Board Meeting - April 11, 2022

001okay i would like to resume the april 11th board of education meeting if people could stand for the pledge of allegiance and remain standing for a moment of silence indivisible with liberty and justice we'd like to take a moment of silence for a u-46 employee who recently passed away john j rehitpecky began substitute teaching in the district in 2004. starting in 2009 he was hired as a special education para educator spending the last 12 years in the central schools program his service in u46 followed a long professional career at human resources development institute in chicago john's life focus was on helping people co-workers say he had the biggest heart for the students in the alternative education environment he was kind clear patient and compassionate john was an active member of the first baptist church of

002elgin and enjoyed traveling the country with his family to visit dinosaur museums once going on a real dig john passed away in march 18th he was survived by his wife janet son patrick daughter-in-law deanna two sisters nephews and nieces a memorial service was held march 22nd at first baptist church of elgin we'll keep john's family and friends in our thoughts and prayers thank you okay first item dr sanders is strategic plan request thank you madam president members of the board of education it is our fourth i believe uh report if the school could go in and start moving towards the presenters area for our u-46 rising rigger diagnostic and rigor walk update tonight you're going to hear from the fine staff at willard elementary school to lead us off we have dr michelle thompson our

003executive director of the south elgin network uh we have with us dustin covarrubias the principal of wood elementary school ms henry of willard elementary school the instructional coach uh ms leonard who is our third grade teacher at willard here to provide tonight's update uh yeah if you can pull it down and it should be they can't hear you with that i'll turn it over to dr thompson all right thank you everybody we're very excited to be here tonight before we turn it over to the willard team i'm going to give a little bit of information and data from our middle of the year rigor diagnostics so whoever flips slides we can go to the next slide thank you all right so the rigor diagnostic um is an is a full day assessment that all of

004our schools engage in three times a year um the beginning of the year was in september the middle of the year was at the end of january early february and we actually start our end of the year ones um next week and so we can flip to the next slide as a part of the day the teachers engage in we work with our lsi leadership coach and there's focus groups there's classroom visits there's student and teacher interviews there are also a data discussion with the principal and there's a debrief with the u-46 rising team so it's a full jam-packed day and you can see from these first two charts this is the breakdown of the grades and the subjects that were visited so that that first row is rigor diagnostic one so that was in

005september and the second row is rigor diagnostic two that's the one that was at the end of january early february and so the first side breaks down the grades that were visited and the second side breaks down those subjects that that we saw um and english and english language arts and math were the the content areas that we saw the most often um but we did see you know lots of other content areas 538 classrooms were observed across the 57 schools and seven networks and the way that the classrooms are chosen um is through a randomizer by our our leadership coaches and so any on on any given day your classroom might be the one that that is visited and so that's how the the classrooms are broken down you go ahead to the next

006slide so then the schools are judged or are assessed on five different pillars and that first set of bars that you see is the overall mean score and you can see when you look at it the dark blue line was rigor diagnostic one and the light blue is rigor diagnostic too and you can see that we we saw growth in all areas in all pillars from the fall to the winter and so that conditions for rigorous learning that data is collected through the focus groups through the classroom visits through the teacher and student interviews the next pillar is what is seen during is during the classroom visits looking at our learning targets are they lined to standards is the student work aligned in terms of the taxonomy the next one is looking at the student

007team so are students working in teams what does it look like when they're working in teams that the next one verifying learning that is the student assessment and the student self-assessment and the teacher assessment and then the final one is tracking student progress towards standards and that one is looking at the the data dialogue with the with the principal and thinking about what systems do we have in place as a district to assess our students so you can see we saw growth across all those pillars let me go the next slide so this is that same data but broken down by network and um the two areas where we saw the most growth were standards-based student evidence and activating student teams and that makes sense because that is where we put so much of our

008effort this year in terms of our professional learning our work with the faculty coaches our our faculty meetings at schools we just put a ton of effort into those areas so that we could build that building block and and keep building on that to to increase in the other areas too you can go ahead and go to the next slide so then another place where we collect the data is the taxonomy levels of what we're seeing um the first side that chart shows that in both rigor diagnostic 1 and rigor diagnostic 2 retrieval was the level of taxonomy that we saw most often but then you'll see in that second chart we did see higher levels of taxonomy in in both rigor diagnostic one and two um just retrieval was the highest that we've been

009seeing when it when it shows no student work so that would be something um we might walk into a classroom and and be there during the mini-lesson or during a read-aloud where the students aren't actually producing any work so that's why we would have to say no student work for that piece you can go ahead to the next slide and then this is that same data but broken down by network so again you can see retrieval was what we saw the most often across the networks but we did see higher levels of taxonomy across all the networks as well and actually it's really exciting because after this data was collected all of our teams finished their training in academic teaming 201 and the taxonomy level that we have seen of student work after that training

010is just taking off and so we're really excited to see what the diagnostic at the end of the year brings next week because we are really seeing it a lot in our walks so with that i'm going to pass it over i'm super proud to pass it over to the willard team to tell their journey this year all right thank you next slide please all right so we'll just go ahead and start with a little bit the story of willard um last year the team came to me the the teachers at willard when this was proposed to be a possibility and they said hey dustin would you go to the informational meeting with us sure every one of our ut members showed up to it we watched it via zoom right because they're all doing

011it then and they immediately went out to have a vote 100 of the teachers at willard were on board with doing this and we didn't really know everything at that point i don't think we actually still know everything because we're in year one still of a five-year plan here but just having that buy-in and part of there's an ongoing joke at willard that because we're at the end of the alphabet we're always last and i know there's not that's necessarily truth to that right but they said hey let's be on the forefront for a change and let let's do this together and my only ask of the staff at willard is if we're going to do this we're going to do it every day everyone has to be on board there's always going to be

012challenges but we have to be a team with this and that would has happened every day at willard next slide please and for that to take place we had to have strong structures in place so since last june that top chart i know it's very hard to read and just looking at it is extremely confusing but that is our master schedule we're a very small building but we still needed to have very strong systems and structures in place so we worked with michelle our executive director and many many other people to design structures that could sustain anything really and part of that is the planning time or plc time and our teachers have that now they they have a personal plan time they have a team plan time and they have a data driven plan

013time and that's all held in the same place in the school every single week at the same time and that has been huge for our team we never have that before another piece of this is then individually each grade level has a master schedule so the entire grade level is teaching the same thing at the same time in my tenure at willard that had never happened it has made a huge difference for one when we're doing these rigor walks that we're talking about when you go into the two classrooms you're saying the same thing now teachers can put a different spin on it right but they're teaching math at the same time ela at the same time and then they're coming together and they're not just talking about the next lesson they're going back and

014talking about hey how did that go and and that's that's huge we made a commitment also as part of our structures um sarah is our instructional coach i made a commitment to her that i would never pull her away from her role i have one time i'll admit it all right we had a little incident where we had about 11 people out one day and this thing called covet happened and we had you know a week where we were a little struggled and she did have a sub one day for us but it is extremely important that our instructional coach could make sure that she is meeting with these teams regularly if you miss one you're really missing two weeks so that that has to happen and those structures are so so important the next

015thing because we're a smaller school willard we never had any buying from the specialist teachers that is so important they don't they never felt like they belonged to the school because they would come for maybe a half a day or a day and a half and a lot of times the staff at willard didn't even know who they were because they sometimes we'd have three different art teachers because they were just piecing in where they could find someone that needed an extra section to come teach it at willard the students didn't buy into that we have full-time art health music and pe teachers now and we also do not have a digital literacy coach we went with the reading specialist instead at willard you know that's a little different from the other schools but that

