thanks to all the teachers and students who embraced the importance of the SAT and really invested their
060best effort um finally thanks to all those who participated in black history night that was the 28th of February and I wanted to thank and highlight Miss Mani Cummings from the high school who served as the chair for that event and did a great job rapidly approaching the end of the third Market period uh the end of this month March seems like it lasts forever uh but it will get here eventually I encourage everyone to please reach out to your students teacher school counselor or administrator if you have any concerns about your students progress uh the end of the marketing period is March 28th as always I encourage you to check our website especially as we approach this busy spring season there'll be a lot going on you don't want to miss anything speaking of
061things going on this weekend Lake Force High School proud to presents Sleeping Beauty the musical uh opening night is tonight there shows Friday and Saturday night and then a matina at 2m on Sunday so please check out the lake Force High School website for information about tickets I'm sure it is going to be epic that's all I have this evening so I give the floor back uh to president and board for any questions or discussion thank you Dr Lucas questions or discussion for Dr Lucas so I have two observations in in one question um two observations one so uh wrestling right kind of tied to wrestling but Jerusalem Howard finished second in the state right in his weight class I think it's important to note that his loss in the final was to the state's
062first five-time state champion right so that's how well this this kid did and and that's the only the only student that he only wrestle that he LS to is junior he is a junior yes so that other guy graduated this year he did got his first got his first champ as anade um good and then the the other observation at the about the sports um ceremony last night at the high school um so as a parent of a student athlete that was you know asked to attend with all of the communication that came home about dress to impress dress to impress um and then to see uh Mrs rello uh go and pull a coach aside who then went on to stage and had a student remove his hoodie and had a student remove his
063ball cap uh was phenomenal because the teaching doesn't just end in the classroom right we should be teaching these students these LIF skills and that certainly was something that if anybody was going to catch it it was fantastic that she did and hopefully those students walked those student athletes walked away with something from that so it was just a little observation that I I saw last night uh it happened to be the wrestling team so I was definitely in tune with with what was going on there um and then uh a question for you Dr Lucas sports related as well last meeting um during public comment uh the board we had several speakers um talking about the the girls lacrosse team um and the possible at that point um that the program is going to
064be canceled for the year I know there's been some work done since then if you could just maybe give an an overview of of the steps we've taken and where we stand today with that yes good question so we actually did start uh the girls team uh last Tuesday was the first practice uh they've done about seven or eight practices to this point so far uh they haven't quite reached uh the capacity of of a um being able to feel the full team for you know it doesn't doesn't look great right now uh but they're going to have a a meeting tomorrow afternoon to determine if they are going to have enough players to be able to have a season next year but we gave it gave it a go uh we've been putting out
065uh some pretty constant communication via remind and trying to pick up some extra girls to see if we can have a season um we'll see what happens right now we we're sitting on about between 11 and 13 girls but we haven't had more than 10 or 11 show up for any one particular practice so uh we've got to have I think we need 11 U Mr Naf singers at lacrosse guys so is there 11 players 10 in boys so I believe it's the same in girl 10 on the field 10 on the field what about is that include the goalie yes okay but then they need subs I mean it's a a lot of running in the N Sports so yeah gets a little warm sometimes yeah in may as well so uh so we'll
066see see hopefully we get enough and we're able to pull it off but we gave it a go either way all right well thank you sir I think as a board we're appreciative of that and I would think the parents who spoke last time would be as well because I'm not sure exactly where we were at that time of that meeting but if this was a reversal of course I think we we've done everything we could to give it a chance and to put it in the hands of the folks who who can make that difference so hopefully tomorrow uh goes well for them as well so all right thank you very much sir yes sir all right well up to section four unfinished business 4.1 board policies second reading this is an action item
067this start section 4.1 Board policiy second reading I make a motion we approve uh the second meing um policies as modified during discussion second have motion on floor properly seconded is this common place we will briefly go through each one of these again this is second reading all of these have come to the board already um for discussion so may a little more we'll start tonight with ef Food Services any discussion on EF see we'll move to EFA food purchasing selection and discussion on EFA see none move on to efab use of surplus Commodities any questions or discussion on this policy seeing n move on to EFC free and reduced price Food Services a discussion on EFC see n move on to EF competitive food sales vending machines discussion on this policy see number one
068to efh Food Service sanitation program any discussion on this policy seeing none Mo going to EFI Food Services records and reports any discussion on this policy hearing none we want the e gab photocopying Services discussion on this policy see none we going to ege mail and delivery services all for any discussion on this policy see now move on to E GF telephone service a discussion on EG G F seeing n move on to our final second reading Ed use of Technology resources and office services we call for discussion on this policy all right that closes the individual review we have a motion and a second on the floor any additional discussion on the motion see now we'll move to a vote all those in favor I I any opposed any extensions motion carries forward to
