Board Meeting - June 21, 2021

001so i would like to resume the june 21st new 46th board of education meeting before we begin i do want to note that we are still under 19 executive order number 80 um issued by governor pritzker although there are no board members who will be participating electronically tonight so if everyone could please stand for the pledge of allegiance america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay first item on the agenda mr sanders strategic plan update thank you madam president members of the board it's our honor to present actually two strategic plan updates this evening the first is an update on our work uh that we're engaged in uh that we're formally titling now uh u-46 rising with the collaboration with administrators and

002others we're proud to announce u-46 rising for some of the work that we're going to be doing post pandemic to really increase student engagement and learning across u46 in the coming years i'm going to pause just briefly if the tech folks could make sure that the board can see the screen on the on the front panel here mr leatherby if that's possible that'd be great um so i when we first came into the pandemic in march of 2020 i put this tweet out there and i it says if we come away from this the same then we failed meaning that if our schools look the same if instruction looks the same if everything that we do returns back to the what schools look like like they did when i was a kid and when you

003were kids and what our kids have currently been experiencing then we have failed and as your board knows uh through our work with lsi among other work that we're doing internally we really do want to transform the look and the feel of our schools and the level at which our students are engaged in their own learning so tonight we're giving the board a quick update on where we are with u-46 rising and especially our work with the schools of rigor and equity so with that i'll hand it off to dr johnson and team members can individually introduce themselves as they go thank you mr sanders and the board of education appreciate your time this evening and this opportunity to make this presentation as we begin i will note that we have made some minor updates

004to slides as we've continued to review it uh today so you might see a slightly different label or an updated graph and we'll be sure to highlight that but i i will call your attention to that as we begin so uh again as we share this update excited to announce that u46 rising refers to our renewed u-46 enhanced focused and commitment to our instruction as we transition to a post-covid response to learning inclusive of an organizational structure that has been changed and updated to better support our site-based administrators and our principals as instructional leaders while also building and supporting teacher leaders to guide and direct this work additionally the practices and the strategies that you see come forward are research based and align with our efforts and our initiatives with our u-46 equity plan and

005our inclusive practices and always driving those forward while addressing opportunity and outcome gaps for all students with a focus on growth and rigor for all students this focus will also assist us with developing student-led academic teams that will increase student agency collaboration and proficiency with a focus on core instruction we are talking about research-based work this evening that will transform our classroom from those that are primarily led by teacher-directed instruction to classrooms where our students drive their learning and their peers learning through inquiry exploration creativity and collaboration and our teachers support this learning as facilitators and guides this change will change will take time but we are proud to begin this work this summer with extensive preparation and planning and to initiate the work across all elementary schools and a group of consortium secondary teachers

006in the 2122 school year beginning in august we do have a tremendous sense of urgency and a commitment to this work and know that it will continue over the next five years and beyond as we touch all 57 sites all classrooms and all programs to best support student learning and prepare our students to contribute and thrive in our current world the world beyond us as we plan for the future while incorporating 21st century learning and professional skills for all students at this time i will introduce dr carpenter who will begin to describe what this transition will look like so why make this shift there are several reasons but we'll highlight a couple tonight the first is education has barely changed in the last century lots of sit and get the teacher as the center of

007the classroom almost uh you know in this picture here it's addicted it shows nearly 100 of direct instruction it's not working it's not working as well even with increased standards rigorous standards increased resources and programs technology various programs that are individualized for for students we haven't seen the growth that we want to see now we have to shift we have to make change to our practices this slide includes data demonstrating that the old way is not working the chart uh tracks a grade level cohort from third grade through seventh grade and shows the percentage of students reaching expected proficiency on the iar assessment previously park each line represents a particular student group and this chart represents proficiency on the english language arts portion of the assessments there are two important takeaways from this chart the

008first is lack of consistent growth as the results are essentially flat to down slightly over the five year period meaning many students who start below grade level remain below grade level as they progress through our system and the second takeaway are the persistent gaps between student groups so our goal is to see all the lines on this chart but the healthy upward and to the right trajectory as well as showing lines that are converging to show reduction in the gaps between student groups and to ensure that all our students are achieving academically to their full potential the next slide is a similar chart showing math performance on the iar or park assessment for the same cohort over the same five year period essentially the same pattern with flat to down slightly trend and no discernible

009closing of the gap between student groups we also know the old way is not working right now because it's not equitable we know it and our students know it we know it because we recognize disproportionality in our behavior referral data and an identification of students with learning disabilities as well as in the lack of academic growth and outcomes for our students our students know it by how they feel how affirmed they feel for who they are how likely they are to be understood and valued within our classrooms data from two recent surveys confirmed that here's the first example from our panorama equity and inclusion survey of students in grades 4 through 12 that was conducted in march 2021. while we were encouraged to see some gains from last year's results which was the first time

010that we had we had given this survey we still have only 52 percent of our students who respond favorably to questions regarding their sense of belonging and when we look at the disaggregated results we see further discrepancies in how some of our students feel about their educational experience at u46 and here's another example of how our students are telling us they feel from our most recent five essentials survey when you look at the top level results we actually increased in four of the five areas from the previous year which is encouraging but we decreased in the area of ambitious instruction which is an area in which both students and teachers respond to survey questions the five essential survey describes schools with having strong ambitious instruction as providing classes that are challenging and engaging with instruction

011that is clear well structured and encourages students to build and apply knowledge as you can see this definition is very much in line with the renewed focus on core instruction that dr johnson described earlier so to summarize from these two very recent surveys our students are telling us that they have a relatively low sense of belonging and also telling us that the instruction they receive daily is not ambitious enough these are important data points that support the u-46 rising effort and the shift to academic teaming that you'll hear more about tonight so at this point i'll hand it back to dr carpenter to continue our presentation thank you mr lindholm and as has been mentioned before this will be a lengthy process five years is what has been stated but it's it's uh nearly guaranteed

012it will be a non-linear process we'll learn a lot along the way we'll grow and develop as a system and as with any any system and any major change there will be unforeseen obstacles and there'll be challenges along the way and where we endeavor to meet each and every one of them but we will start this in phases and 2021 is phase one we'll introduce the new practices with lots of coaching and support we'll start with our elementary teachers and the consortium of secondary teachers and five selected schools will serve as pilot schools to pave the way across our schools and programs these are our schools of rigor and equity you have heard a lot you have heard a lot about our shift to student-led academic teaming in phase one we will spend significant time

013around providing critical professional development and coaching and around our how and why we're making this shift the student-led academic teaming we'll be building on 21st century skills which are embedded components of student-led teaming skills like collaboration because we know that that collaboration increases brain connections communication because we know that talking about new learning helps the learner remember it and critical thinking and problem solving because we know that teams make better cognitive decisions than individuals the next slide shows a teacher-centered classroom a tradition a traditional classroom that we may see in some in our in our school district and across the country it's very the teacher-centered approach is a dominant experience for students resulting in an academic culture of the classroom in the traditional teacher-centered classroom direct instruction is we see direct instruction almost 80 percent

014of the time the teacher does most of the talking and students are passive listeners yet we endeavor to move toward is student-centered academic teaming and again i will i will reinforce that this will take time for us to scale to the graphic that you see on the screen but we endeavor to have a classroom that is teacher excuse me is team centered as the dominant experience for students in the classroom because they spend most of the lesson time learning and teams in a student-led academic teaming environment students drive their own learning and their peers learning holding themselves accountable for reaching their learning targets while the teacher shifts to the role of facilitator and verifies learning in this kind of environment we would see 70 percent and 30 direct construction so if you think back to

015the the picture that we saw at the very beginning that's reflects almost 100 percent of teacher-led instruction we're going to be moving more towards that 70-30 model and now i will turn over to all my storage thank you and so while this work will be started with all of our elementary schools this year we have offered an opportunity for five elementary schools to become schools for rigor and equity these schools will continue to engage in all of that professional development and continue to have support however these schools will have an added layer of support in terms of frequency and intensity of support to ensure that we can accelerate their learning as adults in their implementation of this program these schools will all have supports such as ongoing instructional coaching both for individual teachers and teacher

016teams leadership coaching they'll be engaging in book studies to review what academic teams are and how to best implement it and above all they will have structures in place in their building for collaboration time both individual planning time so teachers can review student data and make decisions based on where their students are on a daily basis as well as team planning time to ensure that they have opportunities to engage in collaboration with teachers at the same grade level between programs but also vertically so that we can be aligned that way as well in our elementary schools we're working with these schools to provide at least 180 minutes of individual and team planning time per week that's an increase from the current 60 minutes a week that they currently get so we offered this opportunity to

017all of our elementary schools and we were very strategic around how we wanted to set this up we provided an info session to all of all of the schools that were interested and there was an application process our five schools that were selected are selected based on the network or feeder pattern that they reside in with our new leadership structure so we have creekside elementary school that is in the larkin network willard elementary school from the south elgin network laurel hill elementary school that's in the bartlett network parkwood elementary school from the streamwood network and channing elementary school from the elgin network these schools showed that they were eager to implement change and be innovators they engaged in conversations with their principal to talk about the level of commitment that they needed to have to

018engage in this work and all agreed to be a part of it to move the school forward in addition to that we have a consortia of middle and high school teachers who also applied to be a part of this work as willing participants we know that we have to start somewhere so we're starting at our elementary level well i've done we've identified these five schools for rigor and equity to eventually serve as model schools so we can learn from the structures that they have in place and also think about how we might be able to scale that up at a later time with the consortia teachers they'll be engaging in the same professional learning opportunities and also coaching both individually and with teams as well and we're hoping to and as with this as with

019the consortia teacher um they will all be engaging throughout the district in academic teaming professional development this starts in august 2021 those who participate will also receive training in this in using the student evidence tracker for real-time formative assessment of student learning and for student self-assessment of learning and they're also receiving professional books to support the implementation of the classroom as well as training and coaching on an ongoing basis like i said earlier both individually and within their teams and as the improvement plan rolls out across the district our faculty and administrators will be visiting these classrooms to learn from them and learn around around what's going well and how do we scale this up and how can we how can we learn from each other to implement this district wide what we're trying to

020do with this is to connect and extend with what's already working so this model will allow us to learn from sites that are doing this that are doing it well and be able to scale that up we're ensuring that we're planning and delivering rigorous standards based lessons implementing powerful classroom strategies to increase rigor empowering students to engage in cognitively complex learning and using real-time formative assessment data to strengthen instruction and that's why that planning time is so important so that we have the structure in place but now we've got the support and the strategic plan to help make sure that that time is is used well and that we are making decisions based on student needs so u-46 rising it is a new day in new 46 and we are committed to making sure that

021all of our students advance in standards throughout their journey in our district and we're looking forward to continuing to do this work to ensure students can lead their own learning empowering them to be agents of learning in their own educational journey are there any questions does the board have any questions comments i don't have any questions a comment um i am excited about new 46 flies and i am so excited that we are going to venture into something new um as an educator this is the way to go so i'm excited to see what the outcome is going to be and i know it's going to be great because we do need to change and we have to make sure that we're changing and to have the five schools that's involved uh that's going to

