5/11/26 Orland School District 135 Board Meeting

001going to get started we like to welcome everybody to the orland school district 135 board of education meeting today is monday may 11th at 6 p.m jill could we have a roll call please miss browner here miss chmielewski here dr castongren here mr merandy here miss peckham nudge here miss thanos miss zayad here thank you if everybody would rise for the pledge okay tonight we have a school present meadow ridge students are going to come up and give us a show miss weston are you going to come introduce everybody good evening is this working good evening i'm lisa weston the principal of meadow ridge welcome to meadow ridge i'm um joined by miss megan toronto miss jacqui baker our assistant principals today to give you an amazing student presentation a little background meadow ridge houses

002the intermediate self-contained program for the district and currently we have six classrooms of self-contained each classroom is paired up with a gen ed classroom it's kind of their buddy classroom they do different activities like school events scl activities specials with their um gen ed homeroom so this year miss d francesca vermilion and miss annie burdens were paired together and early on in the school year they came to me and said we have this idea and as a principal that is my favorite thing to hear and i absolutely said yes let's go for it and their idea is book buddies and that's what they're going to be sharing with you today good evening members of the board we are here tonight to tell you about the best hour of our school time it's a program we

003call book buddies every couple of weeks our two classrooms come together to become one big team of readers but we'll get to everybody we don't just sit in the same room we partner up and dive into a great story but book buddies isn't just about finishing a book we're working hard on our literacy goals we look for the beginning the middle and the end we also find the characters exactly we talk about how the characters change and how they feel this helps all of us become stronger and more thoughtful readers we are learning how to read we are also learning how to be great friends we practice patience we learn how to encourage one another and we celebrate when our partners work through a tough word i like book buddies because i get to read

004and have fun i like book buddies because it's it is a good way to make friends book buddies has changed our classroom we aren't just two separate classes anymore we are friends we are a community of readers who support each other every single day thank you so much for sharing that with us parents if you want to come around behind the alley and take photos too while the kids are lined up come on up and take your pictures okay we're going to move on to uh recognitions tonight we have uh students starting off with student recognitions so we want to say um congratulations to the 2026 njhs outstanding achievement award congratulations to halana weidemiller a journaling junior high student for receiving the njhs outstanding achievement award halana is also a girl scout just saying next

005honoree is opa cc for the civic b finalist so congratulations to shou zheng kuang who was the finalist for the orland park chamber of commerce civics b okay next is iaea statewide student art show congratulations to kaylee hiler an orland junior high student for having her art selected to be in the iaea statewide student art show next uh we're honoring student artists so congratulations to hannah bay a meadow ridge student who just became a published author i do just want to finish saying that hannah wrote and illustrated her book addy doesn't like flies which can be found on amazon and right here amazing we're going to move on to community recognition service of legacy first up tonight is officer kevin catching orland school district 135 would like to recognize and thank orland park police officer

006kevin catching for his four years of service to the junior high schools as their dare officer officer catching made lasting impacts on many students during his time working within the district and we will miss him as he moves to a new role within the orland park police department thank you our next honoree american school bus orland school district 135 would like to recognize and thank jeff barnes and tom moe sullivan for their 20 plus years of unwavering partnership from the first day of kindergarten through junior high graduation abc has safely guided generations of orland 135 students through every mile thank you for your dedication and support next we have staff recognitions above and beyond the call of duty every day the abcde award first we have honoree sean lyons from liberty school he's a fifth

007grade teacher for the value of compassion nominated by michael montgomery mr lyons has had both of my children as students both of them love him as a teacher his love for what he does and how he identifies that each student needs different attention sets him apart he has shown great compassion for my child this year when they were slow to catch on to certain things it made them try harder than they ever had and believe they can do it the next nominee is lindsey vicars from set that she's a center school nurse for the value of compassion nominated by sabrine abu ali zayed nurse lindsey goes above and beyond for all her students she shows great compassion even when the kids are not honest about why they are in her office every phone call i

008receive from her is treated with respect and sweetness we love her so much the next honoree is jessica davis from center school second grade teacher for the value of compassion nominated by katie amen miss davis is the most wonderful second grade teacher my child has blossomed so much this year and loves going to school my child comes home and plays school because miss davis is their role model miss davis is so kind and compassionate to every student in her class she is outstanding at communication and an amazing teacher the next honoree is hannah strubacher a meadow ridge fifth grade teacher for the value of inspiration nominated by katie amen miss strubacher is an amazing fifth grade teacher she is such a kind compassionate teacher and she is also great at relating to her students she

009plans so many creative lessons and projects and we have such tremendous growth in our child this year our child loves going to school and we know it's because they have such an amazing pardon me outstanding teacher the next honoree is kara gein journaling junior high music and drum line instructor nominated for the value of inspiration by diana and john agnos mrs gein is deeply involved in the school community and is a constant source of positive energy her classroom is not just a place for learning it is a space where students feel valued supported and inspired to grow both academically and personally mrs gein provides her students with meaningful opportunities to shine whether before school during class or after school hours she dedicates her time to creating experiences that allow students to showcase their talents and

010develop new skills additionally mrs gein fosters a genuine love of music and her students through her passion and enthusiasm she instills an appreciation for the arts that resonates well beyond the classroom and the next honoree is also karat gein nominated for the value of outstanding achievement by jamie machu ms gein has done so much for the journaling drum line she has found opportunities outside of the district for the kids to perform the program has grown into one that so many kids want to try out for and perform in her passion and dedication is truly admirable watching the drum line perform is so fun and the energy is contagious i know she will continue to find opportunities for the kids not many junior highs can say they have a drum line and i'm proud to brag

011about ours i wish this weren't my child's last year journaling because i'm going to miss drum lines so much the next honoree is jennifer beijer century junior high ela teacher nominated by shiri koloje for the value of inspiration mrs beijer is a wonderful teacher for the impact she has on that on my child this year i have seen their confidence grow tremendously especially in reading which they now truly enjoy the student teachers keep getting younger to finish the the statement for mrs beijer her knowledge of her subject matter and passion for teaching reading shine through in the way she engages her students and helps them build strong skills her thorough communication with the parents in the newsletters is also so helpful in keeping us informed on what the classes are working on i appreciate her

012making my child transition into middle school smooth and successful we are so grateful for the difference she has made she is truly an exceptional teacher our next honoree is jillian wojcik high point school fourth grade teacher nominated by the khaki family for the value of inspiration she consistently goes above and beyond to motivate and uplift creating a classroom environment where everyone feels valued and supported her positive influence has helped my child feel more confident engaged and excited to learn mrs wojcik truly makes a lasting impact and makes her deserving recipient of the abcde award thank you for all you do mrs wojcik we are truly lucky to have you as a teacher our next honoree is jack kinsella jillian junior high band instructor nominated by jamie mccue for the value of effective communication when our

013child came to us and said he wanted to join band we thought it would be temporary that they just wanted to try it out now they are graduating and still love the band as much as they did when they first began mr kinsella truly has impacted and inspired our child and others his love for teaching and excitement over music truly shine through and the band kids are so lucky to have him he truly teaches cares inspires and helps kids to believe in themselves and their talents i can't say that i see too many people who love their profession like mr k our next honoree is jason minarovic liberty school fifth grade teacher nominated by valerie manoulis and brian lemur for the value of inspiration at the start of the school year our child didn't feel

014confident in math it wasn't even sure they belonged in high math through his encouragement patience and belief in his students he helped build them build confidence and truly understand the subject because of his support they are not only succeeding in math but have also grown to love it what was once their most uncertain subject is now their favorite teachers who could change the way students see themselves and their abilities are truly inspiring and he has done exactly that our next honoree is andy og liberty school fifth grade teacher nominated by valerie manolis and brian lemur for the value of compassion she exemplifies true compassion in everything she does for her students she consistently goes above and beyond to support not only their academic growth but also their emotional well-being always ensuring that each child feels

015seen valued and unvalued and understood her ability to connect with students in such a genuine and meaningful way makes her truly unique wait her dedication extends beyond the school day as she takes the time to show up and cheer on her students at their activities outside of school the meaningful and lasting impact she has had on her students makes her truly deserving of this recognition for compassion our next honoree goes to jenna gallifos from park school kindergarten teacher for the value of inspiration nominated by sarah and kevin o'malley both of our children have been blessed to have mrs gallifos for kindergarten at park school she inspires these kindergartners to learn while having fun by creating engaging ways to learn foundational skills our child comes home daily reciting catchy ways to remember heart words or math

016facts mrs gallifos has a way of incorporating movement conversation and meaningful interactions within her lessons in the words of our five-year-old mrs gallifos is kind she is smart she is calm she explains things well she never yells and she is the best teacher ever we are so grateful our children had mrs gallifos to begin their 135 education to inspire and instill a love for learning in them both the next honoree goes to katelyn zintak high point school third grade teacher for the value of compassion nominated by sarah and kevin o'malley third grade has been a tremendous year of positivity for our child thanks to miss zintak her warmth and kindness made the transition to a new school with new people so much easier from the start miss zantak took to learning about each student and

017caring for them both inside the classroom and out she found ways for her introverted for our introverted child to feel a part of the class with creative group assignments and fun ways to talk with peers with ease our child has shared that they felt respected and valued for who they are in her class miss zintak would often share their gains both academically and socially with us through her strong communication we are so grateful for the compassion she has shown not just to our child but to all of her students the next honoree also goes to katelyn zintak high point school third grade teacher for the value of compassion nominated by jackie durkin miss zantak consistently goes above and beyond to make her students feel valued and supported she sends thoughtful postcards home highlighting each child's

018kindness and the positive impact they have in class her warm smile at card drop-off and the genuine care she shows every day leave a lasting impression two of my three children have had her for third grade and we couldn't be happier with their experience she is truly a wonderful teacher and a meaningful role model for her students our next honoree is page teresas high point school fifth grade teacher for the value of inspiration nominated by cynthia manderson mrs teresas is a wonderful educator who ignites her students minds with curiosity and problem solving her drive to motivate her fifth grade class encapsulates excitement and awe alongside the curriculum miss t offers numerous activities and writing assignments that gives to they give the students a more thorough understanding from deep diving into certain time periods or exploring

019new ways to find answers she always tries to find she always tries to end the unit with some memorable treat she knows how to keep their interests and on their toes for what's next as the parent i love to hear my child say that they love going to school and i appreciate the time safety and care she gives her class thank you for all you do our next honoree is kristen slick orland junior high ela and social studies teacher for the value of compassion nominated by karen o'connor miss slick has demonstrated an extraordinary amount of compassion towards our child and our family as our child faced new challenges they selected miss slick as a trusted adult at school to support them miss slick has been an extremely compassionate educator she continues to go above and

