001just until seven o'clock so moved second phone call please ms martin yes ms owens yes miss porter yes president kerr yes we are recessed at 6 30 till 7 pm [Music] okay i'd like to resume the march 21st 2022 u-46 board of education meeting if people could please stand for the pledge of allegiance and remain standing for a moment of silence i pledge allegiance [Music] we'd like to take a moment of silence for a u-46 employee who recently passed away david ortiz served as a custodian at lincoln elementary school in hoffman estates ever since it opened in 2004. he began his u-46 career at ellis middle school in 2003. david's co-workers say he took tremendous tremendous pride in his work in lincoln elementary when he was called to help a teacher or student or fix
002a problem he responded within seconds he loved being around the students serving as a mentor for several of them he even served as a dj for hispanic heritage events at lincoln elementary teaching students dance moves david passed away on march 14th he survived by his sisters angelica and florida his father geronimo three nephews and a cousin a funeral service is planned for march 23rd at william willow funeral home in algonquin we'll keep david's family and friends in our thoughts and prayers thank you first item is strategic plan report dr sanders thank you madam president members of the board of education uh our presenters as they come forward i will be glad to introduce them for our equity update please can please join um so here to provide the equity update of equity work today uh
003we have none other than of course dr teresa lance our assistant superintendent for equity and innovation ms lisa jackson director of equity and inclusion and ms hollingsworth a crosscad special education resource teacher to provide tonight's update with that i'll turn it over to dr lance all right good evening superintendent sanders board president kerr board of education thank you for the opportunity to finally provide you with an equity update so i do acknowledge that the last time you received an update was in 2019 i'm joined this evening by my colleagues lisa jackson who is the director of diversity equity and inclusion and then teacher olivia hollingsworth who is representing the equity committee and she's also a co-pillar chair of our equity committee so tonight our goal is to provide uh three particular outcomes one is to
004share an overview a broad overview of our equity work to date and please keep in mind that we're talking about almost two years of work so we may not get it all in tonight also to provide a high level overview of the equity audit process and again that will be a high level overview and finally our goal is to end this evening by sharing our immediate and long-term next steps i would be remiss if i did not take time to acknowledge so many colleagues who join us meeting at the meeting without any monetary compensation to talk about and help us revise our equity plan my goal is not it's just real quick i think we're having a technical glitch where your screen's moving but the one on the zoom meeting is not moving for i
005don't know if there it goes thank you okay now it's working i apologize did you need me to go back or oh no we're good okay so i would be remiss if i did not take time to acknowledge and list list all these names but i won't i will not read all these names to you but i do want you to know that all these individuals meet with us uh every month and sometimes they meet outside of our equity committee meetings as well the individuals that are highlighted in blue serve as our equity committee chair leaders in addition there are two names that are not highlighted because student achievement is such a massive undertaking we called on two additional persons to help facilitate student achievement pillar one those individuals are dr kelly gilbert and miss
006aaron jackal but again the individuals highlighted in blue are our pillar leaders before we go any further i certainly want to remind everyone that there are four current pillars that we are operating under those pillars are student achievement effective and engaged staff community engagement excellence efficiency and accountability so the goal is not to walk through every one of these steps but to share with you a visual for what we did as we engaged in this process so again i arrived almost two years ago in u46 and really a part of that time was laying the context for the work that we would engage in that includes taking time to acknowledge the biases that we hold before we really started to analyze the data so we walked through a series of steps that were very slow
007folks will tell you it was like watching paint dry but we were deliberate and intentional so we did not jump to assumptions because it's easy to do so we are at the place now where we are solidifying our root causes and then moving into major improvement strategies and action steps this will be called equity plan 2.0 and i want to remind just everyone here that's watching the current equity plan we are absolutely acting on that that is not sitting collecting dust we're actually engaged in that work right now this is just a mental model that we use to engage it so again folks on the equity committee might say that it was a slow process but again we were deliberate deliberately moving slow said that we did not jump to assumptions so this ladder of
008inference is just a reminder of how easy it is for us to see something make assumptions and then jump to conclusions this ladder of inference forced us to slow down and check each other before we went to this step which is right here actions and again we are at the stage of looking at the root causes which you'll hear more about through this presentation and then action steps this is an example of uh what we have been doing this data following is just an example it's not facts it's just for the comprehension of the process last year just we were low on the latter like dr lance said we observed data we evaluated the data and we made assumptions ultimately about the strengths and the things that we need uh in areas of improvement and
009then we went into um the conclusion rung of the latter and made summary statements within that we start with a strength and then we end that with a opportunity of growth so when the data suggested that some groups and areas of concern had a lot of strength it also creates this opportunity to shape the district for more equitable means for groups in areas of marginalization marginalization meaning historically oppressed so that is what we finished up last year and we started with this year and what we started with this year we first looked at our summary statement and the data and we dove into root causes root causes looks at the deepest reasons this is the rung of belief right now it looks at the deeper reasons why there are not equitable behaviors and actions within
010our district and it's factual um it's not addressing the symptom we used a protocol called the five wise to get to the root cause and that is a protocol of questioning so each root cause will have an mis a improvement strategy we'll get to that one second after that we went into the wrong into the action that's when we triangulated data with the summary statement our root causes and then also our data so in our lagging indicators as this is our example it's a it's easy to measure hard to improve it's a smart goal which means it's specific it's measurable it's achievable it's realistic and timely it's more of a long-term goal and it targets the improvement and the opportunities that we can see in our district so within that we look at our leading
