Board Of Education Special Meeting March 12 2018

001okay we would like to resume the special board meeting of the u46 Board of Education for March 12 2018 if everyone could stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and remain standing for a moment of silence we have a few moments of silence tonight we would like to take a moment to remember Sadie Rivas Shalaby Linda turn quest Jackson Nicklin Jonathan Duran and Janet Corman who all passed away recently Sadie was a fifth grade student at Heritage Elementary who passed away on February 21st she was eight years old when she was diagnosed in 2015 with Stage four neuroblastoma sorry teachers say she demonstrated courage and bravery bravery despite her illness they remember her smile and how she went out of her way to include others Sadie loves school and enjoyed learning she also enjoyed arts and

002crafts sleepovers with friends reading playing games and spending time with family her favorite subject was art especially painting services were held on February 24th at Salerno Rosedale chapels in Roselle she is survived by her mother grandparents cousins and many friends Linda turn quest had been a bus driver for u46 for nearly 30 years when she passed away on February 22nd Linda chose to transport students with special needs and she attained safety service awards year after year she was an active member of due to several times holding the position of an officer Linda was a member of the women's the women of the Loyal Order of most large 799 and involved with Boy Scouts with her son when they were children and later with her grandson she especially loved being a grandmother Linda is survived by

003her mother by her husband John turn quest her two sons Matthew and Phillip and three grandchildren services were held at Laird Funeral Home in Elgin on March 2nd Jackson Nicklin attended Independence Center for early learning and Wayne Elementary it was attending Markland day school at the time of his passing on February 6th Jackson who is six was dearly loved by his teachers and all who knew him he was a smart dresser with a smile that lit up the room teachers say he loved a good snuggle and the opportunity to swing and be rocked Jackson is survived by his parents James and Christina who are both u46 graduates as well as grandparents a memorial service was held on February 10th at Countryside Funeral Home in Bartlett Jonathan Darrin Jonathan was a junior at Larkin high school

004who passed away on March 5th friends teachers and coaches remember Jonathan as a bright funny student who loved to make others laugh he wanted to go into a helping profession maybe in law enforcement or as a probation officer he enjoyed playing soccer and volleyball and worked as a manager at McDonald's jonathan is survived by his parents Jose and margarita a younger sister who is also a u46 student and a number of aunts uncles and cousins services are being held tonight at the Simmons Madison Funeral Home in Elgin Janet Lewis Corman was a long time of the Board of Education who passed away on January 27th jannat known as a hard worker in everything she did was especially passionate in her support of education she first became involved with you 46 through volunteering with the PTA

005when her children were little she then served for 16 years on the board of education becoming its first female president in 1989 she decided not to run for re-election in 2001 to devote more time to her family and her profession as a paralegal in addition to her fallen tier work Janet loved traveling reading watching movies playing cribbage and most of all spending time with family members janet is survived by her partner and best friend Frances Robert Corman two children five similar siblings and four grandchildren her family is making plans to celebrate her life this summer we will keep the families and friends of all of these people in our thoughts and prayers thank you okay the first item on our agenda is comments from the audience good evening and welcome to the Board of Education

006meeting we're now at the public comment period of the meeting when the board listens to issues and concerns but then I does not respond to statements I stated in our board welcome fire we ask that you complete a request to speak card each each speaker will be allotted up to three minutes a tone will sound when your time is up if you wish to have a high to your concern or question please check the box on through on the card and a written reply will be mailed to you thank you thank you we have one speaker so our first speaker is Rick Newton good evening if there was ever a time for the citizens of u46 to awaken and recognize the subversive liberally biased efforts to undermine the education of our children it is now

007we regularly see curriculum that is ideologically biased promoted by the administration and accepted by this board while the board claims to abhor any form of bullying by students they nonetheless bully their own members who dare to express opinions that differ from their own their contempt for our First Amendment is surpassed only by their degree of hypocrisy how else does one explain the tolerance afforded to one of their board cronies that knowing the overlooked statements in which she described the 2016 Republican convention as a clay invention and that she views the American flag as toilet paper I that's not volatile or harmful as the board majority you altered the duration and agenda placement for public comments due to your lack of tolerance in hearing opposing opinions George Orwell would have told us I told you so