020beyond in communicating with us and supporting our child we appreciate all that she does and the support she provides to her students that extends beyond academics our next honoree is missy hyatt centennial school early childhood teacher for the value of outstanding achievement nominated by marissa gassick from the moment my child was accepted into the preschool program at centennial mrs hyatt has been guiding my child and me each step of the way her calming presence and caring demeanor helped my child make the transition to school seamlessly i receive daily updates in person as well as from parent square and the activities they do are amazing since entering mrs hyatt's classroom just under a month ago my child has transformed into a completely different child they're sleeping through the night and are eager to try new activities

021and go to new places my child is engaging with our family more and they absolutely love going to school to see mrs hyatt and her team i cannot thank them enough for helping my child every day the next honoree is sharon grassman high school high point school art teacher for the value of inspiration nominated by ashley muffett my children love our class with miss grassman they are always so enthusiastic when it is art day with her they have had the opportunity to learn about amazing artists and art principles and bring home beautiful artwork showing these techniques i love miss grassman's ability to make art so fun for her students we appreciate all the hard work she puts into it and all the inspiration she provides to all of her students to make beautiful things the

022next honoree is carla morgan high school high point school enrichment teacher for the value of inspiration nominated by ashley moffett my children love reading enrichment with miss morgan she creates the most fun and engaging projects that go along with all the books the children have been reading in her class this year my children always come home and talk about the cool things they are learning about and the projects they are completing with mrs morgan they often say that it is their favorite class of the day thanks so much to mrs morgan for creating an engaging curriculum that keeps her students interested and for continuously helping them to improve all of their reading and writing skills the next honoree is lori brosnan jerling junior high pe teacher for the value of compassion nominated by leslie larner

023mrs brosnan's compassion is seen in every interaction she has with students whether it be in the class or during a game of one-on-one of the many teams she coaches mrs brosnan wants every child to succeed build confidence and grow a love for the physical activity regardless of their skill level my children feel safe and respected around mrs brosnan in class and on the field and in the community we are truly lucky to have a teacher like mrs brosnan leading our children the next honorees are chris bahula jerry carns katie lazarski stewart taylor trey harris and brianna agudelo also lindsey fredin nominated for the value of outstanding achievement nominated by linda dodged the 2026 civics b held by the orland chamber of commerce was held at orland junior high on may 2nd the amount of help

024provided by our district staff was an instrumental in the success of the event everyone went above and beyond to ensure ensure success we also had a record number of osd 135 students participate this year thanks to the efforts of the assistant principals and the junior highs the chamber thanks everyone and looks forward to next year before dodger castigring gets to the community of recognition john was going to play a short video oh boy so we had our our schools they were really interested in wanting to share a student appreciation for our crossing guards so we have a a short video here of students expressing what they mean to them on a daily basis hopefully you can hear it do you have a special message for the cross guard if so what is it um just

025thank you for all you do and helping to keep us safe every day thank you for helping us cross the street thank you crossing guns for keeping us safe you have to help us get across this busy street with all these crazy kids we i like you because you are my favorite person and you always are so nice and caring thank you so much crossing guard dan for leading us and helping us cross the road and not being endangered by the cars thank you you we have we have a few here so we'll invite them on up so the board has a proclamation for the school crossing guards appreciation day whereas the daily commitment of our school crossing guards is essential for protecting the safety of students our most vulnerable pedestrians and bicyclists on their

026routes to and from the school and whereas these dedicated individuals consistently perform their duties with vigilance and resilience overcoming challenges posed by traffic congestion and unpredictable drivers and whereas countless students across our district rely every day on the watchful attention and courteous conduct exhibited by our crossing guards and whereas our school crossing guards play a critical role in promoting a secure educational setting by actively modeling proper street crossing techniques and traffic awareness for the children under their care and whereas the board of education of orland school district 135 wishes to express its deepest gratitude and highest respect for the unwavering service provided by all crossing guards to the students and families within the orland 135 community now therefore we the board of education of orland school district 135 do hereby proclaim may 15th 2026 as

027school crossing guards appreciation day and be it for the resolve that the school board of orland school district 135 encourages all members of our community to join us in acknowledging and thanking the school crossing guards whose commitment positively impacts the lives of children in district 135 and stand up there a long time next we're going to move on to uh board member comments did anyone have anything to share at this stage of the meeting go ahead this has already been mentioned a little bit but the civics b was uh last saturday and it was a great event um i just wanted to say thank you to the chamber of commerce and everybody from district office who helped to coordinate the event it was a great experience for the kids and they worked very very hard

028to prepare for that um and they all did a really great job and it was a beautiful event okay um we do have uh someone signed up for public comment tonight uh i'm sorry my eyes are getting so bad dr chakra if you would like to come up to the microphone um the board doesn't typically respond to public comments but we hear you and we're listening um and we ask that you keep it to three minutes please okay sure thank you first of all thank you for giving me this opportunity is this important i am so spoken okay thank you for giving me this opportunity uh first fall i'm a father of eight so four of my kids come to district 35 um also um i was born in a refugee camp uh in jordan

029my father was born in this place camp in west of uh of uh west bank uh so so the i want to share my thoughts about the holocaust curriculum that thought at uh century the junior uh i want to make sure that i'm clear we all sympathize about what happened uh with the jewish community it's wrong uh it's uncalled for it's not fair nobody deserved to go through what they went through but the uh okay uh okay um with this being said uh the curriculum uh feels as incomplete it does not tell the entire story and it's very offensive uh to me um the holocaust ended in 1945 1948 a state formed as a result of that which is state of israel how the state was formed and what happened to the native is equally

030important it's equal to the holocaust uh because you know uh what about me i'm i have been paying for a crime i did not commit whatever happened in germany to the jewish community it's wrong uh it's not right but the formation of the state of israel after the holocaust resulted in nakba that should be in the curriculum or the curriculum should be totally seized and deceased um that's what i'm here for um not sure how much i have to add but uh that's the one thought process about the curriculum uh is is incomplete it does not tell the entire story and for me with my kids uh it makes the victims prior 48 we get that we understand it but nowadays you have a state that's been also accused of ongoing genocide and war crime

031that is getting sympathy from the curriculum uh so so that's the item that i want to leave in the uh in that so what i'm asking for is for that curriculum to be reviewed either totally removed or tell the entire story thank you thank you we do not have anyone else signed up tonight thank you dr chakra for sharing that with us um we are going to move on to the superintendent's report hey good evening dr nichols is going to introduce our first presenter on professional learning communities that we have for the board good evening i'd like to welcome bob pain to share with us his expertise on professional learning communities we've been working with mr pain for two years um through solution tree mr pain is a retired um school administrator and currently provides

032professional development with solution tree on professional learning communities so he's been a coach and a guide to us and um as we've continued our our journey into strengthening and building our professional learning communities across the district thank you well thank you am i on oh okay well thanks for having me i'm uh really glad to be here i spent most of my uh education career in independent schools but i have three grandchildren in 135 so you have my heart and so when i uh retired i thought well what do i do with my time i'm gonna sub and so i enjoy subbing i was in seventh grade resource today and i had a great time but um i got talking to some people well what's going on with with our schools and her professional learning

033communities and i thought i just want to lend whatever i can to the school to help this uh practice and you have a role in plc and that's what i wanted to share tonight so but before i share some of the information we need to always know why right why do i want you to know this so i i have a little story so i i saw on our website that we want to be a community of learners which is what i want um and there are lots of schools that talk about being uh for learners but there are different kinds of schools so for example there might be a school called um let's see what's the first one charles darwin school now charles darwin school they believe that all students can learn if they

034have the ability if you have everything that you that you need to be successful in my classroom you'll be fine if you don't i may have to put you into another classroom because you don't have what it takes or maybe there's a school called punches pilot school where hey i'm a great presenter and i'm going to teach you well and if you take advantage of it you'll be fine but if you don't i wash my hands of you it's on you or maybe there's a school called the chicago cub school where we've all been a wriggly field maybe on game day it's a warm friendly environment everybody's going to learn something and we're going to be happy but maybe not a lot or maybe there's a school called henry higgins school maybe you remember henry

035higgins from my fair lady or pig million and henry higgins school we're going to learn and you're going to learn and i'm going to do whatever it takes to help you learn so i want you to think for just 30 seconds and talk to the person next year we call them elbow partners in school what kind of school did you go to and what was the evidence one of those four schools 30 seconds go so the other question i could ask is you're the school board of 135 what kind of school do you want to lead what kind of schools do we want for our students do we want students that if they've got it they'll be fine if they don't you know where they're on their own or do we want the kinds of

036schools where teachers say no whatever it takes we're going to help students be successful because we say we're a community of learners and that's what plc i think will help us do i come from the experience of a couple of schools where i use these practices the second one became a model plc and that's why i do this work but i gave you a little handout there so that you can take some notes on things what do we mean by a professional learning community if we talk about professional we mean that we want our teachers to remain current in their field the most research field in all of america is and as a 73 year old i'm glad of this medicine the second most research field is education there's so much out there we're learning

037all the time and don't we want our teachers and our students to take advantage of the best that there is out there and so that's what it means to be a professional in your field you stay current in the field they all stand for learning a professional learning community it's about the learning the learning of the adults but also the learning of students of course teaching is important but we're going to focus on what students have learned and the last thing is community we want to make sure that we are doing this together now i was sitting there enjoying listening to all the comments that people have made about the teachers and one of the things that we can do in a professional learning community is we can provide a forum to bring those teachers

038together so that they have to take the advantage of the learning that each of them has and then the students have the advantage of all of those teachers working together not just the one that they have so the community aspect of plc is is extremely important and here's a quote that you have it on your your your hand out but there's simply no credible evidence that schools are more effective when educators work in isolation and the questions of what students learn how they are assessed and what happens when they struggle are left to the randomness of the individual teacher to whom they've been assigned teachers working together gets results unfortunately for most of our educational career teachers have not been provided that opportunity to work together teachers have worked in silos they do they'll come

039together and they'll talk about some things but then they go back and they're close their doors and so we just haven't provided with that opportunity to work together and that's what we want to do in professional learning communities make sure that they have that chance to work together so how are we going to do that well there are three big ideas that i want you to take away tonight on your sheet we've got a just a couple of numbers and there are things that i hope will help you retain some of these ideas tonight but the first thing that the first big idea is a focus on learning for all i like the the phrases that we have for our for our vision statement a community of learners and then we talk about dedicate to