016that teacher also has a very um structured schedule we know exactly the students on her caseload when she's pulling them time of day and it also goes to make sure that we're never pulling any student from the core uh we would repeatedly say that all the time students need to be in the course students need to be in the core but the problem was that wasn't happening they might be pulled first some type of services or for band or whatever it could be they were being pulled we have made this massive schedule so students in every classroom are staying in there for the core instruction and the students love it and the teachers do as well what our specialist teachers are doing is just not teaching that subject area they're actually pushing into the classrooms

017and working with students and it and what we've done is we've teamed them up with certain grade levels so they're building relationships on top of that and they're helping our classroom teachers in the classroom so they could come in and work with with students in ela or math and internally we have trained our specialist teachers on some of the intervention work we do right because a lot of our intervention work happens on computers and we know that because of our size sometimes we have to do that but if our students can be really working with an adult that's so much better and our specialist teachers we've added that into the structure they know exactly where where they are going and the students they're working with they also come to that planning time so we can

018work with them also our data um a lot of times with our mtss data instructional data we're looking in it's a month behind maybe maybe even longer if we're looking at map that could have been three months ago iar could have been six months ago we are updating our instructional data every day now through canvas so within all of our intervention programs we have it inputted in and that goes directly to the classroom teacher every single day and overnight it updates so we can see where our students are this is this is not just a guessing game at all and it's really helped um everyone in the building the teachers are telling me in the core i we can teach all the kids now and we're not focusing on the taking working with some kids

019and some kids aren't intervention over here it's only the core during core time and that has been very beneficial to our school next slide please okay um structures and designated plan time could you pull this in just a little bit closer so that our youtubers can hear you thank you sorry all right structures and designated plan time allowed our staff this unique opportunity to grow as professionals and perfect our craft this additional time has been focused on data-driven decisions the creation of academic teaming tasks that are standards aligned teaming tasks within all classrooms across our building standards truly driving all instructional decisions and our students succeeding and growing as learners next slide please like dustin shared at the forefront of all of our plc's is really data teams of teachers use common assessments district reading

020assessments formative data map data to determine success and determine our next steps we have a dedicated commonplace as dustin has shared for all teachers to plan and meet weekly this also houses our data wall which is also on the slide this visual has been a powerful reminder of where our students are in the area of reading as well as the growth that they are making the data on the wall is updated not only during the district literacy assessments but also ongoing as the students are making progress so we are receiving receiving information and watching children grow within our wall of data which has been extremely powerful additionally our reading specialist uses her data to provide progress updates to teachers our reading specialist has been a crucial piece to all of our growth and literacy this

021year building-based data rules drive interventions and support within our building mtss processes and intervention data are embedded into our weekly plcs this allows us to change interventions early on versus waiting these supports and our data-driven focus have resulted in growth we've never seen before at willard we have students making a year or more worth of growth in six months which is closing the gap between them and their peers our common planning room also houses our action board this helps to guide our work within all aspects of our school our board is broken down by grade levels leadership team rigor walk data academic teaming and plcs each of those areas is broken down into goals and micro bits for those teams to work on this is monitored and verified verified by our billing administrator this leads

022us to our 45 day goals our data is truly within every aspect of our work at willard next slide please early on in our journey we realized that we as a building really needed to realign our practices we began the intense work around standard task alignment teachers worked during plc's to unpack standards to not only identify the learning target but also the success criteria which are the steps that the students actually take to demonstrate the standard this was very intense work we worked through each content area to understand the standard identify the learning target and then create the success criteria this was done for every standard in every content area this provided teachers with a greater understanding of the standard and the intent behind the standard this led to highly focused tasks within our classrooms

023this early work was crucial to the growth that we have demonstrated this year teachers were then able to create tasks that were standards aligned and match the intent behind the standard this opened the door for teachers to embed standards into tasks at a higher taxonomy level as well once teachers had this understanding teaming tasks were then created this led to focused lessons where students were presented with a target for the day students now know what they are learning and understand the steps they need to take to demonstrate their learning students even as young as our kindergartners can now explain what they are learning what their learning target is and what they are doing to demonstrate their learning our teachers are stronger because of the work that they did around standards their conversations are rich their

024tasks are aligned our scores have increased and students are more successful this year next slide please because of all the work that we are doing through this process we have grown as educators one of our main focuses this year has been to dig into those grade level standards to create our learning targets and success criteria this has led to creating tasks that are fully aligned to our standards and overall we have a better understanding of the grade level content as teachers additionally with this understanding not only are we able to create tasks that are fully aligned but also are team based our other focus has been embedding the team structure such as roles and task readiness we have worked to implement these structures so that our teams are able to work independently and productively we

025have worked all year in our grade level teams and at our plc's with our instructional coach to accomplish both of these goals teachers are utilizing the professional learning and coaching from lsi to implement these structures and as we have dived more into these resources and materials teachers are looking for the feedback from the rigor walks the look and learns as well as rigor diagnostics to continually improve our teaming structures and overall effectiveness next slide please here we have some snapshots of teaming across the grade levels at willard within my classroom i have really enjoyed learning to incorporate teaming and i've really seen some incredible results with my students we do spend most of our day in some kind of team and because of these teams my students have been highly impacted students are incredibly engaged

026in the work that they are doing and they're really having to think deeply about their work they are able to push each other each other's thinking which is helping them to apply those skills and other settings as well additionally because of the teaming structures my students have really become problem solvers they know all their strategies that they can use to help them if any issues arise arise whether it be with their team or a question related to the subject area i've been so impressed with my students and how well they've become using their resources they're constantly referring back to our anchor charts our vocabulary wall and the resources in their desk and they're truly working to find the answer to their own questions and not just relying on me to provide them with the answer

027because of this and their deeper conversations students critical thinking has really improved since they're having to think about these tasks in different ways um they're first thinking about how they believe a problem should be solved and what their evident evidence is to support their thinking and they're also considering and evaluating what their teammates think and then coming together as a team to come to a final decision for their work all while doing this they're using their roles and their appropriate language from their agree disagree cards to really create rich conversation around the topic which has ultimately led them to really push their thinking and help them think in different ways about the topic students have truly been owning and driving their own learning with these teaming structures my students really enjoy working in teams and

028having roles they understand the learning target and the success criteria as they're working on their tasks they understand the purpose or the why behind what they're doing which i feel has really helped them to kind of focus their conversations and their work they also are beginning to reflect on the and at the end of task on their progress towards the learning targets and success criteria and i've heard some really rich and honest conversations about this and my students have been holding each other accountable and it's not just something to say oh let's check the box yes we met this goal but they're really considering if they met a target and then why or why not it's really been a pleasure to see my students owning their learning having rich conversations and ultimately using the teaming

029structures to deepen and expand their understanding throughout the content areas next slide so the results right we are not a year into this so to say that we have all our results it is not accurate but here are some things we know so far this has changed how we look at academics at willard principals are hired to be the instructional leaders in buildings this is the first year i've been in over 200 classrooms i can i can't say i did that combined before in all my years and not only going into those rooms then the follow-up conversations with the instructional coach the reading specialists and the teachers that never happened before and it's going to continue to happen at this level there's not a choice because of the structures we have in place and it's

030a demand from the teachers they want to see us in the room i i tell people all the time like well can i come visit yes just come because we want to and we want you to come see whatever room you want to see it's happening every day and we're continually working on that students are are now that maybe we're not vocal before in a classroom they feel confident and they're able they want to tell you what they're learning you ever gone into a classroom and asked the student hey what are you doing right now let me give you the shrug right they're going to tell you now because they're part of a team and they're going to tell you their role within that team so those structures are very very important to the students