008but now this past Wednesday a letter from the administration stated that they can pick and choose when current events offer what they believe qualifies as teachable moments not lost in that letter was a statement that read we respect students right to free speech really some allure to the restrictions you intent you would like to impose on board members does that apply only when these students concur with your rationale for selecting a teachable moment so if you truly believe in teachable moments where is the allotted time on the National pro-life Day each October to allow students 3,000 seconds - honestly explore the issue of abortion one second for every life lost to abortion in the u.s. every single day yes parkland and other incidents are beyond tragic but if it's a senseless human carnage that triggers

009your anger how do you then justify your silence towards abortions or for that matter towards the debilitating choke hold that various forms of liberalism place on our freedom it certainly community educational for students to have the opportunity to explore current events but not at the expense of bias as to what is selected and whether the facilitation of discussion has balanced education public or otherwise is supposed to be about learning and that is an ongoing process for our entire lives however it is a flagrant abuse of freedom we all experience when you inject personal ideological bias that is disguised as wisdom that is not only indoctrination but is also nothing short of child abuse thank you thank you we do have one more card Anthony trikey good evening I appreciate this opportunity to be heard preliminary

010I wish to advise you that I have served as a substitute teacher in New 46 I've served on the CAC and I'm currently River High School PTO I only mentioned some of my involvement to impress upon you that I'm not a single issue bomb thrower coming from the outside but rather a deeply invested stakeholder in this district I hope that you will consider my comments within that context before I proceed I must mention that I am very grateful to know and work with members of Elgin High School's administration behind me who are here tonight the time and time again I witnessed these fine educators demonstrate their commitment to the success of our students both you and I owe them commensurate respect turning to my foremost concern tonight I wish to express my strong disapproval of

011the u46 policy decision a national school walkout has set forth in our CEOs letter dated March 7th the letter begins with us quote the women's March youth empower is calling for a national school walkout unquote to which statement I must ask the question who cares though the letter strange to achieve a tone of neutrality it fails to do so our administration is plainly taking sides by valorising the imperatives of this one organization while the highly controversial political Association of the founders of women March is not immaterial my argument is not contingent upon whether one feels sympathy or antipathy toward that organization or its causes rather I ask again who cares that they asked for a walkout who cares of the NRA asked for a walkout who cares if PETA asked for a walkout who cares

012if the Anglican Church asked for a walkout I don't and neither should our administrators at least not when they're acting in their official capacities well our CEO issue a letter every time an advocacy group calls for a walkout only employ his own political sympathies to pick and choose worthwhile political causes will we sacrificed hours of precious instructional time every week to make endless grand gestures about how we quote respect our students right to free speech unquote am I to believe that our academic outcomes are so impressive that we can afford to do so our CEO was placed u46 on a slippery slope that ecologically ethically and legally and the last one can get very very expensive so I ask that this board please direct our CEO not to play ideological gatekeeper for our families and

013not to expose taxpayers to needless civil liability our parents pay heavy taxes and have a reasonable expectation that when they surrender custody of their children to our schools each day that their children will be kept in and educated in the classroom I know that our teachers invest countless hours to meet that expectation please direct our CEO to rescind his March 7th letter to reacquaint himself with and to enforce this policies board number 7.1 sorry 96 I have copies here on student demonstrations and to refrain in the future from lending the imprimatur of our school district to any political cause thank you again thank you okay the next item on the agenda is other business does any board member I guess could I start out by just I just want to thank all of our police

014departments and villages and everyone who has worked with us our staff also our administration that have been with the threats that have come up within the schools everyone has just done the best job I could ever hope for so I just want to send our thanks out from the board to all those agencies the policemen the villages the staff everybody for keeping our kids safe thank you and I have one other thing that Tony and I went to stream lead the villages Streamwood last week and Tony was recognized for years of service on their community committee and also recognized for being on the committee and got some nice yeah yeah that's so congratulations Tony any other updates so this one say we're going to be the CEO Student Advisory Board is going to be holding