040culture of student success whenever we can we want to think about this is for all students that's what our commitment is learning for all students it's a focus on learning of high levels what do we mean by high levels when a professional learning community that's something very specific high levels means grade level and beyond when we talk about all students we want to make sure all students get at least up to grade level because what are we doing we're preparing them for the next grade level right if we're not teaching them a grade level then when they start the next year they're going to be behind that so it's a focus of making sure that all students are grade level and beyond and we'll talk about beyond a little bit more in a minute but

041that's one of the first focuses it's a focus on learning the second focus there is it's a focus on results what we teach is important but the results matter we want to know how are the students doing and so we're much more in district 135 if i'm seeing this all over the place we're much more tuned into data than we used to be and we're taking it very seriously so we're looking at these results and finally it's a focus on collaboration we're doing this work together and the opportunities that you have provided your teachers for the team time that they have is just super important so i'm glad we're doing that so i don't know if you ever hear that annoying commercial that's on tv all the time clr cleans everything well i just like

042that little phrase clr because it helps me remember the three big ideas collaboration learning and results so if you happen to go somewhere this weekend and someone says i hear you're talking about professional learning communities what's that about clr it's about collaboration it's about learning it's about results your advocates for it already so where do we start with this professional learning community's idea well take a look first slide that comes up is a picture of a house well where did this house start you don't see it but next slide it's the foundation if we don't have that foundation that house is not going to last it doesn't it doesn't feel sexy doesn't feel like a lot of fun but it has to be in place and so in a professional learning community we say that

043the foundation is extremely important and our foundation it answers four questions it answers what our mission why do we exist and you've talked about that you want learners and our vision what do we hope to become let me look at that again i don't have it memorized yet sorry a culture of student success by providing a supportive innovative engaging educational experience so we've got these things in place we've got a mission we've got a vision our values that's part of the foundation as well and your teachers have been working on these things that's one of the things i just commend you for the the work that you've done in hiring coaches this year to work with the teachers and we're putting this foundation in place and finally our goals you know what if we don't

044have goals we're not a team we're just a group and by having these goals the goals of student achievement it makes a difference so one of the things and i would if i if i could have one one ask one wish it would be to get some posters made with these four questions so we get them every classroom this is the game changer when i started doing this work this is all i have i just encourage us all to think about the importance of these questions for learning what do we want students to learn how will we know they've learned what do we do when students don't learn it and what do we do if they already know it so your teachers this year in the middle schools are working primarily on question one and

045and spilling over into question two they're working hard to make sure that students have this i love the idea of this district 135 experience it doesn't matter which school you're in you know if we're not doing this work we're playing educational lottery it just depends on what teacher you have but if we have teachers working together answering these questions together this is what we expect students to learn in district 135 and it doesn't matter what school they're in teachers have worked together and decided that this is what matters and then they're working on having the same common assessments it doesn't matter what school you're in in fourth grade or excuse me in in seventh grade social studies or math this is the final assessment for this unit and so we're confident that our students are

046getting the same education and it's the education that comes from all the teachers collaborating together so these four questions are critically important to to the the plc process and finally i see i'm out of time i'll go quick the last one so what are what are our next steps you have a role commit to this process ask questions of the of the teachers follow the data and ensure the policy support achievement if our goal is all students learning at high level the decisions that we make whether it's about time or or support or staff or whatever does this does this support what we want for our students administration they are working hard they have their role there's a conference this summer for plcs that they're going to which i'm sure is just going to be

047very exciting for them we have building level teams and then finally teachers i think it's important for teachers to understand you know education is is notorious for initiative du jour we're trying to try this this year or this next year and teachers need to understand no this is a commitment because it's a commitment to student learning and finally what do we say this is a you know success doesn't always look up into the right it's it gets a little messy and teachers for a long time have just been allowed to do whatever they want in the classrooms and this level of collaboration it takes time and then they're getting there and i just commend the administrators and the coaches and and you folks for the work you're doing supporting this because it's all about student

048learning at high levels you guys are getting ready for what i think is the most important year of all k-12 education ninth grade it determines how high school goes and high school to a large degree determines what kind of opportunities are available afterwards and the work that we can do to work together to get them ready for that ninth grade i think is critically important so thanks that was a lot to pack in um and if there are any questions i would love to answer them or any now or anytime i have one quick would you mind sharing those slides with the board there was some really good information in there i'm sorry i can't hear you i'm sorry would you mind sharing those with the board oh oh perfect okay thank you for sure

049oh and and uh you guys have books that you can read about books for you guys for the the district uh district plc so absolutely yeah i you have okay first of all thank you so much for your time the concept of everything that you said is amazing um i really like everything that you said all learners uh results focus collaboration focus that's awesome is there um a way to measure the results of all that you're doing with the teachers and the collaboration um sure yeah and that's what i i know you folks are are are working on and the the assessments are probably not perfect but they're what we have and we're held to the same standards everybody else and i know we're working really hard map uh nwa map testing data um my

050grandson got in the car this weekend i beat my goal he was excited as can be so the more that we can you know have students engaged that's the holy grail right student engagement when they want it as much as we do and uh and that can happen that's one of the things oh you got me started um with these four questions that i love so much so question one what do we expect our students to learn well guess what there's a student version what do i need to learn clarity precedes competence when students know what's expected of them and then there's a parent version what do we expect my my my child to learn right so that we can all come together on that so i think the focus that we have on achievement

051the map testing the iar testing and of course the classroom assessments as well but yep it's we want data life's no fun without without numbers patrick glencioni is one of my favorite authors he wrote a book called the three signs of a miserable job and the three signs are one of them is in measurement there's no data we're not measuring how are we doing uh the second one is irrelevant well our work is relevant and the third one is anonymity and i think as we get teachers involved in these teams and committed this i think teachers will have higher job satisfaction too when they see what they're doing and satisfying results did anyone else have any questions thank you for your presentation thanks bob thank you very much strategic plan all right we have our

052strategic plan update and bob was nice enough to share our mission and our vision so we can move right ahead so we these are the five categories it's not showing on my screen these are the five categories that the strategic plan focused on two years ago when it was built with the community staff administration and the board communications curriculum instruction human resources student family experiences and finance and operations and the first to go up is ali coletta our communications department all right good evening so we've been very very busy at the end of this school you're doing a lot both internally and externally um our first goal is build partnerships local businesses residents and families to cultivate and promote a positive culture so we have done many events with the orland public library we did

053the battle of the books we did a coding challenge so we've been there a lot with a lot of our students connecting them with that resource we also had the civics be that we've talked about a lot about tonight with the chamber we've done the junior high career day so all three of our junior highs our last one is coming up next friday i believe so we have a lot of local businesses coming in and presenting to our students about local careers that can be localized or they can go national but a lot of our parents are locally doing these jobs our students are learning a lot from them so your career happened last week we'll have some pictures um in a presentation a little bit but we had that and that's all local communities

054that were coming and talking to our fifth graders we've had the therapy dog visits from the police department i believe he's hit all of our schools now so that's great with that dog and then we have upcoming events as well so the village memorial day parade that's the first time that's happening so we're going to be participating in that and then we also have our end of year movie night that we will have local food trucks there for our families to participate in so a lot going on outside the community just showing all of those different things that families can be involved in with our students as well the next slide just some pictures of the different activities that have been taking place of things i just talked about the library the civics b and

055then career day and then our other goal is enhance the school community by connecting families of children with similar interests and needs so we've just been continuing a lot of family engagement nights our el family nights have been taking place across all of our buildings our intermediate buildings also have been hosting their wax figure fairs and their world fairs which is bringing families in so it's all across fourth grade fifth grade so different families can kind of connect with that fourth grader that they have in common while listening to all of these students give presentations the cpac has also been meeting that's the special education parent advisory committee so i know i know our student services department has been meeting with families to talk about all of their concerns and ways that we can continue

056to grow in the district as well do you have any questions for me for public relations great thank you alley next we have curriculum instruction and assessment our first goal within this area is challenge all students with um with support for individual growth with rigor and support for individual growth i felt that the the best way to highlight this um is an end of the year is our innovator expo which all 10 of our schools participated we had 37 staff members do presentations with their students and over 170 students who participated in the innovator expo and the reason that i feel like this is just a nice picture of what's happening in all of our schools all the time these weren't projects and activities that were designed for the expo these are things that are

057happening in the classrooms that the teachers then worked with their students to highlight what's happening so if you saw a fifth grade teacher from liberty doing a presentation chances are all of the fifth grade teachers have been doing that same activity and this is going on year round in our schools just last week i was at liberty school or i'm sorry i was at prairie school to talk to the pfe and and read in a classroom and i was just walking through the building and walked into the media center and there were kindergartners who were learning directionality and practicing their directionality left right diagonal those things and they were doing it in an innovative way with these cars that were programmed and so it was just amazing to watch the kindergartners practicing this the skills

058and the learning targets that were connected to kindergarten skills but doing it with these cars that they had to program to get to go around something to be able to turn right because if it turned left then it you know went the wrong direction so that's just one example the innovator expo is it just is a great end of year highlight of all of the innovative things that are happening in the district to really emphasize rigor and supporting all of our students the next way that we are supporting this standard or i'm sorry this goal is through our plcs and i won't you know go into details about plcs because we just heard a great presentation on that but with our plcs the amount of collaboration that's happened this year is more than than we've

059ever had as a district our junior high teachers meet as teams every single monday as a district-wide team through google meets so every monday of the school year the teams have been meeting with their counterparts across the district so they're meeting with all three junior highs we've had in-person meetings with every single group at every single grade level that district office where we've worked on identifying what our common learning standards are for every single unit and developing common assessments for every single unit for all content um i'm proud to say that the work that our junior high teachers have done it's led to over 300 common assessments that's formative and summative so ones that are end of unit and then like assessments along throughout the unit to help develop and determine if students are meeting

060the needs or if the students are meeting those goals so we've had over 300 assessments that have been developed um with the teachers so i'm really proud of the work that they have done the other part of the professional learning community has been on data-driven decision making and really standards focus we've also this year had professional development and a strong focus on math at the junior high we've had professional development on writing and math specifically and we'll continue that goal into next year as well and then i'm jen brown is going to share about the plc's at the in the special education department hi everyone jen brown assistant director of social education um so really keeping in the theme with what everyone else has been saying finding following our goals working on connection and rigor

