001FY25 external audit of East St. Louis school district 189 accounts, the regional vul systems accounts, and the East St. Lewis area joint agreement account 13D to place seven students in alternative school settings and those are student number [Music] 88915810 student that's for extreme defiance and accord behavior that will be in safe schools through June 2026 student 88913117 7 for theft and safe schools for the remainder of this school year. Student 8894835 for threat and intimidation to staff replaced in at Vincent Gay School through June 1, 2026. Student 88911954 for threats and intimidation to staff placed in safe schools through June 1st of 2026. Student number 88923013 for threat and intimidation to staff to be placed at Vincent Gray through June 1st, 2026. Student 88912856 for physical confrontation without injury. placed in safe schools for the
002remainder of this school year and then transition to the Bush Alternative School in through June 1, 2026. Student 88922000 for threat and intimidation to staff the school staff placed in safe schools for the rest of this year and then placed at Bush alternative through June 1, 2026. 14A, the financial report for the month of March 2025. 15A, personnel report and addendums and contracts. 16A, buildings and grounds report, waving fees for the use of the facilities. 16B, curriculum committee report and addendum. And finally, 16C, the finance committee report and addendum. Got to get a motion and a second. A motion. A motion by Remy Ding, second by Walter Hood. Roll call. Now, if the board wants to, I just want to be clear. If if if there any board member that wants to discuss any one
003of these items, now would be the time to do that. If not, then we can go ahead and call the role. Any questions? Hey, I mean, same thing. Yeah, I don't I don't agree with one of the prayers. So, do you want to um you can divide? We can divide them up or you can call the vote and we'll just call the vote. Okay, call the vote cuz I can vote for everything but that I mean 13A just with a no to that. I'm not agreeing to that. T8 both suggest one. He recommended both. So I'm not I just don't agree to it. I thought we did an omnote that we collected it all together. You can do it all together with the omnibus. If you wanted to vote no. Yes, you could. So So
004we said So we're trying to retract that and do individual individual. Yeah. Well, maybe one for 13A. But for you can if you want to divide them up, we can or you can just see what happens with this ominous vote. Let's do ominous vote. Okay. So, the ominous vote is on the table. A motion. Second. Yeah. Right. Mhm. They already did that. We got a motion in second already. Is this time to call the ro? I think Mr. Hood second. Yeah. Roll call. First name. Willie Ray. Yes. Um, this vote. Walter Hood. Yes. Remy Dane. Yes. Lonzo Greenwood. Lonzo Greenwood. Timothy Lock. Yes. Danielle Moore. Yes. To everything with the exception of action agenda 13A. No. Okay. And Latoya Mosing the same 13A. No motion pass. Motion passes. Yes, Mr. President. That does conclude my
005report. Okay. Thanks. Any old business? New business. Announce the regular board meeting 21st, 2025. Presentation. Yes. And now we're transition to our presentation. We have Patrick Allen with us again to um complete the third required board training. Do we need to take a break? Yeah, I think we just need to take a short break. We've been there pretty long. Great. Do you guys remember Patrick Allen School Board Association? He did the first training and then we had some come in, someone come in from Isa do the second one. And yes, now here's number three. Yeah. Yeah. through this session for this. So the objectives what we're going to talk about today uh are going to be to uh to understand why monitoring is is important. If you remember back to the first session that we
006did, uh we talked through that, right? Uh monitoring is one of the foundational principles. So, we talked a lot about why it is important, why it's something uh that boards uh need to constantly be aware of and constantly be doing. So, uh we won't touch on that too much because I think we touched on that uh last time and I'm sure you guys remember everything that I said about monitoring. We won't have a quiz or anything, but I'm sure you've got that uh in your your memory bank. Um uh I know last time we talked some about how data can be uh can be organized and and can be presented. So we'll hit just real real quickly on that about why that can be uh can be important. Uh but the one that that we'll
007spend most of our time on uh and Jennifer is going to going to help me with this is um talk about uh the student achievement goal that you guys already have uh and everything that's kind of associated you know with that. uh the things that you've already identified, the data you've already identified, the kind of the targets that you have uh and make sure there's a clear understanding of uh you know of that goal uh and everything associated with that goal. Uh so you guys are aware of you know the the information that's in front of you and how you can uh use that information. uh if you have any questions, you know, about that um you know, how it's set up that, you know, now would be a good time or not not right
008now, but when we get to it would be a good time to uh to talk through that, make sure everyone's on the same page with with what is there. Um, and we'll spend a little bit of time. You know, the the difficult part with uh with some of this is that uh really the more questions that you ask, the deeper you get into some of the questions, uh you potentially start getting to a to a level where uh you're you're doing administrative work as opposed to to board work, right? So, we'll talk a little bit about what are good questions for boards to ask, what you know, what's kind of a good level to to do that. Um, I'll use the uh the state report card as a as an example. Have you guys seen