015interviews for I believe it's for people who will be interviewing for the next student advisor position so we're excited for that and to get to know the applicants better so that's exciting we got to me to sue and I got to meet the four of them last week for the orientation they're great students great students anyone Oh Jeanette you had something yeah I'd also like to say a few words about the student walkout I'd like to remind everyone who the women's March organizers are those were the same people who donned pink vulgar hats and screamed obscenities on the National Mall in DC in January of 2017 the current walkout involves powerful leftist adults finding kids who agree with them and then hiding behind the sentiment we must listen to the children if kids organize demonstrations

016advocating concealed carry or arming teachers or protecting the rights of the unborn would we be quote establishing a plan to support student-led activities I asked a number of questions on this this issue which are available on board Docs and also on my Facebook page I asked how does this not violate board policy and the Student Code of Conduct the answers I receive do not convince me that this does not violate board policy and the Student Code of Conduct quote reasonably regulating student walkouts is supposed to quote avoid interference with normal school operation and quote not disrupt the continuity of instructional programs but this does neither of those if students leave class instructional time is disrupted if all the students in a class walk out the teacher is required to follow them and supervise them what

017if the teacher does not support this walkout and refuse is will they be disciplined I strongly disagree with you 46 supporting and facilitating a walkout like this any other updates no I just wanted to note usually we talk about things that have happened in the past but there are two big events happening tomorrow evening one is Larkin high school made it to super sectionals I know Elgin HEIs here but Larkin mates is super sexual so we have to it's at NIU and then talent fest also is tomorrow night with all five high schools represented at the hemin so that's another great evening if you have an interest in u46 talent that's the place to be so okay the next item on the agenda is foils Mr Sanders there are five people Commission act requests that

018are posted on board docks and also available for public consumption I'm available to answer any questions the board might have there any questions on FOIA no okay consent agenda Mr Sanders on the consent agenda we have a contract renewal for financial operations annual support and update licensing for workforce software a contract renewal for the deputy superintendent operations annual support and licensing for Berger planning intelligent software a bit for plant operations for Streamwood High School air handlers gym and auditorium wing part five a bid for financial operations information services EU a program uninterruptible power supply purchase and finally building permits can I have a motion to approve the consent agenda of March 12 2018 so moved to any discussion or questions roll call please yes yes yes yes yes next on the agenda discussion action Mr

019Sanders our next item is under discussion action as HR resolutions will be the first item this is an annual event that misses my does can walk the board through this evening we're asking for authorization for each of these resolutions and the board must vote on these individually but that misses my Dell anything else you want to add okay thank you we are going through six resolutions this evening I will read through again traditionally it's these are resolutions that have to occur 45 days before the end of the school year the first resolution is authorizing the non-renewal of first second and third year probationary teachers this is resolution 1819 and this impacts 13 individuals can I have a motion to approve resolution number 1819 resolution authorizing non-renewal of first second and third year probationary so moved

020second time any discussion roll call please yes yes yes yes yes next resolution is authorizing the honorable dismissal of teachers resolution number 1821 this is a targeted RIF all teachers on this list will be eligible for recall it impacts 19 teachers can I have a motion to approve resolution number 1821 resolutions authorizing honorable this dismissal of teachers so moved so any discussion roll call please yes yes yes yes yes the next four resolutions are for classified staff this next is a resolution number 1823 authorizing honorable dismissal of educational support personnel this is for one MTS s position it impacts one do you individual if I have a motion to approve resolution number 1823 honorable dismissal and support do you salute second any discussion [Music] roll call please yes yes yes yes no yes yes next

021resolution is resolution 1828 authorizing the honorable dismissal of educational support personnel this is non-union personnel part-time staff and after and before school individuals as well this impacts 19 non-union personnel members can I have a motion to approve resolution 1828 honorable dismissal and support non-union so moved second any discussion roll call please yes yes her yes yes yes yes next resolution is resolution 1829 this is authorizing the honorable dismissal of educational support personnel for funded project personnel I do want to note that this list includes teachers that have full-time positions this listing is only for their after or before school responsibilities that are grant funded not their full-time position it is 55 individuals that are impacted for their before and after school grant funded supports can I have a motion to approve resolution number 1829 honorable