061and what's more individualized than an ip it's an individualized plan so it's a kind of a easy easy job for our team the student services department has really prioritized these three main areas so focusing on systems and compliance um looking at using data to improve student outcomes and then ensuring that our staff feel valued um the addition of our iep manager this year jena jordan has really afforded us the opportunity to be present with our teams proactively um similar to what dr nichols was just sharing we have also been meeting monthly with our student services department across all levels for plcs um it's the first time that we've ever done that specifically with the special education team on a regular basis the way that we are so somebody from our team is at one of

062the buildings and then we're all zooming in together so they have access to us throughout those times um through that kind of looking at that pyramid we've really been able to tailor and provide a lot more support for our team members to prepare for their students so they've had access to consistent feedback intentional and tailored professional development for them in their roles ongoing coaching and then that one-on-one support to help enhance student plans growth and progress for students we know starts with a solid foundation so that plan having reliable data analyzing that data and then doing something with the information really has has continued to lead to rigorous learning opportunities for all we are always looking for ways to celebrate our staff so again there's a picture there from our centennial preschool for all program

063they received the silver rating from the illinois state board of education this year which that silver circle of quality designation is um for any program that meets or exceeds quality benchmarks and their learning environment so it looks at administrative standards different qualifications and professional development so for our first year of having that program it's something that we're really proud of and make sure we take time to celebrate our staff in those moments too and our second goal for curriculum and instruction is provide evidence based literacy instruction that supports all learners across the district as you know we are finishing up our first year of a new literacy program kindergarten through eighth grade we've been using the hmh program so this year what we've been able to see with hmh is really that common language for

064all of our students so our students no matter who their teacher is no matter what classroom they're in they are learning phonics and foundational skills in the same way they are learning writing skills in the same way they're working on um they're working on comprehension and those things no matter which teacher they have when they move on to the next grade level it's going to build so they all are getting that common language and that common experience with hmh you can go to the next slide john with hmh it's also allowed us to have a standards alignment so all of our students are having the um the learning targets across the district in each grade level that are aligned we also have developed common novel studies at the junior high so sixth graders at all

065three junior highs have the same novel same with seventh and eighth grade and then what i did this year towards about a week a couple weeks ago i surveyed our teachers just to find out how did it go through the first year and what do you need moving into next year so that needs assessment will be used to to plan out the professional development for year two of hmh because we know that it is hmh is a huge program i keep telling people you're drinking out of a fire hose this year and it's okay give yourself grace it's going to take time and the teachers have really dug in and done an amazing job but it takes a long time to really learn a new program so we'll continue with professional development on this next

066year can i ask a quick question um i mean i've been really pleased with the hmh rollout i mean it's it's the pilots on that and the rollout for this has been great are we at the point that we can retire this focus area and move on to something else since we're now a year into the implementation yes so um we'll continue with this obviously because we will continue it'll still continue to be a goal of ours in general because we will continue to have professional development and we do want to make sure that we are watching our how our students growth are growing on map and i are with the implementation but we would look at adding or switching to a new goal for the strategic plan next year even though we'll continue with

067the literacy but that doesn't impact all of our teachers not all of our teachers are are using hmh and teaching that so we could look at a new goal um to flip out the literacy i have a question but before i ask the question i just wanted to congratulate um you on getting the the district on getting the silver rating um award that sounds amazing from isb for so great job i just i didn't want to not say anything about that um but it sounds like there is a lot of success going on with the plcs and um one question you answered i was going to ask if you are getting teacher feedback and you you just said you are um my last question was in the beginning you said you developed 300 assessments what

068do you mean uh by by that so the junior high teachers have been working on question one and two of the plc so what are our standards for every unit that the that they are teaching and each subject has a different number of units and each product calls it something different hmh calls on modules each product product calls it something different but within a unit the teachers are identifying what are their learning targets what are the main standards that we are wanting our students to learn we call them our priority standards and how are we going to assess those we are starting with the assessments that are given to us by the company or the program so for science we use tci and so the science teachers are working together to look at the tci

069assessment and identifying does that assessment measure the um the outcomes that we are looking for with this unit does it measure the priority standards and so with that they are making some decisions they're maybe changing some questions adding questions making sure that there is writing in every single assessment so our students when they whatever whatever subject they're in they are writing with their assessments and so they're starting with the assessment that's given to them by the product but then making sure that that assessment is aligned to um to the standards that they are working on in the past prior to working through the plcs the teachers would it depends on the teacher that that you had in the school a lot of the collaboration went on within the building so maybe eighth grade math at

070century was using the same assessment but eighth grade math at oj maybe was using a different assessment and so our goal is to get all of the units to be using having the same assessments so that we can then honestly say what's working and what's not and so what that'll allow us to do is moving into next year our focus will really be on question three and four what how did our students do how are we supporting the students that got it and how are we supporting the students that not yet and so that's moving into the data analysis is really going to be the big part of plcs for next year of course i guess about the 300 assessments is are you close to being done forming those like you have 300 like how

071many do you have to get before you feel like that's kind of i guess it's never going to totally be done but yes it won't ever be done completely because we will always go back and also evaluate the assessment so part of the data analysis is you know looking in if there's a question that almost every student got wrong okay well is the question is it the instruction like did the kids not get this part um and it's hard to say like exactly what that heart number is because each grade level in each subject has a different number of units so what our goal has been is for every unit um for every unit it for each subject and grade level that they have one common summative so the end of unit is the same

072and then two common formatives that can be used throughout the unit so there isn't like a hard number it depends on the number of units most of the content are they're pretty solid when i was reviewing um you know we're tracking everything um most of the content areas have pretty much all of them done except for like art because they teach three grade levels so that takes that'll take longer um social studies will be working on new assessments moving after next year so um there it's it'll be an ongoing process but we're pretty we're doing very well well and just to say i mean that's a big amount of work just to get this going to do all that and then it's more maintenance so i mean hats off to to the whole team and

073getting us to where we are now thank you absolutely okay our strategic goal is to update and modernize the facilities um and then we tie in the strategic plan along with our facility survey um so first up is the center mechanical um this is phase two of that building as you can see in the green that was completed last summer um what is summer of 26 is in the pink um a lot of this is classroom work old unit ventilators media center getting modernized and bathroom updates are kind of the highlight overview of center mechanical um liberty as you can see in the blue that was the new addition that was in 2024 the remodel of the lunchroom in 2025 and then the summer of 26 is in the in the pink um there we're

074modernizing about 12 classrooms some small group instruction area art room music room and then some uh needed bathroom ada updates at that at liberty moving on to oj um the new and remodeled was in uh of 2020 2024 was the gym in the fitness area the uh the small green was the staff lounge and then proposed for this summer 2026 summer work which actually started last week um on the band and orchestra room um this is a lot of the large spaces we were hitting there um main office is getting a remodel with some security updates the media center again band room art room and the lunchroom is kind of the main area there and then moving on to park mechanical renovations at park um as you can see the blue was the uh what

075was remodeled in 2024 the 2025 was the lunchroom and then the summer of 26 is uh let's see eight eight classrooms um nurses office um some definitely some updating to the main entrance there um for security and we also wrap in hvac renovations there and the um staff bathrooms definitely ada requests updates on those areas and then also wrapped into this um we are updating the intercom and the emergency alert system district-wide which is also um on i know for board approval later on tonight any questions on anything for summer projects okay thank you oh i'll take this one uh human resource goals to provide increased opportunities for staff to advance their education skills and the uh jen and her staff have been doing a great job as far as providing uh summer pd opportunities

076for staff as you can see there's 24 of them upcoming which result in close to 68 hours of potential professional development for staff um supporting el students special education uh jen talked about the plc's and the hmh and the innovation as well so it's just opportunities providing staff uh to to professionally develop as everybody in education with a license has to get 100 uh hours in every five years so this helps their case as well as that the district is providing these opportunities for them and then job fairs just kept going to job fairs as well this year these are at least three that we went to had a i believe we had a few scheduled even at trinity christian but they will no longer be operating moving forward so that one did not hit

077for us but we have a lot of trinity christian college students in our district and we continue to update our jobs through iasa job banks google indeed linkedin and these are just some of the a couple of pictures at a job fair that as you can see brian fogerty there is the uh in the meat of both pictures here uh recruiting for park no less and the rest of the district of course so that's where we added human resource wise all right in this next area uh it focuses on what you see in front of you in terms of providing opportunities for students and families district-wide and as we go into the next slide this is an update um continuing a goal area that we set uh last year and have continued into this year

078but really just making sure we're providing these uh experiences and opportunities in an equitable fashion across the district obviously when we look at clubs they're not always going to be exactly the same school in and school out across the district but um we have had over 80 clubs this year and i think something that stands out in district 135 and and really uh sets our district apart is that when we talk about clubs it's a kindergarten through eighth grade experience so when we talk about these clubs here you see a young elementary student coding his sphero uh this is a coding club in one of our elementary schools and the number of participants in our clubs this year again kindergarten through eighth grade continues to go up so over 1700 student participants in our clubs

079this year um and while those clubs as i mentioned do change uh to some degree uh because it does take student and staff interest to generate a club uh the district is always uh providing that opportunity in an equitable fashion and then when we look at our family events um events during school hours after school we have family events literally happening all the time in the district to the point where the feedback often is uh can we look to streamline our calendars a little bit more to help our families actually kind of keep track with everything that is always going on so uh this picture here on the right is and uh pardon me miss weston if i if i botched the title but meadow ridge loves math is that it all right so i

080happen to be there on this particular morning uh when meadow ridge had this math event for families this is just one example but meadow ridge invites families in uh to play math games throughout the morning with their students and on this particular day the vestibule the parking lot everything was packed they had just a fantastic turnout uh and it was so fun to see uh parents and grandparents and everyone show up to play math games with their students that morning and again just an example we have these types of events happening all the time in the district uh and you can see the attendance there at the bottom um that that's right uh thank you over or over 41,000 total in attendance this year uh so the district is really hitting the mark in that

081area and then when we go to the next slide when we talk about providing opportunities for students and families something else that the district has also done this year and really made it made into a concentrated effort is celebrating students and providing the safety and the support for students through celebrating students all of the time so again this is a district-wide effort all grade levels all of our schools and you can see the numbers at the bottom of the slide there in terms of the impact that this has had and i'll take you through the pictures the two pictures on the right are celebrations of our students of the month in different schools the picture on the left is a monday morning pep assembly at liberty school so liberty school and this is not unique

082to liberty but this is an example liberty school starts off every single monday morning with a pep assembly and what's unique about these pep assemblies is they are using celebrations to also set the expectations the behavioral expectations for the week so this particular one was pretty neat it was a play on the date last week last monday was may 4th so this was a may the fourth be with you uh pep assembly over at liberty and they had a blast i i was lucky enough to be there this morning for their pep assembly this morning and i learned that their expectations for the week this week were for classrooms to stay in a straight line in the hallways and then also sportsmanship as we get into the spring and we get into field days and

