School Board Meeting - 3/18/2025 - Part 1

001Today is Tuesday, March 18, 25. This is a regular board meeting. Um, could I have roll call, please? Remy Dean, present. Lonzo Greenwood. Lonzo Greenwood. Walter Hood, present. Timothy Lockett here. Danielle Moore, Danielle Moore, Willie Ray, present. Latoya Mosley, present. Okay, we have a quorum um prayer. Miss Willie Ray, please. If we ask everyone to stand for prayer, please. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your mercy and your kindness for waking us up this morning, starting us on our way. We ask that you bless us to conduct this business in a way that you would be proud of. These things we ask in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Thank you. Pledge of allegiance. Pledge to the flag of America and to the republic for it stands one nation indivisible with liberty for all. Okay. Thank you.

002Next will be adoption of the agenda giving the board president discretion to take items out of order or executive session. Can I get a motion? I'll make the motion. I second. There's been a motion by um Remy Dean. Second by Willie Ray. Roll call. Remy Dean. Yes. Willie Ray. Yes. Lonzo Greenwood. Lonzo Greenwood. Walter Hood. Yes. Timothy Lockett. Yes. Danielle Moore. Danielle Moore. Willie Ray. I mean Latoya Mosley. Yes. Motion pass. Recognitions. Yes. Good afternoon to each of you. I have several recognitions to share to you. We are very excited to announce that Nina Elementary School has named the 2025 Southern Regional Teacher of the Year by the Illinois State Board of Education. Out of hundreds of applicants, Nina McClean was selected for this honor due to her outstanding excellence in teaching and leadership as

003well as her unwavering commitment to ensuring every student feels supported, included, and inspired. She is also a finalist in consideration for the 2025 Illinois Teacher of the Year. So, we are very thrilled with this. Mi Miss Ms. McClean is earning well-deserved recognition at the state level as an exemplary educator. She has 25 years of classroom experience, is passionate, and is a dedicated teacher who goes above and beyond to ensure the success of every student. In fact, her fifth grade ELA students received the highest 2023 Illinois Assessment of Readiness or I AR test scores in our school district. And they were also double the state average. She also has an unwavering commitment to supporting colleagues and mentoring future educators. Beyond the classroom, she serves as a lieutenant colonel in the US Army Reserve, exempl exemplifying leadership,

004dedication, and service in all that she does. So, please join me in congratulating her. Additionally, the Illinois State Board of Education annually recognizes the outstanding contributions of personnel from across the state who have made a lasting impact in their in their school community. This year, in addition to Nina McClean, the the school district has 13 staff members who will be recognized by the Illinois State Board of Education at the Those Who Excel Awards Banquet in Bloomington. This is upcoming in the middle of May. We have numerous exceptional staff uh throughout our school district, but we are very grateful that ISBY has recognized some of our best. They include the instructional learning team at Avant Elementary who's receiving an award of excellence. The those staff members include Barbara Outton, Selena Eastling, Chalmer's, Erin McMullen, Emily Stewart,

005Mckia Williams, Ashley Browning, Nina McClean on this team, Ariana Brown Tagert, Tena Scott, Audrey Jackson Lester, and principalwanda Nicholson. Similarly, earning an award of meritorious service includes Jasine Stansel from East St. Louis Senior High and Tiona Woodhouse um at Avant Elementary. An award of special recognition to Abigail Dandy, a teacher at East St. Louis Senior High School. Many of you might recall that Briana Morales was named as the I believe was the 2023 Illinois Teacher of the Year and she um who still is an ELA teacher at Gordon Bush Alternative Center for us was nominated for the life changer of the year award presented by the National Life Group. Um, the life changer of the year is a national recognition program that honors K through 12 educators and school employees who are making a difference

006in the lives of students by exemplifying excellence, positive influence, and leadership. We also want to congratulate our students who have been recognized as the 2025 racial harmony awardees. These students were publicly recognized at the annual racial harmony student awards ceremony in February for promoting goodwill to their school community. These student awardees include Cali Lewis, Kingston Tate, Germaine Gamble, Phoenix Cobbs, Marco Orur, Llaya Harris, Jamira Russell, and Terrell Flowers. We also want to congratulate Pierre Walton for earning the 2025 IHSA Wrestling State Championship title in class 2A. He is in the 165 pound class. This marks a historic achievement as East St. Louis Senior High School's first wrestling state championship since 1943. Wow. To honor this incredible accomplishment, the school hosted a state championship celebration on February the 26th, recognizing Pierre Walton's hard work and dedication.

007Steven Dodie is the head coach of the wrestling program and of course played a key role in guiding this success. And last but not least, we want to recognize other highlights from our winter sports, including um additionally with the high school boys wrestling team. Corey Robinson joined Pierre Walton as an IHSA state competitor and Ethan Clark as a sectional qualifier. Our East St. Louis Senior High School boys basketball team, which earned the Class 3A regional championship title, head coached by Mark Chambers. the Lincoln eighth grade boys basketball team who earned the IESA class 83A state championship title. Head coach John McDaniel and noteworthy um one of their student athletes Teddy Prince or Royal Teddy Prince set a state record for the most three-pointers in a game at a state tournament which was seven and tied

008the record for the most threes in a state tournament which was at 10. Lincoln seventh grade boys basketball team was the IESA class 7 3A third place awardees and the young school of excellence 8th grade boys basketball team was the class 81A regional uh six champions head coached by Brandon Johnson. So we're really thrilled by all of these great accomplishments and celebrate with our students and staff. All right. Thank you. Good luck. Thank you. Thank you, Cindy. Um, any reports, presentations? Uh, no other reports or presentations. All right. Thank you. Uh, public comments. I have a George Mc Melon. And Shante Ford, pardon me. Approve the board. Oh, he can come back and do it. Approve of the board minutes. Oh, I did. Okay. We come back to you after this. Thanks, Mr. Susan. Hello,

009board members. Uh, thank you for allowing us know to make some, uh, public comments. My name is George McClullen. I'm the vice president of the NAACP in East St. Louis. To my right, I have Miss Sante Ford with the East Side of the Line. You want to raise your hand? Walk away. Okay. I also have my president, Miss uh, Robin Kerry Boyd with the NAACP of East St. Louis. and I also have Mr. Donna Saunders with UCM, which is United Congre, United Congregations of the Metro East. So, I'm here in order to first say I love the uh Children's First right behind you. That is a great slogan in order to have. And with that being said, we'd like to formally invite you uh candidates to a form that we have set up for the

01027th of March, 2027, sorry, 2025. It would be at the East St. Louis Higher Education Center. I have a form here in order to present it to you to each one of your candidates. And it's this form is intended in order to be a nonpartisan non-confrontational opening for your candidates to just present their platforms to answer some questions that are that that allow you in order to show what your vision is for the future in order to see where you want to take our children our children first. Before we before I leave, I'd like in an order to hear from my children from Miss Shante Ford. Um, good afternoon everyone. As George stated, my name is Shante Ford. I am a community member. I have children in the district. Um, and I work with a

011youth group called Leaving Our Voices Everywhere. Um, so before I begin, I want to acknowledge that I'm reading this statement on behalf of Kayla Walker. Um, Kayla is a student at East St. Louis Senior High School. She's a freshman in honor classes. Um, and she's very involved. Um, Kayla also is a member of love, which is which stands for Leaving Our Voices Everywhere. Um, her intentions were to be here today, but because the meeting was moved to school hours, she wasn't able to attend. So, I'm speaking on her behalf. Um, so her statement says, "My name is Kayla Walker, and I am a freshman who's in honor classes and play softball at East St. Louis Senior High School. I'm also a proud member of Love, Levering Our Voices Everywhere, a youthled organization dedicated to making

012sure young people have a voice in decisions that impact our communities and schools. On March 27th from 6 to 8 at the Y Veter H Young Higher Education Campus, we are partnering with the NAACP and Uniting Congregations of Metro East to host a school board candidate forum. This event is an important opportunity for candidates, both new and returning, to engage directly with students, parents, and community members. As leaders and decision makers in our school district, your presence at this forum would mean so much. is a chance to listen, for candidates to share their visions and connect with those who who will be directly impacted by the policies and changes that shape our schools. This is more than just an event. It's about ensuring transparency, accountability, and collaboration for a better future. We truly hope to

013see you there. Together, we hope to create meaningful change for the for school district 189. Thank you for your time. We look forward to welcoming you on March 27th. Thank you. I'm going to pass off forums right now to all the candidates. Yeah, it'd be great. You have for both uh forums? Yes, it be Oh, together. She was Okay. I don't know if there was an additional Thank you. Thank you all. [Applause] Talk to him after. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Thank you all. Appreciate it. Is it George? All right. Did you say the time was 6 to8? What time was it? 5:30. 5:30. 5:30. All right. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. Um, next would be, um, need a motion to approve the minutes of February 25th, uh, 2025 regular board meeting. Can I get a motion?