022dismissal Ed's support funded project so moved second any discussion roll call please yes yes yes yes yes yes that's resolution for this evening is resolution 1837 authorizing the reduction in force of educational support personnel with a reduction in hours with their present position it impacts one individual I have a motion to approve resolution number 1837 reduction in force educational support personnel so moved su second any discussion roll call please yes yes yes yes yes yes thank you that concludes this evening resolutions thank you my next accession action item is a resolution of school district u 46 supporting the proposed extension of Hanover Park tax increment finance district number three village center dr. King is joined at the dais I also know that mayor Craig is in the audience as well and is available I'm sure

023to come forward and answer for questions as well can I have a motion to approve the resolution of school district u46 supporting the proposal proposed extension of Hanover Park tax increment financing TIF district number three village center second okay any discussion or should we start with Jeff I was gonna say well we might want to would you like - mayor give a quick overview of what the village's is attempting here with the door of the specific TIF I'd be happy to and this is a challenge we weren't looking forward to created the TIF the last eight years we have had a negative EAV component this year is the first time we saw even a small increment of improvement we have a couple of developers on board one is a single-family home developer and he's looking

024to build some homes lot by lot he's looking for some assurances of support from us and then there's another developer at Lake Street and Church Street putting up five buildings three four-story apartments and so he's looking for some increment there's not enough time left in the existing TIF and so those are we're not looking to go beyond what we originally planned but we do need time with the increment that we lost and certainly the challenge for me with this TIF extension and if I'd have known what I know now when we implemented this but if it's a part of the transitory development around train station and it goes into two counties and it goes into two townships and the number of taxing bodies that I've had to personally go in physik cuz I thought it

025was important you know that if the mayor shows up with a request on a TIF extension I think everybody realizes we're serious about this and we want to serve our community nicely and we also will we be respectful of the school districts because I don't know that the you can't use every dollar that you have opportunity to receive I do know when the last half expired we left there was quite a bit of money there and rather than generate a special project so we burned it all off we returned a large sum of money to the school district and that would that demonstrates the fairness that we believe in in Hanover Park with our other taxing bodies so tonight I'm before you you're the last hurrah the I've been to DuPage County I've been to

026the airport authority of into the DuPage County part I think I call a park district but you know the district the Forest Preserve District MWD was interesting they said wouldn't you thinking you know we don't approve these kind of things but they gave me a letter of non objection so that was not what I was looking for but it certainly doesn't say no and so the number of taxing bodies that I had to go visit and I thought Cook County was going to kill us that they were very supportive they understand the dynamics of the economics that we've gone through in the past so tonight I'm before you I last my last opportunity everybody else has given us a pat on the back though haste to go forward do good things so now that's our

027that's our goal tonight clarify that doesn't end even here because it's still this is just to get a bill in the legislature correct that it's austere this just just gets it in to them to build the requirements today with our legislature are they want to know all the taxing bodies are supportive okay and so this is just one step in the process so we get the bill together then I think that's a that's a major leap of faith to move forward so thank you for your consideration this evening and I know many board members ask questions that we did respond to and those are available on the board book as well but dr. King I'm sure can join in answering any more questions of what might have so I guess my first question is why

028well no look at the numbers you're estimating a six million dollar deficit with if I'm reading page eight of the 2016 document correctly that's based on projected expenses through from 2017 and beyond does that's I believe that's correct okay are you expected I mean there's five five years after this TIF six years five or six losers five six years and you don't get any more tax property tax money in the next five or six years to cover that deficit well we're not because of the negative VAV the last eight years we're just not where we should be and so developers want to come in and they need X amount of dollars to to help with their building process and if we don't have the number of years to spread that out over and it just