009the state report card before? Have you gone to the the website and and you can you can see what's there. You kind of, you know, when you first get to your district page, you've got a summary. You can, you know, kind of click into the different schools, see the the overview of everything, and then you can keep diving down, diving down, diving down to where you get down to, you know, third grade math uh by uh by females. you can, you know, you can uh kind of dial it down to, you know, to to race if you wanted to. There's all sorts of things that you can do. So, for a board, you don't want to get so detailed in one of those things where you're saying what's happening in third grade math uh by,
010you know, by females by by this race of kids that were born in in this year, right? That really gets down to administrative work. You want to be more at the kind of the high level saying, what are we seeing in math overall? what are the trends that we're seeing? Right? And then you let the great team that you guys employ here to be the ones to go ahead and kind of give you those answers. They'll give you the the in-depth response to that. But as a board, you don't want to ask that question that's so specific. You want to let them kind of come to you and present that if that makes sense. Okay. Um so if you'll forgive me as I uh scroll through some of these slides real quick. Um, as a
011reminder, foundational principle five, the board constantly uh monitoring progress uh towards the goals that you have, right? And you guys have a really good strategic plan with with really good uh goals that that are in there. Uh, and you should be monitoring that on a regular basis and we'll see all the different goals that are there. Uh, you do have different um frequencies that you'll you'll see some of that data, right? with um I AR data for example that's something that you only going to get once a year right there's only one uh one test that you'll be able to see some of that data other things you might see on a a monthly basis quarterly basis you know whatever that might be but uh you know making sure that you understand when you're going
012to see this data u so that you're you know constantly aware of when that's next uh next coming uh so let's see here scroll through the we had a couple videos we'll scroll through those real quick. Um, so when you're constantly monitoring that data, uh, you know, you're going to set your your district goals, right? Those are going to come, the board's going to help set those district goals. Superintendent's going to turn that into a strategic plan. Uh, but as a board, you're going to constantly review those goals, right? Are these still on track for what we're uh what we're looking for? Are they still going to hit the mark for uh what we want as a district? has something huge happened uh within the district that's going to change whatever those goals uh might
013be. Um you know, if we think back to something that happened in say March of 2020, that shifted a lot of things that were happening in districts, things that were important before were all of a sudden no longer important, right? So, we hope nothing like that happens uh again to to shift goals. But as a board, you just need to make sure that you're, you know, constantly reviewing those goals to make sure that it's um, you know, something that that is still important. Um, and as a board, when you set those goals, you've got to make sure that you're aligning resources to accomplish those goals. Uh, if you're setting a goal, it's real difficult for the superintendent to accomplish that goal if you don't give them the resources necessary to actually go through and and
014accomplish uh, whatever that is. Um, and then you're going to monitor that progress using uh using the data that's that's going to come in. Uh, and when you're monitoring, that's going to lead back to reviewing those goals, right? Are these going to hit the mark? Are these the things that we're uh really looking for? And this is the continuous cycle uh that we uh we talk about with with boards monitoring. Um, we'll scroll through some of the um we had a section on um presentation of data and why it's uh important for uh for boards. Um we'll just hit on these these five quick concepts u so you can see them. Uh first one is you know a picture is worth a thousand words right? So rather than presenting just a bunch of blank data
015with no um you know no no words along with it with nobody can can understand you know find good ways to to present that data right and I think you've got a good a good team here that that probably already knows that and knows that if we're going to communicate this information out to our community you want to be able to present it in a way that that they can uh they can understand it. Um one good way to do that is to use color. Right? There's a number of different ways you can use color within uh within data to to make things kind of jump out at the page a little bit more, make people understand uh what you're uh what you're seeing. Um as a board, you want to ask good guiding questions,
016right? It's um again, it's making sure that as a board, you're asking questions at the right level, right? you're not getting uh too detailed, but you're asking uh questions that are clear enough that uh the people who are going to be answering those questions know where they need to um you know the level that they need to come back and be able to to answer those uh with you. Um you're going to focus on the distribution of results. And what we really mean by that is you don't want to focus on the average, right? the the term or the the concept that's always used around average is I could have my uh my head in a freezer and my feet standing on a stove on average I'm doing pretty good, right? But my head's not