014I'll make the motion. I second. A motion by Miss Will Remy Dean. Second by Willie Ray. Roll call. Remy Dean. Yes. Willie Ray. Yes. Lonzo Greenwood. Lonzo Greenwood. Walter Hood. Timothy Lockett. Yes. Danielle Moore. Danielle Moore. Latoya Mosley. Yes. Okay. Pass. Don't need no executive session, guys. No, not from the administration. All right. Superintendent report. Need a motion to approve by on vote action. Items 12 A, 12 B, 13 A, 14 A, 15 A, 15 B, and 15 C. I make the motion. A motion by Miss Willy Ray, second by Walter Hood. Broke off. Willie Ray, yes. Walter Hood, Remy Dean, yes. Lonzo Greenwood, Lonzo Greenwood, Timothy Lockett, yes. Danielle Moore, Danielle Moore, Latoya Mosley, yes. Motion passed. Thank you. Need a motion to approve the following action items. 12A revised proposed calendar for the

0152024 2025 school year. 12B student discipline and these students is four will be placed in alternative school schools rather and that student number 88923013 for threats and intimidation to students to be placed at Vincent Gay through June 1st of 2026. Student 889 9 88920411 physical confrontation without injury placed at Bush Alternative School through July 1, 2026. Student [Music] 88912964 for also physical confrontation without injury to be placed at the regional office of education safe school through July 1, 2026. And uh finally, student 88910421 for physical confrontation with staff to be placed at the ROE safe school through June 1st, 2025. I make the motion. I'm there a couple more action items. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Also, action items 13A, the financial report for the month of February 2025. 14A personnel committee report addendum and contracts.

01615A buildings and grounds committee report 15B curriculum report addendums and revisions. And finally 15 C finance committee report and addendum. Now that does complete my report. Okay. I got a motion by Will Hood broke off. Willie Ray, yes. Walter Hood, yes. Remy Dean, yes. Lonzo Greenwood, Lonzo Greenwood, Timothy Lockett, yes. Danielle Moore, Danielle Moore, Latoya Mosley, yes. Motion pass. Thank you, Superintendent. Um, next would be um any old business. Yeah, old business. Yeah. Any old business? New business. Uh, next board meeting, April 22nd, 2022. Uh, could I have a pre presentation? Yes, we have u Mr. Nick Heckle from the Illinois State Board of Education. He's going to provide us a presentation regarding school improvement to ensure that the school board completely understands the school improvement process. Thank you, Mr. Heckle. Thank you guys. This

017is a training. You guys welcome to state, but you don't have to. Yes. School board. School board training. Yes, sir. I'm sorry I couldn't hear you. Hey. Hey. Um, George. George. Yeah, it's it's open session. We have a scheduling conflict. We'll probably split half over there. But I talk to you about that. Okay. Okay. Pretty good. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Oh, okay. Yes, sir. It's all in your hands. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon. As Superintendent Culver said, my name is Nicholas Eckle. Um, I am the supervisor for the school improvement, the school district improvement department at the Illinois State Board of Education. Um, I am based out of the Chicago office. Um, so I'm doing a lot of traveling uh these next couple of months as I visit districts across the state. Um, a

018little bit about my background because I know that when I'm sitting on the other side and somebody's presenting or training to me, they're like, "Who is this person to talk to us about what they're talking about?" So, I have 23 years in education. I have spent the past four years at the state board of education, specifically working in the school district improvement department. The past four years, the 13 years before that, I spent as a building administrator. the six years prior to that I spent as a first grade and a fifth grade teacher. Um I have worked in districts where my most recent district less than 1 half of 1% of my students fell into the low socioeconomic area. My district before that which is absolutely one of my favorite districts that I've ever worked

019in between 97 and 99% of my students fell into the low socioeconomic area. Um, my actual absolute favorite building I ever worked in was I had an all kindergarten building. So, I had 500 5-year-olds in one place. A lot of little people. Um, and that was just one of the two buildings that I had. The other building I had was the early childhood building. I had another 300 kids in preschool for all and early childhood special education in that building. Um, I am married to an early childhood special education teacher. I have a 16-year-old. I have a 13 going on 13-year-old. Um, my son has a 504 and my daughter has an IEP uh for a specific learning disability. So, I come from a lot of different angles. Um, one of my favorite roles that

020I played in the last 23 years was I was a board member in my kids district. So, I've sat on the side of the administration. I have sat on the side of the teachers. I have been a union representative and I've sat on the side as a board member. There's a lot that goes into school improvement. And so I'm here to talk about that today to help you as board members understand the role that you play in supporting the work that the administrators and the teachers do inside of their schools every single day when it comes to school improvement. So that's what we're going to talk about first. The first thing is this. School improvement is not about changing what kids do. School improvement is about changing adult practices to improve student outcomes. Let's say

021it again. I want to make sure the board members know you do have a packet. Yes, you have a packet refer. And I'm going to go through each of the documents that's in here for you um as we talk about it so that you understand what they are, what role they play um in everything. Admin, if you all want copies too, I brought extra copies of all of this. I'm sure some of you have seen these before, especially chief of schools. I'm sure you've seen a lot of these. Um so it's to help you understand adult practices. It's changing adult practices to improve student outcomes and to help you understand the role that you play in school improvement because boards do play a very important role in supporting the work of school improvement. So, first

022I want to start with this. I've got three questions for each board member. So, the more we're interactive today, the easier this goes because remember I was a first grade teacher and I had a kindergarten building. A really good wait time. So, I could do this for a long time. So, the three questions I have for each board member is one, how many years have you been a board member? Two, what is your favorite part about being a board member? And three, when you hear the word school improvement, what does that mean to you? So, Miss Dean, can we start with you? That's fine. Um, I've been on the board for about a year and a half now. Um, one of the things I'm enjoy most about being a board member, I love constantly learning.

023So, this is something new for me. So, this is something that I'm definitely learning something every time. Um, school improvement. When I hear that, I just think of making the schools better. You know, test scores, engagement, things like that. Excellent. Miss Ray, I've been on the school board for four years and what I enjoy most is the interaction with the school board, the students and making um sound policies that affect the students and the outcome of the students in this area. When I hear uh school improvement, what comes to mind is the board ability to make effective change in policies and procedures and the interaction with what's happening in our schools in our communities. Excellent. Mr. lock it. Um I think I've been a board member 12 years. Um um when that's let me see

024when you hear school what do you most um I like working with the um like working with my team members. Um the reason why I like being a board member is um to to try to improve the kids attendance. Um um grade grades um um interaction with the teachers interaction with the parents uh in the community um you hear of school improvement um um kids attendance parents participation uh community participation. Excellent. Thank you Miss Mosley. I have been a board member for two years now. What I enjoy most about being a more a board member is I have a positive uh impact on my community and when I hear school improvement um I'll say it comes to mind and um let letting us board members know that we're on the right in the right direction

025on the right path. Thank you Mr. Hood. Uh, I've been a board member for two years. And what I enjoy most, I like to see the students achieve because I I'm a graduate of this school district and so I also like to see other people come behind me and achieve on a high level. And when I hear school improvement where I have we have condition where we teach these students to be all they can be anything they want to be. Let's let's try to do that. That's what I see. I see school improvement. Excellent. I'm so glad to say nobody said shame and blame. Um because those of us that have been around a little while, we remember NCLB and NCB was really about shame and blame, right? Like if student didn't per if school

026didn't perform, what did we do? We took funding away from school, which how does that make any sense to anybody, right? It's like taking an IEP away from a student. Oh, you're not progressing. We're going to take away all your supports. That doesn't make any sense to anybody, right? So, um I am glad to hear that you you hear school improvement and you think about student attendance, parent engagement, making things better for our students, our students getting whatever they need to be whatever they want to be, right? Like that's school improvement and that's what we want to do. So, we're going to dig in a little bit more to this today. So, why as the East St. Louis School Board are you being trained? Um, so board members of districts with schools that did not

027exit status when completing will complete training provided by the Illinois Association of School Boards and Illinois State Board of Education, ISBY, on effectively supporting school improvement. So, what does that mean? That means that in 2018 or 2019 when report cards first started coming out, there was a school that was designated as comprehensive. And then again on report card 23 or 24, they were still designated as comprehensive, meaning they didn't exit that status. And they entered a status that's called intensive. So what does that mean? How many of you have heard these terms before? Exemplary, commendable, targeted, comprehensive, intensive. Yes. I'm hoping every board member is saying yes. They've heard these terms before. Okay. So the exemplary status is for districts that are perfor schools that are performing in the top 10% of the state. Okay.