083the season where there are a lot of games and competitions remembering to be good sports so those were the expectations at this morning's pep assembly and i just i could talk about this for a while but what makes these uh so neat and so fun and so engaging for staff and students is again they're doing it through celebrations so when they were talking about uh staying in a straight line in the hallway this morning at liberty they're playing this the song called the jump around i don't know if anyone knows what the jump around is but yes so playing the jump around so staff and students were literally jumping around but when the music stopped every classroom had to get into a straight line and they did it perfectly so again a break from the

084norm in terms of just saying what the expectations are and i'm sure there there's video somewhere there there it's usually captured somewhere on instagram uh you could probably find it if you looked um but then again the results on the bottom so this year our suspension our suspensions have been down 30 and our chronic absenteeism is down over 156 students what's unique about that chronic absenteeism number is last year at the end of the year our district percentage was at about 12 meaning about 12 of our students were chronically absent again what's chronically absent that students missing about 10 or more of the school year um we haven't seen those percentages in single digits since uh since pre-covid so we're getting to a point now where our percentages of chronically absent students are now getting

085back into the single digit percentages so that's very exciting for us in short what that means is our kids are coming to school more than they have in years and we're very excited about it and we're celebrating them for that so this is a very exciting slide very exciting numbers very encouraging and then when we go when we go to the next slide we're talking about um making sure we provide these opportunities across the district to continue to bring families together and connect all students and families from around the district um so the two pictures here that you see are uh one is a district uh volleyball event that's one at sandburg um special thanks to our district pfe for all of those efforts not only our school pfe's but our district pfe has just

086done an outstanding job helping us with those events those have been really fun to see all of the families and students come together and then again on the right you see a picture of the innovator expo which this year just continued to grow and get even bigger so we're very proud of those events and the opportunities that we have to bring everyone together just a reminder about uh graduation again graduation is may 30th uh saturday and you can see the three junior highs and just to remind everybody the only time we go indoor is if it rains both days if it rains on saturday it will get postponed till sunday if it rains on sunday that's when we'll be indoor are you good show all right welcome back we found the slides all right we

087will start out with centennial and centennial had a healing hearts walkathon fundraiser and rosy is somewhat there hopefully going to be their adopted dog here as i shared with the board a little bit a couple weeks ago so we're kind of going through that process of having rosy be a permanent fixture in our district and this is beth hayden over there going through some training with rosy and celebrating let's see teacher appreciation week at center give this to a teacher you are thankful oh thank you oh thanks marco so sweet that made my day thanks buddy thank you sir you know me i like to dance you're like a personal fortune cookie can i have a hug because you make me smile too give this to a teacher who is simply the best oh thank

088you so much i think you're pretty cool too first to a teacher will bring you today oh come here give me a hug give this to a teacher who promised you a way from park park oh so for me yeah me a hug park their spring book fair and art show and pfe fundraiser they had an inflatable dance contest and then the kindergarten spring musical they didn't he ryan did not share a video of that but that would have been an interesting video to see as well okay you did you just call him a clown oh because i'll second very had their classrooms earned minute to win it games fulfilling their april attendance raindrops and parents volunteered at their hawk store and they wanted to highlight their amazing students and staff participated in the innovator

089expo and i know they definitely had some students from the self-contained program as well presenting so great job by them high point had highlights to their el night their third grade wax museum and their battle of the books coding and robotics competition a lot of a lot of action going on there at high point liberty had their around the world fair and then they had their the robots revolution and then they had a presentation at the state capitol i believe that senator hastings if i've that's correct and then they collected over 250 dollars for lori children's hospital for two for pediatric brain tumor program research metal rich had their student council visit the village of orland park they had their probably had their government unit supported by that and the fifth grade talent show there

090on the left and looks like some staff members were looked looked like they're some background dancers there didn't get a video on that one either but maybe we can find that one and then here looks like they're doing a little community service helping out with the fire truck and at century their girl soccer conference champs and then and it looks like the staff pfe volleyball game looks like century came out on top amongst all these schools so congratulations to them and then a couple pictures of we are in full swing and concert season throughout the district as well and journaling they had their career day and also the pfe had an all-school in school an all-school field trip for a celebration there i of iar and then they had a field trip to the industry

091field trip industry field museum and then students also presented at the springfield to state representatives as well and then at orland junior high they shared their career day and civics b they had five entrance there to civic civic b and the regional competition so great job by them and then they highlighted their little mermaid cast and here are some pictures from the volleyball finals you had high pointing you had journaling and century we had our fourth annual steer your career last week and there's pictures with all our various volunteers and our community participation with our vendors and i will say this would not be possible without alley coletta putting all this together she is a a one person wrecking crew no pun intended with the steer your career but without her she has has kept

092this started this and has kept this afloat with a lot of our sponsors helping us with this program and just these are the companies that helped us are or the village the police department the fire protection district at&t cook county sheriff kramer tree specialist i did resist not putting a picture of kramer from seinfeld on that one so i could have got a thousand of those and then for parkview for hosting it they've been a tremendous partner for us so thanks to everyone who assisted with that and i have a slew of people that i want to share thank you for teacher appreciation week and i won't read them all but you can see them at everybody that participated in helping and appreciating our teachers and our our staff actually not just our our teachers

093but all 800 plus staff members in our district all these donations from these various vendors and none of that would have been possible without our pfe so i want to made that slide last for a reason and the largest because without them none of that would be none of that would be possible because they made all that happen and that's all i had for school update and foyers i got it here somewhere put this up here real quick we had seven foyers and five have been completed and two are in progress the foyers were with employee records legal service records live streaming live stream recordings religious accommodation records and a vendor and service records for from some of our contractors and those were our foyer requests up until now and that's all i have all

094right all right we're going to move on to our committee and administrative reports starting up with finance and operations tonight to discuss the 143rd street project who's taking that one okay lucky me right okay um i'm going to kind of just break this down into two different pieces so up for approval tonight um the main part of this is the widening of 143rd street so the village has been talking about it for many years we knew that it was going to come at some point but we didn't really know when so now that the state meaning i dot and the village has the funding for it they have informed us several months ago we've been working back and forth with the village that the project is is going forward so they are going to widen

095143rd and it's really going to affect probably currently from west avenue i'll say to to lagrange to lagrange road um where it affects us obviously is front in front of park school um and at our access at union so union at at that intersection at union where everyone turns in at will be four it'll be four lanes wide and an additional at least two turn lanes so it's going to be substantially substantially wider than what it currently is so up for approval tonight is agreements with i dot um that is a temporary easement permanent easement and a deed transfer of some property in front of park school that they need to acquire from us to widen the road i will kind of relate this back to century the project in front of century with 159th

096kind of similar is what kind of what is going on there is very similar to what happened over there years ago so the as part of that um the temporary easement is only like 200 square feet not a whole lot the permanent easement is like i think uh only like 13 or a small amount and then the d transfer would be about half an acre in front of in front of park school it's mainly from the street to the sidewalk i would say is what it is current you know about what it'll end up what it'll end up being um and that also allows for them to put in a paved path along um along in front of park school so that's why they are looking the state i dot is looking for that for

097the transfer of that um they went out got an appraisal on it um through an outside vendor um that appraisal come back came back at 52 000 they had comparables um our lawyer looked at all of it looked at all of the easement agreements um is in agreement with what i dot is proposing to us um we had some stipulations in there that we just want to make sure that we actually have the access and everything that we need while this construction is going on um it is going to be challenging there over the course of this project but it's going to be challenging all the way along 143rd for the for the entirety of the project um so union we will have access to that while this while the project while the widening is

098taking place um but it is going to i mean it is going to be congested in that in that area um so in working with the village how can we make this how can we improve this for us going forward we all know that for parent pickup and bus drop off even though park school does a phenomenal job at the logistics there it is challenging getting the parents and the buses in parents are staging all the way up union to allow for the buses to get in unload and then go on their way so they aren't late for their other for their other routes um so we worked with the village actually the village came to us and said you know we kind of have a ballpark plan what you guys can do to make

099it easier on school traffic safety issues and to alleviate congestion on union so the village also worked in our favor with the forest preserve and got us some easement property along the east side of along the east side of park school that will allow us to put in an additional drive um the village is covering the cost of the improvements at the stoplight um which on west avenue so that was the little picture on the corner there is currently what west avenue what west avenue looks like yep yep so that shows where our where our new drive would would go through um extending extending west avenue and it would allow for us to have a separate bus lane um for the buses to for the buses to stage park unload and then would allow for

100car staging and parking for the parent pickup and drop off um it would make it a lot easier for the for both the buses and the cars to get back out because they would be at a dedicated light at west avenue so there will still be access in and out at union but i dot their their big thing with this is to keep the traffic flowing on 143rd so the timing of the light is going to be is going to be awful if you're trying to get out and make a left on union so they went back and forth on that in this picture here you can still see where it was it's only a right in and right out on union they have they have changed that a little bit from when our architects

101did this sketch for our property so that has changed a little bit there will still be access left in left in and left out left out if you if you need to um but again they keep stressing that the timing of the light will not be conducive to get our traffic out of out of our our lot on union so that was why we came up with the proposal of you know the the i'll say the extension of what of west avenue we uh worked through with building administration staff to really come up with what will work best for for the site you know logistically we're still going to have you know some things to work out but having the dedicated bus lane was was definitely key and that being separate from the from the

102parent pickup from the parent pickup line it gives us a lot more sidewalking for kids that still our main crosswalk still will be at west avenue so we will still have our crosswalk there and our crossing guard will still be at that location but it'll give a safer path for the kids to you know once they cross there they'll have the path to walk around to the to where you know where they'll be will the where they will be entering or staging with all the rest of the kids um so this is kind of what was developed from you know from all the parties getting together and meeting um the village um will is i won't say looking for our approval but their next stage in this is working on the on the stoplight with

103idot um our portion of it starting this next week is we have we'll have a company out there with our engineers doing a traffic study of just our property so they can work on what the timing of the light will be on west avenue because we will have it will be timed to allow our buses and our cars to get out onto west avenue so that won't be so they'll allow us to stop that basically they'll allow the traffic to stop at west avenue but they aren't going to allow it to stop at union because of its proximity to the railroad tracks is really what they're worried about um the timeline on this idot is going out to bid in soon it's like um spring of 27 is what they're thinking is what they'll go