022be wonderful to see the outcome of that so thank you so much for the team that worked on this and continue to keep us updated when this is implemented um and i just kind of sorry over here i just want to add on to that um i have been in classrooms that are set up in this team focus method and have done projects that are more team oriented and i really think that um it's so much more engaging than traditional classroom and i certainly learned so much more in those classes than i would have had they been not more traditional teacher oriented set up so i'm so excited that we're going to be expanding this for more students and a more diverse setup so great work i can't wait to see where this goes done

023so thank you for answering the couple of questions i submitted earlier um as far as the five schools that were chosen um you had mentioned there was a kind of a smaller number of schools that had pl applied to be the rigor in equity schools do we have concerns are there any concerns i guess about buy-in from some of the schools and the teachers as far as moving to this new format especially based on a lower number i guess a lower percentage of our elementary schools applying to be one of the first five i guess to really delve in and you know go all in on a new project well i think with any new initiative you're always going to have you know some people who are really excited about it some people who are

024on the fence and then some people who who might not be as excited about it as others but with our schools for rigor and equity that part of the application process was to engage in a conversation with the entire staff so that they would be interested in it and to gauge that so that's part of the application process we asked what was you know how did you engage with your staff in this like how do you know that people are interested in it and that was part of that process so for those five we know absolutely that they are um they're all in and that's super exciting for us and given given the history also that we as we brought forward the earlier proposals working uh for the the schools towards the school's rigor and

025equity um i think we were actually pleasantly surprised by the number of schools that applied to be and that we actually had one from each of the future patterns willing to take this on and the commitment of the teachers of all eight buildings that actually applied was amazing uh but the five that are selected even more so they were really they're they're ready to do this work and i think before long you'll see these as model schools yeah i was just going to add um of the 40 elementary sites because this was only available to our 40 elementary sites we had almost 25 apply to be one of these schools uh and so obviously not able to take all of them to begin we know that it's important as we roll through something and bring

026something like this forward to really be able to pilot and be able to focus on those schools we brought this forward of course at the end of a school year and of course the the most challenging school year i think that any of us have seen so to have approximately 25 come forward and say we'd be interested and we have substantial buy-in at our site where we could navigate any of those barriers or concerns i think was very positive and again we've spent some ongoing time done with these five sites as well so after they were accepted we had another informational meeting uh presented what this rollout of professional development training work ahead this summer would include and then next fall as well again still had positive participation and then we've also continued meeting with

027them so we had another meeting last week with the leadership teams from those sites so that's not only administration but those are teacher leaders from the sites again teachers who are volunteering to participate meet throughout the summer to identify what the scheduling will look like and what the needs will be at the site to be able to bring forward a schedule to support the plan time so that as ms nystorevich spoke of it our teachers have the ability to plan and work individually with a coach with their grade level team with vertical teams and to be able to really focus on the appropriate rigorous level of standards those learning targets and the need for that that formative student evidence continuing so i think we've been really pleased with that we have another meeting later this

028week again with those teams so we've we've had a lot of positive engagement and then so we have the five schools this fall that will have the additional supports and additional teacher hours so for fall of 2022 would we be in a position to have an additional five schools with those supports or would the idea be that the schools that now are these kind of small school models and have taken the first step on the path be more the in-house support for getting it set up at you know at the additional elementary schools sure i think that's that's the question that that is out there and certainly from the sites that weren't selected for this year they want to know what's the next like when's the next role in potentially for this so our goal

029is to be able to provide as much support and assistance to these five sites to be as successful but to be able to learn from them as well where where are the places that we need to be um ready to address some questions some challenges um things that don't go quite according to plan because whenever we're involving this many schools this many students we know we're gonna face that so being able to grow from that and then certainly um our goal is to be able to continue to move this out to additional sites for the 2022 school year whether that's five or three or four um and we will certainly revisit that and plan to come back to the board as ms porter has requested with additional updates throughout next school year so you would

030know in advance and sooner next winter or spring what that might look like moving forward for the 22-23 school year thank you you you had mentioned in one of your slides that we're going to have an aft upload structured after-school program could you describe that sure um just take a quick note here so one of the goals in being able to move forward to be able to best support our sites and our communities is to partner with some of our other community partners to be able to support our students and our families before school and after school uh and you've seen some of those proposals come to the board of education already with some of those partnerships where students are engaged again in additional learning in alignment with our standards-based curriculum it could be exploratory

031pieces it could be additional support for our students and that's before and after school one of the pieces that's critical is that if as schools are moving forward they identify the need to potentially adjust or alter their daily schedule meaning that the school with instruction with teachers may start slightly earlier might start a little bit later could go longer in the day we know that that can be very challenging for families so by bringing forward that partnership and being able to support students and families before school and at the end of the day for all our families and our our households that feed into these schools can be confident that we are willing and able to support their student for a standardized schedule every single day so knowing that it's not going to fluctuate from

032day to day week to week based on perhaps a slightly altered schedule to be able to accommodate some of that teacher plan time that is needed or some of those additional coaching pieces students will be engaged either in their learning whether classroom assigned teachers or via these other partnerships were before school and after school support as well and what that would look like um so those are pieces that we'll be finalizing this month early next month and sharing out with those households as well that's certainly critical feedback that we've received from of course our community throughout this school year as we've navigated a number of changes in scheduling but also one of our sites who is uh who has partnered with us to be a school for rigor and equity they've all they've had a

033long long-standing site exception and that is one of the things that they had to navigate because they had a slightly different schedule they always worked to make sure that their students and their households had a common start and end time this partnership will allow us to do that okay and another question i had is the you mentioned the collaboration within the five schools that we've selected will there be collaboration among the five schools i mean with zoom and everything these days it's a lot easier to have meetings yeah absolutely and so there will be opportunities um both for the leaders of the schools for rigor and equity once a month they'll engage in communities of practice as and then we're also developing structures for teachers within those schools for rigor and equity to have time

034together as well okay great thank you melissa you know i first started um having these discussions about this um rolling out this new initiative there was a family engagement component piece to that that that we had discussed is there going to be that involvement with these pilot schools um yes so we will we will absolutely need to be uh working with those families we have not in those households for these sites we're still trying to finalize that schedule so that we can initiate that engagement with our families again some of the feedback we've received is make sure that you have those details that we're going to want and that we need when we initiate that communication so we are working with our team to outline what that will look like and then what the what

035the ongoing interaction and collaboration will look like with families as well okay thank you and one final question for me what how will we measure if this is successful or what what are we looking for for outcomes i guess that's a better idea so there are a variety of outcomes one so there's two two things that we'll be looking at one is implementation are we doing what we said we're going to be doing so the way that we do that is you know if we say we're going to do x number of sessions of professional learning or engage in x number of meetings did we do that so that there's that those implementation indicators that we'll be measuring then there's also an implementation with a rigor diagnostic tool so we're actually engaging in training over

036the summer all of our principals our directors executive directors cabinet members are engaging in what's called measurement implementation training this summer and we'll be using a tool that is designed by our partners at learning sciences international to observe student learning in the classroom and that tool will allow us to gauge what learning looks like and at what level of rigor we're at within within that classroom for this first year our partners learning sciences international will be conducting what's called a rigor diagnostic they'll be doing that twice a year in the beginning of the year and at the end of the year obviously at the beginning of the school year we're just you know starting implementation that'll be our baseline data but then we'll be measuring that throughout the years to see what is what is

037student learning in the classroom look like as a pertains to that tool and are we growing in that area so that's the implementation piece and then of course you have all of our other metrics that we look at in terms of our impact or outcomes so we'll be looking at student grades we'll be looking at our you know standardized test scores attendance do we have more kids coming to school because now we have classrooms that are you know more engaging and there's more more agency with students and they're super excited to come but all of those typical metrics that we usually look at will be we'll be get looking at those as well and i imagine we want to see the the chart that mr lindholm showed us going up and getting narrowed between the

038lines up and to the right other questions eva i do want to say um when i retired i've been retired six years and i taught in that way with student-led learning and when we talk about measuring sometimes when something's implemented it takes a while to get the the feedback that you really want to get so you know as you update and things might not be coming in the way we want them to his voice their numbers are concerned doesn't mean we give up this is the way we need to go that's exactly right and if you the board recall we when when um you've actually seen some of the data that that's available through the the software and programming that we get from the rigor walks um and certainly we'll make sure that the board

039is kept up to date on on what that date is telling us because that is a leading indicator not one of the lagging indicators that you see on state report cards but that is really the data we should be measuring to to see how we're performing on a regular basis it'll also cause us to shift our practice at the cabinet level already has started to shift our practice at the cabinet level at the principal level doing book studies throughout the summer um and you're going to see this continue to be this a constant u-46 rising for at least five years and beyond so um this is not going away we're excited about the work any other questions well thank you keep us updated thank you team so are you getting our next presenter okay so

040it's our pledge tonight to give an update on our early learning initiatives programming uh i don't know katie that the board's actually ever met you in person we've seen you on zoom many times uh so kind of a funny story because in the world of interviewing people via zoom katie and i had never met in person we passed each other in the hallway like three times before we both realized wait a minute so um anyways thank you for being here with us tonight so i'll hand it over to dr carpenter and katie cox to do their their update so mr sanders will the slide deck be um presented on the screen um let me check with mr leatherby to see if he has access to your slideshow working on it working on it we can

041go and get started um the board yeah the board has access to it on board docs if we don't mind starting with board docs and then we'll get it on the screen as quickly as we can if that works that way we don't hold it up uh thank you mr sanders for that introduction and thank you to the board for providing this opportunity for us to give you an update on our early learner goal and also to formally welcome miss cox to our team and she's been on the job for five months starting in february and fun fact that as as part of the onboarding process uh i asked miss cox to put together a plan to evaluate our early learners program which is the goal that we're responding to right now so little did

042she know at the time that she was actually doing that for for two for two purposes so we've been doing a fantastic job of um evaluating um our early learners program and uh looking forward to hearing the update tonight so miss cox that's great great to meet all of you i've been you know a fan from listening at home so it's been great i'm happy to be here tonight tonight my hope is that by the end of this presentation you'll have a better understanding of our birth of five initiatives and recognize why they're so critically important we need to speak into this and realize our efforts in evaluating our department's work and making plans to build on our successes do i advance these or do you guys do that okay got it um so from

043the first day a child is born we have only two thousand days until they begin kindergarten eighty-five percent of a child's brain development happens before the age of five we know that the sooner we start working with our kids and their families the more successful they're going to be early childhood education has been gaining bipartisan political support in recent years because of the long-term academic and economic impact it has on our youngest citizens and our larger community outcomes in order to identify what efforts are needed to support school readiness the state of illinois implemented a kindergarten readiness assessment in 2017. within the first 40 days of kindergarten all children in illinois are measured with the kids survey in 2019 29 29 of children across the state were deemed ready for kindergarten as evaluated in three

044developmental areas which were language and literacy social emotional and math in that same year in 2019 15 percent of u46 students were found to be ready in three developmental areas so we have our work cut out for us in our department school districts are required through federal mandate and state codes to find all the children our boundaries between the ages of birth to 21 and screen them for any services that they may qualify currently our child find efforts are listed on this slide the majority of our work in child find happens through our partnerships with our community collaborations with much of this being done with our partnership with apple the elgin partnership for early learning apple much like u46 serves all of our communities by partnering with the large systems that serve our families such