028Their scores on AR, graduation, ISA, all of those put them in the top 10% in the state. Commendable. Commendable is a pretty broad range. It ranges from 6% to the n 89th percent in the state. It's a very broad range of schools that fall into that commendable range. Targeted schools are a school that would be in the commendable range, but one or more of their student groups falls into the bottom 5% in the state. Okay? So that could be their EL, Hispanic, Latino, lowincome, black, African-American, children with disabilities, um, former EL, any of those student groups that fall into that bottom 5% in the state makes that school a targeted school. Comprehensive is when all that all student group and all student groups in the building fall into the bottom 5% of schools in the

029state. Okay. And intensive, as I said, is the schools that on report cards 2018 and report cards 2019 were designated as comprehensive and then on either report card 23 or report card 24 were designated as comprehensive again. Meaning state determined action at that point was that they become an intensive school. How many of you have seen the Illinois report card for East St. Louis? One of the nice things about the Illinois report card is that you can see the designation status and historical data for every school going all the way back to 2018 on the site. Okay. The thing about designations is this. Each school receives an annual summit of designation every October. Once a school enters status, let's say on 2018 they entered status as a comprehensive school. On 2019, they could have gone

030up to a targeted school, but their status remains as comprehensive. And then on 21 on 22, it was 21 and 22, they were again they could be commendable and then go back down to comprehensive. So the annual summit of designation can change from year to year but that status their status where they fall into either targeted or comprehensive stays the same for four years. Okay? Now I know some people can everybody's doing math and they're like well Nick 2018 to 2023 was five years not four. It's correct because during that time we all know that CO took place. So we gave all of the schools an extra year of funding an extra year of support to do the work during that time. Okay. So for schools that enter intensive status, what comes along with that

031status? Well, the first thing that we do is we give them title one part A section 1003 school improvement funds. We give a grant to those schools every year. In their first year of designation on report card 23, they received $70,000 in that year. Okay. In the first year of implementation, which would have been the following year, they get $100,000. then it goes to $65,000, then it goes to $35,000. There is a more rigorous needs assessment. Um, if you were on the board last year in October, which most of you were, um, you would have seen a contract come across for the American Institute of Research, AIRRI, to do a more rigorous needs assessment at Lincoln Middle School. Okay. A root cause analysis. And we're going to talk about each of these pieces, what they

032mean, what it looks like inside of schools. They would do a root cause analysis. We would develop a new school improvement plan. Okay. Schools that are in intensive status have had a school improvement plan in place for 5 years. Something is missing from that school improvement plan that we're not seeing the growth. So, what we're going to do is we're going to take a step back. We're going to do the needs assessment, root cause analysis, and develop a new school improvement plan. We have an on demand learning series to help people understand school improvement um at the school level because what I can tell you is when I went through my M's program several years ago now um I didn't have a course on school improvement. I didn't have a course on that. I didn't

033have a class on that. I had to learn trial by fire. I went into a school and in 2018 my school was designated as targeted. I had to figure it out. School improvement website. Our school improvement website is available for everybody across the state and we've got it divided out into sections. We have it divided out for intensive schools, comprehensive schools, targeted schools, and then we have one for all schools. If you ever hear Dr. Tony Sanders, our state superintendent, talk, he talks about school improvement for all, not just our designated schools, but that it is good practice, regardless of designation, that school improvement efforts are taking place inside of schools. I can speak to this firsthand as having worked in a school that fell between the 80th and 90th percentile in the state and

034they didn't do school improvement efforts. They were successful because of the students that walked through the door, the product that was given to them. They could have done so much better had they actually put in some effort for school improvement efforts. Technical assistance from our school improvement helpline. It's a phone number and an email address. It's available 247 to anyone in the state including board members to reach out and ask questions. And then an assigned school improvement coordinator right now that is Christina Kelly is the school improvement is my school improvement coordinator that is assigned to East St. Louis. Before that it was Trevor Chapman, Dr. Trevor Chapman who was assigned to the district before that. So like I made mention Lincoln Middle School is the school in St. Louis East St. Louis that is

035designated as an intensive school. They were designated last year on report card 23, meaning that in 2018 they were designated as comprehensive school. And then on report card 23, they were again designated as a comprehensive school. So what do those four years look like for them? So last year for Lincoln Middle School was their planning year. That was the year that the needs assessment took place, root cause analysis took place, and creation of a new school improvement plan took place last year. This year is implementation year one for them. This is the first year of implementation. This is where they're going to take all of that work, research, and everything that they did last year and they're going to put it into practice this year. So, they have this year and then two more years

036of implementation to improve the systems and what works inside of the school. report card 2027 will determine if they exit status as either a targeted commendable or exemplary school or if they remain in the bottom 5%. And the honest answer to the next question that you all have is what happens if they do? We don't have an answer for that yet, but we will. Okay. Um, currently assessment and accountability is making changes to the system in the state of Illinois. Yes, sir. Nick, their most recent scores that we got back in the fall, they were targeted. So they have to I just want to make sure that So they have to remain they have to get targeted or above for what three more years. So they they could go up, they could go down, right?

037Right. They could be comprehensive next year and commendable the year after that. It's on report card 27. So October of 2027. That set of scores determines do they exit status or do they remain in status. They they skip over commend over comprehensive and went to target straight to targeted which is amazing which is what we want to see meaning that one or more they were in the commendable range but one or more of their student groups was in the bottom 5% kids yep kids with disabilities and that's and that's a huge improvement right like going from that comprehensive intensive level up to targeted that's improvement yeah right and I tell everybody like listen good school improvement good solid school improvement is three to five years for it to happen and for it to stay. Yeah.

038What always worries me is when I take a compre is I see a comprehensive school and they go to commendable the next year and they're like, "We're good. We're going to celebrate. We're good. We're not going to do anything else. Don't do that." Yeah. No, no, no, no, no. Right. Because in the very next year, the first thing I see is they're back down at a comprehensive level. Okay? It's got to be consistent. It's got to go regardless of status. Even if they exit status in 2027, the same efforts, the same school improvement plans, those efforts still need to continue afterwards regardless of status. So will the board be required to go through this same training next year and the following year? No. So what happens is is the board's going through it this year

039because of the intensive school, right? Moving into next year, I know there's new law out, uh, new legislation that's out that requires all new board members as part of their initial training to get training on understanding school improvement and monitoring school improvement for for success. I'm in the process of creating that training that's going to be shared out with every with the 15 different providers across the state. So, they can use it if they want to. If they don't, that's great. It'll be available to boards to watch whenever they want. Um, but unless there's another intensive school in East St. Louis later, you won't have to go through this training again with me. I was asking that because board members asked some board members asked me about it. I wasn't sure the response. Okay. Thanks.

040So, no, it'll be it'll be for new board members going forward. It'll just be part of their uh initial training. I know it's a four-hour training that they go through initially. All right. Okay. So, continuous school improvement. So, as um Superintendent Culver said, the packet in front of you is um different resources and documents that my department has created over time and provides to anybody in the state that wants them, but specifically our targeted comprehensive and intensive schools. When we meet with them, we use these documents with them specifically. Okay? So, you can see in the upper right hand corner of this slide, there's a little icon with two hands and a piece of paper. Anywhere that you see that on this presentation, there's a corresponding document in your packet that goes along with it.