029doesn't happen so that we're back with nothing so for example developers want streets built or what are they what kind of support would just walk away so we wouldn't have anything because they need more time that's what's left currently in the town that's what they're telling us they're the ones with the money we have to trust what they tell us are there any other questions Jeannette I just have some comments in general I'm not supportive of Tiff's I voted no on the Bartlett tip in 2015 because I said Tiff's tend to facilitate crony capitalism and I still believe that additionally this particular TIF started 17 years ago within an available eav differential almost 12 million and now there's a six million dollar deficit and the request is to continue the TIF for another 12 years

030it could appear that we would be rewarding poor planning in this municipality to the further detriment of other taxing bodies and for these reasons I will be voting no and I guess my question again looking at the document you gave us there was money deposited into the what's called the special tax allocation fund I guess that's a tip fund for 2016 of $1,800 wouldn't we estimate similar amounts in future years that's what I'm getting at that yeah I can't really speak to the every technical field dollar transfer you know I you know I would know how to speak to that but we can come back with the you know the dollar component the important thing to know is with a robust economy which were on the cusp of what I'm being told with the robust

031economy the eav can then improve itself and with and improve the AV that brings more dollars to the table and so with more dollars it's not so much about planning so beware about the what the world what's going on in the world and we've all been hit with negative II IVs with reductions and value and it affects the number of dollars that we have coming into our taxing district so I'm dr. King we already as I said this some of the tax worry that might have come to the district goes to the TIF you know I think you said 750 thousand a year that was my estimate so due to the increase in ei V so then typically what municipalities do is borrow against that growth number then to use that money to entice people

032to come in and build whatever they're seeking them to build apartments houses commercial development typically they'll they'll leverage that growth money they'll borrow further out and if they don't have enough time in the TIF then that limits their ability to borrow far enough out to pay all that back listen mr. Carr you you asked a question I don't know that it was fully answered about the 750 thousand and whether or not that money is then I mean it's not that you 46 is out that tax money that's coming from somewhere else in the district correct no so if so if we levy a certain amount the TIF would take a portion of the lovely the tip no they don't take a portion of our levy we don't even have access to that okay once the

033TIF is created the EAB is frozen in that TIF district so in the year that in this case it was was it eight million roughly mm-hmm was the original value we're frozen at the 8 million as that grows then that's what the village is used to borrow against to leverage that those future funds that that they'll achieve through the growth then to then bring back into the TIF to invest to entice other people to come in but I my quote would be we still love you a certain amount regardless whether there's a tiff or not we do and that levy just means that the other tax payers would pick up the burden basically the Munno that's not how it works not how it works okay all right it's gone yeah I know I guess that's

034what I'm not understanding is white because the left the levy only recognizes the original EAP no I'm saying the levy in terms of we levy let's say make it simple let's say we level levy 10 million and our eav without all of our tips it's 90 million right now if there is a 10 million in TIF set-aside doesn't that mean that the levy is being based on that the 90 million which means that if you have one of the property tax owners not in the TIF you're picking up a larger a larger share no no splintery why wrong no the again the reverse does happen so when the TIF rolls back on the tax rolls then it will have in a growth economy it will have the effect of lowering taxes but when it's established

035again it's set in time so the impact is not greater upon the other taxpayers because the village did what they did or any particular village that that effect doesn't occur so the original was the 8 million dollars we're frozen at right as an EA V value so we are not receiving taxes on that originally on the 8 million yes we're just frozen at that love or whatever taxes we get from the property that's in that to the 8 million that's in that tip it's flat correct so we don't get the benefit of the growth know any a B but that benefit of the growth you're saying is not then so like I think it's when we go and challenge property tax increases if someone if a business owner commercial property is able to lower their

036tax burden that gets spread among the rest of property owners is that correct yes but that's not the case with Tiff's we get the whatever we get off of that 8 million and whatever we would have gotten off of the increasing eav doesn't get alyc does not the other taxpayers are not picking up that burden no so what happens is so the original 8 million again is part of our levy and so let's assume for argument's sake there was growth in the TIF and we levied 2% the 2% is only allocated against our existing eav so the taxpayers are not are not being punished for the establishment of the TIF there's not a I don't know how to make it I'm struggling to make it clear but that's that's not how that's not how it