045as the public libraries healthcare park departments and city governments currently we have a large gap of services for young children and we do not have enough slots for preschool and early childhood care and education to meet the needs in our community learning on the go is a one of the larger initiatives in apple and it creates early learning opportunities in non-traditional sites around our communities so the picture on this slide shows language and literacy in the laundromats so in five participating laundry mats across our community we have little kind of classroom setups with libraries and literacy activities for families um to participate in while they do their laundry in addition to that we have read while you wait book baskets and i want to say it's like in a couple hundred locations across the community

046and then we also participate in distributing and helping to create um getting ready for kindergarten calendars that are distributed each year i feel like it's been for over five years that we've been participating with that and each year there's about 11 000 calendars that go out across the community in addition to all of this we are a member of the elgin community slot gap planning team working with apple and partner organizations to plan for ways that we can all work together to expand programming and reach more children and families in our community last week i was fortunate to meet with our child care center directors so they're all the directors that work with our daycare providers in our community to start to form a relationship with them because they're teaching our kids too before they

047come to kindergarten so the more that we can partner with them share goals and professional development with them the more ready our kids are going to be we need to work as a whole community system to support our youngest citizens so we can thrive your next slide is going to show you some information about our preschool screening process we've been working to consolidate all of our screening efforts into one simplified system for our families on average in our department we screen about 700 children a year with the size of our district and the amount of program slots we have i'm hoping we can reach many more families and children in the years to come each screening takes about an hour to complete children receive a developmental checkup a language screening vision and hearing screening parents

048complete an interview and the district registration process in that time following the collection of all of this required information our staff evaluates the child's file and all of their data to determine if they meet the criteria for one of our programs if they do they get enrolled in the program if they do not meet the criteria they're placed on a waiting list or told that they don't meet the criteria and we offer them other services in the community that they may qualify for not all school districts in the state of illinois are funded to provide preschool programs isbe offers competitive funding opportunities and grants to organizations and districts to be able to offer these services so we compete with all of these other entities in the state and we've received three grants historically we have

049the ones highlighted in yellow on this slide so parents as teachers is our first grant funded program it's a prenatal to h3 home visiting program where parent educators go into the homes of pregnant moms or young families that have toddlers and they teach them developmentally responsive parenting parent and child interaction skills and family well-being supports we also offer early childhood special education services kids before the age of three receive home-based services speech developmental therapies occupational therapy physical therapy but once they turn three years old it's the responsibility of the school district to provide those services so we do that for our community as well we also offer two preschool programs that are state funded preschool for all and preschool for all expansion preschool for all is a half day program and all of our sites

050are listed there on the slide it's a half day program kids come either in the morning or afternoon and then our preschool for all expansion is a full day preschool program that is offered to kids that are four years old the year before they go to kindergarten both of those programs have specific criteria outlined in the grants that the kids need to meet in order to participate our kindergarten program which i'm very excited about being here and working with is a full day play-based comprehensive developmentally appropriate kindergarten that spans all of our content areas and is aligned to our elementary school at the bottom of the slide here you will see that i just listed um based on census information the number of kids that we have in our community and you see it's i

051think it's a little over 18 000 kids we only have the capacity with us and our community partners in elgin to serve 22 of those kids in early learning and so that's something where that political support i'm really hoping turns into some money and that we can expand our program in the future so we just wanted you all to see those numbers um so looking at our transition my transition into this role i started in early february and as josh said my task during interviewing was to share my plan for evaluating our program and so in the last few months i conducted focus groups with teachers para educators principals 37 groups total and i met with 87 staff members all the staff members that met with me did so voluntarily they weren't paid for their

052participation and boy did they have a lot to share so it was great i really learned a lot from that i selected three questions to ask them and they're very simple and general but i did that purposefully because i didn't want to lead the conversation in any specific direction so i ask them what's working in our program what is not where areas of growth and then what do they need from me as their director to be successful in their work on the next slide i summarized the bulk of the information i know it's a lot of information but i just want to point out a couple of the themes so um for strengths it was really exciting that it didn't matter if it was the para educators i was speaking with the teachers administrators parent

053liaisons really everyone felt that we have a committed classroom staff including paris and teachers that do an excellent job of providing a developmentally appropriate experience for our kids and that they are led by administrators in the buildings that are supportive and accessible to them and that the administrators really know their families and are available so that was that's a really strong strength i was excited about for growth opportunities um mostly what they identified were systems kinds of things that they thought we needed to work on so we needed to increase access to our programs for all members of our community and simplify our screening and enrollment procedures to help families be able to navigate navigate them easier they also wanted to see us work to create department cohesion and alignment across all of our sites

054and elementary schools as far as advice for me they asked that i provide them with clear communication and expectations and that i'd be a part of their team by being visible and in the buildings as much as i could so i just picked out a few of the actions that we've started to work on in the department to address these areas in order to address access we formed a small work group in mid-february to begin to evaluate and streamline our screening and registration process our goal is to increase the access for our families and we revised and consolidated our paperwork to make the process simpler when i sat down with this small work group it was like over 20 pieces of paper that people had to fill out to be screened it was very robust

055so we've gotten it down i think we're like under 12 which is a lot better but still i'm hoping we can do better yet um and we updated our website to create a centralized screening point of entry that allows us to track all the families that are requesting screenings tracks when the staff has contacted them when their appointment is what the result of the screening was we also assembled a team from across our whole program of secretaries community parent liaisons teachers para educators and administrators to work three days throughout the summer screening our children so we do screenings right now monday tuesdays and wednesdays at illinois park and we're registering students and getting them enrolled for the fall since early may when we opened the portal we've had 360 families sign up to be screened

056which is really exciting since we only screened 700 families in the last couple years so we're halfway there in two months so i've got high hopes for what we're going to accomplish this year as part of my role i also worked to create communication routines with our staff that was really important to them so throughout the year i send out a weekly communication to principals and a monthly newsletter to our teachers on the first friday of every month the staff has been very positive and excited about the communication and it's helping to create some initial consistencies another part of my work was learning our budgets and where we could leverage funds to support our early learners during covid some of the money that had been set aside and the grants wasn't needed for we weren't

057busing as many students we weren't feeding as many students we weren't sending staff to professional development you know in person so we reallocated those funds and we were able to update classroom furniture and materials as well as provide summer learning backpacks to all of our preschool students this summer so over a thousand backpacks were handed out to the kids and they really promote literacy math and then outdoor exploration so the last part of our presentation is about the plan that we had initiated last year to work with the national pre-k to third grade center at the university of denver to create a tool to evaluate the administration of early learning programs well the plan i created really looked at things at the ground level this evaluation looks at the lens from the top of our

058organization how are we set up to support early learning initiatives from the top so due to kova the evaluation timeline was altered some of the work did continue through this year with the qualitative pieces aren't going to happen until the fall of this year of 21. so during the past year the audit tool was created the team from the university of denver was able to learn more about our program history and our current evaluation practices and next the university of denver team will be conducting focus groups with principals and district office administrators and using the audit tool to evaluate our strengths and area of needs and we would expect to see those findings in early next year so january february of 22. so there's not an industry standard evaluation tool for administrator for evaluating the

059administration of early learning programs so this partnership is giving us a unique opportunity in some groundbreaking work the process will fully capture the capacity of our district to lead administer and sustain the early learner initiatives by evaluating the points you see on the slides so looking at our mission and strategic plan our central office organization and structure decision making practices investments in professional learning access to programs to look at a few so just in closing it's been it's my honor to serve u-46 and to work and be part of such a strong team and do this important work if you guys have any questions about my presentation i'm happy to answer them do people have any questions i have i have one question um you mentioned we're doing screening at illinois park have we thought

060about doing it elsewhere in other parts of the district i believe we're all moving all over everybody over to 10 19 for all of our screening purposes so it's a one-stop shop at the 1019 building which we're probably going to be naming it the family welcome center okay part of what went into the decision was the short timeline and that we there's like construction and other buildings and stuff so we went with illinois park because we could people could park easily and then get in the building and there was no construction happening um but but we are moving to a centralized screening do you have any concern that some people may not have transportation to get there and how are we addressing that yep so we when we contact the families like that sign up

061for the screening if we offer like if you can't come into screening we can come to you we can do home visits the other thing we're doing is we're in the parks um five days a week signing up families for screening and same thing is offered if you're not able to make it we'll come to you okay great yeah any other questions melissa and the audit tool that you're um developing that's going to also encompass the community partner so like apple and ace they'll they'll be part of that audit as well i don't i don't you would know better that's correct that's correct because we as data in there we want to we want to understand how we work with our partners yeah and um and again there's not an industry standard right now for

062evaluating programs like what are these partnerships how are we utilizing them how are they helping us uh how are they opening the community so yes that would be part of it yeah i think that's going to be really helpful because we're talking about students that aren't necessarily in our buildings right and still we're having an impact through the community partners and through our liaisons with them but i'm looking forward to seeing that complete audit and seeing how all of these different pieces get put together i just want to clarify um because we are such a large district you know i know apple has in their name elgin partnership for early learning you know ace um tends to be very um elgin centric and in some of their um partners that are involved with them but

063these both of these organizations reach district wide right they're they're in all corners of our district so it's not just an elgin focus it's where we're encompassing the entire district okay thank you sure eva um yes i have a question um well i've been on the board for two years but when you said that 15 of the kindergartners are not ready for 50 of the students are not ready for kindergarten have we seen did you say that i did say okay have we seen that needle move at all in the last two years when we tested those kids coming in sure so the data so i took this data just off the state board of education website and i believe it had gone up from the two years previous so i think maybe we started

064at like 10 and we went to 12 and 15. so there's an upwards trajectory this year's data due to covid was not required to be turned in until the end of the school year so we won't have this year's data like the 20 data until probably the fall i would guess that we would see it um and then this year i think is going to be a little bit of an a lot like anomaly as it's presented but we should see i i would expect that it will move a little bit yes a great program i need one of those calendars i had one for the last two years but i didn't get one this year i will get you no problem [Laughter] thank you anyone else thank you very much thank you for what

065you're doing looking forward to hearing hearing more about it so thank you thanks so much all right next on the agenda comments from the audience mr sanders we have comments yeah we do we have um looks like five comments in total mary fergus will read the uh intro um and then i will uh mary you said you entered him also into the spreadsheet so i can read them off from the spreadsheet correct okay so she'll do the ruby's part and i should have him directly here so it looks like we have four in person and one who will be via zoom but we'll go in the order that they came in good evening and welcome to the board of education meeting we are now at the public comment portion of the meeting attendees wishing to

066make a public comment tonight were asked to complete a request to speak for them in advance those wishing to speak in person or via zoom those who chose to speak via zoom were provided with a webinar id number to call in promptly at 7 pm today june 21st as always speakers will be given 3 minutes to share their comment 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 u46.org those emails were posted on the board agenda for public viewing thank you marion thanks for pitching for uh ruby marufo then