069zero up to 4.2 2025 2023 school year calendar um this as well is in action idem Mrs starky uh 4.2 make a motion we approve the 2526 school year calendar as modified during discussion second a motion on the floor properly seconded we'll move to any discussion on the topic uh Mr Mormon do you have anything additional to add from our previous discussions no sir okay any discussion from the board on this motion seeing none we'll move to a vote all those in favor I I any opposed any extensions motion carries five four to zero uh and again just thank you to Mr Warman and the calendar committee as all these for putting together a great product all right section six for policies we're up to 6.1 for policies first readings this is a discussion item
070we once again will go through each of these policies individually for first readings um so we will start with EH data management any discussion on E all right seeing none we'll move up to FF naming facilities in discussion on this policy see no move on the gcn supervision of certified staff discussion on gcn now move on to GC qg supervisory relationships with employees and discussion on this policy see none Mo going to jbb responding to teen dating violence and sexual assault any discussion on jbb I will make a note that this policy so the note is that policy was reviewed by District Council were were the modifications put forth by The District Council or we made the changes and Council reviewed those changes not on this specific okay policy made the changes for the student
071code of conduct to reflect that instead of okay JK but our our Council okay great all right yes Mrs St uh on page three number four just one small thing has two two um the red has to the most practicable extent but the two are just something small all right anything else on this policy thank you Mrs Dr White um under training it talks about the administrators the School nurses the counselors in the district but there's no mention of the wellness centers and their involvement so um we did that to kind of keep it more an aspect of what we're responsible for in terms of of the training aspect of it like as far as making sure that our staff was trained um try to think of how to incor durate the wellness center into
072that but that is something that we could you know ensure that our outside providers are I'm not as worried about their training because I know they agencies do the training I'm more concerned about the reporting of incidents or evidence that they may acquire to share with administrators or counselors um you can definitely take a look and visit that on their scope and what they exactly are responsible for making sure we take steps to ensure that whether it's through policy or through an understanding that we have with the wellness center that those things are addressed thank you all right thank Dr Wyatt anything further on this policy right C none move on to jic drug and alcohol use by students again we have uh not that policy was also reviewed by District Council any discussion on
073this policy all right moving on j i weapons in school discussion on this policy question um and before we get there just make the same note that uh policy changes policy oh in this case changes to policy were recommended by our Council Mr oh I had one thing also too that I I did notice um in our current policy it must be a misprint but it says 1989 as an antique weapon you change it to 1898 because that's what it is but I didn't so just wanted okay gotcha okay out there okay thank you clearly what you call thank you you clarified that so now we come um so I just have a quick question um on that first paragraph in red there on the second line where it says they must be expelled for
074not less than one soer is that one so year per calendar year or per school year if that makes sense so if they're expelled in December is it just the rest of that school year or is it till the next December it goes into the next school year okay it's a 12 month actual full year okay so they're so if they're expelled in May May 1st it would be till May 1 of theowing so I don't know if it's worth clarifying that um that could be interpreted as like I don't know it made me wonder so it used to be 180 days okay um when the school calendar was 180 days long um at uh Mr Stafford's advice we Chang the language to this and I can get more clarification from him on that from
075what one year is I mean one year is one year um it's not for the remainder of the school year um so they are out for one year yeah I agree that it's a little confusing maybe we can ask him to see if we can get a better clarification because we talk about fiscal years school years calendar years they all mean different things when I one school year I don't think 365 days all right anything else on this policy all right moving on jld dbb self-esteem promotion SL Suicide Prevention once again a note that this policy has been reviewed by District Council discussion on this policy okay seeing none we going to JRA Student Records any discussion on JRA I will say um the very first policy that we reviewed in um in first reading
076eh data management um referred to two different policies and I was like wow I wonder where those policies what they say and sure enough they came up tonight as well so I appreciate that and I think that should be our best practice when we're reviewing a policy that refers to another policy that we refer to or that we review those at the same time so in this case it went off without a hitch so thanks for that um any discussion on this one that has also been reviewed by counil all right and then our final first reading is kdb Freedom of Information Act parentheses forya discussion on this policy there's only one change there and I do have a question about that change any specific reason we're going away from the foryear coordinator email address
077to specifically you Mr M because the for year coordinator email address is no longer active Okay be a very good reason we actually have a form portal on the website um links it right there links it right there so we do put the reference of the email in just for policy purposes so that um it is known um and policy as well who the for coordinator is okay all right than thank you for that um that closes our individual review of our first readings uh it will come back up for a vote later in the meeting with a discussion period at that time as well we are now up to 6 2 which is an action item is start make a motion we approve resolution 6.2 as presented second a motion floor properly seconded any