031another thing that as a result is a lot of times you always hear well spot student discipline that's not happening in the classrooms students are engaged when they're engaged they will not the behaviors will be minimal and that is happening and we look at our trends all the time i think sometimes sarah dreams about data because we're looking at it so much but we're going to continue to do it and we'll continue to get better for students because this is best practice for our students and when we're starting to change more of our adult behaviors the student behaviors will be right behind and we really appreciate all the support you've given us at willard and we will continue to shine for u46 next slide my favorite part about teaming is getting to hear other people's

032answers what they say i probably didn't think of and probably one thing because i probably think only one way will they pick another one this here helps me because i'm learning what my friends know my favorite part is working together you can't get the answer by yourself if you don't know so having a team they can help you and it's amazing i had a hard time thinking that first graders could team with roles i should have given them more credit i should have given myself more credit because they can handle the tasks they can handle the rules the words that they're using and the work that they're producing is above work that i've seen them produce before the discourse that they're having can get really rich it allows them to go past just okay this

033is this problem this is how i'm going to solve it they're really having to think and to defend and then also consider other points of view having roles is important because you have to help people if they don't get it when they don't understand things they can all do it together and figure out the answer my favorite would be the facilitator because i get to talk a little more and start the conversation without a facilitator you probably won't stay on track as much and probably everybody wouldn't share their status as much my favorite role is learning monitor because then they can help everybody in the team because the students are working together more and they're challenging each other i really enjoy having them have more responsibility for their learning instead of just like rote memorization

034of facts or this is the answer they're really considering like why am i doing what i'm doing how can i solve this and is there any other way that my teammates are also thinking which i think has helped to expand their knowledge that's all i got tonight thank you very much uh questions done so i don't really have a question i thank you for your commitment to this and all the work that um everyone at your school has done this year i want to give you huge props so it's slide nine it is the structures in place from day one i am insanely impressed with the amount of work that went into scheduling i mean one of the things we lost over the last couple years with covet was structural structure for the students structure

035for the staff so it led to a lot of chaos double work like it hard for students to stay on track when the structure was missing so to see this and the i mean i i love writing lists and things this is so impressive the amount of forethought and work that went into laying out planning time making sure kids are there for core like i just huge props on the amount of work that went into this i know that something like this is helping you guys it's very impressive yeah okay yeah i mean i don't really have a question i'm just i'm so enjoying these presentations each week i really look forward to the videos in particular and seeing these kids being like i love it and here's why and they're not just saying oh

036it's cute they're like telling us with specific specificity um why they like it so great job thanks for the hard work keep it coming i can't wait till the next meeting in another presentation john oh eva i'm sorry eva excuse my voice i just want to say uh michelle trained me so kudos to her that before i stopped teaching i was trained that way in the entire school and i know this works i taught third grade and i saw you know everything that you saw tonight i saw it in place i saw how we all as teachers how we changed the way we taught i saw how the students changed the way they learned and it was just so exciting to see at the end the results and you know we've seen other presentations and

037they have all been good but i have to say that scheduling part and having the special teachers involved and having the planned time for the teachers that is key to making this a success and i just want to say michelle trained me and i'm just so impressed veronica i have a question that i've been dying to ask any one of the presenters that have come to talk about um this process and and that is has to do with the reluctant student who usually doesn't work in teams or doesn't want to work with other students how how does how do you handle that and have you seen a change in the way kids engage especially those that don't want to i'll start and then i'll let chelsea give the better answer okay uh it started from

038the beginning so we just didn't start off with academic teaming day one it really became strong after the 201 training which was a few months ago but we started teaching the kids bit by bit and getting kids comfortable and also building those relationships with the kids in the classroom to find out those kids that are reluctant and what we can do to make them feel comfortable in the classroom and it was twofold because we also haven't seen some of these students for two years right so i think a lot of them sat behind a computer screen right and shut that screen down and they were in their comfort zone so we had to make them feel uncomfortable in the classroom to make them feel comfortable again in the classroom and each teacher had a different

039way of going about that but if we just show them the process and they would start to buy into it and each student did it differently are there still some students reluctant absolutely but they're not hearing it from the teacher anymore saying hey you're not paying attention what's the answer their classmates are now telling them that and they feel much more comfortable because their classmates are helping them but i think chelsea probably has a better answer so i think there's been a few different things we've done to address that not just in my classroom but across our building i think first was it was just starting small i think the agree disagree cards all the students have it provides them with sentence stems on the back so it's like i agree because or i disagree

040because i think that really helps those students that are more reluctant like it already gives them a start to share their thinking so it's starting small and just working in a partner and really focusing on that language piece and letting them feel comfortable using those stems and kind of sharing just with one person before you start to bring a small group of three or four kids together and then once you do get into that small group the roles that we have also really help with that um on all the roll cards it says like as one of your jobs is to make sure you're sharing your thinking and students are holding each other accountable and giving each other to the space be like hey you haven't shared yet what are you thinking um i was

041also going to add um so i'm not sure if everyone's aware so at willard we do house um two self-contained ed classrooms so we do have students that are coming to us with a different behavior makeup in general um and so within that we are not only are working when they're and they're highly mainstream we are the mainstream school so we have we that is our goal um so we have built in a lot of supports both visual supports and also the ed teachers work with me as the instructional coach and they work with the classroom teachers so we can train them on additional ideas and supports they trial it they get them used to it within their classrooms then when they're mainstreamed out into the gen ed classrooms they already have a little taste

042of what they're going to walk into so those have just helped our students tremendously so we've got kids coming in and out of classrooms now that walk into a teaming situation that they may not have been successful in before so we have provided those supports that they are now successful which has been so powerful i'm so glad you explained that because i've been this whole time since we've started been trying to imagine how my child you know way back when when his behaviors were through the roof how he would have handled this kind of a situation so it's really comforting to hear that you're you know that you you take the time and you work with it and you you know experiment out with some of the processes that work for each kid each different

043child so thank you for helping me understand that i appreciate jessica um i just want to reiterate what everyone else has already said like as a student i know how valuable this kind of setup can be um and like obviously i wasn't really exposed to that until i got into high school and you know i was just thinking about the classes that i do best and are the classes where we have the opportunity to talk through our problems like those are the days when i have the most fun and those are the tests i do the most well on and i think it's exposing students to this makeup of a classroom like so early on like i know like when i was a kid um when i was in elementary school like the structure is

044very much like like i had some fantastic teachers but the structure is very much like you start here and then you better get the right answer or else um and so having this opportunity where you can be like i actually don't know the right answer and i would really really like some help um definitely would have helped me with my multiplication tables i really struggled with those but so seeing the structure where students can feel more comfortable like that's going to set them up for so much success later on because right now like there are still students who are afraid to be like i don't understand how to do this so exposing them to that already like i just can't stress enough how valuable that is and how valuable it's going to be moving forward

045so thank you so much for all your hard work and i have to agree with miss martin i love a color-coded schedule so like all that work like i i guarantee your students can see that and i know that they're really going to benefit from that like 10 years down the line melissa and i just i want to share that i've seen this now in multiple presentations i had the opportunity to go to um wayne elementary a few weeks ago i saw it there as well these i statements right these you know whether it's i can learn this or i am learning this or i know this and to miss pierce point i need help right i don't understand this those things are so powerful and you know for me looking at it as an

046adult and an adult that has employed people in the past to have people that can take that kind of ownership and these students are starting so young with that right and those are skills that you know they're difficult for adults to grab a hold of so to be able to instill this at that age is just absolutely wonderful and i think we're setting up our students for a whole lot of success by doing this kind of work um so i love you know seeing and this the the little i don't know what page this is um slide 12 where it you know the green go i understand the slow i think i understand but i need more help like being able to articulate that and take ownership of that and ask for help those are