067i appreciate it so our first public speaker this evening is linda sabo who is here in person so linda if you come on up and um just make sure you're one of the microphones that has the green light on and any one of them will work okay thank you my name is linda sabo and i'm here in collaboration with awake illinois a non-profit social welfare organization to address the votes by the 132 thousand on latin x curriculum it's our understanding that this is being chosen to affirm and promote inclusiveness of students including transgender but if inclusivity is the goal how can latinx be considered as think now research indicates that the latino community opposes the term has there been any meaningful request for input from the latino community and parents with regards to this curriculum

068parents of this district are concerned more with gang activity and safety and these funds could be better utilized treat others as you would want to be treated does not require 132 thousand dollar price tag it's just another dei and critical race theory curriculum agenda pushed on our kids dividing them rather than bringing unity on the elementary level senate bill 818 has passed in the state it is waiting governor's signature what opportunities will be available to taxpayers of u46 to view the possible curriculum before selection and what participation will parents and taxpayers have in the process in a coed setting grades three through five will need to explain masturbation hormone blockers on young people who identify as transgender and define and explain differences between cisgender transgender gender non-binary gender expansive grades six through eight will need

069to define vaginal oral and anal sex and must be able to name four methods of contraception available without prescription and how to access as well as describe pregnancy options including abortion this causes children discomfort and embarrassment which makes this sexual harassment is out outlined in code 7.020 of your anti-harassment policy if this bill is signed into the into law the board needs to drop a resolution that u-46 will not sexualize our children and will not harass our children sexually harass our children tell springfield no well we want the board to be transparent to parents and the general public to ensure full parental understanding of any sexual education and options that parents wish to opt out of sex education for their children you're awake illinois and you will be canceled thank you our our next public

070speaker is supposed to be via zoom it's angie world rollville rule um is she in the audience by any chance here tonight angie um angie if you are on the zoom can you please uh use your participant uh thing to raise your hand uh on the zooms i do not see your phone number or you in the attendee room and while we're waiting for you to respond i will go into the next speaker um who is sherry tucci who's here in person regarding the latinx curriculum sherry oh she's up in the overflow room okay well if whoever's watching it go to the overflow room if you're in the overflow room come on down um i'll just go to the next person on the list then uh brian framer did i say that right mr grandma

071yep i just got to put my uh i have it saved in my phone sure hello my name is brian i come to speak today against crt being taught crt is spitting on the brave of martin luther king jr and destroying what he taught on judging people on the content of their person's character and not the color of their skin you are doing the same propaganda tactics as hitler mousey tongue pop stalin ho chi minh fidel castro the clan and isis what tactics are those you might ask attacking a group of people based on heritage religion and race how does it feel to be doing to be doing the same thing as some of the most evil people in history as a white american my family never owned any slaves they came here in the

072early 1900s to the mid-1900s my italian family faced bigotry when they came here but instead of being a victim they persevered and became extremely successful how is it not racist to tell black or hispanic americans that because of their skin color they can't be successful i don't know it sounds racist to me what you're doing is nothing but socialist communist and fascistic control tactics and having family who fought against those evil ideologies i will continue to speak children don't see race they are innocent stop trying to corrupt and brainwash our kids all you're doing is creating more division remember judge people by actions not actors and i would just like to say one more thing on how our school systems aren't working apparently everyone i grew up with my family my parents all had to

073go through the same school where the teacher was doing the instructions and they became successful from upper middle class to extremely rich so maybe it's not what's how it's being done maybe it's the teachers thank you very much sherry are you hi come on i'm cherry tucci uh you're up next uh for your three minutes good evening good evening i appreciate your introduction i come from an education room i spent 17 years uh in private and public schools um i advocate for the children i did special ed services i worked for the kids that were told they were excuse me lazy they weren't able to do things i had to find their superpower i think that's our interest i think that's what we want to do here but i think that there are a lot

074of things that are trying to be pushed too quickly every year when we go to our teacher classes seminars there's a lot of curriculums that we look at and consider and it's always a cost and budget issue and it it's no different now but i think it's more important now how we spend that money and how we advance the greater populations that are attending our schools you know the latinx curriculum i couldn't find a lot pertaining to even high school students there's college-based and you know post-secondary school ideas about it but i don't know how big of a population that is going to serve i think that we are all sitting here with masks on still okay there's a lot of science in all directions that we follow and not to be redundant but our

075kids are still facing this the abnormalcy that they have dealt with you know especially the upper grade kids they are so impacted by this i think the funding for the early childhood initiative is outstanding i think that's where we need to get back to you know we need to intercept these kids the money hundred and thirty two thousand dollars you know in any budget that's a lot of money that can benefit there was a statistic that i saw um that said there's eighteen thousand children in the district in uh 22 receive uh you know an application to be considered but only 700 are selected that's five percent of the ones that qualify to even receive that application it's not enough that's just not enough and there's money being spent in other areas that can better

076serve and start at the bases of where these kids need to be intercepted we know if they're not intercepted until third grade takes them to high school to catch up with their peers so i'm imploring you all to consider reallocating funds i do believe my time is up but i do wish you would reconsider putting those funds to better use that is going to reach a broader band of our students throughout the whole district not just in the high school level in a certain quadrant of the education realm thank you i appreciate your time thank you the online speaker again angie roll the vuel if you're there if you could raise your hand in the chat box i will be glad to call on you when i see your hand raised uh if not we

077will go on to joan emsting as our final speaker of this evening hello my name is joan ernstein i am a resident of carroll street and have been in the u46 school district for over 35 years i just have a couple of comments about some of the issues from today primarily latinx i agree with the lady who spoke before me um the money that is being um offered for this program for um basically a name change and um pertaining to a certain group i'm not sure is the best way to spend that money i have spoken to several of my hispanic neighbors just around my block and they don't know what it is they are not interested in it they just kind of roll their eyes and a few said everyone is so sensitive today

078and they feel that if the district is planning something like this it would be to appease more sensitive people we have we lost a year last year some not entirely but the kids are behind and i think putting that money it would be better spent um toward more education rather than an ideology that is the current trend um thank you thank you do you ever get the online person to see no she never raised her hand so i believe we were done with public comments man of president i do you mind if i just make i would like to just respond to a few things typically you don't respond but i would like to just point out that the the curriculum proposal if you could go back and watch the youtube video when it was

079presented to the board is an elective for high school it's a capstone course for a district that is now dual language pre-k through senior year beginning next year so we are a dual language district 55 percent of our students are latino uh eight percent are asian six percent are black and 26 are white so this does fit the the our student population demographics i would also point out that um there are 53 instructional mandates in the state of illinois there's one to teach the irish famine there's one to teach the holocaust there's one to teach about the history of african americans in the country there's one on mexican deportation illegal deportation of mexicans there are there's leaf eriksen day if you go through the 53 list you will find so many different races and cultures

080already where we're required by law to teach in our classrooms this fits i mean anyway i'll just i'll leave it leave it at that this is a it's a really good curriculum that's well worth more than even 126 thousand dollars so i'll just leave it at that thank you okay next um other business board member and superintendent update and i'd like to start for once um because as you know if you look at our consent agenda under the personnel report we have a lot of people leaving um that is really sad so i'd like to recognize them and i'm just going to do it alphabetically and and talk a little bit on each one that they've been a tremendous help to the board of tremendous support to the board so mr steve berger who's an

081assistant superintendent for elementary schools instruction and equity i have learned so much from him i didn't know him when he's a he was a principal i know melissa did but being on committees with him i've learned a lot about how schools work and some of the issues that schools face every day i've particularly enjoyed serving on the reopening committee last summer with him and again learned a lot there dr jeff king who's a deputy superintendent of operations and also the treasurer of the school board i have known him since my days on cac and he is one of the most honest straightforward people i've ever met and if you ever ask him a question he will give you a straight answer no matter how difficult the question he's always willing to be helpful he cares

082so much about the kids and that's really obvious when you when you work with him and he's just so incredibly knowledgeable everything from the physical plant to finances so i have no idea how we're going to replace him but he will be very much missed mr luis rodriguez you're probably one of our unsung heroes uh luis is very works a lot behind the scenes for the board he has everything from being a hearing officer to doing the very thankless task of maintaining our board policies you've done it with good humor and always willing to put a lot of effort in it and you're also willing to answer a lot of our questions many legal questions we have so thank you thank you and mr miguel rodriguez who was the board secretary and the chief legal

083officer who's retiring he has guided this board through many legal issues he's helped me as board president to do things right which i don't always do and i know i speak for the former president donna smith on the guidance he's given her helping us run meetings smoothly and he's always been willing to research a legal topic and provide information and finally dr ushma shah who's assistant superintendent for elementary schools instruction and equity it has been a pleasure knowing dr shah these past few years she has provided me with many thoughtful insights into some of the many issues facing education in a more on a more personal level i've really enjoyed talking to her and getting her ideas and and getting to know her better so we will miss all of these people i have been

084such an important part of the board so thank you all very much thank you so that's why that was mine i i'll just echo your remarks i i can't thank uh obviously jeff ushma steve miguel louise moore um you're more than uh colleagues your friends and family and always will be i'm looking at you luis because you're sitting right there so um we very much appreciate all of your work uh you've made a difference in the lives of hundreds of thousands of kids within your time in u46 thank you thank you eva i just want to give recognition to the equity symposium that took place on june 7th through the 10th um i want to thank dr lance and her committee there were many people that were involved in that the symposium was phenomenal very

085educational and much needed it was a four-day symposium that addressed the many needs and highlighted others it addressed the district's resolution to call to action for equity i was so excited every day for four days to get up and get on the zoom and get on the webinars and be educated uh be revived look at reflections on myself as a person um it was just phenomenal they had some incredible speakers guest speakers that were keynote speakers and it was just wonderful um this was the first symposium and i think they're working on another one coming up if you were not a part of it you missed something great i want to thank the district for making sure that they have symposiums such as this so that we can be educated we when we know better

086we can do better we can leave us leave our children in the district um it was just incredible it was on equity cultivating uh relevant practices and inclusion uh as a staff member you know we talk about equity all the time we talk about the different things that we need to do for the diversity in this district so we want to make sure that we're educated and i think that we got some great lessons those four days on things that we might not have thought about things that we need to think about and things that we need to change to change your mindset and so i was so excited about that so dr lanson i know it was so many others i won't even start to call the names but it was a great symposium

087and thank you so much i also forgot last time we had the board meeting to talk about the curriculum instruction of the african-american studies i was so excited that this district is moving forward with that i know it's on the consent agenda tonight and i am so excited about the 18 teachers and administrators that sought fit to call to action for the june from the june 15 2020 resolution that we put in place on equity uh to provide every student with equitable equitable assets to a high graduate high qualities and cultivating curriculum and educational resources i'm so excited to vote on this tonight that we can go forth with the african-american curriculum and i just don't know what else to say you know when we learn about other cultures and we understand the history that

088happened then we have a better understanding and respect so for that committee that worked on that and for the consulting team the writing team that's going to be working once we vote on it to help put that framework in place as a district thank you can i just do one more so i i want to just echo your comments as well the symposium was awesome rockstar speakers uh it just very well organized and so informative um just a wonderful event i also wanted to say i know i made remarks to the public speakers here this evening but my point was trying to say who among us doesn't want to see their culture represented in the curriculum that that our children are taught i do right i mean who among us does not want to bypass