011indicators which is the write down leading indicators will always target the root causes and eliminate it so major improvement strategies will have um will be in tandem with the root cause last action step is the implementation benchmark is how we will monitor uh how our goal is going again it's a smart goal benchmarks break down the scope and sequence of the lagging goal it also gives time stamps for progress to end of the year goal um these gold marks will tell us who what when why and where um we there was two categories added additionally to the plan that were not there before one of those was the key personnel that is responsible this personnel will come to our equity and share their data with us and the other thing that we added was centerline
012centering marginalized voices marginalized voices once again or those who have been systematically and historically oppressed voices that we center and students staff and families our whole community and we're looking at african-american latino latina latin x indigenous lgbtqia students with special needs and low income if i could just go back because i want to make sure that this is clear to those who are watching this is not factual data this is just a sample to explain the process and again to reiterate those major improvement strategies the intent behind that is to address the root causes for us sorry give it a speaking open oh for us to really look as a pillar i'm sorry i always talk about pillars first look at committee we did um we did a book study with street data and that
013really helped us center those marginalized voices and not only that but it allowed us to really look at quantitative and qualitative data very differently especially for those at the center and we have had an opportunity the chairs have had an opportunity to work with the authors and we're working right now on focus groups and they are leading us to to do those properly so we've been really busy um and our work has uh is continuously evolving uh the work to date includes affinity groups for students and for adults and that will be staff we have for staff african american asian american latino latina latinx affinity group uh lgbtqia and we have white allyship those are adult affinity groups we have been writing curriculum for african-american studies course and it's awesome when i go to a
014school kids actually ask me about it and they say when is that going to happen is it really going to happen who's teaching it it's a lot of engagement by the students equity audit we'll talk about that i'm going to talk about that in a moment and then implicit bias workshop right now we're working with some of our student interns from illinois state university and we've done about three modules with them so these are people who are actually in our building uh huff and clinton and coleman and sycamore trails and so we're working with them now and you know kind of like and you know you know this is what u46 is about and we're encouraging them that if this is what you're um committed to this is a great place to work and to
015share your beliefs around equity and diversity and inclusion um we provide oh i'm missing something it was a lot of fun too uh we're working on our second um equity symposium and so we had one last year at the end of the the year and we heard from staff that we want to do this again we last year we did it for four years four four years four days and the feedback that we we received was that we want five days and so we're gonna do five days and so we have our keynotes lined up and we're gonna they we also receive feedback that we wanted at the beginning of the year we heard we heard that we wanted beginning the middle the end we right now don't have the capacity to do all of
016those so we're going to start it off at the beginning of the year in august and so we're looking forward to that we provide optional professional learning and so um while while we push in we also uh off uh accept invitations um and we don't do just like one and done if you would like us to come in and provide professional development it's it's a series and so we work with uh teams on how that might look we work with our counselors like how does that look what do we want to get to and so we plan out those types of sessions and then we're working on our website right now we have resources for women's history month up on our website uh our recruitment efforts are underway and we are targeting hbcus we've been
017in uh close talks with a tennessee state university i believe dr lance had a conversation with howard today um and uh we have a job fair a schedule a trip to a job fair in washington dc in the second week of april um and in social media please follow us on um i don't know is this i don't even want to say it but is it yeah tweet us 46 equity matters please follow us and then we do a thought exchange where we really uh we capture the input and the feedback of our uh our staff our families and our students and we'll have more examples of that but one of the the pieces as it pertains to the equity um our equity plan is uh one of the thought exchanges was really around um
018what are some areas of improvement that you would like to see and that went out to our equity committee and actually on also how do we prioritize our work so those are some areas also that we did as it pertained to thought exchange uh here's another um area where thought exchange um really um was a useful tool so we sent a thought exchange to our parents and said so what universities uh historically black colleges and universities would you like to have an inf uh would you like to invite to u46 and to hear from and have a panel off and so they said let's see we want to see more house spelman howard and tuskegee and so that those were the uh they said several but these were the top picks and so guess what
019we got more house spellman powered in tuskegee um it was in uh february and so we had a panel via zoom um and so a lot of conversations um uh they gave us so much information and they opened it up for questions for students and for their parents and um it was very engaging i think every adult who was on on the call wanted to go back and like redo our undergrad one of these these uh universities it was it was a lot of passion and uh the panelists uh were informative and also they were inviting and uh it was just you could they really presented themselves in such a manner that that uh they even were engaged with one another and so it was really uh well done for our students and their families
020uh yes so um please if you haven't done already we have an equity u46 matters newsletter and it's a monthly newsletter if you missed it um in january you didn't miss it because we just put it out in february so look for february march and so it will come out every month um so far i mean there's a lot of interest for one we've had um this month 55 subscribers i guess you want to call them subscribers last month we had someone as far as canada to actually click on and then this month we had someone from ukraine actually visit our site and so on that site it's it's a lot of information it's a lot of uh just information of what we do and who's in our department um and also we there's like