047really powerful things that are going to be really great tools for those students so thank you and i guess i'll conclude by saying first of all thank you like melissa and i think many other board members we have been able to take some real walks and it's been very impressive you actually answered one of my questions i was going to ask about discipline and whether i've heard a lot about discipline issues since kids have returned from covered but sounds like this is helping with that that issue somewhat um i had two questions one is just for the public can you explain what an instructional coach does wow um well i have multiple roles actually um but what i think the way that i this is how i interpret it i instead of i came from

048a classroom so instead of working with students i work with teachers now so i work with teachers on their practices i work with teachers on what they're doing within their classrooms to strengthen their practices and then i also go in and support the teachers so i use um within lsi there's a tool it's called a look and learn so what will happen is i'll plan or i'll work with a group of teachers to plan a lesson and i go and i watch the lesson unfold and i look specifically for certain areas so i'm looking for academic teaming because that's our 45th day not that i'm ignoring everything else but that is our 45 day goal so i go in intentionally and i observe what is happening and so the teacher is monitoring and working around

049the classroom and they may not hear certain conversations so my role is then hey wait did you hear what was happening and i'm kind of getting them in on the conversations that i'm hearing so the long and short of it is i'm working with the teachers to help them perfect their practice thank you and then my other question is have you had people teachers and staff from other schools visit to see who might be interested in doing this and see how you're doing uh before they announce the next round of schools that will join next year i honestly can't remember how many schools we set up it was really more zoom meetings where we met with the staffs of their schools um because people had tons of questions right rightfully so so we we met

050with lots of staffs and spoke to them and then we at that time we would say anyone from your staff please just come do not don't call and ask for an invite because we want you to see what's really happening and there's people here all the time in our building and coming into they might want to see a certain grade level or how a certain structure is put in place but that is continually happening and i hope and that it continues to happen because we want people to see what's happening in the building and coming and watching and not only when the teachers are teaching the classroom but the plc time the personal the grade level and and the data driven time we want our adults to see what is happening during that time and

051see how structured it is it doesn't just go in the room there is a layout every single day for our staff thank you any other questions well thank you very much you're doing a great job so thank you okay next on the agenda comments from the audience good evening and welcome to the board of education meeting we are now at the public comment portion of the meeting attendees wishing to make a public comment in person or be assumed tonight were asked to complete a request to speak form in advance those who chose to speak we assume were printed were provided with a webinar id number to call in promptly at seven pm tonight as always speakers will be given 3 minutes to share their comments the board listens to the speakers but does not respond

052to individual questions or comments during the meeting a written response will be mailed to the speaker if requested on the form those who provided a public comment but chose not to speak publicly in the meeting were asked to submit an email to board u46.org those emails were posted on the board agenda for public viewing buenas thank you we have three public comments no zoom comments no written comments so the first person is marie schneiderman if you just come to one of the microphones that would be great it's my understanding the board will be voting to send 45 staff members to florida for a symposium on understanding and teaching social and emotional learning which is sel i will remind you it is not the role of the school system to sway the young minds of students

053toward this very progressive radical ideology the parents of school district u-46's k-12 children are responsible for family and social values moral civic duty understanding right versus wrong how to interpret and strengthen with life's lessons and everything else that makes a child an eventual contributing member of society it is not the role of u-45 or i'm sorry u-46 staff nor the government to interfere in parental rights u-46 employees are hired to teach classroom studies such as math reading and science the proficiency scores of these subjects from a few years ago support the dumbing down of the buyings of our young students the administration the teachers and staff are paid with my tax dollars your consideration of sending at least 45 tax paid teachers to a symposium in florida is a senseless costly mistake i found an

054online listing for an sel symposium in orlando for this april 27 through the 29th and i did a rough calculation of the expenses for the three-day scl seminar in orlando rooms flights meals conference seat reservations miscellaneous expenses came roughly to 70 thousand dollars for 45 participants u-46 is not a corporation u-46 is not a lucrative business earning capital by selling products and using this capital to falsely enrich the minds of teachers who will then falsely enrich the young minds of students u-46 solely relies on tax dollars from residents the state of illinois and the federal government all three of which i put money towards i do not want the 70 000 tax dollars wasted on this census symposium or this radical project even one attendee is one too many i want the tax dollars put

055to the use to increase overall proficiency scores for u46 thank you thank you next speaker is linda sabo i was i'm also here to talk about the 45 people going to orlando for that conference and while i appreciate the presentation that they just gave because it sounds really good and it'll be interesting to see how that does turn into you know scores on down the road would be very interesting to see how that how that translates um but i know that the district spent like 18.5 million on um this program from what i believe i know anyway and the res and i don't know how it actually fits with what was on the cac meeting the other night but um the results of the panorama study of the three out of four categories that students

056feel worse about their cultural awareness and sense of belonging than the prior survey and it's a terribly expensive program without positive results in that area so this program is divisive like if you're looking and putting people in groups according to their race and their gender identity and that sort of thing from what i heard on the cac thing that um that's actually more divisive than than bringing people together um there's been parents across the country pushing back on different programs like this i am all for things that are going to make help kids to learn when i was a kid i worked in groups yeah i know it's effective you know we should all know that it shouldn't take you know i'm i'm all for great things that are going to help to increase people

057to learn kids to learn but the content of it is what i would be worried about because there are parents across the country who are very worried about the ideology that's being taught in these programs and they're using these social emotional learning tools as a way to sexualize kids break down into races and cross and encouraging more of a divide than more than a unification of people and um i just want to know what this board is doing about it i looked at the um scores for um for you 46 as far as the proficiency for the last several years and like 30 of the students are meeting and exceeding the standards and that's going to change that should be better than that so um i think that sixty seven thousand dollars you know i

058think a survey for the appearance of what they would think you know could go to uh raising their kids scores would be worthwhile um you know we don't want marx's training in our schools we don't want divisive we don't want indoctrination and you know sexualizing of kids so the content is very very important and if it's leveraged in that way it's got to go thank you [Applause] and the last speaker is amanda clark good evening guys so on thursday night at the cac meeting um we were talking about infinity groups and tony had emailed you this morning and thank you so much for taking time to send me some emails you answered some questions so i had to erase everything else that i wrote down so i just shouted down some notes so for infinity

059groups we have um six categories and in those category categories are african-americans latino ax indigenous igbtqa plus students with special needs and low-income students i had asked at this cac meeting why are we putting kids in six groups um i can't say exactly what you said tony because i can't go back to the video and quote exactly what he said but if you tony basically said because we are focusing on minority um groups and i'm not sure if you guys know we have more than six groups of minority kids um i'll name a few i only have two minutes to speak so i can only name a few we have children who are fatherless that are minority we have children that are motherless who are minorities we have children that have military fathers and mothers

060that are minorities we have children that are coming from broken homes we have children who are adopted and we also have children who were in the system at some point we have children who are raised by grandparents and i can continue to go on um i tried researching this and i can't find it what is u46 labeling as low income are you guys labeling 83 000 a year as a low income are you guys labeling 240 000 as low income that tony sanders makes here um sense of belonging went down who is feeling like they don't belong because i can't find it anywhere of who doesn't feel like they don't belong is it the children we have under five categories because in the panorama test or survey it includes all the children not just five

061not just african american low income and so on and so forth um why can't we see the panorama questions and see what our child answered to so i can talk to my child who doesn't fall underneath these categories and i can explain to him why and i can explain why he doesn't fit or help him better understand why he why he feels that way right work with him why don't we have groups right that has smart young child african-american work with a white child with math because the african-american child is really good at math but the white child is struggling a lot of kids are struggling right now why don't we have groups like that but we have groups for minorities i'm not sure if i understand that and i would like to know if