089time so um and then i also would like to take a moment and recognize that for a lot of the participants on tonight's zoom meeting they're teachers who are not required to work in the summer but many are joining us from home tonight for various presentations and i want to thank them for their commitment uh for being with us during their summer when they should be being refreshing or refreshing themselves for the start of august so uh thank you for being here with us anyone else um there's actually something so sorry i'm trying to it's okay it's okay um first of all ms porter i absolutely agree with you um the equity symposium and this new um after attending american studies like both of those are just so exciting for me because i've known how

090that affects so many students and helping them feel more comfortable and more represented in these districts and this is definitely beneficial for a district as diverse as ours um the only other thing i wanted to say was this past thursday um i was able to meet with miss mastrokovich and dr johnson to talk about a little bit more about the distance learning academy that we have in the works for next year and we were able to talk about how we wanted that um what we wanted that to look like in the classroom and some ways that we can talk about um making sure that all their needs social emotional and educational are being fully met and so i was really thankful to them for giving me that opportunity to meet with them and i'm really

091excited for the next steps we have coming up for that anyone else okay thank you all right next item is the consent agenda mr sanders on the consent agenda we have personnel report in workers compensation cases minutes of the board meeting june 7th 2021 resolution authorizing participation in federal and state supported programs a resolution authorizing the school treasure to make bond and interest payments resolution authorizing the transfer of interest earnings from working cash fund to the operation and maintenance fund a contract for curriculum instruction for african american studies curriculum consultant contractor enrolled for curriculum instruction for blue streak math intervention resource contract renewal for curriculum instruction for edpuzzle contract removal for curriculum instruction for cami a contract renewal for curriculum instruction with learning a to z contract renewal for curriculum instruction for pear dec contract

092renewal for curriculum instruction for st math intervention resource renewal contract renewal for curriculum instruction zoom contract for human resources for life long-term disability critical illness and hospital indemnity insurance and short-term disability claims administration services contract renewal for human resources with firm systems which is futures and rehabilitation management inc contracting renewal for human resources for our vision insurance policy contract renewal for illinois association of school boards annual dues contract renewal for information services for micro focus software a bid from business services for district cellular service a bid from information services for network switches proposal from educational pathways for vex robotics v5 upgrade proposal from transportation department for gps three six to four 3g to 4g conversion upgrade and that is the consent agenda all right are there any items board members would like to move from

093the consent agenda okay could i have a motion to approve the consent agenda so move second this is veronica any discussion roll call please mr deborah yes miss martin yes miss nolan yes miss owens yes mrs porter yes madam president yes motion passes 6-0 all right discussion action mr sanders our first item under discussion action number our itemized bills for june 21st 2021 mr burnage is here the court has questions administration recommends the board approve the list of bills in the amount of nine million four hundred and seventy eight thousand four hundred and seventy dollars and seventy eight cents could i have a motion to approve the list of bills in the amount of nine million four hundred seventy eight thousand four hundred seventy dollars and seventy eight cents so move this is veronica second

094john any questions or discussion roll call please mr deborah yes miss martin yes miss nolan yes miss owens yes mrs porter yes madam president yes motion passes 6-0 all right next was a presentation at the last board meeting for incubator edu curriculum proposal if the board has questions i see mitchell breesmeister director of educational pathways and we also have doreen roberts a teacher leader of educational pathways with us this evening administration recommends the board of education approve the incubator edu curriculum proposal could i have a motion to approve the incubator edu curriculum proposal so move this is veronica any discussion or questions roll call please mr deborah yes miss martin yes miss nolan yes miss owens mrs porter yes madam president yes motion passes 6-0 our next is also was presented the last board meeting

095and returns tonight for a vote for latino latina latin x studies curriculum proposal dr acevedo i believe is with us yes i see dr acevedo here with us this evening if the board has questions with that administration uh strongly recommends approval of the latino latin latina latinx studies curriculum proposal could i have a motion to approve the latino latina latinx studies curriculum proposal still move this is veronica second eagle porter any questions or discussion melissa i know it's been mentioned a couple times that um this proposal carries a price tag 132 thousand dollars i want to focus for a moment on the estimated cost per student because i think that we need to be looking at this as at the student level um and that estimated cost is 76 dollars per student per year we're

096talking about a curriculum that is taking you know this is housed under honor spanish language arts right but we're talking about a curriculum that is truly cross-curricular that's taking language and melding that with history and with art and with culture and in my mind that's where language lives right you don't truly understand a language until you look at it from the lens of the culture of the history of the art being the parent of a rising senior and looking at colleges and looking at the level of work that our students are going to be doing as they progress to the next level after they take a class like this and where there are majors in in latinx studies where there's majors in you know all sorts of different special interest studies that that you know

097quite frankly weren't around when i was younger i promised you that those are going to cost more per credit hour than 76 dollars this is a phenomenal value for what we are giving our students and i fully support this anyone else mr debra yeah i just echo a couple of those comments uh this is we talk about academic rigor whether it's you know the new programs we're talking about you know to launch this year or high school or what have you this is a rigorous course a really challenging course and to be able to provide more and more uh courses um at this level to challenge our students to give them opportunities as someone said that prepare for college to to replace the course of college is a remarkable opportunity on our part you know

098the area of topic or focus on this one again um we obviously serve a very broad and diverse community um and so uh you know this feels so good and so important both the content and the the quality of the course so glad to support it anyone else i echo that with 55 of the students in this district that's latino i think they would love to see a course like this that would benefit them and not just them but all students roll call please mr deborah yes miss martin yes miss nolan yes miss owens yes mrs porter yes madam president yes motion passes 6-0 all right next is another proposal that was on work session but returned tonight for discussion action it's the specialized student services study skills curriculum proposal if the board has questions

099we have with us dr carpenter dr satter white and miss favianczek administration recommends the board of education approve the specialized student services study skills curriculum proposal could i have a motion to approve the specialized student services study skills curriculum proposal so mo this is veronica seconded don any questions or discussion roll call please mr deborah yes miss martin yes miss nolan yes miss owens yes mrs porter yes madam president yes motion passes 6-0 our next one is a bid from business services for elementary schools classroom desks and chairs this was not previously on a work session item but given uh continued guidance from the state health department that we will continue to have to enforce the three feet of distance social distance into next school year we will need additional equipment in order to accommodate

100all of our students if the board has questions mr farrell is here from business services uh so administration recommends award of the low bid meeting specifications to warehouse direct for one hundred and seventy four thousand three hundred and seventy dollars and fifty three cents and frank cooney for thirty thousand four hundred thirty six dollars and fifty cents for a total of two hundred and four thousand eight hundred and seven dollars and three cents and requests authorization for administration to execute related documents this will be charged with the educational fund and will then uh should be reimbursed through the federal ester dollars and the cost will be included in this fiscal year's budget okay could i have a motion to approve the purchase of elementary classroom desks and shares from warehouse direct and frank cooney for

101a grand total of two hundred four thousand eight hundred seven dollars and three so cents the porter second veronica any questions you listen i think it's just a quick question i know that i know you know it states the proposal and i know that that this is the reality that there's a long lead time for any kind of anything being manufactured at this point um if something happens to change would which it's been you know throughout this pandemic that's what we've seen is these rapid changes um what is actually the lead time on this and then assuming that at some point we will go back to normal distancing with with students will these desks then be used to replace equipment that has become obsolete yeah and i adjusted i assume that that's the case that

102we would continue to use this equipment whether or not it's needed for the pandemic because we could replace or outdated furniture is that correct justin absolutely this was uh the same furniture has been utilized right now in the district so absolutely can be used towards uh agent obsolescence replace damage furniture elsewhere it's the same same tape same dust and chairs we're currently using now and as far as uh lead times go i know um warehouse direct as of today uh has the desks the elementary desks in stock ready to ship they can fill fill our whole court pretty quick here frank cooney on the chairs it's more based on as soon as we get the order in and give us more accurate lead time on the chair thank you and then just as an update

103the health department did a webinar today where they're still continuing to say the they figured out they're still saying restrictions will be in place at least at this point that's what they're telling us uh they are so yeah okay ms martin so the bid that we're looking at specifically says elementary chairs and desks um i'm assuming that the three foot spacing the department of health is mentioning is for all schools and all levels and how do we um i guess where do we stand equipment wise for trying to maintain that at the high school levels in the middle schools so we we did look at um at high schools as well but i held off on bringing forward a proposal for high schools at this time because and the rationale was secondary students have access

104to the vaccine 12 and up can be vaccinated so my presumption is that if we were to have any ease and restrictions it's going to be at the secondary level where students can get vaccinated so at this point we were holding off on any secondary purchases and just trying to maintain the three foot the best of our ability like we did the second semester so and i just um since it's you know where as people are mentioning the spending of money and why we need to do these things i want to make it very clear that we're doing this because we're being told by the department of health they anticipate at the elementary level at least a mandatory three-foot spacing continuing into this next school year so i want to make sure the families understand

105why we have um you know an unanticipated additional expense once again for covid and that it is based on what we know today for ongoing health standards yeah so again as of today the only updated guidance that they had today that was a change was around water fountains uh no change to social distancing contact tracing or anything else thank you as at this point anyone else okay we had a motion right so correct we roll call now roll call mr devereux yes miss martin yes miss noland yes miss owens yes mrs porter yes madam president yes motion passes 6-0 our next is a bid from information services for district storage area network replacement uh again this is one unfortunately we're asking for the board to receive and and uh agree to in one evening um

106laura macias director of information services with us tonight at the board has questions we're recommending award of the low bid meeting specification to store com it intelligence in the amount of 231 499 and request authorization for administration to execute the documents this will be charged the educational fund and is included in this year's budget so could i have a motion to approve the bid for the district storage area network replacement so move this is veronica second this is dawn any questions or discussion roll call please mr mr deborah yes miss martin yes miss nolan yes miss owens yes mrs porter yes madam president yes motion passes 6-0 sorry about that our next is approval of the board of education's travel expenses through the illinois association of school boards 2021 joint and neural conference by law

107this is a a an expenditure that must be approved by the full board of education in order to travel uh to this conference the administration certainly recommends that the board be able to attend this professional learning opportunity again this year all right so can i have a motion to approve the board of education's travel expenses to the illinois association of school boards 2021 joint annual conference i should have noted for the record that the price not to exceed uh five thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars sorry that doesn't include that apologize so moved this is veronica okay second any questions discussion no call please mr deborah yes miss martin yes miss nolan yes miss owens yes mrs porter yes madam president yes motion passes 6-0 our next is approval of the board of education resolution

108submission for the 2021 isb delegate assembly at the same conference um i did i don't know if you wanted to go this was the same conversation we had trying to advocate on behalf of the ability of school boards to continue to use zoom or other electronic means to meet without having to necessarily be in person allowing more transparency for the public and giving them greater access to the board of education um and so i did take the lead in drafting a resolution and filtered it around and yeah i don't know if the board has feedback or wants changes before we submit it but let's go for you tonight and and i wanted to add that i i talked i talked to with some other board presidents and they they liked the idea i guess i