078questions or discussion on that motion seeing none we'll move to a vote all those in favor I I any opposed any extensions motion carries four to zero all right M starky section seven we start with Section seven amendments I make a motion we approve resolution 7.1 and 7.2 as written second a motion floor properly second any questions or discussion or the motion seeing none we'll move to a vote all those in favor I any opposed any extensions motion carries 40 section eight personel resignations and make a motion we approve resolution 8.1 and 8.2 is written second a motion will floor properly second questions or discussion on that motion hearing none we'll move to a vote all those in favor I I any opposed any extensions motion carries four to zero section 11 transfers and make
079a motion we approve resolution 11.1 and 11.2 is ritten second a motional floor properly seconded questions or discussion on that motion see none move to a vote all those in favor I I any opposed any extensions motion carries for Section 13 Personnel off of employment I make a motion we approve resolution 13 one as written second motion on the floor properly second questions or discussion on the motion seeing none move to a vote all those in favor I I any opposed any extenstions motion carries for zero section 15 personal Le absence I make a motion we approve resolution 15.1 through 15.5 as written second the motion on floor properly seconded any questions or discussion on that motion hearing n we move to a vote all those in favor I I any opposed any extensions motion
080carries full to zero staying in section 15 Personnel leaves the absence and make a motion we approve resolution 15.6 and 15.7 is written second motion on floor properly second any questions or discussion on the motion seeing none we'll move to a vote all those in favor any opposed nay nay any extensions motion uh motion fails four to zero zero to four excuse me uh section 19 personel appointments and make a motion we approve resolution 19.1 as presented second a motion floor properly seconded any questions or discussion on the motion seeing none we'll move to a vote all those in favor I I any opposed any extensions motion carries three to zero with one exstension staying in section 19 personel appointments and make a motion approve resolution 19.2 as present second a motion on floor properly
081second any questions or discussion on that motion seeing none we move to a vote all those in favor I I any opposed any extensions motion carries four to zero uh section 21 other business I make a motion we approve resolution 21.1 full Choice as presented second a motion four properly second questions discussion on the motion hearing none we'll move to a vote all those in favor I I any opposed any extensions motion carries four to zero section 22 other business field trips I make a motion we approve resolution 22.1 through 22.3 three as presented second the motion floor properly seconded questions or discussion on the motion I'm just happy to see the on the the agenda I mean we've seen them for FFA B but I love just seeing that thing as the first Tri
082Salsbury Zoo um okay um anything further seeing none move to vote all those in favor I I any opposed extensions motion carries 4 to zero section 23 other Business Financial reports I make a motion we approve the monthly financial report as presented second motion Flo properly second any questions or discussion on the motion seeing n move to a vote all those in favor I any opposed any exensions motion carries four to zero and section 24 of the business board policies and make a motion we approve resolution 24.1 board policies first reading as modified during discussion second a motion will floor properly seconded any further discussion on our first readings seeing none we move to a vote all those in favor I I any opposed any abion motion carries 4 to zero thank you Mr starky
083thank you Mr R we're up to section 25 board reports and discussion items item 25.1 delar School Board Association Mrs MOSI is not here Mrs starky do you might you have anything I do not okay all right um 25.2 legislative committee Dr White excuse me we have not met okay all right any questions or comments for Dr Wyatt all right up to 25.3 go to the order opportunity for board members to address other topics not covered Elsewhere on the agenda and the floor is open I guess Technic 251 the nsba conference which falls under dsba is a April 1 so there won't be a bullet point for dsba on the next meeting okay great thank you Mr R anything further go to the order all right take the opportunity once again to talk about School
084Board elections we got a few more meetings to go before this occurs um this year the lake forest board of education has one seat scheduled for an election the terms now consist of a four-year commitment that filing deadline was last Friday uh March 7th 2025 uh we do have two candidates who have currently filed uh and listed as they appear on the elections. delaware.gov website uh we have Mr Daryl Hughes of Felton Delaware and Mr James Ral who have both filed for that seat uh again thank you to both gentlemen for their interest in filing um arguably there's no greater method of having local community impact when by serving on your local District's School Board uh with that said uh we will have an election elections are always the second Tuesday of May this year
085that will be Tuesday May 13th while we still have two months to go and I'll I'll I'll make this announcement each time uh we will talk about the fact that polls will be open from 7:00 am to 8:00 pm uh to vote you must have proof of identity and address which would include a Delaware driver's license a Delaware ID card a work ID card with photo and home address or US Postal material with your street address uh and during that time we will have four po in places uh the frederck of Firehall Lake Forest North Elementary Lake Forest South Elementary and Lake Forest High School so I encourage everyone in the community to uh please exercise your right to get out and vote that is all I have anyone have anything else I do not
086believe we have a need for executive session Dr Lucas sir any board member with a need for executive session all right um our next meeting will be two weeks from tonight Thursday March 27th and we will be Fross the road at Central Elementary School with that said I'll entertain a motion for adjournment so second have motion on floor properly seconded for adjournment any questions or discussion on that motion seeing none we'll move to a vote all those in favor I I any opposed extensions motion carries board is adjourned 8:11 p.m. thank you all very much for all you do be safe out there