041Okay. Okay. So, the first document that is that shows up there is this document. It looks like this. Okay. So, originally when we created this document, it looked only like this. It was a full page. It just had this boom improvement cycle on it. through conversations and feedback from district administrators and building administrators across the state, a lot of them said, "Hey, Nick, listen." I said to my coordinators, "Listen, if you were going to give us one document that I opened up on my computer and I could pull everything I need off of it, that would be amazing." So, that's what we did. We created this in electronic form. They can click on all of the blue ones and it links them to all of the different documents that we recommend to them to look

042at. All right. Now, all of the documents you have in front of you, all of the documents that we share except for one, these are all guides. They're recommendations. They are not set in stone. They are not you must do this exactly as we've written it. They are guides. They're resources to help people understand school improvement and help them work through the process. Okay. So on the continuous improvement cycle, there are five components on this cycle. Identify local needs, plan for school improvement, select relevant evidence-based practices and interventions, implement and monitor, examine, reflect, and adjust course. We're going to talk about all five components today and the steps that schools go through when they're dealing with these components. Also, what we have built into this is there's two documents in here that are just for

043boards. Okay, they look like this. And they say monthly topics and tasks at the top of them. Okay, there's two. One is a single page, one's two pages. You'll be like, Nick, they look the same. Well, one says planning year, one says implementation years. Yours have blue at the top, not red at the top. Red at the top is for the schools. Blue at the top is for the boards. So that's the one for the schools. So you're looking for toward the back. They're towards the back of your packets right here. Those two right there. So, we're looking for my team would like the package. Absolutely. I can get you package. Okay. Thank you. Anybody else need water? Mr. Hood, you need one right here. Thank you. Yeah, it's cold. This is cold. You got

044That's room 10. That's cold there. That's what he Okay. So on these documents, what we've laid out for you as board members is questions that you can ask, ways for you to engage the administration in your district on school improvement efforts inside of schools. Excuse me. So, we're giving you ways to engage because what we want is we want boards to engage from the board's position and help to understand what is going on inside of schools and how as the board you can help schools to improve. So, let's start down the road of continuous school improvement. So when we talk about continuous school improvement, we start with identify local needs. Under identify local needs, there are four elements that take place. The first two seem very very obvious, but can I walk? Is that okay

045with everybody? Yeah, you want to uh you can take the mic off of the stand too. School administrator. Sorry, just moving group. Okay, sorry. I apologize. So, the first two steps are to identify a school leadership team and identify a stakeholder advisory group. Those are the first two steps of identifying local needs. And they seem very obvious, but the number of times I've sat down with a building principal and I've said to them, "Hey, tell me who's on your school leadership team." And a principal goes, "Well, me and my AP." And I'm like, "Close. Really close. But no, we're not there yet." Okay, so we've got identify the school leadership team, build a stakeholder advisory group, conduct a school level needs assessment, and conduct a root cause analysis. So let's have this question first. What

046is the difference between a school leadership team and a stakeholder advisory group? Anybody? Okay. The school leadership team is a group of school level staff whose focus is to develop, implement, monitor, and evaluate the school improvement plan. My little icons back up there. You've got this document right here in your hands. It says identify a school leadership team. This gives that administrator administration in the building and at the district level because the other piece of this is that schools cannot do this independently. Schools need the support of the district leadership and I know in talking with my coordinators that the schools here in East St. Louis have a great support system in the district administration here that support their efforts and the work that they're doing. So identify a school leadership team. It gives you

047who should be on your school leadership team, how often you should be meeting, and then we provide the topics to help guide those conversations. So who should be on your school leadership team? First one that we say is grade or grade bands. Okay, we say this because I know that my very first year of teaching when I just graduated college high school, that was a long time ago. When I just graduated college, I took a teaching job. There were 16 first grade teachers, 16 second grade teachers, and 16 third grade teachers in my building. And that was just on the east half of the building. The west half of the building had 17 of each section. Okay? So, I was one of 16 first grade teachers in that building. And we met on a weekly

048basis, all 16 of us, plus our reading recovery teacher. We didn't get a whole lot done during that time when we met on a weekly basis. Too many voices at the table. Okay. But if you have a smaller school where maybe you only have one section of every grade level, you might have a kindergarten, first grade rep, a second, third grade rep, a fourth, fifth grade rep. Okay. Department chair, middle schools and high schools. If you have department chairs, they should all be on your school leadership team. Special areas teacher. So, we're thinking music, art, PE, STEM, any of those that you have going on inside of your schools, somebody from that team needs to be represented on the school leadership team. Special education teacher, somebody from that special ed team needs to be represented

049at the table because they speak for a very specific group of babies inside of our schools. So, they need to be present to speak to how this is going to impact those students. This is the one I always get a lot of push back on, a lot of flack on, but regardless of the relationship between unions and the districts, I don't and what the relationship is, it's fine. But if I go to a teacher and say, "Hey, we're going to do now X, Y, and Z." And that teacher doesn't like it, I can guarantee you the first thing that they're going to do is they're going to go to their union rep and say, "This is a change of work conditions." No. If that teacher union rep is sitting at that table listening, hearing, understanding,

050and contributing to the work, when that person comes and says, "They're changing my work conditions," that person's going to say, "No, we're just doing this differently, and this is why we're doing it, and we're all going to do it and get on board with it." Okay? And then the last one that I know is overlooked in probably 90% of our buildings across the state is our pair of professionals or our teaching assistants. Okay? They work oneon-one, one on two, two on, threeon-one with our kids, okay? And nine times out of the 10, they're parents in our community as well. Have them be part of that school leadership team. Okay? We say a team size of four to eight. All right? And it really depends on the district and the size of the school. If I

051go over to Brooklyn, where I was a couple weeks ago, okay, their junior senior high has four teachers and kids. Four kids, four teachers and 50 kids in their junior senior high. Well, guess what? Their leadership team is the entire staff. Okay. But if I go up to Auburn High School up in Rockford, another district that I work with, a school that I work directly with, he's got almost 200 staff members and several thousand students in his building. Guess what? His team's about 10 or 12. And that's okay based on the size. We say four to eight so that good conversation can happen and good work can take place as well. I'm going to come back to that document real quick. Well, no. Let's go to that one. So, in your packet, you also have

052there's two documents that are folded over and they're legal size. Okay, this document, one is for planning year again and one is for implementation year. Okay, this is a year in the life of school improvement. What we have laid out on this document is if we're looking at we'll look at the implementation Starting in August through July, we have laid out on a month-by-month basis who is responsible for what during school improvement efforts. And when I say we've laid out who's responsible, I mean everybody who's responsible. Okay? So, your school improvement coordinator is on here. Isby as an agency is on here. You as board members are on here. district administrators, school administrators, school leadership teams are all listed on here and who's responsible for what during each of those months. Okay? Again, not written

053in stone. Okay? Some buildings may be a little ahead, some buildings may be a little behind, but that's okay. The other document that goes along with this is schools have the monthly topics and tasks as well. These were developed because here's what I can tell you. I remember as a building administrator, I was in the parking lot. I'd like to say it was 7:00, but it was usually 6:30 or 6:45. Sat in the parking lot. I pulled out my phone and I went through and said, "Okay, my schedule starts at this time. There's this. There's this. There's this, there's this. I went through my schedule for the day and I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna have a great day." I got out of the car, took about five steps. My superintendent called, talked to my

054superintendent as I'm walking towards the building. Hung up with my superintendent. My secretary called was like, "Where are you?" I'm like, "Outside the door." She'd be like, "Great. You've got three teachers standing outside your office already." Like, awesome. And two parents have called already and they want to talk with you. Even better. and it wasn't even 7 o'clock yet and my day was already shot. Okay, that is the life of our administrators every day. Every day our administrators go through that. They get to the end of the school day. It's 3:30, 4:00, they're ready to have a school leadership team meeting and they just want to sit down and put their head down for a minute and not do their leadership team meeting. And I understand that feeling. But we're going to help them through

055it. We're going to help guide them, help keep them on the right track so that when they get to the end of the day and they're tired and their staffs are exhausted from working all day with kids and being run around and all this other stuff, helping everybody stay on track, you know, everybody stay on topic of school improvement is the purpose of these documents. Okay. So the next document that's in there as well is a stakeholder advisory group. Stakeholder advisory group is a group of stakeholders impacted by the success of the school community. Okay. And again we give what's the difference between stakeholder advisory group and school leadership team. How they're different. Their purposes are different. How often they meet are different. School leadership team meetings minimum on a monthly basis. stakeholder advisory groups