109i like it for really three reasons one is if we have really inclement weather we would give us the opportunity not to have to drive here and snow and ice and everything else which would be nice um also cac follows the open meetings act and once [Music] the executive orders end they're going to have to go back to in person even though they admitted that they liked having some of their meetings as zoo meetings so this would give them the opportunity to continue doing that and i also think that we all know that we we meet a lot i mean i think in the last few months we've only had a few mondays off and it is nice to be able to take a vacation but also still participate if you know you want and

110they're able so melissa and i think that that's a you know when i when i think about being the delegate assembly for a couple years in a row right and when some of these um assuming this gets vetted from the committee that does the resolutions the nominating school district will come in to the delegate assembly to you know offer some context and explanation and i think for some of the downstate school districts that might you know the the fact that we have meetings more than once a month right i mean some districts are only meeting once a month they don't have the advisory committees like we have with cac so i think offering that context is going to be important now if people have had a chance to look at the resolution is there anything

111people would like changed good well what about adding that kind of context that most is talking about right now um those differences is it worth that or just bringing that up at the at the delegate assembly let's see under the rationale i'm just asking because you brought it up you made me realize i don't know if you have to defend that or somebody has to defend it at the at the committee when they when they vet the resolutions we've only done this once before uh and that was to extend the amount of time that the board would have to replace board members like leaves because it was a really fast turnaround process and there was an opportunity for the board president to to appear before the committee and give that feedback on the rationale behind

112so it could be that that just happens at the resolutions committee level but um but either way i we there is a statement of rationale so we could add you know for districts where boards meet you know sometimes four or five weeks in a row between committee meetings and regular meetings this gives more opportunity um and also in and that it gives access to to families so like cac where we had greater participation with families with children at home and and more participated and actually for example we had a finance committee meeting today that was on zoom we never had before the pandemic we didn't use zoom you had to come here to be see the finance committee it wasn't put on youtube so that again gives more access does that make sense could i

113would suggest then consists is on the agenda free voted on maybe to say um as amended and then yeah and we can i mean we can right we can take the feedback from the video feedback and update it and and just submit it back out and just say we're passing it as amended yeah right yeah okay so get a you get a motion now you can motion right you can motion to do so to approve as amended it has discussed during the meeting okay probably the tape and then add the amendments okay so um can i have a motion to approve the proposal the resolution um i think it's a resolution okay resolution to the iasb delegate assembly as amended and as per the taper as as disguised on the table yes so moved this

114is veronica second any more discussion welcome mr deveraux yes miss martin yes miss nolan yes miss owens yes mrs porter yes madam president yes motion approves motion is approved 6-0 our next is a resolution relative to the appointment of the school district 246 treasurer attached to the board book is a resolution for the board to consider this evening administration recommends the board of education approve the attached resolution relative to the appointment of the school district 246 treasurer effective june 21st 2021 okay can i have a motion relative to the appointment of the school district u46 treasurer still move second this is veronica any questions or discussion we'll call please mr devereaux yes miss martin yes miss nolan yes miss owens yes mrs porter yes madam president yes motion approved 6-0 our next is a resolution

115providing for the issue of not to exceed 22 million 100 000 general obligation limiting refunding school bonds of the district for the purpose of refunding certain outstanding bonds of the district providing for the levy of a direct annual tax to pay the principal on interest on said bonds and authorizing the sale of bonds to the purchaser thereof uh mr lewis uh the third by senior vice president of pma is with us this evening to answer any more questions i know this has been a topic at two board of finance committee meetings and comes forward tonight for final presentation so could i have a motion to approve the resolution i guess i'll read the whole thing resolution providing for the issue of not to exceed 22 million 100 000 general obligation limited refunding school bonds of

116visit district for the purpose of refunding certain outstanding bonds of the district providing for the levy of a direct annual tax to pay the principal interest on said bonds and authorizing the sale of said bonds to the purchaser thereof so moved second this is veronica any questions okay any questions or discussion melissa i just want to point out um as mr sanders said we did discuss this again at the finance committee before the meeting on the onboard docs under that finance committee there is a tentative schedule um for how this will proceed um there's also a document with the estimated savings um and we did discuss that at the the board committee i don't know john if you have anything that you want to add to that no i think i agree i think it's

117important to highlight that in the general meeting here um and just for the sake of crystal clarity this isn't the issuance of new debt it is the refinancing of existing debt at a uh significant savings based on the current interest rate environment um as well as you know are continuing to improve uh credit rating etc so uh a net net benefit for the district and the property tax uh directly to the property taxpayers yeah any other comments or questions okay roll call please mr deveraux yes miss martin yes mr nolan yes miss owens yes mrs porter yes madam president yes motion passes 6-0 hey other business cnc update so uh last week you had over the last board meeting you had the 2020 2021 cac reports from family and community engagement and specialized student services

118uh annually after the reports are given to the board the board accepts those reports uh historically so administration recommends the board of education accept the 2020 2021 cac reports could i have motion to accept the 2020-2021 csc reports so moved this is veronica second eva porter any discussion or comments thank you again to cac for all the work you've done again this year it so we'll call please yes ma'am mr devereux yes miss martin yes miss nolan yes miss owens yes mrs porter yes madam president yes motion passes 6-0 other business mr sanders our only other business this evening is the main financial report and here to present is uh dale burnich mr barge okay uh at the end of may our total fund balances are three hundred forty six million nine hundred twenty nine

119thousand two hundred seventeen dollars uh which is a decrease of eight point four million from april in may we received thirteen point one million in tax revenue uh for state payments we received evidence-based funding payments of 17.8 million and 375 000 in categorical payments at the end of may our balance due from the state was hundred fifty 89 dollars and our federal grant revenue for the month was five point one million so our total revenue is two point eight percent higher than last year at this time and it's uh due to our federal funds uh are higher because we've received semester funds this year and then we've also received higher food service reimbursements uh for expenditures were 4.4 below last year with the largest decrease from the capital outlay section uh and that is about

12018.4 and if there's any questions i can answer that at this time are there any questions mr bernice thank you mr burnage okay work session mr sanders our first item under work session are the list of authorized depositories uh mr bernage is here to present the list and can respond to any board uh questions um let's see here i'm sorry also attached to the board report is the 2020 anna reports for english concepts deep doing businesses pma securities illinois school district liquid assets bond and jpmorgan shakes administration recommends the board of education approve the list of authorized depositories are there any questions mr john just a quick question this is the same group that has been utilized in the past and present yes yes yes this is a annual item so here we bring this

121list forward to the board and these are the same depositors that we've we've been using very good thank you anyone else our next is an actual presentation we have the freshman seminar curriculum proposal being presented tonight by uh mr mr mitchell breesmeister ms dorian roberts teacher leader for educational pathways and mitchell are you able to share your screen to do the presentation good evening everyone baby good evening board of education tonight dorian roberts the teacher leader for educational pathways and i will be presenting to you the freshman seminar course proposal when the call to committee for freshman seminar went out in 2019 a group of educators from various content areas and each of our high schools applied to participate in designing an introductory course to the educational pathways initiative since we are not in person

122and we are not all here this evening i'd like to recognize lisa brown brad davisman heather carey jackie gordon diane krisher megan kubeck jeff shirer marnie stevenson alexa hand and michelle chapman and tracy stewart for their expertise for being thoughtful and collaborative throughout the process of designing this course christian seminar is an exploratory course intended for 9th grade students to discover their academic and personal strengths interests and abilities while learning about the opportunities available to them while in high school this course will help students create an intentional plan for their path and experiences while in high school and their path after high school as students are engaged in learning during freshman seminar they are continuing to develop their ability to make informed decisions set goals expand essential employability skills practice interpersonal skills and problem solve

123the course was designed specifically in alignment with the areas of student achievement and community engagement of the district strategic plan the process to develop the course began with the call to committee in january 2019 the committee met 12 times from january 2019 through february 2020. these meetings were a mixture of full and half day sessions the first meetings entailed learning about the ubd design process and deepening our understanding of the district's svla principles we created a vision for the course selected learning standards for the curriculum developed content rubrics assessments and units we then analyzed and assessed resources and made a selection that supports the goals of the course finally we identified professional development for the instructors of the course freshman seminar is a one semester course which begins with students focusing on themselves and building

124awareness of their personal interests students then take what they have discovered about their strengths and interests and explore a broad range of actions that may be that they may be interested in pursuing while in high school and how their interests and strengths can lead to career possibilities from there students select career areas and examine the experiences courses courses certifications degrees an individual may need in that particular field finally students begin to build a plan for themselves their plan includes intentionally selecting a path while they are in high school that provides those experiences a knowledge base certifications and or early college credit supporting their post high school plans as you can see each unit supports students social emotional development essential employability skills like team building problem solving and communication skills as well as short and long

125term goal setting as the team design freshman seminar we wanted to utilize resources students are familiar with or may already be using naviance is a system used by staff and students in our schools for communication and housing information as part of this course students will be expected to utilize naviance for goal setting and personal assessments students can house information in a portfolio or a journal within naviance that they can reflect back on throughout high school and use to communicate with counselors and parents avid is another course offered to students in our schools some of the committee members are avid teachers which was intentional as we were selecting committee members freshmen seminar is not intended to be a replica of avid they are different courses designed for different purposes to support our students on the left

126side of the slide you see the topics and concepts students learn in 9th grade avid on the right you see the topics and concepts of freshman seminar although there are some similarities and possibly opportunities for sharing experiences between these courses freshmen seminar is a one semester course to support all students in drafting a plan for high school that begins a path for post high school auctions whereas avid supports students throughout their high school experience here we see the resources that were selected to support the curriculum we have classroom sets of textbooks and digital licenses an exciting addition is virtual job shadow which offers over 1 000 and counting professional job shadow and career advice videos um this is a platform that students can utilize to explore their interests and then examine the opportunities that u46

127provides that align with those interests here we see the addition of professional development that will focus on project-based learning for our staff will be engaged in teaching this course and this will ultimately support our students in this training they will learn how to utilize formative and summative assessments with a project-based model and also focus on differentiating for all of our students when engaged in their project-based learning uh you can see the the grand total for the first year's investments and estimated costs per student when the development of the course selection of resources and professional development was completed we presented and received feedback from the groups and committees identified here we made revisions based on the feedback and received a recommendation from instructional counsel once the course is implemented the educational pathways department in partnership with

128the curriculum team will follow the curriculum cycle to monitor support and revise the implementation of the course so the freshman seminar curriculum committee recommends the approval and adaption of the freshman seminar course to be offered in the fall of 2022 or the fall prior to the implementation of educational pathways freshmen in this course would be the first to select from the full scope of pathway offerings and that concludes our presentation thank you are there any questions done so thank you for the presentation i'm very interested in the rollout of pathways and you know how we get our students to where we are hoping that they can be and continuing for with college and career i had asked earlier today if you were looking at recommending this class as a requirement and your response was no