017very comfortable and my feet aren't very comfortable, right? So, you got to be careful when you're looking at averages because there could be outliers that are really skewing uh those results. So, it's important to make sure that you're kind of looking at all the data, not just the average of of what's there, right? And you'll see, you know, things could be uh kind of all over the place, but you want to, you know, look at the kind of the overall results rather than just, you know, one singular average, for example. Um, and then with some of those things, and this is what, uh, you're, I'm sure your your team is doing for you, when you've got those results, sometimes you really need to separate those results to say, you know, what are we seeing from
018this school? What are we seeing from this school? Or what are we seeing from this grade and this grade, right? But you want to make sure that you have ways to kind of um pull that data apart so you can really see, you know, where some of that information is uh is lying. Um so we talked about uh color just a little bit, right? So this is an example. If you look at this, it's difficult to say what's going on, right? You don't really know what's there. Um but if you if you use color, um for example, green means you you made the target. Orange means you missed the target. If you fill that in, it gives you a lot better idea. Everything kind of jumps off the page at you. You're able to see
019real clearly where we hit the target, where we didn't hit the target. Uh so it's an easy way to to do that. Um just kind of a breakdown of more um more things. So this is the question that you're going to ask more than more than any as a board is how are we doing, right? How are we actually, you know, getting things uh getting things done? Um but that question can lead to a lot of different a lot of different things. It is a generic question uh but it is an important one to uh to to think about. Um so as a board uh you got to make sure that you understand where this data is or what this data is being compared to when you're looking at at specific things. Are we looking
020at like state standards for example? Are we comparing ourselves to that? Are we comparing ourselves to ourselves what we've done over time? Uh or are there other things that we're comparing ourselves to? to our neighbors, for example, right to uh other districts in the state of Illinois that are a similar uh similar size. It's important to know what's there and what you are being uh compared to, um if you're not specific about it, uh that can lead to some issues down the road, but when you when you know what you're being compared to, everybody's on the same page with uh with what's going to what's going to be there. Um let's see. talked about averages being, you know, being careful with that. Uh different ways to uh to look at data. Um you can look
021at things, you know, you can use those those color-coded uh options on something like a, you know, like a line chart, uh like this that gives you a good view kind of overall gives you a better view of something like a like a like a pie chart. Um let's see. So this is just looking this is one way you can look. This is a you know looking at a whole lot of data. Um you can uh you kind of you know pick two numbers out see two different things that are that are going on. Uh see trends over time. You know I think you could pretty clearly see what the what the trend is. you know, but if you look at one particular thing, again, if you're looking at at like an average, that's always
022not going to gonna fit in there. But over time, if you look at all the numbers, you can see uh what's uh what's there. Um uh talked about being able to pull the data off, right? You can look at it where uh maybe you can see the the blue triangles that are up there. Maybe that's one particular school or one particular grade, right? So you can you're able to see that um off of EDM as a subset of of the rest of the uh um the the data. Let's see here. Uh so again with the the guiding questions, right? How are we doing? What are we comparing ourselves to? Uh what's our target, right? What do we want to be at? Where's where's our our ultimate um uh destination with with a lot of these
023things? And I know in talking with Jennifer, um, you know, a lot of those goals do have targets of what you're what you're after, which is important. Um, I had a former boss who used to say, uh, you manage what you measure, right? If you're not measuring something, if you don't know what your target is, you're not managing it along the way, right? So things that you're measuring, uh, you're you're managing, you're making sure that you are, uh, hitting those uh hitting those targets. Um, let's see. Uh this is an important one. Um by itself, data doesn't really have any value, right? Data um as as weird as it sounds, it is another data point, right? It's going to it's something that you can use to help make a decision. Data isn't necessarily going to
024make the decision for you. It's not going to make a difficult decision any easier. Uh but it's going to give you kind of proof of why you did something, right? Here's a change that we made. Here's why we made this change. We know it's a difficult change. We know there's going to be some uh you know potential disruption of of you know within the the community, but this is why we did it, right? So data isn't the uh the end all beall, but it's going to be something that really helps you make those uh decisions as you uh as you move forward. Talked about the the school report card some if you haven't looked at that. I think that's a good thing to to go look at. You can kind of, you know, poke around