056three times a year. So, who should be on your stakeholder advisory group? Well, teachers and school staff. So, what I say to leaders all the time is this. Listen, you've already got a school leadership team. You're probably paying them a stipen for their work, which is what we should do. have them be on your stakeholder advisory group as well because they're going to be the ones that can speak directly to every conversation that's taken place, every bit of work work that's gone into that school improvement plan. Parents or guardians are a must. Students, you've got those middle school and high school students that stakehold advisory group. Get them to the table. You want some honest voices that'll tell you like it is good, bad, ugly, and indifferent. They're going to be the ones to tell

057you. Community members, local businesses. One of the things that for stakehold advisory group when I was a principal, I could walk out to the corner of my school and look down the road at the end of every day and I watched my kids walk down the road to a street. On one side of the street was the public library. On the other side of the street was a store. Guess which one They went into the store. It wasn't the public library. I tried to encourage them to go to the public library, but they didn't. But they went into that store. So about six weeks into my first time being a principal at that building, I walked down and I said to the store owner, I said, "Hey, listen. I know my kids are coming down

058here. Are they causing problems?" Right? Like I can work like we can. He's like, "No, no, no." He's like, "No, they're good. They're in here. Yeah, they're goofy, but they're kids." He goes, "But I'd rather have them here than out there causing problems." I said, "Great." I said, "How can I help?" He goes, "You got some books?" I said, "Yeah, I got books. I got a ton of books." He goes, "If you bring me some books, I'm going to put a bookshelf up in the corner, load it up with the books that you bring down, and the kids can take those, bring them back, read them when they're in the store, do something, but then we've got books here." I said, "Great." So, I went back to school. A week later, I walked down there.

059I probably had about 50 75 books ranging from kindergarten through sixth grade because that's what I had in my building at the time. And I said, "Here, I got some books." He's like, "This is great." He already had the bookshelf up ready to go. He put the books on it. I went down there a month later and I talked to him again and I walked through the door. The bookshelf had turned into two. Books were overflowing from there. I said, "Holy cow, where'd you get all the books?" He goes, "Well, I bought some. Community members came in. They saw I had it and that we were working together and they put books on there." And he just kept growing his library every year for those kids. Kids took them home and he's like, "If the

060books don't come back, yeah, I don't care." So that was a way to engage my local businesses and my community members in the efforts that we needed to do inside of those schools. School leaders, they better be at the table as well. And the other one that I always tell everyone is think about your local civic leaders, alderman, mayor, council members, any of those that you have, have them invited as well. Because who's the one person that's always standing in front of constituents? Somebody in politics, right? And if they can say, "Hey, you should see the things that they're doing over at East St. Louis." Okay? Because a lot of times in a lot of communities, what I hear is this. I went to the school 25 years ago and things haven't changed since then.

061And I've got to say to people, listen, I started teaching 23 years ago. We aren't doing what we were doing 23 years ago. And let me be 100% honest, we're not doing what we were doing 5 years ago inside of schools either. It's changed. But if we don't ever tell anybody that, we don't ever show them that, they keep thinking, it's the same way it was 25 years ago when I went there. And that's not the case. So that's where your stakeholder advisory group comes in. So these are ways to engage the community to build understanding about the needs and improvement processes inside of our schools. It provides an avenue for varied perspectives to come to the table um and share the positives and the concerns that they have that are impacting the school community

062and they act in an advisory capacity. Okay, so that's one of the really big differences. Your school leadership team are your decision makers. Your stakehold advisory group is just that they're an advisory group. They can give you feedback on how they feel that that's going to impact or maybe we overlook some concerns or some priorities and bring different ideas to the table. How often should they meet? It varies from place to place, but what we say is at minimum it should be three times a year. And those three times a year are this. In May and June, when you finish your school improvement plan, it's gone to the board and the board has been like, "Yes, this is good." and they sign off on it. Have that stakeholder advisory group come together, share with them,

063this was our needs assessment, this is our root cause analysis, these were the priorities we identified, our goals and how we're going to address them. Present that to them. Then December, January after that winter benchmark is done, bring them back together again and say, "Okay, listen everybody remember these were our goals. This is what we've done since the beginning of the year. Here's our data from the fall. Here's our data from the winter and present it to them so that they can see the growth that's taken place. They can hear about the professional development that's been implemented inside of schools. All of those pieces they get to hear about and see this is having a positive impact on our kids. And then the third time is again in May or June after the school has

064finished the year. They've done all of their benchmarking, all of testing is done for the year, and they've had an opportunity as a leadership team to sit down, re-evaluate their school improvement plan, make any changes necessary for next year, and then present that to the stakeholder advisory group again. And that should just be a cycle that takes place May, June, December, January, May, June. So like I had referenced at the beginning that document that the two documents that you have are topics and ta um monthly topics and tasks for board members. It gives you questions to ask during that planning year and say, "Hey, what data did you look at to help you determine the priorities for Lincoln Middle School? How did you determine those priorities?" Okay? And your building administrator should be able to

065answer that question to you and say, "Hey, we looked at AR data. We looked at do we use map or we use map data and we looked at progress monitoring data and that's how we determined this was our priority." Okay. Help to engage. Now, intensive schools have to present to boards three times a year. September, March, and June or July. They have to present to the board. Okay? Three times a year. We didn't do it last year, and we're not doing it this year because we haven't trained boards yet on what to expect on how to how that goes. All right. Now, as far as what that presentation or what they're presenting to you looks like, we're not telling districts how to do that. We're not telling them what it should be. What we're saying

066to boards and administration is saying what do you want to see? How do you want to share it? Okay, because then they can make that decision on what's best for boards. Okay, one of the biggest reasons and when you look at it is 50% of my role as supervisor is to work with Chicago public schools. 622 schools in Chicago public schools 100 210 of them are designated. 70 of them are designated as intensive. They've got to present to their board three times a year as well. All right. I've got to work with that board and that administration to say, "This is how you're going to present." Every district has that right. Every district should decide this is what works best for us, East St. Louis 189. This is what works best for us and how

067we want it done. Okay? States's going to stay out of that. That's up to you and what that looks like. Okay? But it's three times a year. So, I'm going to stop here for a second. Any thoughts or questions on what we've talked about thus far? Okay. So, what is you want some water? I got some Okay. All right. I want to make sure I try to kiss you out of here at 90 minutes. So what is a school level needs assessment? The school level needs assessment is conducted specifically during the planning year. It ensures that the initial school improvement plans that are developed are based on high quality data. Now, schools during their planning year, comprehensive and intensive schools, they do two school level needs assessment. Okay, the first one is done internally. It's

068the Illinois quality framework that is done internally. Okay, so that leadership sits down with either the leadership team, sometimes the entire staff depending on the size of the staff, and they complete um the Illinois quality framework. So that's one piece of data. That's one school level needs assessment. The second school level needs assessment is conducted by the American Institute for Research. They conduct that assessment for designated intensive and comprehensive schools. So what is included in that? This is what I can tell you. It's a pretty in-depth process. There's a lot of steps to the process. The first step after the board approves the contract and dates are set up with administration is they then send out a survey to the staff inside of that school. That school that staff has that opportunity to complete that

069survey. It's anonymous. There's no names attached to it. So staff can feel comfortable saying this works really really well. This does not work at all. The next part that happens is AR sends a team out to each school to do observations inside of the school. They observe classrooms inside each building. They have an evaluation tool that they go through. They evaluate, they look at different classrooms throughout the building. The third part of that is there is a staff focus group that gets together usually at the end of the day, sometimes early, depends on the staff and how they want to do it, but they get together absent of administration and get an opportunity to answer questions face to face with someone. So it's a focus group. Middle schools and high schools has a student focus

070group. So students get to do the same thing. They get to sit down with the evaluators and the researchers and say, "Hey, this is what we feel. This is what we see." The final part to that is is that there is a administrator interview. The administrative interview is 45 minutes to an hour long. So, it's pretty it's pretty robust. It goes over a lot of different topics, covers everything that would take place during a school day in a school year. And I can tell you the reports that come out of it, 50 to 75 pages. So, they're pretty robust reports. They're pretty long reports. These are the four school improvement areas that are looked at inside of this report. So we've got leadership and vision, curriculum, instruction and assessment, culture and climate, targeted instruction and