062um teachers are being paid for these six groups thank you guys thank you okay next item is board member and superintendent update anyone have any updates i know we've been okay um yeah i know i wanted to say i was finally able to go to one of the um rigor walks at canton um it feels like forever ago but it was just the week before spring break um and it was very exciting it was very interesting um really got a nice chance to see kind of all of this in action and be in the building and then i got to end my eve my day there as well because i went to the middle school choral conference middle school choral festival i think is the the appropriate term and that was just super great it

063was so fun to watch these kids um they just got really excited about all of that and then i was the board member at the cac meeting for the equity on thursday it was very interesting thank you very much dr lance and ms jackson for all of the hard work you had put together to share all that with us and and really honest statements right i mean some of it doesn't make us look great so um it was good to see all that thank you anyone else oh melissa so mr devereaux and i have been invited to participate in the community engagement planning team for the ongoing work for our facilities plan um mr deborah and i because we are on the facilities co-chairs of the facilities committee we've been participating in we've had two

064meetings so far and the planning team is getting ready for the first community engagement session which mr sanders probably has some more information about that you can share um but that meeting is coming up on april 27th i believe that sounds sounds correct and we're going to publicize it widely as well so just to um you know update that we're participating in that committee um there's a lot of really good work that's being done right now um but once that information comes out about the community engagement session um you know making sure that we get that information out to everybody because we need a lot of community engagement to move forward with this plan so that's that's the intention anyone else well i know several board members uh joined me at the ias illinois association

065of school boards kishwaukee dinner uh where we learned a little bit more about the teacher shortage and all sorts of it was it was uh quite a good meeting but that was right before like literally before i think spring break hit if i remember correctly so uh but it was a really good session that i i know board member thomas and uh board vice president owens were there with me okay next item our four-year request mr sanders on board docs and available for public consumption or nine freedom of information act requests that will also be put on the website in the next week i'm available to answer any more questions any questions okay consented dr sanders on the contingent agenda we have the personnel report in workers compensation cases minutes of the board meeting march

06621st 2022 termination of brendan gallagher a monitor termination of halle purcell para educator separation agreement between rosalinda and perrin and school district 246 a contract for the deputy superintendent of instruction with learning sciences international summer conference 2022 in orlando florida a bid from plant operations for streamwood high school pathways phase one early childhood healthcare science business incubator and science lab renovation project number 319 and finally we have three building permits including taft middle school ceiling piping insulation light replacement permit elgin high school tennis court permit and larkin high school tennis court permit are there any items board members would like to move from the consent agenda can i have a motion to pass to approve the consent agenda so moved second any questions no call please mr deveraux yes ms martin yes ms nolan yes

067zoe yes ms porter yes ms thomas yes president kerr yes motion passes discussion action dr sanders under discussion action our first item are itemized bills forgive me i went to the wrong page one second there we go uh our itemized bills uh dr williams is here to answer any board questions the administration recommends the board of education approve the list of bills in the amount of 10 million could i have a motion to approve the list of bills in the amount of 10 million 747.63 so moved second any questions roll call please mr martin you okay there mr debro yes i apologize no problem ms martin i apologize as well ms martin yes ms nolan yes ms owens yes ms porter yes miss thomas yes president kerr yes motion passes thank you all right next

068is a proposal from plant operations for ontarioville elementary school emergency fire alarm replacement uh coming forward if there's any questions is mr phelps and miss waldow administration recommends approval of the proposal from fox valley fire and safety in the amount of sixty seven thousand three hundred and eighty nine dollars and sixty two cents and request authorization for administration to execute related documents this we charge the operation maintenance fund and is included in the budget for the 2021-22 school year and again this is uh was an emergency purchase that we had to do and are bringing it forward now for ratification so could i have a motion to approve the proposal from fox valley fire and safety in the amount of 67 389.70 62 cents for repairs to the ontarioville elementary school fire alarm so moved

069second second okay all right uh any questions please wait more says oh i just had one i just had one quick question so when the the control board failed during the school day and then their the fire department helped out with a fire watch that mean we had fire department personnel in the school so we had engaged with the fire department we actually had our own staff members who were actually walking the building constantly throughout the day since the panel had failed okay all right thank you any other questions [Laughter] yes all right cnc update shonda has joined us i already promoted you so you can speak shonda good to have you with us tonight good evening superintendent dr sanders members of the board of education and all who are present our recent cac general

070meeting was held on thursday april 7th via zoom we had a presentation on equity diversity and inclusion our presenters were dr teresa lance assistant superintendent of equity and innovation and lisa jackson director of diversity equity and inclusion our nominating committee gave their report along with a proposed slate of candidates for election at our may general meeting for the slate for the 2022-2023 school year those candidates are myself shonda schwartz for chair matthew heavy for vice chair and veronica betts for secretary as for our upcoming cac meetings the specialized student services committee's next meeting will be held tomorrow tuesday april 12th at 6 30 pm via zoom the committee will be brainstorming programming for the next school year the cac executive committee's next meeting will be held on thursday april 21st at 7 pm via zoom

071and i wanted to remind everyone that the recordings for our meetings as well as some of the presentations including our recent cac general meeting are on the cac website on the district's website this concludes the cac update for this evening thank you for your continued support of the cic thank you shonda are there any questions hey thank you all right works no february uh other visitors dr sanders under other business we have our february financial report and here to present that is dr williams our deputy superintendent for operations good evening for president kerr superintendent sanders members of the board of education and our entire u-46 community included in your packet are monthly financial reports for the month ending february 28 2022. highlights of the report are as follows the total ending fund balance for the

072month was 368 million 548 a decrease of 2.4 million over the prior month that revenue consisted of 43.6 million in local funds primarily property taxes from club county 21.1 million in state funds primarily evidence-based funding and 4.9 million in federal funds the total revenue at this point is 3.95 percent higher than last year at this time and this is primarily due to the increase in evidence-based funding expenditures totaled 46.46 million and they were 6.9 percent above the same period last year but both revenue and expenditures are in line with the budget this concludes my report and i'd be happy to take any questions if you have them regarding the rest of the report are there any questions hey thank you thank you okay i'm sorry book session all right under work session our first uh

073work session items kind of go hand in hand other there's one powerpoint that goes together for two different curriculum proposals that are with you before the board tonight the first is the lead launch curriculum proposal and if the presenters uh mitchell reese meister could step forward he's our director of educational pathways he's joined by tracy stewart of streamwood high school assistant principal of innovation mrs doreen roberts educational pathways teacher leader and megan balzer a streamwood high school teacher who are here to present tonight's proposal and as they're going to the powerpoint please note that it'll be they're powerpoints for both presentations so you'll see both coming forward at the same time because they're related to the same again academy program coming forward um and i'm not sure mitchell if you're driving on this one or

074if somebody in the background back in the back is driving it uh yes sir right i can drive i'm just putting it to present mode i'm going to total google slides guys so if you go to slideshow bottom right click and then it should just say present the irony is i'm going to be talking about the microsoft office suite shortly that's okay good evening board of education and dr sanders tonight we'll be presenting two curriculum proposals for the lead academy we will be presenting lead launch as well as business for innovators and presenting with me tonight is tracy stewart ap of innovation megan balzer streamwood academy teacher and doreen roberts teacher leader of educational pathways so we've been here a couple times to talk about some of the components of the lead academy at streamwood

075high school and tonight we're going to begin with a brief overview of the process we've been through as we've been working on and developing the pieces of this academy and after i'm done giving you a brief overview my colleagues are going to share a little bit about those two courses that we hope our rising ninth graders will participate in next year as we began designing this work for the streamwood high school lead magnet academy we decided one of the first things we needed to do was determine what the terms leadership entrepreneurship action and design meant so leadership is guiding inspiring and creating a unified vision by motivating others to achieve goals never thought possible entrepreneurship innovators constantly learning to develop a product or service to better a person community society or business action ideas in