025and see some different things that are that are there. Um, that's all data that's probably been presented to you at some point. Uh, as a district, you're you're providing all that data. So, it's stuff that you've um, you know, have access to, but it's done in a um in a good way. Um, so this is the the the goal that we'll we'll talk about your your student achievement goal that's in your uh strategic plan. um establish and maintain continuous academic growth toward exceeding grade level expectations for all students using the diverse, culturally responsive, rigorous, and ISBE standard aligned curricula, instruction, and assessments. Um, almost sounds like AI wrote that. That's a really good goal. I don't know who uh I know who put that together. You didn't have AI. Okay. Um, but so that's a
026really good goal, right? But now the the question is how do we how do we measure that, right? What are the things that are going to happen that that we're going to see? And this is where I'm going to have uh Jennifer kind of um talk a little bit about how that goal is um how it's broken out, like what the objectives are kind of underneath that. Um and um I think this is all data that they've all they've all seen. They're kind of all aware of this. Um, I think this is just a good opportunity to just kind of run through it again, make sure everyone understands, you know, what's there and if you have any questions or, you know, concerns or anything like that, now would be a good time to to kind
027of talk, uh, talk through those. So, I'll let you talk through that. Okay. All right. So, um, everyone received just the academic excellence portion of the strategic plan. Uh, it's the one with the three pictures in front. And if I could get you to turn to page seven in that and I'll lift you a packet right there if you want to follow along. Also, page seven really u goes over that academic excellence um goal and then breaks it down into objectives. Those objectives, there's seven of them and they they came to us um by a self-evaluation. They came to us by research and best practice um and also things that we knew that we wanted to accomplish. It ranges from putting together a comprehensive plan to um making sure that we were tying together what
028was in the curriculum, what teachers were doing in the classroom, and how students were assessed. And then we talked about professional development um in these objectives. But past that, if you move on to say page 26, just want to use that as an example that what we did is we broke down these objectives into critical initiatives and things that had to happen in order to make that objective successful. And if you look at critical initiative 1.4.3 it says expand competencybased education personalized learning and career explorations. Okay. So um if you look at just the CBE part we are in progress with that uh or sorry pending with that we are in progress with personalized learning and career exploration. We're doing that in many of our buildings. We've act we've really detailed what the activity is
029that's related to that what the start and end dates are who's responsible the status I have the status there but then also over to the right we have key measures and targets and what I want to focus in in on are those 30% of students meeting and exceeding expectations on IR 15% meeting on SAT 55% meeting growth on national, state, and local assessments. Those are the hard targets that we're looking at as a district within each of our schools and grade levels. It really helps us identify how are we making progress toward those goals. So, if you'll switch in your folder that I gave you to the packet that looks like this, it's got orange or sorry, yellow and gold. Miss Garrett and I meet with the building leaders and curriculum leaders um twice a
030month and we've kind of had a hiatus with the weather and and with testing, but um we meet with leaders uh twice a month and at the beginning of the year we always look at where are we with re with respect to our goals. What are our goals for this new year? And uh you'll notice in this packet we are looking at average daily attendance, chronic absenteeism, NWA IR readiness because we only give the IR once a year. We use the NWA as a benchmark to really look and see how we're progressing toward um our percentages that we've listed in our strategic plan. But as you turn the page, we look at growth Uhuh. So, NWA um we we take a Northwest Evaluation Association has an assessment that we take three times a year. It
031covers reading and math. It um is assess students from kindergarten through 8th grade and that's who takes the AR um third through 8th grade for AR. but it gives us really good information about how students are progressing from the fall to the winter to the spring. So, we have three points on time that we're looking at each year. And the the assessment responds to what a student does well and what they need help with. So, it's a responsive assessment. Not two any two students are going to have the same assessment based on how they respond to answers. But from that, we can get an idea of readiness for the state assessment. we can get an idea about growth. Um, and then when we do take the IR, we're looking at our U percentage goals for