021webinars to implicit bias articles clarifying the difference between um equality and equity um and then there's tools like we uh that um for like this month for exploring women's history month and so you'll find things like that on the website so at this point we'll shift to the equity audit so i want to thank the board of education superintendent for allowing that equity audit to occur so basically that equity audit was a major undertaking especially for a district this size and it was important that we conduct an equity audit so when the superintendent and the deputy superintendent were all in we knew we were on the right path so i'm not going to walk through this entire timeline because we're beyond that but what i do want to highlight is that we when we put
022out an rfp we had eight vendors that said they wanted to conduct our equity audit and i'm proud to say that the superintendent myself the deputy no one from central office selected the vendor we actually asked each vendor to come to the equity committee and present to the equity committee we used a scoring rubric and a feedback tool so that they were all in so cmsi was not selected by any central office administrator cmsi the vendor was selected by all of us including the equity committee so that was again that was a huge undertaking and we're proud of that the other thing that i will say is that with this equity audit it was important to us that we put forth someone who had experience engaging in an equity audit of this size district if
023not larger also we did not want just a few of our schools visited we wanted every single school touched and cmsi did just that so lisa excuse me miss jackson is going to talk a little bit a little bit more about the process that the equity audit um took us through thank you dr lance so the overall intent for this audit was really to um ensure that there's equitable treatment of all students equal access to all services and educational programs it was conducted through a lens of five areas and i'll go into those five areas in the next slide or next moment as well as our district policies and expectations that we have as u-46 um and as it pertains to the magnitude of this undertaking um every department program uh school was touched every
024building was touched in u46 um and all students classrooms parents and staff they were involved in one way or another and so these are the areas uh oh sorry methodology oh sorry so the methodology um oh wow it was a lot so we collected so many documents and it so it was thorough yeah it was just thorough so documents included staffing documents hiring um job descriptions board policies district and school improvement plans financial reports state and local assessments attendance assess attendance information discipline program placement curriculum guides professional development data we can go on and on we surveyed students parents teachers paraprofessionals school administrators district administrators um and we interviewed students parents nurses social workers counselors board members and school and district staff um yeah we they visited every single school um they uh every single
025school and then they every single grade level was touched in every single program and so when they visited the school it wasn't just going into the classrooms they actually walked the buildings with the principals and so the principal had the opportunity to take them wherever they wanted to so if you wanted to show off something in your building you could do that if there was an issue that you had in your building you could do that too it was something that you just might need a thought partner with you could do that as well and so the the principal was in charge of of guiding the the walk as well as making sure that they visited classrooms and seeing instruction uh take place and then we collected a student sample work and so it was
026student sample work as it pertains to how does this look according to standards so again every grade level and every program was submitted and let's break down the numbers we had lots of uh engagement and so this is just a reflection of how our community just went all in in engagement 200 plus teachers administrators and staff 150 plus parents 120 plus students were interviewed and over 22 000 people responded to surveys and that includes staff and family and students and it was just a great opportunity many of us have never had an opportunity to engage in in an interview or a survey um like we do our five essentials that's for families and staff and teachers or if we do the panorama that is for uh our our students um and this was an opportunity
027i mean people asked me questions i was able to fill out a survey and so it was engagement at every level and so it was um i thought it was useful also so sorry oh so this is one i thought it was um so these are those those five areas that i was speaking about and so um when it as it pertains to the lens in which we um uh cmsi uh conducted that audit these are the five areas it was um uh a vision and accountability um achievement equity and access and access cultural and um and climate and curriculum those are the the lenses in which the survey was the audit was conducted and then strengths it was just what are the areas we have right now a written report they've given us and
028so right now what we're looking at are the strengths of the district those areas that um you know based on all these documents and all the data and all the responses from everyone in the district those areas that we're doing really well and we should continue to do and then the findings um those areas in which we could get a little bit better at and then those um recommendations and they'll they gave us lists of those things that um would move us closer to uh student outcomes in an equitable way and so these aren't our district strengths right off the bat we have a strong board and leadership uh commitment to and support for equity we have a great dual language program a supportive and a diverse community and our curriculum and assessment development is
029very strong and we have we're we find ourselves in a strong financial position as a district so our next steps uh we're going to triangulate findings and recommendations with existing equity plan so that will be in march and april 2022 we'll conduct student focus groups to confirm identity identify root causes april 2022 provide the equity committee the draft of equity audit for review april 2022 provide the board of education with the final equity audit executive summary to review april may and lastly finalize equity 2.0 including action stops by may 2022 and that concludes our report to the board of education we'll take any questions at this time any questions eva thank you so much for that report i've been waiting to find out what you were up to and what you were doing and you've
030been busy um just thank you i am excited um to see the progress that you've made and what the plans that you have in place and i look forward to the next meeting that you have in april to even get some more information thank you oh i do want to say the symposium i can't wait i did it last year the four days and you're thinking of five days this time around and i so enjoyed the speakers and everything i do have a question do you know how many people took advantage of that well how did you measure how successful it was it was successful it was great but how many people took advantage of that do you have that data or was there no way to record that because i know it was by