104out to bid and they're talking construction will start rather quickly so it should move further their portion of it and the widening is going to move rather quickly if we go forward with our portion we're still looking at probably like eight to nine months of engineering architect work and the permitting that we have to get permitting with idot permitting with the village and then we have to go through you know water reclamation district for water runoff and retention so all that that's about eight months of permitting process that we will have to still go through for this project and then we will go out to bid for our portion of of the project we had talked about trying to go on with idot go on with the village um but we really wanted more i'll

105say more control of our own property and it just wasn't conducive to the time frame that they were going to have and we were going to have working you know to try and work through this project ted did you mention the playground at all yeah so unfortunately when we put the playground in um we did not anticipate at that time that this project was ever going to go was going to go forward so part of this is moving the playground because where the road is going where our access road is going through it is right where the playground currently is so the playground will move to that shaded area up in the i'll see in that center area and um so the same equipment we can move it up to that area up there and

106then that they'll have a new the kids will have a new i'll say grass area which they have a fairly large grass area now it'll be about about the same and that'll all be new new new grass area for for a play area so they'll they'll still have the same size playground same equipment everything it just unfortunately has to be has to be moved so you're saying that the field space will still be generous over there pretty close you know they use a lot pretty close to the to the same size because we're maximizing all of the i'll say the outskirts of our property for the for the road and then for where we have the new roads coming in um are we going to do or are we thinking about anything like guys on

107west avenue by oj how we put like the plants and stuff and the bushes are we considering any like safety measures on that since the kids are kind of in the middle right at recess time so if parents are driving around are we going to have any type of we will probably end up doing fencing um around that around that main player play area and then during the school day um similar to center similar to liberty though there will be gates that we will close after the buses go through um at the entrance to the bus area and at the exit to the bus area so where those buses are staged right there that'll also be i'll say open play area but gated during the school day so you know cars can't go through there

108and buses you know have to wait before they get into that to get into that staging area during school day thank you um it also kind of redo it redos some of the current parking area um move some of the some of the stuff off of the the neighbor's fence that's there right now it allows for a few more parking spots um and just kind of improve it really truly improves the the flow of the flow of traffic but that lot right in that in that area there towards the funeral home will be will park more vehicles than what it currently does um because we can shorten up the sidewalk on the one side because the kids won't be walking you know will not be walking that way right now they're lining up or the

109kids are going there because of the bus pickup so and again if if a if a parent chooses to come out and go on to union avenue and make the right they'll still be able they will still be able to do that they won't have to circle all the way you know all the way around if they're just quick dropping something off that might be quicker to drop off and exit that way but again logistically we'll have to you know work with building principal and see exactly how the flow of traffic will will end up being it's exciting so so a couple quick questions um with idot taking some of the property in front of park how close is the road going to be to the front of the school the road won't be any

110closer than the current um sidewalk uh because they are limited by the funeral home so the funeral home that's there will have the road just about right on their windows so if you if you you know are familiar with that where the funeral home sits that close to the road they will not the road won't be any closer than than the front of the front of the funeral home and it'll actually be a little narrower than that then it'll be a little out from that only because they they do have a i think it's a five foot i think it's a five foot wide path at least five foot wide path that's going in front of the building which will end up time i mean the end result is you know the end result is

111143rd is going to be widened all the way to 355 but you know that that's many years down the road i guess the other question is what you're showing here i mentioned you're going to want to get done all in one summer is that going to be something it's a lot of work there do you think that's something you're going to be able to get done summer 27 it will probably be stretched over two summers once we kind of get see what the construction plan is with idot um we'll kind of we're we'll kind of go from there once we kind of get more in the engineering stages and we can kind of see how exactly how long this project is going to take it will take it will not be able to be completed

112over you know over eight weeks that that much i know so it will stretch over part of probably part of the school year and at least at least over one summer once it's actually started so at that point we'll have to figure out i don't want the kids to lose any play time on the playground um you know we got to obviously have a safe environment you know for the for the kids so we're really going to logistically have to work through um what what that what that ends up looking like that's going to be tricky to figure out i don't envy you for having to figure that out yeah it will it will improve it will improve the it will improve that that that site all in all i think it'll make it a

113safer site for the kids you know once it once it's all done and for our parents and buses to get in and out um and have you know and have the you know the the off of west avenue there to have the you know two lane if it ends up being the two lane you know two lanes out a left to turn and though and though and the right lane in um it's just going to it's going to drastically improve improve the flow the flow of traffic there so um you know if we had if we if we didn't do any of this and later down the road we said you know that you know this isn't working with union um and we had to do this traffic light on our own you know we

114would really be looking at a couple hundred thousand dollars so the village doing the traffic light improvements to our side also um you know it is it is a huge is a cost savings to us to do this at the same time and plus you know some of the permitting everything um i don't want to say they're going to be a little more lenient but it's a little bit more it's a little it's more helpful when we're all doing this at the same at the same time i'll just say this is a tricky situation i think you've got a good plan here any other questions on on this i mean there'll be more you know there'll be more coming forward for sure everybody okay great job thank you thank you all right infinite campus that's

115you mr behula sure so this is the the year of big projects for us um and infinite campuses is one of those um we've had some pretty good milestones over the past couple months um first was getting kindergarten registration open um and getting parents on and registering their students um next was trying to get our the next group of people that was the rest of our current families um so just after spring break we opened re-registration um which meant that all of our families had to make new accounts on the infinite campus portal um so we we're well into that process um when i checked a little bit earlier we're pretty close to 1800 um families that have submitted a application um whether it's a kindergarten new student application or a returning student um the

116re-registration process um and then finally the next group of users that we've kind of onboarded was our staff and may 1st we had a professional learning day um where just about every staff member in the district got on to our uh new platform and even into our sandbox where they get to play a little bit um and um that's that's important for a number of reasons um one to get the staff somewhat acclimated to the new system including our teaching staff um we have uh we we've recruited and have just over 60 we call them campus coaches which are teachers in our buildings so every building has a team of teachers um that are the go-to experts in that go-to experts in that building um so on our pl day those teachers led professional development

117in their building getting their teachers into uh the sandbox uh putting a grade into the sandbox taking attendance and looking up student information um and that's one so that this that we know the staff can one get in um and get them a little acclimated to the environment and know how to do the things that you need to do on the first day of school or the first week of school um but then also get in there and when they start playing around they can find things that aren't maybe configured just right or maybe their sixth grade math is is missing a learning standard so we can get all of those things cleaned up um before the actual first day of school um and we're going to continue that process um over over the summer

118i'm actually meeting with the all of those campus uh coaches this week to get kind of feedback on how training went what additional resources the coaches might need to help facilitate supporting their buildings in august as well as opportunities that those campus coaches will have over the summer and then also give us some insight on what additional support the staff might have based on those first trainings and so we're well into it um we're going to bring over the last bit of data from skyward over the summer at the conclusion of the school year um but we're well into this um and uh you know we're learning a lot but it's overall it's it's going it's going well any questions uh thank you chris and thank you to you and miss coletta for uh meeting

119with the pfe to kind of help go through this and show them the platforms and how to get their fees in and stuff like that i know that they really appreciated you're welcome thank you so just out of curiosity are we going to talk about the tyler technologies switch over as well like are things going well for that as well sure um tyler school erp pro we are also progressing very nicely on it we are jam-packed with training sessions pretty much four out of five days a week uh those go from nine to four um we have now integrated the district office as kind of like the target group guinea pig group um to get access to the platform and test things out we just had requisition training at district office that's a very important

120thing because everyone wants to get their orders in for the upcoming school year we're not live yet but they were able to get into the sandbox just like what chris said get their hands into it check out uh the features on it how to put different orders in how to use e-commerce on it and then we will be having this wednesday the building secretary is coming over for a training and they will get access to the requisition training on it because that's a big piece too they are always worried about how do i get our orders in prior to the end of the school year so that we have supplies and materials available in the hands of the teachers to start our next school year as far as the integral part between hr and business

121office with setting up all the positions all the deductions and benefits we are pretty much there now everyone's position is in all the deductions and benefits are in now it will be going person by person and running test payrolls to compare in platform of skyward compared to tyler how we set it up is it getting the identical results so we will be going through all 800 and something employees to make sure that we are matching that that is our next phase on it we're right on target and we are going live with that very first payroll on july 2nd which will be for our 12 month employees and we're right on target if i can just say this i mean we talked about this you know a year ago this is a actually more than

122that i think this was a really massive project we haven't heard much about it which i think is kind of a testament to the tech department and to the business office of making this transition smoothly and i mean i would just say hats off to all of you for doing this because i know it was a massive undertaking so very nice job did anyone have any questions okay we're going to continue on to the junior high social studies pilot we're on the 20 26 20 27 school year we are going to pilot new social studies resources at the junior high level this came from teachers from teacher feedback and teacher input really through the plc process with the amount of time that they've had to collaborate and working on those common units and those common

123assessments the socialized teachers came to me and said we really need to start looking at something else what we're using isn't working for the the plc work that we're trying to do and developing those common units and those common assessments so i i did a feedback um form with the teachers with the socialized teachers to find out really what they were looking for a lot of what they talked about was the wanting to have a resource that is back to hardcover paper pencil type materials our current social studies resource is all digital and so in order to use anything that is print um and that the students are writing on the teachers had to to physically print it so really just looking for a resource that they can develop their common standards their common assessments

124but also having physical copies of that so last week we had a committee of teachers that came together worked with me and a couple other administrators we heard from three different vendors that came in and presented on what their social studies programs look like we use the illinois is b provides a social studies resource evaluation tool so we use that to evaluate the three resources and then the committee of teachers really hands down had um two that they that that came through that they were looking to um to bring for next year so next year at the junior high level only we're going to pilot tci and sabas for a social studies resource and then we would go through it's a full year pilot um so that that way the students and the teachers aren't

125having to transition halfway through the year we'll come forward next probably march february or march with what a decision is and um you know request an adoption for the from the school board do you have any questions you know it's exciting i'm glad there was a lot of collaboration there to get everybody involved does anyone else have any questions or any feedback i guess one thing and i'm not sure this is something you're going to be able to do much about i know one thing i've heard from some parents just with their kids who were part of the math pilot and then they were part of the ela pilot and they had some concerns about okay their kids have been the guinea pigs all you know for the past several years is there is there

126any way to try to be mindful of which kids are piloting stuff just because we don't want to have the same kids constantly having to do pilots sure all all of our junior high social studies teachers will pilot because in each school there's um only two teachers that for great per grade level for social studies so we will have to have um all of the teachers at the junior high level so all of the students would uh would be piloting both programs are pretty similar in that they all have um like a student book um that the kind of what we call consumables so what the students would actually be writing in that they would be getting each year so the programs are pretty similar um and the reason that that we chose these was