071support. So those are the four school improvement areas that are addressed directly in the school improvement report. Each one of those areas has sub areas that are looked at. So if we look at leadership and vision, we talk about focus, shared vision, goals, distributed leadership and sustainability, culture, continuous improvement, align consistent professional development. All right? And each of those areas has somewhere between four and six uh sub areas that are looked at. And as you look across to the right, there's ratings for each one of those areas. Initial, emerging, established, and robust. Okay. One of the big positives that I see about having an outside group come in to do a school improvement uh school level needs assessment is this. I was working with a district with a principal. It was an intensive status. When

072they sat down and did the IQF, the Illinois quality framework, they sat down. Everything on theirs was accomplished or excelling. And I had to say to that principal, hold on a second. you're designated as intensive. Now, being designated as intensive isn't the end all be all part of the conversation, but I'm sure there are things that are that are accomplished inside of your school that are working, but is it every single thing on this 12-page document? Is you're going to tell me every single one of them is accomplished or excelling? And she was very adamant. Yep, absolutely, Nick. All of them are. I disagreed. Her superintendent disagreed, but we said, "Okay, let's move on." And we moved on. We had AIRIR came in and did theirs and it didn't show that. I went to a

073meeting about two months later. I was in the meeting. I was waiting for them to show up and a new person showed up and I said, "Hey, who are you?" They said, "Hey, I'm the new principal." I said, "Awesome. It's January. Okay, let's make this work." And he said, "So, I want to talk about the first thing." I said, "Okay, what's that?" He goes, "The IQFSR, the Illinois Quality Framework." I said, "Okay, what about it?" He goes, "We're redoing it." I said, "Oh, why?" He goes, "Because it was a lie." And I said, "Well, I don't think it was a lie." He goes, "No, it was very misguided. Like, no way is everything accomplished in excelling." I said, "Okay, you do it and let's have a conversation about it." And it came out as a

074much more honest reflection of what was taking place. I say that to say this, AIR doesn't have a horse in the race, right? They're not there. They can't come in and then say, "Hey, this is what you should be doing and here's our product to do it." They can't say that. All they can say is, "Hey, these are the things that are working. These are the things that aren't working. You've got your report. Now do your work." Right? So, they don't have a horse in the race to say if something's good or bad. It's just an honest outside perspective to say, "Hey, from our perspective, these are the things that we see that are working really, really well, and here's the things that are opportunities for growth." Okay. All right. So when we talk about

075um school level needs assessment and looking at data, schools are not data deserts. Schools have an abundance of data. So what I have up here is I have standard assessments, school surveys, attendance, five essentials, benchmark assessments, behavior data, progress monitoring data, classroom data. Are any of those, in your opinion, are any of those pieces of data that schools don't need to bother with looking at when they talk about school improvement? Nope. Every single one of those plus more is data that they should be looking at. All right? And that's why they have a school leadership team of people because a school principal cannot possibly in their day manage all of this and staff evaluations and behavior situations and teacher situations and parents and and and and they can't do it. But if I sit down

076with my leadership team, I may say to my kindergarten and my fifth grade reps, I would say, "Hey, you guys are responsible for bringing benchmark data and classroom data to the next meeting and sharing out what that data is and what it looks like." First grade and fourth grade, you're responsible for bringing behavior and attendance data to our next meeting and sharing it with us and what you see. What were the things that stood out to you during the last month? Okay. I would break it out over who my leadership team members are. That way they're taking responsibility for it, right? They've got skin in the game as to what is taking place inside of our leadership team meetings, which is really important. So the next one up that you see there's our little icon

077again is the root cause analysis. And that's this sheet right here. Okay. A root cause analysis is an approach to problem solving through discussion to dig deeper than the surface symptoms and undercover and uncover the underlying issues. All right. I would say to principles all the time, have you ever done a root cause analysis before? I said, yes. They were like, yeah. I'm like, well, what did it look like? Well, I sat down with the teachers and we talked about the problems. Said, okay, what'd you come to the conclusion of? I don't know. We just talked about all the problems. They said, ' Okay, here's a document to help you ask why. Dig deeper. Okay, a lot of times when I say to people, okay, what are the problems that you're facing in your school,

078in your school community? The first thing I always hear consistently across the board is chronic absenteeism is our problem. And I have to say to everybody, time out. Chronic absenteeism isn't the problem. Chronic absenteeism is the symptom. It is the symptom of the problem. It is the result of other factors. The root cause analysis tries to get to the bottom of what are the problems that are causing that. Okay. One of the buildings that I was in, we talked about chronic absentism all the time. Well, I found out I had a bunch of my sixth graders in my building were missing school because the babysitter got sick. Mom had to go to work and they had to stay home to watch the kids that weren't school age yet. So, they were missing at least one

079or two days a week every week to do that. Okay. Now, here's the thing about a root cause analysis. You're going to come to one of two problems. First one being something that you as a school can do something about. Okay? I can't personally do anything about the fact that the babysitter's sick and somebody's got to stay home and watch the littles. I can't do anything about that. All right. But I can work with my community to see their community resources that the community can offer that could help that problem. The second problem you're going to come to is one that you can do something about. Okay. I had a a fifth grader when I was at this school who would not come to school and I would call home be like, "Mom, what's going

080on? I can't get him out of bed. I can't get him out of bed. He won't get up in the morning. I said, "Well, how can I help?" She goes, "You want to come drag him out?" Like, "Yes, I do." So, I'd walk the two blocks down the door down there. Knock on the door. Mom would be like, "His room's right there." And I'd knock on the door and I'd open it and be like, "Hey, Mark, let's go. Time to go to school." What's he doing in my room? Mom's like, "Better get up. Mr. Heckle's here. It's time to go to school." I'd wait. He'd get up. we'd go to school. At the end of week two, he started getting up on his own because he was tired of Mr. Hackle knocking on his door

081two to three days a week saying time to go to school. Okay. I couldn't do that for all 550 kids in my building, but mom reached out and said, "Hey, can you come get him to school?" We got him to school. Okay. I have a school in Rockford that they have the same problem. They have parents that do not feel kids comfortable with their kids walking through the neighborhood that they have to walk through to get to school. So what did the principal do? The principal hired a walking bus driver. It was a parent from the community who would walk down the road every day and walk back and pick up kids on the way down and walk them all back to school every day. And that's what that individual does every single day. Their

082chronic absenteeism rate dropped drastically when they started doing that. Okay. So again, but they if they didn't know that, if they didn't dig deeper and ask the question why to families and say, 'Hey, why are your kids not coming to school and parents response was I don't feel safe with my kids walking through this neighborhood to get to school? That principal would have never known. That principal would have never been able to say, "Hey, I've got a solution." District administrators thought he was crazy, but said, "Hey, okay, give it a try. If it works, great. If it doesn't, that's on you." And it worked perfectly. Okay. But he had to dig deeper. He had to go through that root cause analysis. Determine, yes, chronic absenteeism is a problem, but how do we get there? The

083other one that I hear consistently is this. It's our children with disabilities. They have IEPs for a reason, Nick. They're never going to achieve at the same rate everybody else's. And that one for me hits close to home because I've got a daughter with an IEP. I've got a son with a 504. That hits close to home for me. I'm like, listen, my seventh grader is going to achieve and is able to achieve at the same level as everybody else. She just needs help getting there. And she's come a long way in the four years that she's had her IEP. She's come a long way. And she probably won't have an IEP when she goes into high school. But it takes that time to get there. But one of the biggest questions I asked is

084then this. I said, "Okay, how many what's your percentage of IEP?" I had a district tell me their percentage of IEP was 35%. I'm like, "Do you have a lot of self-contained classrooms that you bring in other districts for?" They're like, "No, that's just all of our students." I'm like, "We might be overidentifying." So, let's have that conversation. Number one. Number two, how are your students with IEPs receiving services? Are they getting them all pull out? Do they never see on grade level on track instruction? If they don't, they're missing out and they're never going to achieve at that level. So, we need to have a conversation that's deeper than just they have an IEP they're never going to achieve. So, the root cause analysis gives us that opportunity to dig deeper and deeper and

085deeper until we've got that underlying cause and then we can make some changes. Okay, we've got through I know that was a long one. You're like, "Woo, Dick, that was long. The next ones won't be quite as long." But that identify local needs is long because it takes a full year. Okay? From the needs assessment to the identifying to the root cause analysis to the development of the school improvement plan, that's a year. It takes a full year to do it and do it well. So now we go to plan for school improvement. So when we're talking about plan for school improvement, we're talking about developing smart goals, key activities, local assessments to measure academic progress, and monitoring the school improvement plan. This is what I can tell you about this. This goes from easy