031zoom yeah so we do um we we had partners in the teaching and learning department that really were instrumental in helping us track participation through canvas so we asked staff members who wanted to attend to sign up through canvas and that was one way we tracked we also um engaged in a thought exchange so you heard ms jackson talk about a thought exchange it's at the end of the equity symposium we pushed out two thought exchanges one was what did we do well and what do what should we improve upon moving forward so we have that feedback in the thought exchange and we also asked in thinking about the future so this upcoming um equity audit who are some of the speakers that we should engage in so we got overwhelming response to have um
032one in particular who was there already but they want her back so we don't want to give anything away just yet but we're uh we're excited about our lineup another question the hbcu partnerships uh you're gonna have a job fair um when you had the hbcu zoom where students were part of it and parents to ask questions how how did you measure that how many parents were on that in students i just want to know that it's reaching the people it should reach yeah unfortunately on board member portal we didn't have the turnout that we would have hoped for um and so that continues to be a struggle for us in terms of getting our family members more engaged hence the reason why we have an equity committee pillar on community engagement so how can
033we do a better job of engaging and involving our families but those family members who were present were fully participatory and one way we know that and you hate to say we'll have your camera on but folks had those cameras on and their parents were asking more questions than their students um so that was really exciting and then we actually turned it on the students that were there and said do you have questions so typically we would facilitate that but we asked the students who our u46 students if they had questions so they were able to ask questions as opposed to us asking those questions in advance so when you mention street data so when i had the opportunity to go to the um that jessica the student uh what say it again student summit
034and i leaned into various tables i mean some of the things that i heard was like oh my gosh you know speaking from our youth the things that they're challenged with the things that they're successful in and the exchange of conversation that they had now one did bring me to tears um and i was very concerned about that and when i i saw that um i know it was just an example let me go to the slide i think it was slide nine um i know it's just an example but when it talked about your goals and major improvements and strategies and the root causes and this was a root cause that i heard from a student that wanted to take a dual language class you know because i almost cried when i heard him
035say and no offense to anyone my counselor keeps telling me no i'm not ready to take this course and i'm like okay so you come here give me your name i said and i had him to tell me more so we have to make sure that the counselors and everyone is listening to the students and encouraging them and not discouraging them and that was just one situation one isolated situation but it's the story i've heard many times as to students that a lot of the students don't know that these are things that are available to them the parents and i am a part of the african-american advisory council and the parents that need to be there are not always sitting there to get the information to know how to advocate for their students students of
036color especially um we just need to make sure that we are making sure the ones that need this are the ones that we can try to get to the table and i don't know how we do that i've been trying for years but make sure that they somehow are getting the information so that their students can um take advantage of what the district has to offer we have so many things to offer and i know this is an example but we also know the data shows how many african-american students and students of color are not taking advantage of the opportunities that we have and that are at the bottom and how do we bring them up absolutely thank you jessica yeah a lot of what i was gonna say really just echoes ms porter um
037you did talk about those um hbcucu um visits and you mentioned the low engagement and part of that like i wrote it down um usually when they're held in february i know like a lot of students especially seniors um like we already have our college decisions out by then and so like honestly just moving it earlier in the year when people are beginning to apply to schools like i'm sure that's something that's come up before but just making it so that like when it's so late in the year it's too late to apply for most of them so moving it early in the year would probably increase the participation and that's just a lot already um but i do want to say just thank you so much for this work i know that this is
038something that students have really been looking forward to like the african american studies curriculum i know people are excited about that like when that was first coming out i think there was a survey about that a couple years ago um i know like even then students were really like oh my gosh this is going to be so exciting i really hope that like you know they'll be able to expand this because um like while it's great that we're going to have those opportunities at a high school level i think there is some also desire to see those resources also presented at younger levels for middle schoolers elementary schools not just for african american literature of course but also for lgbtq studies latinx studies so just having those options those resources available to students i think
039that would really mean a lot and i'm really excited to see where it's going right now um i was wondering if maybe like if you have any ability to talk about the process of how you're getting student voice in because i know maybe at the beginning of this year we were able to um during the audit me and a couple of other students from my school were able to come in and like just speak with some of the auditors and that was one of my favorite days like in this kind of role because i learned so much from other students and i could tell like there are some students who've never had that opportunity before who absolutely loves just being able to talk about things being able to discuss their experiences and so i was
040wondering what is going to be your plan to get that student engagement get that student voice because i do think that was probably like powerful for students of course but also really powerful for the feedback they provide sure i'll ask um miss jackson to respond as well but one thing i do want to go back to the hbcu so we did not target seniors for that very reason this was targeted to our 9th through 11th graders we were intentional with reaching out specifically to those families so point noted but i did want to clarify that we did not target seniors for that very reason in terms of listening to students so every chance we get when we go to schools we are talking with students so as an example we had a 45 day goal