076motion bold problem solving that makes goals a reality and design purposefully questioning and acquiring knowledge to redefine the way we problem solve to implement new strategies and solutions so i think you've seen some of this before but there are two prominent factors that led to the designing of a new program for streaming high school one was declining enrollment in the current academy and the other was gathering feedback through a hanover research survey that went to u46 students staff parents and community members in that survey there were two themes that were proposed and both of them came out pretty even as we gathered the feedback in the results but what did come out clearly was that the community staff and students wanted to see skills focused on like critical thinking communication creativity innovation problem solving and

077being independent and self-directed learners so the lead academy that we've been developing will work on these skills for all of the participants the list that you see here is the team that has worked on all of the pieces and concepts that we've done with the lead magnet academy so far and you'll notice that many of the members are from streamwood high school the call to committee did go out throughout the district and we've had a couple of subcommittees but these are the people who applied and have participated the lead academy aligns to the u-46 strategic plan in all four thematic categories these are experiential standards-based courses with staff and community involvement the instructional resources support a forward-thinking inquiry-based learning environment that models real-world business workspaces this lead magnet academy cannot be successful without community engagement

078not only do the lead magnet academy courses align with the district's strategic plan they support the u-46 equity plan in recent years we have revised the magnet academy application process and it is now open to all students throughout the district the lead academy is a relevant option to support our student students to be college and career ready upon graduation the lead academy allows students to have room for choice and opportunities to explore their personal interests through their academy experience it meets the needs of our diverse student body each course in this academy makes connections within the local community assisting in the recognition of the strong partnerships we have outside of the school environment as you look at this graphic you're seeing the team's current vision for full implementation in the year 2025-26 we're at the

079beginning of the approval process and we'll continue working through full approval and implementation the yellow highlighted areas are magnet academy courses the green highlights are courses that are offered in dual language providing academy students the opportunity to enroll in both dual language and the lead magnet academy there are also opportunities for early college credit and additional electives for students to take and i would like to call attention to this slide to supplement the board response i submitted for board member martin's question about student electives in the academy so we can see that non-dual language students have the ability to select an additional elective each year dual language students who are in the academy have electives that are required for both opportunities so their elective choices are fully defined until senior year so since this team

080began working to redesign the magnet academy the work in our meetings have been a little bit different than curriculum writing that's done for one course we began with professional development data review and visioning the team then explored themes to incorporate the survey feedback and the theme revision we researched at university business and entrepreneurship programs we explored and reached out to high school programs around the country we defined the terms leadership entrepreneurship action and design and we used all that we learned to create the four-year course plan that for the lead academy the program we are designing is intentionally experiential linked to community focuses on knowledge and skills identified as employability skills as well as what is needed for college and career readiness as the courses come forward you'll see that we've used the understanding by

081design framework to develop each course in each unit within the course so as you look through these frameworks you'll see that stage one outlines the desired results for the learning experience in this stage you see learning standards transfer goals understandings and essential questions stage two is the acquisition stage which outlines the knowledge our scholars will gain and the learning targets or skills they will develop throughout the unit it also identifies the evidence of learning and you can find links to rubrics and examples of summative assessments there will also be formative assessments that are used throughout each unit and additional summative assessments that are developed based on the formative assessments that are collected to to guide the daily learning stage three includes a learning plan a learning plan is the more autonomous part of the day-to-day

082planning and the day-to-day learning that happens in the classroom so what we have included in stage three is ideas and resources that teachers can use as their working day-to-day with students we also developed rubrics in the backwards design process so these were rubrics were developed before each of the assessments were developed the team designed four level group four level rubrics aligned to web step of knowledge each level increases the rigor of the demonstration of the learning that the students will provide having this developed enables the team to know exactly what students need to achieve to gain proficiency and mastery of the levels when creating their plans and assessments from the day to day for each of the courses we will follow the curriculum cycle and we will review and revise the program as identified through

083feedback walkthroughs of observations discussions planning meetings with the staff that's working within the program this will be supported by the building administration and the educational pathways department so this is the beginning of the lead academy timeline so as you can see it started with that research study that was done in the spring of 2019 we did the call to committee we went through our professional development we started our visioning and concepts and then we were all excited to start our curriculum writing in february of and then we had a pandemic so we not only have worked through a pandemic we've also worked through a marriage and births and a retirement within our team and we're still going to continue to finish this work and influence implement this academy i'm going to turn this over to

084tracy stewart and she's going to talk about the lead launch course thanks so as dorian mentioned the planning originally started in february 2020 at that time we began to identify standards and collaborate on the vision for the academy from march 2020 through november 2021 we developed unit plans assessments and themes alignment we then provided this curriculum for feedback many many times the team selected industry and nationally recognized standards as the basis for the lead launch course the standards were selected because they align with the knowledge and skills students will acquire in the lead academy these content standards are not limited to the success in leed academy as they represent the knowledge and skills students need to be successful throughout the program and in college and career endeavors the standards we selected are the college career

085and civic life framework for social studies state standards common core literacy standards international society for education and technology standards otherwise known as iste and the national business education association standards the divine design process developed by the lead academy is based on the design cycle exemplars from the stanford school of design and the henry ford learning institute students will explore this process in the design and action units of the course this process is the foundation on which students will grow their ability to identify issues and create meaningful innovative solutions throughout the course of their academy career students will build their capacity in the design process that is the foundation for the junior year incubator class students will develop an understanding of the tenets of lead the tenants leadership entrepreneurship action and design align with the content

086of the entrepreneurship courses they will take in their junior and senior year this slide highlights some of the foundational understandings and skills students will develop and how they align to the entrepreneurial courses the lead launch course consists of four unit each unit aligns with the tenant of the program detailed information for each unit can be found in the curriculum documents but each unit has a transfer goal which students ideally then are able to successfully employ after the course so unit 1 leadership transfer goal is to employ communication collaboration and management skills to reach a common goal in unit 2 their transfer goal for design is to have empathy for others when they are facing a problem and employ the design cycle to identify possible solutions for unit 3 the action transfer goal is to investigate

087local issues while working with others in order to develop and evaluate action options and then finally in unit 4 the entrepreneurship transfer goal is to adapt to ever-changing situations through the development of an entrepreneurial mindset resources for lead launch are identified on this slide this is not an exhaustive list but it is a starting point resources will be added after piloting the course and reflecting on our feedback and data the approved resources for incubator edu and accelerator edu such as furniture and technology will also be acceptable accessible and support the work in this course the educators that will teach lead launch will complete these professional development experiences these learning experiences for our professionals will help develop the entrepreneurial mindset problem-based experiential learning and how to facilitate learning design thinking skills to encourage a cohesive and

088collaborative learning environment we'll be sending four staff members to the necessary trainings our next course is business for innovators each course has been developed for grade level and vertical alignment the team focused on completing business for innovators in november of 2021 and prepare for the process of board approval and implementation these are the standards we build the course around we have the common core state standards ist national business education association and the sel sb standards as the current incubator teacher i call this course the nuts and bolts for our introductory course for vertical alignment this course is designed to make sure students have the foundational skills to be successful in the lead program our intention in designing the program was to develop courses and a course sequence that align and supports the knowledge and experiences

089students will successfully utilize throughout their high school and post-secondary experiences in this core sequence students will be prepared with sufficient authentic experiences and knowledge to jump right into their entrepreneurial development and incubator the business for innovators course consists of six units business for innovators aligned with the excuse me with academy integrated math one which we will be um bringing forth for to you very soon these two courses complement and support the skills and content knowledge through contextual application his transfer goals for this course include unit one which is to build a community that can successfully work together towards a goal unit two identify and explain their role in the local national and global economies unit three has them understanding the financial health of a business unit 4 is to utilize marketing as an essential skill