086over here on the left hand side and gets harder as you move to the right. Okay, developing your smart goals, that's the easy part, right? For schools that are comprehensive or targeted, comprehensive, or intensive, they have to have one ELA goal and one math goal. That's the state requirement. You have to have one of each of those. Okay. Beyond that, one other goal would be as far as we'd like people to push. All right. Do fewer things better than more things halfway. Smart goals is the easy part. Key activities to say this is our goal and this is how we're going to accomplish the goal. That's our key activities. How are we going to accomplish those goals? That's what we're going to do. Local assessments to measure the academic progress. So that's MAP, other progress

087monitoring, classroom data, common assessments. All of those can be used to measure progress towards those goals. And then monitoring the plan. Monitoring the plan is where if a school improvement plan is going to fail, it's going to fail in the monitoring. Okay? All too often, what I've seen happen is this. You write your school improvement plan. You're like, "This is our school improvement plan. It's great." You print it. You put it in a binder. That's how old I am. You put it in a binder. And you put it on your shelf behind your desk. And at the end of the year, take that binder down. You go, "Let's see what's in here." No, we didn't do that. No, we didn't do that. No, we Okay, we didn't do any of this. It's great. Okay. That

088school improvement plan at every school leadership team meeting should be in front of every member of that school leadership team every month to say, "Hey, what have we done? What have we not done? Have we been successful? What hasn't worked for us?" Okay? Every single month, it should be right in front of them. Smart goals. we have in front of you is this smart goals. Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. Specific. We've got a clear focus as to what we're talking about. We're very specific on the who, the when. That's what we're looking for. Measurable. Is there something tied to it? Right? Is our benchmark is map tied to it? Is other progress monitoring tools, are they tied to our goals? That's what we're looking for. One of the things that we stress to

089districts is this. Don't use your IR in your smart goals. Okay? IR is the test that's done one time a year and we don't get results until summer. So there's no opportunity throughout the year to measure are we moving towards that goal or not. But if we're using MAP as our goals, we're able to say in the fall, the winter, and the spring, are we headed in the right direction or do we need to change course now before we finish the year? Achievable. This is one that a lot of people struggle with because I, as an educator, I want to say that 100% of my kids are going to be at or above proficiency every time. Okay. But if I walk into a school and 3% of my kids right now are at proficiency or

090higher, am I going to get 97% of my kids to that same level by the end of the year? Chances are I'm not, but I may be able to get 12% of my kids there in year one and then uh 12 to maybe 22% of my kids in the next year and then maybe 31% of my kids in the year after that. I'm going to up that goal every year, but I'm not going to jump all the way to 100. Okay? And that's a struggle because then people are like, "Well, you're leaving that other 80% of your kids behind. I'm not leaving that other 80% of my kids behind. I'm still working with that 80%. But I want to be able to say that I'm headed in the right direction and this is how I'm

091measuring it. Relevant. Okay. Please don't write a goal around shop class as your smart goal. Okay? I say that because I've seen some really funky goals come through and I'm like, what does that have to do with student achievement? It doesn't have anything to do with it. Okay? And here's the piece. Smart goals are written around how the students will perform. Okay? So, they are based on students. The smart goal should not be that 95% of my staff is going to participate in this professional development. Okay? Because we see that goal come through every once in a while too. Goals are written around how students are going to achieve key activities. That's what the adults are going to do different to help kids get there. All right, ready to play a game? Good goals, bad

092goals. Good goals, bad goals. Here we go. I've got four goals up here. And here's what I can tell you. All of them are achievable. Okay? Based on where the students started to now, all of them are achievable. I'll give you that. But the first goal is by the spring of 2025, 48% of African-American students will score at or above the 60th percentile on the I Ready reading benchmark assessment. Good goal, bad goal. Here's a hint. If you're looking in your packet, the answer is there. I did not realize that until somebody in Cahokia pointed that out to me last week. It's a good goal, but it it is a good goal because one of the things we said is by the spring of 2025, so we've got a timeline of when we're looking at,

093right? Right. 48% of our African-American students, so we've called out our African-American students will score at or above the 60th percentile on I Ready reading benchmark assessment. So, we've said what they're testing on. It's reading. It's relevant. It's achievable. It's specific. And there's time on it. Okay. Don't look at your packets. But number two, all students will show improvement in their benchmark assessments. That's false. It's not a good goal. Why isn't it a good goal? What's it missing? timeline. I'm seeing a timeline and what is the um benchmark consist of right? What what are we testing them on? What's what's the assessment that we're utilizing? There's no time on it. All students will show improvement in their benchmark assessment. So, I had a kid who went from the first percentile to the second percentile. It's

094improvement, but are we closing the achievement gap for that kid at all? No. So, it's missing a lot of pieces. You can e Now, here's the thing. All four of these goals come out of school improvement plans that have been submitted to the state. Some of them we've had to send back. Some of them we've kept. None of them are from East St. Louis. Okay. I picked on my districts that I worked with, so that's where I pulled them from. So, I picked on my districts. All right. 38% of students will increase their RIT score in the NWA MAP assessment. It's not a good goal, right? What's missing? What do you think's missing from this? A timeline for one thing. Yeah. Timeline's missing. They're going to increase their RIT score by what? I was going

095to say by the measurements by what? How? By what or how? Because here's what I can tell you. I could have a student that starts the year at a 124 as their RIT score and they improve to a 126 at the end of the year. Their percentile went down for the school year, meaning that the kid didn't learn anything that year. Based on that test, they did. it would appear that they didn't learn anything that they actually regressed and went backwards. Okay. By May of 2025, 38% of all third through fifth graders will score at or above the 60th percentile on STAR 360 math benchmark assessment. Good one. It's a good goal. It's got every piece that we're looking for in there. All right. So, that was smart goals. Now, we're on to key activities

096and timeline. But here's the question I want to pose. This is the this is the question that comes up all the time. Is there a difference between a school improvement plan and a district strategic plan? The answer to the question is yes, there is a difference. Right? Because a lot of times we've talked to districts and they've been like, well, we've got a district strategic plan, so we're good to go. Strategizing. No district strategic plan. Great. I'm glad you have one, but now let's take it down a level to the school. So, here's the thing. A district strategic plan identifies the district's priorities, right? These are the big priorities for our district. So, it could be something like ensuring consistent implementation of highquality instruction to improve student outcomes. That's the district's priority. Okay. A district

097strategic a student uh a school improvement plan says that students scoring in the hon or above grade level range for the numbers and operations domain will increase by 10% from spring of 24 to spring of 25 as measured by the Ire math diagnostic. So that's our goal. That's where we want our students to be. Now let's talk about those high quality instructional practices that are going to get us there. Okay. So district strategic plan is about priorities at a district level. The school improvement plan is about the priorities taking those priorities supporting them at the school level and achieving those goals. Now before when I was talking about the documents I had said this all but one of these documents are optional in resources for intensive schools. There is a document that is required and

098it's the school improvement plan template is required for intensive schools to use. Okay. With over 900 schools in the state of Illinois that are designated targeted comprehensive or intensive, when school improvement grants come through to us, we look at school improvement plans for every single one of those schools in the state. My team does. My team of seven coordinators looks at over 900 school improvement plans for the state. Okay. There are 900 different forms that come through. Okay, everybody's got a different template. Everybody's got a different way of laying it out. And that's fine because there's so many different things that it's got to work for each individual school. But what we say for intensive schools is this. Listen, you've had five years. You had it in your layout. Now, we're going to put some

099more guidelines on it and say this is the document that you have to use. You have to use this template. Okay? We've had a lot of districts that have just said, "Hey, listen. This is just easier. Let's just use this." We have districts that use ours. Even if they don't have an intensive school, that's fine. But intensive schools have to use our template. Our template lays out all of the components that we would require in a school improvement plan. Okay. On this page, you can see the first part is they put in their goal. So goal number one could be ELA, could be math, could be behavior or attendance, whatever your goal is going to be, that goes in there. That's the easy part. The next part is the key activities. This is the how.