041around our magnet academies as a department that we were going to increase enrollment excuse me not enrollment applications of our african-american and latinx students or hispanic students because what we said is we implemented a lottery system but it'll do us no good if our students of color don't apply so we set a 45-day goal with just getting them to apply so as a department we broke up we divided the middle schools up amongst the six of us and we went to every single middle school and we visited them during every single lunch period to talk to every single student who would listen to us in between bites and and we had students that really just talked to us about you know we didn't we didn't know anything about it or we didn't know we could
042apply and it really was very telling in engaging in students that way uh miss jackson i know she can speak specifically to the student affinity affinity groups because she's spearheading that work but just a couple of weeks ago i went to south elgin um to i guess talk to their asian americans reach out that was an affinity group for students and to hear their stories about this group and how this group really was a family for them and so they talked to me about can you come back and how can we get others to listen and i might tear up here because it was just so powerful to hear students say this affinity group meant so much to them and how do we do more of that and that's the that's the work of miss
043jackson but to your point um we can't rely on emails alone we have to go hence the book street data we have to go to the students we have to go to the staff we have to go to the families especially those who have been historically marginalized to hear from them what are we doing well and when we need to improve yeah thank you dr lance and thank you for that question it's like spot on um i remember talking to dr sanders about three or four years ago when i'm like this is the best year ever for me and then the next year was like this is the best year ever but no really this is the best year ever and the reason why it is is because i actually can touch students now it's
044like oh my gosh it's like wow it's just been amazing and so um it's really uh going into here going to into these uh student clubs student affinity groups and hearing their voices and um you know really building relationships with students just building a relationship where they can actually like see you and trust you and i find myself on a stage dancing with them because i'll do anything for a kid and then when they know that you'll do anything for them they can fighting you and they'll tell you things that the street data that we were just talking about and so how do you do that and then systematize it so um for our black student union this thursday we're gonna actually have enough uh a summit for them in the in the evening and
045then they said well let's uh make a summit for the other affinity group so how do we gather all of our affinity groups at the high school level to come together so that we can talk and so that's what it's about it's about building coalitions for our students building systems for our students and so uh that's just that worked and something that was really great for me is that as um you know we had um a prior one um a month ago it was the day of the the actual the i was in two places at one time you know how we do zoom when we think we can do it but when we had the hbcu on zoom so um i was not able to facilitate the uh the black student union uh affinity
046group for the students it was at ecc they didn't need me to do it i just hosted a space they were in the space and i was in another space when we were on zoom with with those so the kids had come from the different high schools together right the lead leaders that come to they have never met and then they are exchanging ideas and having you know feedback with one another that was great so then we have the student summit over at ecc with all of our kids and it was amazing to see these kids come in and and get up and talk to one another and say guess what i did this in my school and i told my uh sponsor this and this is how we want to operate and so these
047are opportunities to bring kids together another way to gather street data is just you know just have a remote office in a lunchroom at a middle school and so when they see you often enough um they you know now it's not a big deal they just see you and then they start talking and they'll talk to you and they'll tell you about an experience that they had um and it could be you know a physical ed teacher or it could be a relationship that they had with a peer and how did they problem solve this and is there a place in their building to go and how might they start a club and how do we find a sponsor melissa so first of all i just want to thank you for all of the information
048that you all have been pushing out um and the newsletter is fantastic it's not just a little you know two-paragraph newsletter right you're pushing out an awful lot of information through that um the information on the website the information that you know i i wasn't able to um participate in the symposium but i've heard a lot about it and i hope that i can participate this year um you know even if at some times you're not getting the participation that you want um it's you know the continuous work of getting that information out there and you know we never know when somebody's going to absorb that and needs to absorb that right so thank you for that um but more than that thank you for all of the work that you're doing on the ground
049you know hearing these hearing you talk about these engagements that you're having with students and with staff members i mean so much of this work is centered in conversation and to hear these conversations that you're having is just it's fantastic i'm looking right now at the list of people that you have on slide three and i see community leaders i see teachers i see parapros i see administrators people i don't recognize so you know there's just an awful lot of people that are engaged in working on this so on behalf of me thanks to everybody that's involved with this please pass that along because it's it's great work and i'm so encouraged by what you're doing thank you thank you i appreciate that and i guess i'll add also donny did you want to know
050you did um thank you also i had a couple questions first of all thank you for clarifying that that was an example of the following point because at first i thought oh that doesn't look right will your audit have something comparable though so you'll have goals root causes and so forth will that information be in in the audit when you when that's completed yes so right now we have a draft of the audit and we are working with the superintendent all of cabinet to identify those areas that need to be revisited so it's still a draft and the hope is that we'll be able to provide an update to the board of education in may regarding the findings as well as the recommendations from that audit but right now that audit is over 300 pages