032reading, math, and then ACT has a practice test also for our high school students. We're looking at it. We're looking at the graduation rate, and we're looking at nth grade on track. Those are the big buckets that we have for student success and student achievement. Sure. So NWA um as I mentioned because it's three times a year and the assessment remembers the student from one year to the next we can really take a look at their growth. Um it will measure growth for us. Uh the other piece to it is attainment. And what that means is it because it's a nationally given assessment uh they have national averages. they they do a study about every five years and come up with averages for each um each testing period by grade level. And so we can
033look at how many or what percentage of our students are reaching that national average and that gives us a a good idea of how our students are competing with their peers. Uh so we try to report on that when we do those assessments. Um the curriculum committee actually gets some results back from that. uh I report on that through my curriculum report and then um with respect to the strategic plan as a whole everything that you read in that curriculum report is an update of what's happening with relationship to our strategic plan. So [Music] Mhm. And that actually ties to 1.7 which is in our strategic plan. It's that um from the beginning with the goal of of academic achievement. Um one thing that I do want to point out you'll notice on on this
034chart that we were just talking about is that you'll notice each year those goals go up. We call these reach goals. Um, you know, when we worked on the strategic plan, ISBY came back to us and said, "Okay, these these are pretty lofty goals. Let's come up with some realistic goals." Um, we always want to have reach goals because we know if we reach, we're going to go past what it is that we're we're looking for. Um, now, um, any questions about goals and the strategic plan? Okay. So, the other packet that you have in your folder should look pretty familiar. It's something that you saw in November. Uh each each November uh for the last few years uh cabinet goes up to Chicago and when we do our triple eye conference prior to that
035we make a presentation to the Illinois State Board of Education on our progress. Um we also give this presentation to you all and I want to point out some of the things that Patrick mentioned um about representing data and how we're doing that here through this presentation as well. So, if you'll go to the the first page within the packet, the colorful one, when he was talking a second ago about color coding, u I know he was skipping through those slides to color code items to help heighten your attention. Um, this has been very very helpful to us uh to represent the data in this way. Green means good, dark red means not so good. Um, but um those shades in between let us see the progress we've made. So when I'm when I'm looking
036at this page as a whole and I start at the left and move to the right, I can see the the progress made without having to really look at the numbers. The the colors tell me that story. But the numbers, if you look deep into those will tell you a story as well. And so um as we talked through the data back in November, we talked about you know the successes that we saw but also the concerns that we saw. Um then as you turn the page um another thing Patrick mentioned is that when you're looking at your data you should look at it in comparison to state and national a state averages um you should look at it in comparison to groups that are like you. So that's what this chart um page 14
037of the original presentation that is taking a look at some of the districts that were identified in the consent decree um that we were compared to at that time and want to continue to compare ourselves to. We are also comparing ourselves to the state average. the state average for lowincome students, the state average for black students, and then on all all of the next slides, the color patterns are exactly the same. So when you're looking at a blue line at the top, that's going to be the state average. Um, one of the things that we really like about representing the data this way, not just the numbers, but watching the colored lines crawl, you can see that climb, especially of that gold line. Um, you see the jump that we had, that gap of our
038COVID year, but you can also see the quick recovery, that visual of the data. um turning the page. That's our historical and comparative I math performance. Another thing that we like to do when we represent this data is the red box around data just to bring your eye and highlight um movement that's been made. You may have seen that on the previous pages. I don't know if the previous page didn't have it, but this one does. Um, so, um, that's one thing that we like to do to kind of draw the eye to the data that's numerical. It gives us a chance to to really look at that. Um, moving on to the following page for 9th grade on track. Again, wanting to really highlight what it is that we've done as a school and
039the improvements made. Um, so I think that the thing that we struggle with, um, just ourselves when we're looking at the data is what do we do when the data doesn't say what we want it to say? Um, you know, how do we respond to it? And, um, as Patrick was mentioning, you have to put narrative to it. And while this doesn't have the narrative, our talking points are um, and then in our presentation that we give to the board, we usually have um, notes to go along with those. But when we present data, whether it's through this ISBY presentation or whether it's in the curriculum report or if we have a special presentation, it's just our way of updating you all as the board um what our progress is toward our strategic plan goals.