100Okay, this is the goal is the what we're going to do. The next part is the how we're going to do it. Now, with that how we're going to do it comes how we're going to do it. Who's responsible for doing it and when are they going to do it by? What I tell all of the schools that I've worked with over the last four years is this. for your activities, your key activities, your action plan. Please don't write a full year's worth at one go. Because what you're going to come up with is you're going to come up with a document that has 52 key activities for the year. And it's going to be six pages long of key activities. And you're going to go to opening day institute for school teachers and you're

101going to say, "Here's our school improvement plan." And the teacher's going to open and be like, "That's a good goal." And they're going to look at the action plan and be like, and they're not going to do it. They're going to be so turned off by that length. What I tell everybody is this. Listen, think monthto month. Think about these are the two or three activities that we're going to do in the month of August working towards our goals. And then at the end of that month in September, the first week in September, I'm sitting down with my school leadership team. I have the school improvement plan in front of us, the action plan in front of us, and I'm going to say, "Hey, listen. Okay, for key activities, we were presenting professional development on

102this instructional practice that we wanted teachers to implement inside of classrooms. Did everybody attend that professional development?" Yes. Did everybody get the same takeaways that we wanted them to go back to the classrooms and implement? Yes. Are they implementing it? I don't know. Okay. If the answer is I don't know, that means the monitoring plan wasn't followed. Okay? Because the monitoring plan should say, listen, here's the professional development. Here's the expectations. And every teacher should know when I walk into the classroom as the building principal, as the administrator in the building, this is what I'm looking for based on the professional development that we provided you. This is what I'm expecting to be taking place inside of classrooms. And then my data is going to be the notes that I take for myself, the feedback

103that I provide to that teacher on, hey, when I walked into your classroom, I saw this, this, this, and this taking place. Let's have a conversation. Okay? And I said that to all of my teachers as a building principal. Even if they were doing what I expected them to do, it was always let's have a conversation because I wanted to hear from them how they felt that professional development was in impacting their structural strategies inside of the classroom, good, bad, or indifferent. I wanted to know. All right? That way everybody got used to just having to come and have a conversation with me. All right? So if things didn't go well, they could come and say, "Hey, listen, Nick. I've tried this. I've tried this. It's just not working for me." And I'd be like,

104"That's okay. I have this fabulous instructional coach right here. Let me here's my instructional coach. I want you to work with this my instructional coach for the next four weeks on this strategy and have them mo model it for you, help you to implement it, and then we'll check in again in a couple weeks. So again, resources, helping them through that." But if I wasn't monitoring it, my teachers could have gone in, closed the door, and done the same thing they've been doing for the past 25 years. Okay? So all of that's laid out there in the action plan. The what action, by whom, by when. Try to think month by month is what I tell all of my administrators. The next part down there is, hey, listen, what supports do you already have in

105place inside of the school that could help with this? Okay, if you don't have the supports, what do you need? All right. What are some of the associated expenses that come along with this? That's where our funds come, that's where the title one, part A, section 103 comes into place. Okay, what do we need and where can we purchase it from? Because the other piece that we say is listen, implementation year one, I'm only giving you $100,000. Okay, now $100,000 in a district where the total district budget is $2 million. $100,000 is a lot. But if I go to Chicago and I up in CPS and I say, "Okay, I'm giving you $100,000." Well, just in title one funds at Title One, 103 funds, I gave the district $40 million this year. So that $100,000,

106they're like, "Ne, it's not a whole lot of money." Okay. But when we start looking at can we use title three funds, can we use title two, can we look at IDA funds, can we look at local funds, what are other funds that we can braid together to help support this work? All right, we asked them to list all those things out there. So again, it's at the forefront of everybody's mind and every conversation and the other part of this is the monitoring plan. Okay, this is where I said before that if a school improvement plan is going to not be successful, this is where it's not successful. Okay, this is where it falls apart because if teachers sit and get PD we go back to the rooms and say, "This was great." Close my

107door and do the same thing that I've always been doing, it doesn't change anything. But if I'm monitoring, if my instructional coaches are going out and modeling and monitoring that as well, and then we're coming together as a leadership team meeting to say, "Hey, listen. I've been in every classroom and I'm seeing in 75% of our classrooms, this instructional strategy is working, is being implemented inside classrooms." That's fabulous. What's our progress monitoring data telling us? Are we seeing improvement on student progress monitoring data? We're not okay. What's missing? Maybe that instructional strategy isn't meeting our kids needs. Isn't hitting where we'd want the kids to hit. Okay, what do we need to change? What do we need to do differently? Let's look at what we changed going forward. So again for plan for school improvement

108board questions ways for boards to interact things like how will the school and district monitor the implementation plan because if you remember when I said a little while while back schools can't do this independently they need district administration to support. Okay, they need to know that, hey, I want to try this idea to see if it works inside of my school. Okay, if they just go and do it and district administration is like, wait a minute, time out. What are you doing? It's not going to work. But if district administration is like, "Go for it. How can we support this?" That's where things can take place. Okay. So, that's where you can ask, "How is everybody going to monitor this school improvement plan? What data are you going to share with us as a board

109to show that this is moving forward or we're not seeing the growth that we want to see, relevant evidence-based practices. So when we talk about relevant evidence-based practices and curriculums and interventions, there are if I think back to being a building administrator, I knew on a daily basis out of the 350 emails that I got in a day as a building principal, 75% of them or 75 of them were from a curriculum company, an intervention company, somebody that wanted to come in and provide PD for my staff. Everybody and their brother wants to come in and do this or has has this newest, latest, and greatest. Okay, a lot. All of those emails on a daily basis, I delete it because if I needed a curriculum or I needed an intervention for something specific, there

110are websites out there that will help to tell you this is the intervention that you're looking at. Here's the research that supports that it's good for kids, and here's the standards that it touches. And that tells me I might want to try this intervention inside of my school. That same website is going to have Nick Heckle's curriculum on there and it's going to be like there is zero research supporting this. It doesn't touch any of the standards. Please don't use it. Okay. So, there are clearing houses out there that that list out everything in the research to back them or if there's no research to back it, it says there's no research to support this. Okay. The other piece with this is this. I went into a school recently and had a conversation with a

111principal and I said, "Tell me about the curriculum that you use." Oh, okay. Well, this is the ELA curriculum we use. Great. This is the math curriculum that we use. Great. This is science. This is social studies. Great. I said, "Well, what interventions do you use for your tier 2 kiddos?" And the principal started listing them. And he had to get out a piece of paper and said, "Okay, here here's what we use." And he got to number 16 for interventions. And I said, "Time out. Hold up. You are about 14 interventions too many." Okay. If you are having to give interventions to 80% of your kids inside of your school have to have an intervention, we need to go all the way back to the classroom. We need to go all the way back

112to core instruction and say, "Our core instruction isn't happening the way it should be. Something is missing from core instruction, core instructional practices, materials that we're using. something is missing in a tier one core level that we need to adjust and and and change. Okay. If you've got two, three, maybe four interventions because you're giving it to 15, 20% of your kids, awesome. You're right about where you should be. But if you're giving it to 80% of your kids, we got to go back to core. We got to go back to the core instruction inside of the classroom on grade level instruction to determine what's missing. Schools that are designated as comprehensive and intensive in implementation years one and two are required to work with a learning partner. Okay. There are 48 approved learning partners

113in the state of Illinois that went through a competitive process to get contracts with the state. Once they have those no cost contracts with the state, they are then available for schools and districts to contract with them to come into the school and provide support inside of the school around school improvement efforts. So implement and monitor. This is the the fourth ele the fourth component in uh the continuous improvement model. So communicate the school improvement plan to all stakeholders. That's our stakeholder advisory group and that is also our staff inside of the building as well. Okay. The school improvement plan is developed with the school leadership team with input from the staff. But that final product, day one, teacher institute day, that should be the first thing that that leadership team, not just the administrator,

114but that leadership team should be presenting to the staff because, excuse me, Superintendent Culver or any other members of district staff should be able to walk in and say, "Hey, what are what are some of your smart goals that you guys are working on this year?" And that staff should be able to say, 'Oh, well, our ELA goal is is this, and our math goal is this, and our attendance goal is is X, Y, and Z. And they should also be able to ask, hey, what are some of the activities that you guys are going to be doing this year or this month around that? And they should be able to list off a couple of those and say, "Hey, this is what we're doing." Because at the end of the day, every adult inside

115of that room, inside of that school, every and I mean every adult inside of that school, from my custodians to my front office secretaries to by