051long to give an example of how comprehensive of a job they did i mean it is my colleagues can attest to the fact that you're not finishing that overnight um so yes to answer your question yes and while we shared the strengths in tonight's uh powerpoint there are certainly a lot of opportunities that are going to be pointed out as well to both administration and the board that we'll consider as well so yes they're in each of those categories that were outlined in the six different areas there's going to be recommendations that are being made for each of those sub areas yes and one other question other question you mentioned that the high schools have or some high schools have affinity groups do all the high schools have them or is it hit or miss
052or does it depend on student interest so they have um it depends um and so i didn't start their affinity groups most of them have already been there um they're one that i you know we helped get off the ground and i'm actually one of the sponsors for but they're uh on the ground it's really trying to bring students together and so that they're not working in isolation a lot of them are already doing the work and so how do you build it up better and and just make it stronger and so that they can you know so if you have a um the uh um asian heritage group in one school and so what kind of work are they doing how do they partner with the african-american um affinity group and how do they
053you know partner with the other groups um you know so they all it's it's just really tightening the work that they already have okay yeah thank you and thank you again for all your work i did take part in the symposium last year and really enjoyed it so i look forward to the next one so thank you thank you any other questions comments okay thank you very much thank you okay next item is comments from the audience [Music] 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 provided a webinar id number
054to call in promptly at 7pm tonight as always speakers will be given 3 minutes to share their comments the board listens to the speakers but does not respond to 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 at u-46.org those emails were posted on the board agenda for public viewing buenas noches commentarios thank you and we have one public comment tonight uh joshua martin you could come to the microphone please how's it going the last board meeting i had came here there was a situation involving my son i never got a reply email and i got a very vague response
055letter uh in the mail really zero conclusion like kind of swept my situation under the rug my my kidnap was the abbott there was an incident with a staff member had hit my son during a school during the school day i i know this because the principal called me and told me that but after this they told me that i couldn't get any more information until this afternoon about an hour ago i got response from uh one of the board members here and um we set a meeting for wednesday at noon and i was hoping to get you to be able to show up to see if we can you mr sanders to possibly show up to see if we can get to some kind of solutions in the situations i'm dealing with with 246
056i'm trying to be as common collective as possible i know things happen um they you know someone told you somebody hit your kid at the school and then you ask for the name they won't give it to you they ask it for uh i mean they told me what i have my son didn't even bring it up to me the principal brought it up to me but today this guy's back at the school and i'm up there for a meeting of for behavior for my son but uh everything i'm asking about what's happening with the roon situation and the last time i was up here speaking that he was on the fox news two days later in the primetime fox news about the situation and i've still not had any reply from you 46 board
057members legal anything nobody will talk to us i'm on my fifth foia right now to and i'm really not stopping you because i have not got any closure on anything and it seems like everything is very very swept under the rug and everybody protects themselves i guess and you're 46 but i would appreciate uh i don't know i said i would come and uh bring it up so i'm doing something about it because i went to the school i have no solutions and all the only solution i'm getting is my you know kids bad we had to lock him in a freaking room a kid got hit and you know by the the the janitor or whatever it hit your kid or you know sorry you know we can't tell you anything else about it
058you know uh um having a rough time with us and i set an appointment now for wednesday at noon and i would appreciate it if uh i can get some kind of solutions on that day so i'm trying to solve this administratively as possible and i'm going above and beyond trying to go that route thank you thank you thank you and ask some members of the team to step out with you and i'll ask some members of the team to step out and have a conversation with you about it great i appreciate it okay next item is board member and superintendent update any updates anyone i know it's only been a week since our last meeting so no written comments either i'm sorry okay uh for your request mr sanders there are 14 freedom of
059freedom of information act requests that are on board book available for public review it'll also be posted with the response on the web district website in the coming week i'm available to answering four questions any questions about the foyers hey consent agenda dr sanders on the consent agenda we have personal report and workers compensation cases minutes of the board meeting march 14 2022 a contract for plant operations for elevator inspections 2022 contract renewal for school and community relations with the consultant multimedia communications bid from business services for chromebook age and obsolescence a bid from business services for high school athletic purchases scores tables a bid from plan operations for elgin high school lower tennis court reconstruction project number 245 a bid from plant operations for larkin high school tennis court replacement project number 269 a
060bid from plant operations for test middle school asbestos abatement ceiling tile piping insulation and lighting replacement first and second floors project number 531 and finally a change order from plant operations for 955e chicago street site reconstruction project number 2055. are there any items board members would like removed from the consent agenda okay because i have a motion to approve the consent agenda some of the second we'll call please ms martin yes ms owens yes ms porter yes president curve yes motion passes discussion docs association under discussion action our first item are the itemized bills from march 21st 2022 the administration recommends the board of education approved the list of bills in the amount of 5 million 505 556 195.95 could i have a motion to approve the list of bills name on to five million
061five hundred fifty six thousand one hundred ninety five dollars and ninety five cents so moved second any questions roll call please ms martin yes ms owens yes ms porter yes president kerr yes motion passes next is our minutes from various board committee meetings administration recommends the board of education uh accept the following minutes the january 24 2022 board of education legislation committee meeting meeting minutes the february 28 2022 board of education policy meeting with iasb the march 7th 2022 board of education policy meeting with iasb and the march 14th board of education policy meeting with iasb did i have a motion to accept the minutes that were listed by dr sanders second any questions comments go call please ms martin yes ms owens yes ms porter yes president kerr yes motion passes final discussion action