037was established and how it works through the taxing formula you're not you're not the other taxpayers aren't punished because there is one the taxing districts ourselves it limits our ability to access the growth so basically we look at it is it's a no growth situation for the 23 years that it's established and we're not recouping that from other taxpayers outside the jail so no and if and if the tip is not successful you don't have access to that that growth also at the end so it's a it's an investment correct I mean the bottom line is you try to spur the economic growth through these days right you you want the goal is to increase the eav the value of the property if the value of the property increases there's more tax dollars generated more

038tax dollars generated meaning our rates go down so we're actually charging everybody less if our rates go down so in growing it tips work in a growing economy when we had the the reverse effect would happen into the villages all of them from oh seven on til probably fifteen is they all were they weren't getting any growth in the value the EAV so they couldn't borrow any money to bring in developers to invest in their TIF districts because they had nothing to borrow against because they weren't realizing any growth so the Tiff's set in a lot of cases set stagnant because the villages couldn't do anything with them because there was no growth in aave which is basically their revenue source to make the TIF grow in in our case we had negative yeah eav

039so the values went down so while your fixed ended about if the values go down then our chances of for new development in dollars within that are slim to none so that's what we've gone through for about eight years and I understand that and appreciate that I'm gonna hazard a guess that when the tip was created in 2001 we thought that we would be in a growth economy so to say you know for the next 12 years and then plus the five years that were going to be recouping those costs to say that we're gonna be in a continuous growth economies probably unrealistic given typical business cycles I'll give you a little depth to this sure if I think the what we see on the forefront is with the old you know there it's now

040called AI 390 we're within a mile of having access to O'Hare the access to O'Hare is going to open up a whole Western Corridor the day that thing opens I've got a hundred and twenty acres over there that I know I'm gonna start getting phone calls and when I start getting phone calls it's about development it's about the opportunity and we used choose to page which is the economic office for independent office in DuPage County for doing the studies and looking at that and they determined that it would open up 68,000 jobs I've been in touch with pace they want to do a they want to provide a high-speed bus from our from our train station into the western edge of O'Hare the terminal which would come which would be one of the early phases

041but bring you right inside of the terminal controlled area the TCA I'm going to confuse the airplanes on the ground but those things would then be available so our access and our opportunities for growth west of O'Hare are one things that I've been advocating for for quite a while so we're very close that road is gone to 83 now it just doesn't go to eye test but it goes to 83 and and I was talking to towait tonight it's Mary I was supposed to be there chairing a meeting with them at this time but they they are moving forward they're very close with the Canadian Pacific and with the other railroad their school and we're real close I'm having the permission to get into the airport another a bridge that goes over the rail so

042I'm very optimistic more so with the growth I have businesses in town there's a steel manufacturer not typical steel but the kind where they grind pipes and they ship in the oil wells around the world it's a very robust firm and he says I'm going crazy I'm getting more calls than ever so the markets are really coming true some of the tax changes that have been made are just really going to be robust and so not only this Hanover Park gonna benefit but the whole corridor from Bensenville Elk Grove Wood Dale Rozelle Itasca in the Bartlett with their large industrial park on the west end those things are all good for all of us and so I'm in the middle of all this stuff promoting the marketing and the opportunities for growth so this TIF

043and this extension would give us a leg up so that as the eav grows we're gonna have opportunities within that area not to scare developers away but to enhance them and to embrace them for the future growth of our communities I hope that was helpful yeah it absolutely that's helpful I mean it's it's it's good to hear the the projections because that's not information we have here it's not like we have the long document that was presented in 2001 with the original well maybe AV projections that we had since 2008 have been almost scary the big blessing Hanover Park had was with Menards opened in 2008 I don't know what we would have done we the I be out there street sweeping the street so the some of the things that have occurred we're blessed