090in entrepreneurial endeavors unit 5 is to create marketing strategies for products and services and unit 6 is to utilize the design and development process in business and entrepreneurial endeavors you'll also see on these slides the hands-on collaborative projects we designed for our freshmen everything from designing a logo to a virtual lemonade stand to building a roller coaster and developing a t-shirt business business for innovators and integrated math are aligned here are the transfer goals that you can see from the course you're showing in the alignment there's two slides resources for this course are included in the next few slides they include materials for the course and professional development for the staff in keeping with the backwards design process the team analyzed which skills software and certifications would benefit students in these courses they determined that

091one-to-one laptops would be essential to equip students with the hardware they need for an authentic learning experience the laptops will allow the use of the adobe suite as well as microsoft office and this will allow for students to potentially earn industry credentials in both illustrator and excel the laptops will be returned upon graduation and utilized by incoming students until their obsolescence the laptops will be issued in louisville chromebook on this slide in the next we have a list of equipment needed for students to engage in the projects built into this curriculum this slide lists items that can turn the digital designs created on the laptops into tangible goods that can be used for illustrating the business concepts learned this equipment will allow vinyl and sublimation printing onto a variety of substrates surfaces as well as

092the ability to print large format images the equipment on this slide lists the shop equipment which will round out the business oriented maker space the intention behind this is to create an authentic learning experience where the tools are available to turn the student ideations into real products and prototypes for each specialized skill and experience the students will encounter in this course we are providing a complimentary professional development opportunity teachers will be trained in adobe microsoft office virtually ampdon algebra is a corresponding training based on a program that inspired many elements of business for innovators this year this training will be held in the chicago area and finally we'll also provide training on the safe and effective use of all shop equipment this slide summarizes the costs and projects the cost per student over six years

093the implementation of business for innovators along with the other ninth grade courses begins with the phase end of the lead academy at streamlit these tables show what the course sequence will look like each year and beginning in 2022 the freshman class will begin the lead magnet academy sequence sophomores juniors and seniors will continue taking the melissa or world language international studies courses with the addition of incubator edu and accelerator edu in place of the current junior business courses for example the senior core senior class of 2022 has been completely enrolled in wlisa the junior class of 2022 has also had all these courses with the additional incubator the sophomores and freshman class of 2022 will take the wlisa courses and have incubator and accelerator in their junior year the freshman class of 2023 will not

094have any of the world language courses they will be fully in the lead academy it's a little bit confusing but you can see that's why we put in a slide deck so we can follow along as we roll up the courses highlighted in green are courses that will be offered in spanish so our dual language students can participate in both the dual language program and the lead magnet academy this was a major [Music] design principle as we began with this academy to really make it intentional that those students would be able to participate in both programs [Music] and these tables show what the course sequence will look like as it rolls up year to year general in general they will phase into full implementation of the lead academy in the 2025-26 year which is shown

095on this slide we do see that there are some courses that will be coming forth soon for approval and with that being said the streamwood magnet academy curriculum writing committee recommends the approval and adoption of business for innovators and lead launch and that concludes our presentation thank you are there any questions done so i want to thank you for um trying to respond to my question about the electives um i'm a giant pain in the butt about it i have uh my oldest is a senior at the bartlett academy which he loves my daughter is very sad freshman daughter who's a freshman um who was going to do the streamwood academy for language and then with the change she chose not to and now that she sees its business and she's like oh i could

096have you know like so she kind of fell in the transition the program i think looks great i love how you guys have transitioned the roll out of it makes a lot of sense to me um for me when i keep asking for these like uh overall slides so i can see the the progression and where they're gonna have space one of the things that we have found with my son is kind of being aware of the differences between what's required for graduation and then you know if you have a student that might be going to a four-year school like what's really required for some of these four-year schools at the colleges some of these kids are going to so that's why i keep bringing up my big ask is just kind of trying to

097make sure that um when we have students in the academies that their counselors kind of make sure they're really aware of like what these what the kids goals are after after high school so if it's you know if they're going straight to work or if they're going to a year school if they're going to a four-year school and like kind of you know the type of four-year school they're going to how hard is it to get into because you know we're seeing everything from schools that are okay with two years of social and two years of language two they really want four years of social studies and the like it's this colleges are getting much more competitive so that's why i always ask about it because i want to make sure that um especially with

098the students that are trying to balance you know what they're really interested in and like they're getting the information that they need to be productive after high school things like you know business is a great path making sure we also are um i guess it's extra effort to make sure they truly have all the classes they need to get into whatever college they want to afterwards i know um we ended up doing extra work kind of on our own we kind of fell into a hole where we had to do the research on our own to make sure we have the class classes set up to make sure he got into the colleges he want to go to so that's why i bring it up i just want to make sure that we're very with

099intent supporting all of the students you know wherever they want to be but you know it's colleges are just they're getting more and more competitive to get into so like making sure that they have you know the not just the minimum number of some of these actually they would fall into the elective category um just making sure that they have access to them within within the district and not having to go outside of it to get those courses so that's why i bring it up so thank you so much for once again providing that information so we could see how things will fit together yeah that definitely makes a lot of sense and when we put together uh these course sequences that's a a large concern is the is where students will end up with

100their post-secondary careers and we want to make sure that nothing that we would design would limit a student so we collaborate um really working on uh making sure we work outside of our silos so working with michelle chapman who has a really great input and insight on our post-secondary success as well as our dual language department and then just doing a lot of research and looking at what um these schools are looking for postcode because sometimes it's a little bit different and then having uh drafting out a few things testing it out and then ultimately proposing what we have found to be the best fit thank you jessica yeah like this martian kind of always steals my thunder for these things but um like my concern is also like really with those electives um just

101because like i'm also in the academy um at bartlett and i know like i had to do some witchcraft over the past few years to get the courses that i needed to have um so like yes i needed like my social studies courses and my language courses that really weren't an option like there would be no way for me to get the four years of social studies and the four years of things of language that i would need in order to go to the colleges that i was looking at um and then just like the electives like i'm a hardcore band kid um and so and like i think those experiences like they've they're important to going to high school and i think it's a big factor like being able to explore your interests and

102so i understand like i saw on the slides that there was the option for um juniors and seniors to take an independent pe course i was wondering like are there any ambitions to open that up to underclassmen as well so that they can have those experiences and make it a little bit less stressful um because like i know that that was something that we really benefited from as academy students we'll bring that to the team for discussion if i can add also so we are really intentional in looking at the content of the courses for you know the subsequent years coming and so if it makes sense that one of our courses falls into like a social studies content then we will make it a social studies course so not only are the students getting

103the the requisite information from the academy it also fills those requirements um in social studies or in any of those core content areas so if we can kind of help students in both areas that's our goal yeah and then like the other thing i want to add on is like i also had to take some like online courses so i think i did like an online ap course um and so i really do think that like counselors really do need to take a more active role for their academy students just because like it is a very different format and i know like when i was doing college applications like that was something i was running into like listing the listing courses i was taking and saying this isn't ap designated but it is an ap

104curriculum style course or like this says like integrative math like i promised we were doing like calculus we weren't doing like like so i think like some guidance on how we can approach that come application season and also just a lot more support and a lot more networking when it comes to getting like online courses that there's no other way for us to get those electives um so just a lot more support but like beyond that like this is a really exciting program so great thanks for that feedback and that is at the top of our mind as we go forward with additional curriculum proposals that you'll be seeing coming coming shortly um i know we had students apply to the academy was there a pretty good application number of the number of kids applying