062item is a noticed remedy for teacher f administration recommends the board of education approve the noticed remedy for teacher f scott zalkey can i have a motion to approve the notice to remedy for teacher f scott zalkey so moved second any discussion roll call please ms martin yes ms owens yes ms porter yes president kirk yes motion passes by the business cac update chad has joined us tonight to give an update good evening good evening superintendent dr sanders and board of education members and all those who are watching or president in person our next cac general meeting will be on thursday april 7th at 7 pm via zoom we will have our cac business agenda and then following a presentation on the equity diversion diversity and inclusion update the registration link is on our district's
063calendar and then our next update is a bit of a unique update um our executive committee met this past thursday and typically in the month of march between now and may but typically in march we would go through our certification process for all of the schools that make up cac membership which is all the schools in the district and looking at our membership as it's waned and with the pandemic we looked at our bylaws to see if we could possibly give grace on our certification process this year and when we discussed it we do have two executive committee members that are going to be leaving their positions because of relocation or you know a child is in high school so we will have elections this year and we looked at um not holding our certification
064process if the election is uncontested our bylaws state that we can do a voice vote if the election is uncontested so we are looking to give grace on our membership attendance this year which we've never done in the history of cac but also be prepared to go through our certification process in the event that our elections that will be held in may are contested elections we will be prepared to go through that process and one of the reason main reasons i want to give grace is because our membership has been kind of all over the place it's been waning for the last few years but being virtual has had its pros and it's also had its cons and we've been in webinar format for all of our meetings and it really is hard to build
065and sustain our relationship with new cac members and some of the current cac members who may not know our executive committee um to be able to continue and sustain that relationship and so we're looking at ways to build up our membership again um especially as we're moving towards in person while hopefully having hybrid meetings where people can be in person or still be virtual because we have gotten feedback that that is there is a convenience we're getting attendance and we're getting attendance from people from schools but there might not necessarily be cac members and so i wanted to bring that update in the event that anyone has questions for us about going forward with that any suggestions we're welcome we're welcoming that and we've also been having strategic discussions on how to enhance our communication
066with our members dr lance said earlier that email is not enough um we need help with our social media page but just being able to make that connection with our members i work really well in person with members not that i don't do well on zoom but as far as building a relationship i feel like being in person for me will help people to see me and get to know me more as the chair so that that is our update from a membership standpoint um we do have some committees that will be looking at deactivating depending on what our needs are for next year but we'll be giving those updates a little later towards the end of the school year any questions done so i have a question uh mr schwartz so my understanding having
067been on ptos at the school level also is that the way it would normally work is that a cac members for a specific school would meet with cac and then go back and meet with the ptos or booster however it was set up at each individual school i'm assuming part of the issue you guys are still having is that the ptos at many of our schools are also probably still virtual since we're not really having a lot of volunteers in the schools is that something that you're seeing and part of the disconnect you think yes i i would say that that is part of the disconnect and i'm glad that you brought up the uh the relationship between the cac member going back to the pto another thing we discussed is having these like highlights
068or bullet points to provide for our cac members so they feel confident going to their pto once they are a cac member i have not been on many of the pto or pts meetings for our my son's schools because i'm not able to come but when i do come there isn't really a cac update portion for at least the schools i attend but i do know that there are some cac members that have contacted me one in particular has been very active this year and she's been taking the information back so we do have some that are taking it back to their school and they're doing it through the ptos because that's really the only avenue outside of letting the principal know or having access to the entire school's email database or putting it into
069the school's newsletter if there is one does that answer your question it does i've been uh yeah no and i bring it up because i've uh recently was like the last few years i've been part of the uh i want to call it the pto at over at bartlett high school and they've um in recent years they've had participation at the cac level that would always bring us information back however i know with um sitting on zooms it's been more difficult like i know for some people it's it's you know in theory you can get to a lot more zooms that way you can get to a lot more meetings but i know it's it's just been there's been some burnout and i know some people that have been uh cac participants in the past
070have have struggled to get back into it or maintain that presence so you know not that i have a solution but i was bringing it up just because i know that that was uh it was a strong way that cac was able to get the information back to the school so i just don't um i guess that's something that everyone can think about is how we you know how we re get that we get those relationships going again it's definitely difficult right right and thank you for those points and your comments we um we were hoping that we could steer people towards committee participation because our committees are not in webinar format but we didn't necessarily get the increase in our committees that we would have liked when you're in webinar format for your general