129so then my follow-up question is is there a subset of students that you're looking at recommending this course to kind of in the way we do with avid or how would this class or how would counselors be recommending this class to freshmen so that they know that it's a good choice for them so um you already mentioned that you know that there's a subset of students that avid is typically aimed at and then freshman seminar is just another option that can help students decide what their path is going to be in high school and then you heard the presentation and approved the study skills course for some of our special ed students so there's three different options there for students that are going into high school on how they can help learn about what's um

130their interests develop their skills look at what career options are so in order to be flexible for our students and what their personal interests are as they're selecting their courses there's three different options there for them so it's just it's a it's another opportunity for them so if they're not a student that is going to commit to avid and they're not a student that is a special education student that would be recommended for study skills course here's another course where they could have that opportunity to examine their personal interests and their their talents and see how that aligns to career options for them thank you other questions and um how many students do you anticipate at each high school how many i think you said six six classes of each high school of 30 students

131each does that sound right that is correct those are our initial numbers i think we're gonna continue exploring that as we start promoting this opportunity and see see where those numbers go and um and then adjust accordingly okay and and this is a one semester class so do we do we have exploratory courses they could take the second a one semester exploratory course it might take the second semester to fill in the year if you will this would be a first semester class ideally so that they could go through this experience before they select their courses um for those for their sophomore year um and we do have other one-semester courses that students could take where their second semester there are some in the fine arts areas um and there's some in uh social studies

132i believe another option could be that students are uh take a study hall when this course was offered on that same period the second semester and you know maybe they're in that study hall with some of the other students from the class they built those relationships with those students or other teachers from that time that same period during the day thank you anyone else okay thank you thank you mitchell and doreen really appreciate it our next is a dream academy school connect resource proposal uh we have with us tonight megan exaverius multi-tiered system of support lead teacher who will provide the board with the information in regards to the dream academy school connect resource proposal megan are you able to show your screen um yep we're going to click on thank you thanks of course

133thank you i also have mary perkins here she's our associate principal at dream academy and she's been amazing at being supportive so thank you for being here mary um so we are proposing um a resource for our sel our social emotional learning class that we offer at dream academy which is pretty unique to our school um those of you that are not familiar with what dream academy is um we are an alternative program in u46 we have 14 different programs under that dream academy umbrella and we provide an opportunity for kids in a you know smaller class sizes we focus a lot on social emotional learning we have a 30-ish minute period depending on the program that's for dream high school specifically but other programs do participate um daily in seo activities um and so

134we are looking to find um you know a resource that we can utilize in that course that we have each day um because up until this point we've really focused on um you know teacher created lessons and we've found resources just on google um so we're looking for something a little bit more concrete and a little bit more structured for our kids um so like i said every day we have um the social emotional learning experience for our students where we focus on post-secondary initiatives we focus on um those soft skills that we don't always get to teach um consecutively every day so our request is that um we've received funding for this proposal for this resource um and our rationale is that during the 2021 school year we piloted a digital version of the

135school connect curriculum which was semi-limited but very beneficial like i said it does focus on those post-secondary initiatives the social emotional learning initiatives that u-46 has provided to us and the five competencies of castle which is the collaborative for academic and social emotional learning that is kind of our our guiding resource for mtss in the district so every lesson really it includes video based instruction teacher taught instruction everything's research based there's collaborative checking activities which is really important for that relationship building piece for our students and their adults in the building it comes with pdfs and spanish translations and it integrates directly with canvas which was very beneficial this past year um so within all of that it encompasses those real world situations and it has students focus on different topics in a collaborative manner

136um it is designed for all remote in-person and hybrid instruction like i said you know this past year that was very very helpful to us um as that was kind of a class that we struggled with to convert to digital um like i said with the castle for uh collaborative for academic social and emotional learning um those competencies are social awareness self-awareness self-management relationship skills and responsible decision making so all those important skills we want our kids to know before they go out in the real world um the alignment for um u-46 definitely those um in priority one increasing the percentage of students who are college and career ready there is a whole module dedicated to college and career readiness in this resource which is great um and priority to increasing the percentage of students

137who feel safe at school that is the purpose of sel instruction so we want to make sure that our kids are feeling safe and feeling engaged in their instruction for implementation like i said this year we piloted that digital solution and then we sought feedback from our students regarding the engagement of the resources um our students being those who have been struggling in school before they come to us it was very difficult to engage them this past year and so i'm going to show you some data in a couple slides from the kids mouths specifically so um but so we're proposing to acquire funding for the full resource set today um and then we plan to fully implement that curriculum in the fall um and we're going to continue to seek feedback from students and

138staff regarding the effectiveness um we did work in our student services team we did have a discussion about um involving the parents and that that social emotional learning um because we think that's important to engage our families as well um currently the professional development this year myself our social worker and our interventionist we rolled out that whole um digital resource we are responsible for creating a lot of the lessons at this point which is why we really would like this resource to be part of our program every friday by noon we were sending out videos of how to um how to present the lessons to the kids and really get the most engagement out of them and then and staff and morning meetings um we have the luxury of not starting till nine o'clock so

139we have a ton of time for professional development in the morning which is what we use it for um we collected the feedback for about you know with data relating to effectiveness and engagement we can we plan to continue to do so um so for the next school year our plan is to do kind of the same thing as we did this year with the rollout um and then we are going to do a little bit more instruction with our staff and more professional development on how to integrate school connect into that in-person model um we had very low attendance for in-person this year just the amount of kids that chose to come back in person so we really need to get this up and rolling for um face-to-face instruction and again we'll do those

140weekly updates and the monthly professional learning is a serious goal of ours um for each staff meeting which is the first thursday of the month typically to just present those materials and the strategies for best practices and that will include myself our social worker our interventionist and then the staff and our administrative team so this was the digital scope and sequence um that we used this year kind of the framework for that so just a couple highlights you know there are a lot of things like studying effectively remotely or at school um bouncing back from challenges our you know our pbis goals that dream are responsibility resilience and um respect so all of those things are very much encompassed in this this resource um there's a lot of making plans for your future college and

141career readiness things like that we are a trauma-informed school so this trauma-informed supports is very important to us and then what we're looking to achieve is to get the funding for the full binder set um which has a little bit more meat behind it than the digital subscription um and so like i said this module four is all for parent for preparing students for college and the workforce um building relationships developing self-awareness and creating a supportive learning community we are very much um relationship focused at dream we you know there's so much data out there that shows how much um positive relationships with adults in the building engages students and then again we're going to send out those surveys to students and staff and hopefully families on a semesterly basis um and we something that

142we really would like to to try with our staff is getting more feedback from them regarding the lesson design it was very difficult for myself as being out of the classroom for the first year this year um as the mtss lead i wasn't able to engage with the kids in a way that i could kind of gauge their their interest levels in the curriculum so um that was very helpful to get that feedback from staff um and then using that formative assessment data on all the materials that are included in that resource and from this year as you can see those blues are all yeses to these questions so did they enjoy the videos or the worksheets or would you be interested in using these lessons more next year um did you like learning about

143the types of skills and there was very positive results the worksheets one we know kids don't like worksheets you know so that's kind of a given but this is very promising data that we um hope to continue to improve and then so the cost analysis for the four binder resource it's four thousand dollar base price plus two dollars per student and then an additional thousand dollars plus one dollar per student for the unit four um which is a total of 5900 for 300 students it is a one-time purchase um once that money is spent we have the resource and there's no yearly subscription except for the digital solution this year the digital solution is included in the license for the binders um so we kind of get a little bit more bang for our buck

144for um for this upcoming school year any questions any questions on this i i i'm impressed with the fact that your students liked it so much that was very promising yes okay thank you very much thanks again megan appreciate you being here with us tonight um our next is the counseling framework proposal and presenting that uh is michelle chapman director of postsecondary success um and i'll let uh and miss charles a lead counselor so please proceed michelle can you share your screen i can great oh i always push the one button all right good evening everyone my name is michelle chapman i'm the director of post-secondary success and i'm here with alexa charshea our u-46 lead counselor to talk through our counseling framework we had an amazing committee started a couple summers ago with district

145representation from all of our high schools and half of our middle schools and a few administrators and the reason that it's called a framework instead of a curriculum is our counselors we don't have access to our students every day in the classroom so we don't have a curriculum instead what we do is we partner with our with our different um curricular groups um or we work with different classes to push in or to take students out of classes to provide them with our counseling activities so it's our framework it's our place to start and we're very excited to share it with you so our purpose so we really wanted to look at our counseling framework across all of our grades where our counselors are involved so our 7th through 12th grade and we looked at

146using the developmental counseling model for illinois our peace framework our american school counseling association standards um and then the illinois social emotional learning standards um so as you can see our school has worked with a lot of different uh frameworks and standards so i'm really putting these all in one place to make a framework that's cohesive and we wanted to look at having finding ways that we can see the outcome of our work with our students and using this framework is one way to go ahead and do that and we really wanted to make sure that we had student-centered learning experiences for our students and that our counselors were supporting these um and again kind of how uh michelle mentioned um censor counselors you know don't have a daily meeting with uh students we really

147want to be working with our mtss and our just our different curricular areas to make this work and be impactful for our students and at the end of the day we really want to see that all of our students you know across our high schools across our middle schools are getting a similar experience from their school counselors so alexa talk through a lot of this but we just want to make certain like she said that all students 7th through 12th grade are making informed decisions about their plans for high school about their plans for post-secondary and their personal and social wellness it also allows us to make to ensure that our students are receiving equitable services and all students are engaging with their school counselor and we want to make sure that our students are

148participating in experiences and activities that help them with their interests help them improve their social emotional and personal skills and grow in their academic achievement throughout their secondary years um so again aligning to our strategic plan um really working with our student achievement and engaging our staff and making sure that our students are prepared for what they want to do once they they leave our school buildings um and making sure they're ready for their their post-secondary plan so similar to the curriculum process um our framework committee followed that same step-by-step process so we had our call to committee and we began this work in the summer of 2019 we developed our framework using all of our resources that we already have discussed we received school counselor feedback we went to curriculum instruction we went to

149cabinet to the professional development team throughout the year and we received various feedback we we talked through the counseling framework with our district counselors and we are constantly updating and proving and the exciting part is that our committee is still meeting um so even after our work has finished we're still meeting and determining how to how to continue to move forward so again the resources uh that we use for the developmental counseling model for illinois schools are asking mindsets and behaviors illinois social emotional and learning standards and the illinois pace framework um i believe that you all have access to these documents and so what we did as a framework committee is first of all we developed the framework and a lot of times we refer to it as as our guiding principle everything that

150we possibly wanted to do we put in this framework and within that framework what we did is we prioritized areas that we were going to focus on first and then different areas that we were continuing to grow on so for each grade level we have a one pager that you also have access to we made sure that we had information on what the students should be supported to do for each grade level what they should know and be able to do how we could evaluate it and then future considerations so we really were thoughtful in this process to make sure that we had good activities that could be measured for all of our students and make certain that all students in the district have access to these activities so we're just going to walk through