040Okay. You guys uh should consider yourself lucky that you get um the amount of data organized like that that you can look at. Um I'm in a lot of districts that don't have anything like that, right? There's nothing there that that you can kind of easily see, easily compare to. um you'd almost think that uh we worked together uh to talk about some of these things, but we didn't, right? But that um you know, being able to look at that, where are we against the state? Where are we against, you know, low income, where where are we against uh you know, these other schools that have been identified like all of that is an important thing for you to to be able to look at and that's already there, right? So, you guys have so
041much uh data that's readily available to you to to be able to to see. Um, so the the thing that we'll we'll get down to. I know some of this is kind of small print. You might be able to to see it there uh in front of you. Um, this is looking at questions that the data is going to be able to to help you answer. Um, it's not going to be able to answer every question, but it is going to be able to, you know, to to look at some. Um, where are we starting? Right? That's an important thing to know uh when you're when you're looking at uh any kind of data. where were we when we when we first started this this journey together? Uh what does the trend look like? Uh
042you know data is going to help you understand the students that you serve, right? What are the what are the you know again with the the low income for an example, right? How can we pull that out of the state averages so we can compare ourselves to that if that's where our you know if that's where our district falls. Um Jennifer talked about how frequently uh you know students are uh assessed on whether it's the uh you know the AR test or the the NWA that's going to be three times a year right there's all these different data points that are there that you'll be able to uh be able to to see. Uh but it's important to you know to be able to ask these questions right that the data can you know kind
043of help you uh get into uh but again you don't want to get so specific with some of your questions right you want um the uh the great team uh that you have here to be able to you know present that information to you. You don't want to get uh so specific that it really sounds like you're starting to get into the the work that they're doing on a on a daily basis. But they provide you such a a great amount of information uh presented in such a a phenomenal way uh that you know I think you guys have uh most of what you uh most of what you need. Um do you have do you have questions about things? Do you have, you know, concerns whether it's I mean you you could get uh
044specific about some of the data that's there uh or do you have other things that you'd like to uh like to talk about when it comes to uh comes to monitoring or do you think you're in pretty good shape with that? You're pretty good shape. In good shape. Yeah. If you did have concerns about that, what would you where would you go with that? What would you what would you do? There's something maybe you didn't understand, you didn't think you were getting, you know, the right information. What would you do with that with that with that thought? I can tell you what I've experienced though with if something's not quite clear or if if board members feel like they need more, they don't hesitate to let me know. Good. And then I let my team
045know. Good. Yeah. And we drill down as low as we need to to Yeah. provide the information that they feel like they need. Yeah. Yeah. Uh and you should do that because what you don't want is them working on all this data for stuff that's not going to resonate with you, right? If if they're going into all this work to put this together and if it's something you're going to look at and say, "Well, this doesn't mean anything to me, so I'm just not gonna I'm not going to digest that data." That's not what you want, right? That's not an efficient operation. So, if you do have questions or if you have concerns, by all means, let the superintendent know so he can kind of get with the team to to get those get those
046addressed uh sooner rather than uh sooner rather than later. So, um any other thoughts or comments? You guys have any thoughts or comments? No. All right, Patrick. That was quick. Yeah. Well done. Thank you so much. [Applause] And now, who's going to step in in place of our vice president? Oh, Miss Vice President, we have to adjourn and meeting. Okay. Got you in the middle of chilling. Well, we need a motion to adjourn the meeting. I'll make the motion. Motion made by Remy and second by Mr. Hood. Roll call. Remy Dean. Yes. Walter Hood. Lonzo Greenwood. Lonzo Greenwood. Timothy Lockett. Timothy Lockett. Danielle Moore. Danielle Moore. Willie Ray, yes. Mosley, yes. Motion meeting is adjourned. And our next board meeting is what is um May May 21st at 5:00 p.m. Meeting is adjourned at is
047that 5:30? 4:30. 430. 4:30. I can't see. You want to go to You want to go to 5:30? No. No. No. No. So see you all