071meetings you're not having those uh those interactions where you see all the boxes and people can just freely unmute and have discussions and our business agenda portion has been you know very uh lean and not as much business going on from the cac aspect we've we've taken on more of an informative role which is great because there are a lot of parents that don't know about a lot of the presentations that we bring forward every month but then there are those parents that want to get their hands into something and be more interactive and let their voice be heard and come up with solutions strategize and i think that um we're probably missing a big bulk of those those parents and then people being zoomed out and just pandemic fatigue melissa yeah i would agree
072with that i mean i i think that cac is you know it's more about the work right and so when we're in webinar format it's a much more passive type of engagement and you know cac really i think kind of shines when they have work that they you know accomplish right and and inform the board of of of certain things so and i think maybe we have to have some conversations at the board level too because part of our you know cac is is our committee right to to be informative to us so how can we better utilize that because i i mean i i can completely see where this is a struggle with yeah um you know you guys are you're still pulling you know putting out great information i know that the um
073the webinars that i've attended the general meetings that i've attended i've really enjoyed the presentations but i understand the challenges too so yeah you've done a great job with that because i know how hard it is and i know how difficult the last couple of years have been i'm glad you're not decertifying schools melissa and i were both chairs of cac at one point and i'm sure she'll agree with me that that decertification just kills you and you say well this school can't vote because if not enough people showed up and um yeah so i think that's a that's a great decision yeah yes thank you thank you thank you for your support and and i'm willing to sit down with the with the board and um i know my executive committee we're willing to
074sit down and have these discussions however we need to have them to work together and move cac forward thank you thank you thank you and next item is work session contracts over 25 000. thank you our first contract and only contract over 25 000 is a contact for the deputy superintendent of instruction for learning sciences international summer conference 2022 in orlando florida uh mr farrell justin farrell is joining us this evening uh good to see you um he's our assistant buyer from the distribution center and distribution center manager and dr johnson of course deputy superintendent joins us as well administration recommends approval for up to 45 attendees at the learning sciences international conference not to exceed the amount of seventy five thousand dollars and request authorization for administration to execute related documents this will be
075charged at the elementary and secondary school emergency relief fund and is included in the budget for the fiscal year any questions don so i have i have two questions i guess so um my first question is based on the approximate target of 45 attendees at the 75 000. it's approximately 1700 an attendee do we know how that breaks down between like travel and the actual conference i just didn't see that in the information sure um so uh we have actually 33 seats that are included as part of our agreement with lsi 30 seats are included within the agreement with lsi 3 event also provided because we will be presenting i'm sure if you notice there is a presentation there from e46 that provides us an additional three seats so we are purchasing an additional 12.
076approximately 630 um for the conference registration per seat uh and then everything else we follow our district guidelines and policies for travel so that cost essentially is just maxed out all of that information at this time so that's including um the the most it could be for air travel and then three nights hotel as well as ground transportation and food and meals as well so that's that's where we came up with that number um and just just basic math at that point though that's fine and then my other question was um how are we choosing the attendees like and what's the breakdown between administration and teachers and other staff do we have that feel for what that would look like sure so we are still in process for for uh finalizing the participants we have
077started with the inclusion of all executive cabinet members and instructional cabinet members we've also invited our executive directors to of course attend as well as some additional directors from teaching and learning as well as communications we have principles from our current and future schools for river and equity we have also asked that they invite and identify rather a teacher to attend as well on behalf of their site as well as eta leadership also so you know the breakdown um at this point i'm still in the process i keep kind of rolling through this and once i get responses then i i include and send out another group of invitations so um you know right now i would say we're at approximately right now it's about 50 50 um but that's because i haven't completed all
078the invites yet so i've got a confirmation of i think 35 participants and we'll finalize the next 10 over the next but prior to spring break that's the goal and then you i i i know you listed what different programs you're going to have are you going to make sure people cover everything you know assign people or whatever because that's often how you get the most valuable information yeah absolutely um you know that's that's what we've done in the past it's been quite a few years though sorry um since we have had this opportunity so we will work through you know dividing and conquering i do expect that again not to self-promote but our own session in which we talk about our e46 work we'll probably be one in which as many as possible but
079uh they are also just as a side note to that um uh madam president they are also going to provide or facilitate a session for us at the conclusion of every day as well so because of our agreement they will work to bring us together to be able to debrief and make connections to where we are in new 46 rising our goals for next year um our own 45-day plans within our sites and across our system so i think i think that will likely be the um you know most productive session and time that we will have with our our team and the team from lsi great any other questions hey thank you okay thank you and some kids and proposals we have one bid uh proposal and pat waldo is coming up to uh
080to assist with this one it's a bid for plan operations for stream but high school pathways phase one early childhood healthcare science business incubator and science lab renovation project number 319. the administration recommends awarded a low bid meeting specification in northwest northwest contractors inc in the amount of four million eight hundred and ninety nine thousand six hundred and ninety seven dollars and requests authorization for administration to execute related documents this will be charged at the operation maintenance fund and is included in the budget are there any questions that's a big project will they get it done on time okay absolutely thank you okay anything else okay so i guess we're finished so if i could have a motion to adjourn second will call please ms martin yes ms owens yes ms porter president kerr yes
081we're adjourned at 8 10 pm you