127because of the inquiry aspect of those programs that there's a lot of writing there's a lot of inquiry that matches the social study standards but unfortunately it would be all of all of the students at the junior high so kind of like with the ela curriculum that everybody pilots and i'm assuming you're planning on doing the pilot the whole year because i know with the ela curriculum that got short circuited a bit based on the feedback from the teachers on one of the piloted curriculum yes the plan would be to do to do it for a whole year um we're fortunate enough by the size of our district that we have enough teachers to be able to pilot two programs at the same time where sometimes what districts have to do is they'll pilot one

128for like the first quarter or the first trimester and then they switch to another one and everybody's having to flip-flop halfway through we don't have to do that because we have enough teachers to be able to pilot both it's definitely the better model because it's generally it's probably like november before you really are like okay i've got this now i can really decide if i like it um so yes it would be for a full year discovery yeah we have discovery ad for a few different things so at the junior high discovery ad is their social studies curriculum it's it's called a tech book so it's not a textbook it's a tech book but then we also use discovery ad for a resource in other ways um that yep and that's k h so all

129teachers have access to the general discovery ad they use it for you know virtual field trips and there's stem and coding activities um a lot of the monthly um events that monthly mandates and things that we teach discovery ed provides those so we would keep it for that but then the social studies textbook textbook we would not keep all right um of course it's great no it really had a great turnout last year so we're excited to grow on it um so this year it's going to be on thursday june 11th it will be at the same location behind century junior high they've got a really nice chunk of grass back there that works well for the food trucks to pull up as well as for the inflatable screen to be um so this year

130we're going to actually push it back a half hour because we do have to wait for the sun to go down for people to be able to see the screen to see the movie so we're going to invite families to start coming to century at about 7 30 and then the movie will start right around 8 30 this year which is about a half an hour later um this year the movie is going to be zootopia 2 it was voted on by students so we pushed ballots out to all of our students and they got to vote in zootopia 2 uh was the clear winner uh not many people wanna not many students wanted to see toy story so we will be showing uh zootopia 2 this year we've got food trucks showing up as

131well and then i've also been in conversation with the pfe to see if they want to sell some concession again so they're gonna talk with their members um to see if they can get a table and sell some candy or popcorn or you know whatever for our families anyone have any questions great thank you all right oh my goodness all right we're going to move on to the consent agenda i move that the board of education approve the following consent agenda items minutes april 13th 2026 regular board of education meeting as amended minutes april 13 2026 executive session accounts payable april 30th 2026 1,747,975 dollars 13 cents interest fund purchase card april 30th 2026 20,808 dollars 16 cents payroll summary april 30th 2026 4,352,295 dollars and 90 cents personnel report as presented 2026 27 membership

132renewal for iasb 11,098 dollars second um any discussion jill could we have a roll call please mr maliski aye dr castingrad aye mr mirandi aye miss peckham dodge aye miss thanos aye miss zayden aye miss browner aye thank you uh look for a motion to a resolution for destruction of closed session audio recordings i move that the board of education approved the resolution approving the destruction of certain closed session recordings of the board of education of orland school district 135 as presented second any discussion jill could you call the roll please dr castingrad aye mr mirandi aye miss beckham dodge aye miss thanos aye miss zayden aye miss browner aye mr maliski aye thank you uh for a motion for 2627 board meeting dates i move that the regular meeting dates of the board of

133education of orland school district 135 cook county illinois be established as the second monday of each month except as presented and as approved by this motion with additional meetings on the fourth monday of designated months at the discretion of the board all meetings to be held at a set scheduled time determined by the board in the learning center at the administration center of orland school district 135 or at other designated locations as presented for the 2026 27 school year second any discussion i just i just wanted to add real quick we were trying to be a little a little more strategic about the alignment of the schools there was some discussion about wanting to get the intermediate and junior high student councils to make some presentations during the school year so at that point it

134takes a couple two three months for them to get rolling so um we front-loaded the primary schools so we can get some students student councils talking about what the exciting things that they're doing in their schools oh yay i'm so excited um oh any discussion don't think follow-up please mr mirandi aye miss beckham dodge aye miss thanos aye miss zayeth aye miss browner aye miss jimalesky aye dr knastangren aye thank you i look for a motion for online policy services i move that the board of education renew the 2026 27 fiscal year subscription for publication of orland school district 135 policies on the website hosted by illinois association of school boards in an amount not to exceed 2625 dollars second any discussion jill could you call the roll please miss beckham dodge aye miss thanos

135aye miss zayeth aye miss browner aye miss jimalesky aye dr castongren aye mr mirandi aye thank you i look for a motion for press plus services i move at the board of education renew the 2026 27 fiscal year subscription with illinois association of school boards for full maintenance service of the district's policy manual administrating procedures in an amount not to exceed 2100 dollars second any discussion jill could you call the roll please miss thanos aye miss zayeth aye miss browner aye miss jimalesky aye dr castongren aye mr mirandi aye miss beckham badge aye thank you a motion for the second reading of adoption of board policies i move that the board of education upon conclusion of its second reading adopt the following new and revised policies as presented and discussed second is there any discussion

136were we all clear on the optional questions that had to be answered was there any anybody have a question no all right did you have a question well no just those three questions from iasb that we had to answer right are we we're clear on how those are being answered okay could you follow oh you seconded can you follow up please judge miss president before we call the roll can we just go over uh consensus for each of those items do you want to um if we are going with the normal and not going it just stays right if we're not if we're voting yes that just stays are you approving yes they're bolded for recommendation did anybody have any discussion or did they want to go did you read through jill's packet with the

137three with the okay one is um we which we already do is posting that the meeting at the schools is at the school we do that already and then the voice vote so it's to follow the recommendations of iasb as it's handed down is that okay with everybody we're not going to be steering away making our own we're going to just follow those recommendations i read through it and i wanted to continue doing what we're doing we did kind of talk a little bit about it at the school community and policy meeting i didn't get a consensus or recommendation but it was just informative and um that was my understanding is we didn't do anything we keep doing we don't change anything correct right um so for policy two colon 200 um i if we

138vote yes i iasb will revisit this sentence after the district's main input after the district's main office to add to that location this is what we do anyway does any is everybody in a consensus with okay for two colon 200 that is posting of the meeting does anyone have a we do which we do so everybody's okay with that okay at the school and and district office um and then for two to 20 um if we voted no it would default anyway because um yes would be iasb will replace this paragraph paragraph with the following sentence the board shall take a roll call vote on all matters requiring action but not limited to so nobody had a problem with that update correct so the consensus we could tell jill is it's okay all right and

139then um oh policy two uh colon 140 guidance for board member communication including email use um it's my understanding that that is just a consensus of keeping it how it is in the yes did anyone have any questions about any of the three or any of that one it's two colon 140 in our emails okay so through discussion jill those three consensuses are all yeas and then to move on to the formal vote um kelly did you read the motion and we had alan seconded and any more discussion all right well then jill could you call the roll for us please thank you miss zion aye miss browner aye miss chmielewski aye dr castongren aye mr mirandi aye miss peckham dodge aye miss thanos aye thank you okay look for a motion for consolidated district

140plan i move that the board of education approved the consolidated district plan for the 2026-27 fiscal year as presented second any discussion no jill could you call the roll please miss browner aye miss chmielewski aye dr castongren aye mr mirandi aye miss peckham dodge aye miss thanos aye miss zion aye thank you um a motion for the oce letter of agreement i move that the board of education approve a letter of agreement with the orland council of educators as presented second any discussion jill could you call the roll please miss chmielewski aye dr castongren aye mr mirandi aye miss peckham dodge aye miss thanos aye miss zion aye miss browner aye thank you uh i look for this yeah i'm looking for a motion for the plat of dedication uh i just give it a

141hard time i move to the board of education approve a resolution authorizing dedication of public right of way for the conveyance of avenida del norte to the village of orland park effective may 11th 2026 as presented second any discussion no jill could you call the roll please dr castongren aye mr mirandi aye miss peckham dodge aye miss thanos aye miss zion aye miss browner aye mr millesby aye thank you motion for the uh temporary easement at park school i move that the board of education approve a resolution approving the transfer of certain school district property in the granting of a temporary and permanent easement to idot effective may 11 2026 as presented second any discussion jill could you call the roll please mr mirandi aye miss peckham dodge aye miss thanos aye miss zion aye

142miss browner aye mr millesky aye dr castongren aye thank you um a motion for the uh approval of the intercom and emergency communication system i move that the board of education approved to propose contracts submitted by sentinel technologies inc to install upgrades for district wide intercom and emergency communication systems phase one and two in a total amount not to exceed one million five hundred and ninety seven thousand three dollars and five cents second uh any discussion jill could you call the roll please miss peckham dodge aye miss thanos aye miss zion aye miss browner right mr millesby aye dr castongren aye mr mirandi aye thank you okay now we're going to move on to your board of our comments reports and requests requests um articles up first uh do you guys got any uh john

143any awesome articles to send our way you were in that process i think alan wanted to share on or discuss about what that process might look like is that correct well just i think we had discussed as a board that we wanted to do articles i don't think we really discussed any of the details on it which i think it's a really great idea but i mean to me it would make sense to have kind of a rotation if we could get some articles recommended by some of the more senior members of administration i mean curriculum bl finance buildings and grounds i mean technology just if we could have things that are accessible but where we as a board could learn that makes sense to me i'm curious what the rest of the board thinks

144i don't remember um well i remember a little bit talking about that but i don't remember agreeing on art like art like articles of um so to educate us as to i i'm sorry can you explain i think when we were having discussion about the book study last meeting and then mrs zion had the idea we could just do articles instead okay that's what we're talking about okay thank you yeah just to keep us up to date so if you have anything even our school therapists send us a article um you know but we need to stay attuned to everything that's going on so if you have an article i don't want anybody personally i wouldn't want anybody to go completely out of their way here but i know that you guys in school leadership

145stay on top of the article scott finance we several of us have said we like to learn about finance so if they come then um maybe that way if it's all right with you dr brick and the board maybe that could be filtered through you and given to the board and the superintendent update once a month or something along those lines would everybody be okay with receiving information that way i'm okay but are we asking for an additional task or just to be copied on something that we're the district already does yeah like so you're already sharing articles within the district then you would just copy us or is yeah we we we read articles in our within our field all the time so it won't be difficult to to say hey scott or jen