044with and we count those every day and we're looking forward to the opportunity for the future it looks very bright right now where it's looked pretty dismal looking backwards and with the results of a negative Vav you know if you got a dollar tomorrow you're gonna have a dollar ten negative ei DS as you're lucky we're at ninety cents so okay I think we all we all kind of understand this and I respect everybody's thoughts and opinions on teeth on tips because they're very complex and the city of Chicago tends to screw them up for the whole state but they're in a whole different world I know you want to go there well my interest is to make sure that we are not penalizing the neighbors of Hanover Park correct because we you know we

045have to keep the interests of the entire district forefront even as it would be good to have an increase in EAB you know in the future for for the district we have to make sure that we're protecting the we don't we've lost our experience in recognizing that and having the experience of what those benefits bring to us and Mayor Craig I know you're you're a you know a supporter of u46 I know that you're you know one of our cheerleaders one of our champions dr. King I assuming that we have a good relationship as far as the joint review boards go and and the communication lines were comfortable as far as that goes yes okay thank you thank you appreciate tough questions and the other questions comments he said a quick question comment so um

046developers still in businesses still might come in or would come into the area without the TIF correct and there'd still be some growth without ative well yes or no the current developer we're talking with needs some additional increment over over a period of time then that increment comes from from the TIF and so with the short period he can't even start the project so without this we're not going to see it see that development it's a great development for stories partner buildings it'll it'll work perfectly within our TIF within our the transitory development at the train station we have many young Millennials that live in our area that would love that work downtown would love to be a walk cross street hop on the train and go to work so the dynamics of this whole

047thing are pretty exciting but a developer when he puts all the numbers together if they end up a little short though the weight or the look someplace else so this is an enhancement that benefits our community and all the taxing bodies thank you for the question and the other questions Cummins roll call please yes yes no yes no yes I think you got everybody okay so we're moving ahead you'll ask around thank you all very much for your your questions and your consideration thank you thank you thanks for being our cheerleader before we go on to the next item I wanted to mention that we disapprove before closed session we did approve for mr. Costello to join us by phone and he will probably be on your wedding yeah letting us know around 7:00 so

048we may just take a short break and get him on the phone and then I go back to the meeting okay all right contracts over 25,000 our first work session item our contracts over 25,000 our first is a contract renewal secondary education hero software renewal for high and middle schools administration recommends the Board of Education approved the one-year contract renewal with hero software in the amount of sixty four thousand two hundred and twenty-five dollars and requests authorization for district administration decks he related documents the expenditure will be charged the educational fund and it is in the budget for the 2017-18 school year mr. Phelps and dr. Lozier have joined it today is that the board has questions are there any questions so I had sent you a question you would answer that that this hero

049is making a difference for tardies especially in the middle school could you elaborate on that a little bit please sure at the middle school there are fewer staff and so really in order for it to work you need staff buy-in to using hero both for tardies and for positive rewards so our middle schools have got the majority of staff buy-in and we've seen a dramatic reduction in tardies at the middle schools Elgin High School sitting behind me has got 90 percent teacher staff buy-in and is the high school with the largest buy-in in u46 and they have seen reductions and tardies thank you congratulations and the other questions okay thank you we have one other work session item for bids and proposals that's a bid for plant operations for Canton middle-school HVAC replacement part two

050joining mr. Phelps today is Chris Allen director of plant operations the administration recommends award of the low bid meeting specifications to Effie Moran Inc in the amount of 1 million eight hundred and thirty thousand dollars and requests authorization for district administration executed documents the expenditure will be charged to the capital projects fund and the life safety fund and it is in the budget for the 1718 squeeze are there any questions Cummins none okay thank you our next work session items are or the next one's very lengthy um it's our school improvement plans and we have a I think everybody in the audience is here for the school improvement plans are you not right it's a sea of maroon I believe we're going to start up with a district-wide overview as the team members are coming

051forward I hope you all had a chance to look further in depth but our school improvement plans and the new process the schools are following to input information into a newer system that's really fresh and nice and it's a good way for the public to be able to see this happening within our schools so to kick us off with tonight's presentation we have Laura Hill director of assessment and accountability Lisa Jackson a coordinator in assessment and accountability and dr. Terry Lauder assistant superintendent or secondary education and somebody else were waiting on Earth hi hi how are you guys doing fine are you ready to call mr. Hill and yet mr. Castelo or should know he's gonna he's gonna let us know when he's ready so we may have to stop you that's why I wanted