151a little bit some highlight a couple things for each of the grade levels so in seventh grade it's a big focus on self-awareness it's that transition from sixth grade to middle school it's starting that whole idea of school engagement start thinking about learning styles and then that whole career opportunity so in eighth grade we're doing more career awareness more that post-secondary exploration and really getting ready for high school um and looking at what you might be interested which definitely aligns to our pathways moving into the high school level and then ninth grade is similar to seventh grade um the focus is and transition the transition into ninth grade uh to make sure that you are successful in high school um that you feel connected to your high school through those extracurricular and other activities surveys

152and really focus on that four year plan and then the measurement is that freshmen on track rate um which i know we've talked about before in the board meetings but making sure our freshmen are on track are successful and and on their way to graduate um as sophomores our students are doing more self-awareness starting to think about what they want to do after high school are they wanting to go the college route are they looking into military options are they looking into the workforce or trade so starting to really do more early exploration into what they would like to do after high school um and then they're you know creating smart goals um they're reflecting on what they've learned through some of these um assessments that we have been doing and then they're looking at

153their four-year plan and making changes based on on what they're learning about themselves and their their goals their junior year is up here um to really start digging into that post-secondary and those ideas about what career you're interested in and those that career or that space that you want to go what does it look like is it as alexa was saying sophomore year is it for your college is it two-year college is it uh trade is it military is it right to work and an apprenticeship and apprenticeship what does it look like so again we look at that four-year plan we want to make sure that students have those opportunities to take a college level course um their senior year especially if they're interested to really look at that career interest and to start that

154college process we've started it and we've talked about it before but really that junior year preparing our students to really look and make certain that you know before their 10th grade year and before their um 11th grade year before their 12th grade year they're really thinking about what's next and then as seniors we're really identifying what are your career goals and how are you going to get there um how you know what are your next steps what are you going to do after you graduate high school and really making sure those supports are in place to make sure that our students are ready to take those next steps um some of those measures so um at the 12th grade level we received something called an isac access report which lets us know how many students

155are completing financial aid forms we have a senior exit survey where we look for responses and repeat feedback from our seniors about what they're planning to do after high school and what they you know what they can provide us for feedback on how to really grow our framework as we you know we're making changes every year um looking at our post-secondary evidence we have students um giving us evidence of their plans for after high school and then national clearinghouse data this is a report we get in the following school year that tells us which post-secondary institutions our students ended up at for the following school year um so all that kind of works into the accumulation of the 7th to 12th grade lessons and we really were mindful of making sure that they built upon

156each other so that as seniors our students are graduating and you know ready to accomplish their goals at their next goals so our implementation uh we started uh this in the fall of winter of 2020 where we started with professional development for all of our school counselors this past school year we implemented those priority lessons for all of our students this was as we all know a very different year and so a lot of it we did virtually and we tried to do a lot of this with the counselors at lunchtime and different spaces within a student schedule just because that in person excuse me that virtual in-person learning at the time first semester that learning time was so sacred for the teachers we were trying to work around that and with them and partner

157on that and then this spring um as students have been back in the building um it's been a lot easier for our student our counselors to meet with the students and to provide a lot of these services so we are really looking forward to fully implementing this curriculum um this framework i should say as opposed to curriculum next year next school year and to see how well our students are going to do so as michelle said as far as professional development goes um we will continue to work with our current school counselors throughout our district during the school year um and then we'll also be working with any new counselors we have joining us during our new teacher orientation and our next steps um as i said in the beginning our counseling framework team we

158still meet monthly we are continually looking at the activities that we have adjusting and then adding to make sure that our counseling framework stays relevant for all of our students the whole idea is to have these student-centered learning experiences just like what we're doing for curriculum and academics we want to make sure we have that same idea or same process for our counseling framework we want to make sure that we continue to partner with our curricular coordinators and mtss to ensure that we are all working towards that same goal for our students and success and then like i said before we're going to make sure that we adjust use feedback from students and make and adjust or change as necessary to meet the needs of all of our students all right what questions do you

159have thank you any questions from the board melissa thank you for um the presentation there's a lot of information here in here especially with all of the different activities for the grade levels can you speak a little bit about the delivery like what that actually looks like so if i'm i'm a parent and i'm seeing you know this framework how do i expect that that will then be delivered to the students so it depends a little bit on the grade level um and then the high school so what what the counselors do is we sit down at the beginning of the school year and we look at the framework and we make a plan and so we decide like freshmen we're going to push into pe because our physical education are freshmen only or we're

160going to work with our biology teachers and then the counselors will coordinate with those teachers to to co-teach these lessons and then in sophomore year it may be english again english is unfortunately tapped on a lot because students have that all four years junior year a lot of the work is done in us history along with english and then senior year uh civics and economics um but what that's what we do is we partner with different curricular areas to make sure that we're giving this curriculum and then just a follow-up question typically when we're talking about curriculum there's you know the the portion when we talk about how we're going to evaluate the curriculum with data right on and you know on how the students are doing can you talk a little bit about your

161review process and how you're going to do the ongoing review to to you know make sure that the pushing in right and all these different curricular areas having the effect that you want to have absolutely so for each of our priority lessons we've come up with an evaluation area for that and then as part of the curriculum counseling framework committee we meet and we look through that data um so some of it is student feedback so we'll get student feedback and then we'll spend some time looking at that to make certain um our students are getting what they need other areas that's hard data to look at um the easier one to point to is our senior year so this this senior year we call it the three milestones um it's fafsa completion it's post-secondary

162plans and it's completing the senior survey and so we look at our percentages um this year um all seniors had to complete the fafsa or do the non-participation form alternative form or we tried everything we could and we did get 100 of our seniors to do that to meet our graduation requirement our senior survey um last year at the end of the year was a very low due to covid it was in the 10 and this year through all the different schools um their average was over 50 of the seniors so we really had some growth even with all that virtual and now um as part of our um counseling framework committee we had end of end of the year meetings especially with the seniors and we talked to each of the different schools and

163what was successful wasn't what wasn't successful and how we're going to move forward next year great thank you any other questions thank you very much this looks great it really does i think the kids will really be well served by this so thank you and all your committee for all your work okay ready ready session resolution work session resolutions our first is a resolution requesting approval of hazardous transportation area designations this is an annually required resolution by the state board of education uh you'll note that this year uh thanks to mr prowl director of transportation and his team uh for the first time in i think uh about 12 years or so we are actually updating some of these uh some of these routes so i'll let him speak to that i'm sure the board

164will have questions in regards to that but what that administration recommends the board of education adopt the resolution requesting approval of hazardous transportation area designations does anyone have questions for mr prowl now i guess i would have the question why why do we have some so many new areas that are designated hazardous this year so when i when i uh became the director in 2017 the board had already approved it for that year the hazard resolution so when it came up again in 2018 i really wanted to take a look at it before we sent it to the board and that's when i realized that it hadn't been looked at in a long time and so if you look at the the board documents that were attached i think there's 70 pages of illinois department

165transportation forms we took a deep dive and looked at what was already there and what needed to be added we would have been ready to go with this last year had an update for the pandemic but it's been a lot of work to uh you know actually do the traffic studies and and do all the research to to bring this up to date thank you do you have any estimate of how many students will not be riding a bus that hadn't been previously well so i guess the good news is that these students were receiving transportation because a lot of them were marked hazardous in our routing software but we weren't getting reimbursement from them from the state because of hazardous routes so it really won't affect a lot of students it'll affect our reimbursement

166okay that's good to know any other questions thank you very much and thank you for taking the time with your team to get this all completed i know it was a lot of work all right next is a resolution for the display in public hearing on school district 246 budget for 2021 2022 school year mr bernage is here to uh answer any board questions uh that said this is an end requirement to display the school district's attendant budget for at least 30 days prior to final adoption the tentative budget will be brought to the board of education on august 23 2021 and will be on display for public inspection beginning august 24 2021 request for the final adoption of the budget will be at december september 13 2021 board meeting the resolution also addresses the

167requirement regarding the notice of the public hearing notice must be given in a publication of general circulation at least 30 days prior to the public hearing on a school district's budget the resolution sets a date at the public hearing on the district's budget is september 13 2021 this notice will be published august 10 2021 administration will recommend adoption of this resolution at the july 19 2021 board meeting this timeline fulfills the illinois school code requirements and of course mr burnage is here to answer your board questions does anyone have any questions for mr bernage john i i just don't understand the dates uh it says 30 days and so at august 23rd is when it's presented request for adoption on september 13th is not 30 days am i missing something or that then requested for

168adoption and then voted the subsequent meeting three questions okay the actual adoption isn't until the second meeting in september so that will be more than 30 days okay okay right yeah so september 13th is going to be work session presentation the request and then the actual adoption will be the subsequent two weeks later presumably unless there's one on the 20th correct okay thank you any other questions okay thank you our next station contract yep our contract's over 25 000. we have the first is a contract for the deputy superintendent of operations for projection staffing and mapping software dr king has uh here that available to answer as many questions as the board would like uh your your opportunity to ask him a whole bunch of questions tonight administration recommends approval of the contract with berger

169systems for one year and the amount of forty eight thousand seven hundred and twenty dollars and requests authorization for administration to execute related documents this will be charged the educational fund and is included in the budget are there any questions listen i mean i cannot pass up the opportunity to ask one final question of dr king especially when it comes to this kind of software so is this different than the software that we've been using no but there is an additional module i'm gonna make you come up to the microphone sorry otherwise it doesn't pick you up on video sorry that's right and we have to get this for you know prosperity sake that's right so um there is an additional module that's why it's a little bit more money than previous years um this

170particular module i've been working on for over a year with them basically it's an informational tool by school that we would put on our website um i what i have been explaining to mr sanders is this would be a really great tool as we move forward and finalize the capital planning because that tool allows you to integrate information onto the website school by school so you would click on the picture of your school and you could see all kind you could whatever you wanted to put there student achievement data information about uh utilities you name it you could put anything there and it so i think it's it might be a good venue to help communicate out to the public so that's why we would like to move forward with the extra module okay great

171thank you any other questions hey thank you our next is a contract renewal firm for human resources with jelly vision um here to answer any questions is zan chan assistant superintendent of human resources administration recommends approval of the three-year contract renewal with jelly lab inc in the amount of two hundred and eight thousand three hundred and fifty one dollars and request authorization for administration to execute related documents this six minutes should be charged the educational operations and maintenance and transportation fund allocated as a percentage of enrollments in the health plan this okay this will be included in the budget for those appropriate fiscal years are there any questions okay next item under work session bids and proposals here come the bids our first is a bit from plant operations for contract cleaner services uh mrs

172downes is with us tonight to answer any more questions on this first one administration recommends awarded the low bid meeting specification to rna facilities management in the amount of nine million nine hundred and eighty seven thousand one hundred and seventy six dollars and ninety nine cents and request authorization for administration to execute related documents this expenditure will be charged to the onm fund and is in the budget for the uh 22 school years through 2023 2024 fiscal years i have any questions melissa i don't so much i have a question i just wanted to thank the team i think this is a great resolution to what you know really was a staffing problem um and i i'm sure that took some negotiating but i'm i'm i'm glad that we were able to work this out

173so thank you for that thank you anyone else okay i believe that is the last item so could i have a motion to adjourn please still move this is veronica call please mr deborah yes miss martin yes miss nolan yes miss owens yes mrs porter yes madam president yes the time is 9 33 we are adjourned