105to this one yeah so so the the first year is always a little bit of a tough rollout because it's a brand new thing and we don't have photos of students actually doing the new academy so marketing is a little bit tough but right now i think we have mid 60s for our first year and i just had another young man reach out today that he's a late applicant and he's still interested so lots of interest and i think once we um tracy has been planning out some awesome marketing opportunities for our seventh graders to see what this lead academy is going to look like especially our upcoming pitch night and some of the great things that they're going forward with so we expect to continually seeing increasing interest in the academy pitch nice the

106one we want to come to don't forget to invite us we put the safety data out there okay yes any other questions melissa just a comment i i appreciate the um especially with the curriculum with business for innovators um i appreciate how broadly it's reaching across different disciplines right it's not just a business class you're touching on accounting marketing all of those core components but then also you know the other ancillary things skills that you need to have in order to make those things work right and i really appreciate that i think that that's going to be um [Music] it's going to be you know really useful for the students as they go into then the incubator the accelerator um i think that that's going to be a really useful stepping stone for them i'm

107going to reiterate what miss pierce and mrs martin said and it's my one concern continues to be um as everybody has stated is those electives um my son isn't even in an academy and we had to take extra courses just so that he could get his requirements for college so that is something that's a real concern for him it was getting the foreign language component in so um yeah that's just something to always keep in mind that's a real challenge that i think a lot of our students not just academy students a lot of our students are are having right now to make sure that they have all of those because sometimes you know your freshman year you don't know that you are going to need those because you're taking classes like this and your

108direction changes right and that's that's what happened with us so we have to always keep that in mind as well anyone else thank you very much thank you thank you okay work session contracts over 25 000. yes i covered both of those those who both come back under discussion action at the next meeting the contracts over 25 000 are first as a contract for teaching and learning and the english language learners department with northern illinois university bilingual esl teacher cohort mr phelps is joined at the dais along with dr johnson deputy superintendent of instruction and grisel de verdo is our director of english language learners who's available via zoom administration recommends approval of the contract with northern illinois university not to exceed 144 thousand dollars and request authorization for administration to execute related documents this

109expenditure will be charged to the title three uh grant and the cost is included in the budgets for the 2021-22 through 2023-24 fiscal years i have any questions okay thank you all right next is a contract with the office of schools for the summer college tour of this historically black colleges and universities mr phelps has joined joining us along with ms mistorovich assistant superintendent of schools brian tennyson executive director of high schools and we have three esteemed high school principals with us that started their day very early this morning and are still with us here late at night uh we have uh mr cross in belgium high school ms bush from market high school and dr van dusen from streamwood high school the administration recommends approval of the contract with group travel planners and the

110total amount of thirty thousand five hundred dollars and request authorization for district administration to execute related documents this will be charged to the educational fund and the cost is included in the budget for the 2021-22 fiscal year are there any questions done someone you may not i don't know what i did i apologize um i love the idea of being able to take students out to see schools especially schools that based on where we live we don't necessarily have access to right to visit easily do you happen to one of the you hear one of the i'm trying to say this um one of the things you see in the news a lot right now is paying for college and the amount of debt these students are taking to attend schools do you know happen

111to know if one of the things that they'll be covering at these schools with these students are better ways to finance their education like it's such an important component to help our students not only go to these schools but not go a hundred thousand dollars into bed and i just it's such a valuable piece i'm hoping you know that this is something that'll be covered on these for these students to give them better options and all the different resources they can look into yes part of the rationale around the going on this trip a trip like this is one is exposing kids to college because if they see it they then believe they can go but also helping helping to kind of destroy the myth of the cost and the investment of college too uh

112some of the students that we're choosing there's some of the kids that are on the borderline and are like 2.0 students and they're we also have freshmen sophomore juniors or our writing juniors uh and so our goal is to hopefully that they'll then be able to see that college as possible and but also have the discussion around how do you pay for it as well and then also it'll motivate them to do better in classes and then therefore they'll be open for scholarships and i know ms martin also had a question she submitted earlier about why only three about five high schools could you could you answer that again for the public uh so our south belgium bartlett from understanding has a different set of funding we use the same funding for this so we

113use title one funding so they have a different set of funding that they could actually fund this trip on okay any other questions sounds like it will be very busy few days yes yes we'll be all right i convinced them to do it so you know it's possible our kids need to see it though that's what matters yeah very exciting is this the first time all three high schools have done it i know uh it's been i know other individually one i think larkin high school did it originally correct and now it's expanding this is yes yes it is good thank you i just want to say that i think this is a great idea for me personally myself it was one of those visits that made me choose the college that i went to

114that was the hbcu and also i have taken a group of kids on um you know all the way to atlanta georgia so you've got your work cut out for you and my hat's off to you but i think it's wonderful it will pay off the returns will be great because a student who thinks that they can't go or afford to go once they go to the college campus and once they understand that this is a possibility of hope for them they can make a decision so thank you and then throughout the trip we want to encourage them to become educators so yeah agree yeah okay any other questions thank you all right next work session items are bids for bids and proposals uh the first is a bit from business services for age and

115obsolescence plan for lunchroom and cafeteria tables mr phelps is the primary presenter for this one so feel free to ask him any number of questions the administration recommends awarded a low bid meeting specification to warehouse direct in the amount of seventy four thousand five hundred and fourteen dollars and request authorization for administration to execute related documents because we charge the educational fund and is included in the budget any questions for mr phelps okay next step our next is a proposal from business services for financial operations workspace relocation administration recommends approval of the proposal from warehouse direct in the amount of 101 271.47 and request authorization for administration to execute related documents this also be charged the educational fund and is included in the budget are there any questions are we moving people because some groups

116moved over to the one concept correct yes financial services will be moving up on the second floor and later on we will be renovating hr so that the the staff will be all down in hr where uh financial services was we'll be reusing the equipment down there that's currently there okay so because whoever was on the second floor then has moved over to yes yes yes hr is really the only forward-facing thing here any longer that people come here for and so i mean from the outside and so that they they've been needing the additional space and so the the relocation allows for some reconfiguration of and financial services will be all together now correct and it also is allowing us to revamp um the central schools program and the dream academy to give them

117more space and some upgrades okay good any other questions okay and this is similar to the past the other item uh this this is to allow first movement of some additional space for the school programs this is a proposal from business services for teacher effectiveness initiatives and teacher mentor program workspace relocation uh administration recommends approval of the proposal from warehouse direct in the amount of 67 155.66 and request authorization for administration to execute related documents this we charge the educational fund and is in the budget any questions next time right next is a proposal from plant operations for playground equipment purchased ms waldo is coming forward to answer any additional questions the board might have for this one administration recommends approval of the proposal from game time care of cunningham recreation in the amount of

118210 thousand nine hundred and eleven dollars and twenty four cents and request authorization for administration to execute related documents this will be charged the operation maintenance fund and is included in the budget are there any questions okay change change orders we have several change orders our first is uh from hilt for helicos elementary school boiler replacement project number 926 this is a change order uh with independent mechanical industries in the amount of minus forty thousand dollars any questions okay next item our next is a change order for hillcrest elementary school domestic water piping replacement project 927 administration recommends the board of education approve the change order from northwest contractors in the amount of minus 72 126.29 any questions our final item is the change order from plant operations for lowry elementary school library and office

119renovation project number 1177. this is a change order with bully and andrews and the amount of minus 75 028 any questions okay that's great all right since that is the last item could i have a motion to adjourn so moved second please mr devereaux yes ms martin yes ms nolan yes ms owens yes miss porter yes ms thomas yes president kerr yes we're adjourned at 8 43 p.m