146did you come across an article that you would like to share to the board or ted or chris or that part will be easy that that won't that won't that's not putting any additional tasks so to speak that's going to take a lot of time or anything along those lines and that is optional you know but i mean i'm a reader so i do agree with uh alan i'm staying in reading and i love messiah's uh article idea so i think it'll be good all right um did anyone have anything else they would like to add about the articles are you guys good before i move on all right well next um i'm going to uh if you guys remember alan had uh asked about the his resolution um and spoke about it last board

147meeting jill was kind enough to give us a little printout here if you need a refresher um and i'm going to let him take the lead on that here so it's the purple um so as i mentioned at the last board meeting you know one of my concerns is we have a lot of standardized test data for ele and math we have some for science with the isa we really don't have any good options for social studies um so basically this resolution the tech the draft text is in front of you is basically to if this would be adopted for iasb to urge is b to either identify an assessment test we could use or develop one and specifically for it to be something that would be optional because you know i know there's concern

148about doing too much standardized testing it was actually a concern that one of the members of the teaching and learning committee brought up which is a valid concern i i worry about that as well but if it's something that's optional then it really gives us as a district more options because right now if we want a better idea of how our students are doing in social studies compared to the illinois learning standards compared to other schools we really don't have the tools to do that and this way at least give us the option that we have a tool if you know some future board decides to use it because something like this is obviously going to take some time to develop do we have any internal tools assessment tools because i i thought i heard

149that um in social studies there is an internal district common assessment and standards is that not working i'd like to hear from the administration just feedback the current common assessments that we use and are developing are for the units so for each each time they finish a unit of study they would they have their common assessments it's not a standardized assessment so it's not something where at the end of the school year like our iar in the spring that everybody takes the same test and it's it's testing them on their knowledge students on their knowledge of all the standards from the whole school year so the common assessments that the teachers have been working on developing are very much geared toward their current units so not like an end of school year assessment on all

150of the standards like you know similar to like it in high school where you have a final at the end so that we that's not what we what we have in place but are we using that to guide us on how we're doing that that is the goal yes yeah so the goal is for moving into next year with the with this common assessments with social studies it'll be a year later though because with doing a pilot um that they won't all have the same assessments at that point but um moving into next year our our plan is really looking at analyzing now we've made now we all know that we have common assessments now let's start analyzing the data for each unit with the teachers and and that's really what the teachers will do

151together with our support but using those to guide their instruction um and so that's really where the common assessments come into place is how are how did our students perform are the things we need to go back and reteach um is are there areas that maybe we need to look at growing the curriculum so also with the common assessments that allows us to figure things out like the social studies pilot the teachers as they were working on these common assessments together they're like this isn't working what we have is not working this is we need to we you know we want to look for something different so that's where the those assessments are supportive what grades are we thinking i'm not sure i'm really qualified to make that decision like i wouldn't want i shouldn't

152be making that decision i think that's something really the people at isby should be making the decision on to me the part of it is if it's something that's optional if we i mean if we don't like how it turns out we don't have to use it but we would at least have the option that something's there if we choose to use it um dr nichols when you guys met a couple weeks ago i know it was to discuss the pilot and not necessarily this but um did you have any feedback with staff saying that they felt like maybe an assessment was needed at the state level because they felt that they weren't able to use the isbe assessment evaluate to evaluate it properly or is that what you're saying kind of like they were

153happy to be able to assess it themselves because it was more fluid to where they didn't have to is that what i was hearing so there is the um evaluation tool was to evaluate the curriculum resource so it wasn't to evaluate you know the students knowledge one of the things that we looked at for each product was the assessments that are provided within those resources what are the assessments that sabas and tci have that we can use um for our common assessments um but the i the i did not hear from teachers that they would be looking for i haven't had that request from teachers that they've been looking for um like a standardized assessment at a state level i mean is that typically something that teachers look for because that's more something that like

154a board would look for so that we can monitor progress yeah i i don't know that i've ever had um teachers come to me and say that they want more tests so even it wasn't part of when we were evaluating the tools that was not part of the conversation of of looking at a state um standardized assessment but we do use the iar testing to help our students it's not just for us to look at the scores so my question is will this do the same thing and i do think we test too much so i'm not quite sure this is the road i would go down if i was on the board of this was presented to me i just think we test students out the wazoo and um i know we have students

155doing really well at sanberg based on information that dr brick shared with us which was able to uh collaborate with sanberg yeah our our national or the advanced placement social studies i think our students pass it by in the low 80 range which is 20 plus percent more than the national average and i also believe if i remember correctly the score on the ap exam our students score half a point higher than uh than the national average i think the national average was 3.1 and the students at sanberg average is 3.6 and three is passing but it goes to five score but so our our students do well at sanberg with social studies but it you know it's it's a double-edged sword with this we you know as alan mentioned the option of having it

156whether we do it or not right now we don't have an option other than what our staff uses for just the yearly grades that that every staff member uses every teacher uses no i was i just i'm not sure i just feel like um it's something that we can handle internally um how does it benefit the students um if we're testing well if they test well when they go on to high school um i think that is kind of a really good indicator that we're doing a good job already here so i don't know i'm just not i'm not sure it's just some thoughts and it's tough to bring up this topic because it is test fatigue season right now so it's it's like talking about i don't know some huge event what you want

157to do afterwards and i don't try i'm drawing a blank on on an example like a good example but having met with a couple groups of kids recently they did mention the the inordinate amount of testing that was in that two to three week span that we have with iar and map testing and they felt you know the eighth graders that i spoke to proposed like why are we taking spring map because their their their path has already been set because samberg does not use their maps for them but i try to be diplomatic about it with showing their progress but it is it's it's tough to talk about testing when we're right there at the apex of of our testing season but um well i think we should go around because i i would

158say this much i thank dr castongren for his efforts i think that he does make a very good iasv delegate um figured that would be right up his alley um so it takes a lot of courage to come up with the resolution and to propose it at the board level so i'm thankful for that for me personally i would need some more evidence to support this i if you came to me and said we have a survey from teachers we've got some feedback here and um i i would be more akin to just being able to give my consensus tonight but i would need a little bit more support here and i know that you said optional because that's why i was like but after watching resolutions be presented i don't typically see optional for

159the district that's presenting it usually it's the district saying hey we did our we did our due diligence this is our feedback this is what we've collected and this is something that we're going to start our school district and we think it's so darn good that you should start in your school district too and that's how these resolutions get passed at these at these um which it's hard to even get that when people i mean some of these are really great so i guess i would need more information because i would want to know from students teachers families we've got people advocating like dr bricks said to get rid of our second map right as it is right now and then the only thing that i'm a little worried about is um optional still triggers

160people so if you have a school district doing it now the school district and i just i would want to know from staff before i that i mean that's what i do that's what we always discuss right surveys and like talking to people and gathering all that information to make decisions that are data-based and i would need some more support for me to vote yes for this resolution but i think we should go around because i just want to make one point before we go around um i i mean i think it's great that our students are doing well in ap uh ap world history but not all of our students are taking ap world history so we don't actually have any data on all of the rest of our student population at school district

161i mean no and my point here is not to say that i think our district is deficient um it's that we don't know like we have a pretty good idea that our teachers are doing well in social studies i have confidence in our staff but part of our job as school board members is to monitor student progress and really for social studies we're basically blind we don't have any real data at a board level that we can use to look at this which i think is a problem i guess one of my other issues would be if if it's optional then who are we comparing ourselves to to even see where we stand because what if most districts say no thank you um do we know if there's states other states that do social studies

162testing we could look at i have no idea i i did look it up and i can't say that this is completely accurate because i don't know if it's you know if every if if the pool was accurate but um it was around 15 states that have a that have a a statewide standardized test for social studies um some at the elementary some at the middle some at the high school and then in addition there were others more states that not too many more i can't remember the exact number though that had um just like a citizenship assessment in high school that was not counted as like a social studies um so there there was those two differences but there weren't too many and to your point if it's optional i mean in some ways

163you could look at it like the map test districts are not required to do the map test but the map test is normed and so we have norms that we can compare our students to and i would see potentially this would work the same way if we have a test that's been normed we have something we could compare to how do you norm it if no one's taking it i have no i'm i'm i'm totally i have no idea so is it i don't know i mean that i think would be a question for is be so what's the deadline for submission for a resolution lately late june it's after the next board meeting um so i mean i would be in support of submitting this resolution to to i used to be yes yeah

164i'm not in support um not i'm not not at the this time um i i totally know where you're coming from on it because it's data and that's you know if you can't get the data you don't know i just think because i don't think it's necessarily a a problem area right now so it'd be hard to add another test one you don't really i know you you say you don't really know but if they're testing into stanberg and they're having success so it would be i guess it would be hard for me to to say add it right now with where it stands if it was a problem area i'd be more you know i think more willing to to push towards it i'm not for this resolution at this time but thank you

165for your efforts then for exploring this i'd say given the consensus of the board there's no need to discuss this further than actually before you do i was going to mention this with the teaching and learning section i just wanted to highlight that the media center specialist did an absolutely outstanding job presenting at the teaching and learning committee meeting the first hour of that meeting they gave a comprehensive overview of what they do it was i think the best presentation i've seen over the past four years at least you know with watching the teaching and learning committee and being on it it was really outstanding i would encourage anybody who's interested in what the media center specialists are doing to watch it it was a great presentation i also i also want to make a

166comment about my about the committee the school community and policy committee i wanted to give two shout outs because i was just very appreciative miss coletta worked really hard on putting together the community leader and actions award and i know that this has been something that we've been working on for a long time i'm watching it come to fruition and it's pretty exciting she did a great job making the form the website the communications and we we had 23 was it 23 nominations 24 something like that just it was incredible reading them it was just just hearing them comment so we're our committee is in the process of judging them right now and so they're due like on may 22nd or whatever but we're all voting on them and it's just a it's just a

167very exciting process and i know that she put a lot of work into it so i just wanted to say thank you for that i also wanted to thank dr schneider for reaching out to the community in regards to when we're going through and updating student parent handbooks i just was i thought it was commendable that he took the committee feedback and shared it with the parents and brought the parents feedback to the committee i just thought it was just great networking and um you know just when we talk about building a positive culture in the district it just brings everybody together so i just wanted to thank you for that um it was a little surprised to me but not really just that you you know brought the feedback to the parent or the

168parents and shared that and and just give everybody a voice thank you all right let's get into closed who's who's reading i move that the board of education adjourn to executive session to discuss the performance of a specific employee second jill could you call the roll please miss thanos aye miss ann aye miss brownburn mr muleski aye dr castonguz aye mr mirandi aye respect him dodge aye thank you