052to warn you we may have to stop you get him on the phone okay within are you 46 all over elementary schools middle schools and high schools and the dream Academy have continuous school improvement plans this presentation is informative as well as a request of approval of the plans from the Board of Education the elementary and the middle school plans extend to 2020 while our high schools which will be going through the accreditation process this spring have plans in place for 2022 our continuous is a continuous school improvement process is just that it does not begin in August and in in May but it is an ongoing cycle of planning and implementing checking in on and monitoring adjusting and revising their work as needed Michael's smoker in his book results the keys to continuous score

053improvement States quote the combination of three concepts constitutes the foundation for positive improvement results meaningful teamwork clear measurable goals and the regular collection and analysis of performance data and quote our schools through their plans work collaboratively with their stakeholders to determine if their school is improving it is their opportunity to not solely rely on test results or external mandates but to come to but to create common language and understanding of who they are as a school body and what they believe in and to align those understandings and beliefs to what what they do it what we do in the context of a unit district and to center themselves on their why or why they do what they do and to continually go back to it as they assess their progress what takes place within our

054schools every day is amazingly special dynamic and complex and the stakes are extremely high because our student lives we in the balance we when we consider what goes into educating our children the dedication the finances and budgets behaviors curriculum instruction policies safety learning families culture goals leadership talents and more it can be overwhelming if schools if systems have not been put in place the continuous school improvement plan is one example of systems work at the school level leveraging the continuous school improvement process can be an effective tool in ensuring that our schools are meeting the needs addressing the concerns and honoring the dreams of all of our students and by the way this that you see that's award Wordle it's supposed to be the picture of a schoolhouse building so the search aged ik strategic

055plan was developed in partnership with the board of education u46 staff and then the u46 community this slide shows the four aspirations envisioned by the workgroups and refined with community input defining what success looks like for our students when they reach our aspirations each aspiration shown on the previous slide has two priorities the priorities are broad thematic areas of focus and the broad foci can be somewhat difficult to define and measure that is why metrics for each priority were developed and if you remember when we first started there were close to 100 potential metrics to consider and we were able to narrow them down so with the board's input we were able to whittle these down to 13 metrics shown over 14 or over 4 aspirations so keeping in mind that we are a pre-k

056through 12 district once the metrics were identified we had to backwards map the metrics the backwards mapping requires us to consider how we attain this aspiration and give meaning to the work we do at the high school level the middle school level and then a pre-k through 6 level we need to show how all of these connect from one level to the next from there we were able to write specific measurable targets aligned to the priorities the board is tasked with setting the direction of the district and asking the school to meet certain expectations or metrics and then the schools take these measurable goals as defined by the district and determine how the school will work at addressing those goals each school looks at the goals through the lens of their community the staff and

057the building the students and then figure out the best course of action for their school what works at one school may not work at another the plan of action sets the foundation for the continuous school improvement process I asked algin high school if they would mind sharing the process with you later this evening in the presentation and when i asked i got an immediate and resounding yes they have brought their entire administrative team school improvement members school improvement chairs and students and you will have the opportunity to hear from them later beginning this year each of our schools were tasked with documenting their school improvement plan within a Google site this represents a snapshot of the front page of Elgin High School's continuous improvement plan you've been provided a link to the plans for each

058of the schools in u46 this front page is the hub of the plan the banner includes links to the school website and Illinois report card the front page also includes the following items the school's vision their mission a narrative descriptive of the of the school 15 members norms and meeting times the left-hand side displays other pages that are included within this site so beginning with our high school plans the assessment office and I met with Beach High School school improvement team last April or early May to help them understand how the board was asking us to hold schools accountable at meeting their goals the three areas identified as priorities for high schools included standard spaced learning safety and family and community engagement since standard space learning has different meanings to different groups we identified areas

059to focus on that include college and career readiness identified through Advanced Placement a high school graduation rate as well as industry credentials so teams worked at the end of last year and over the summer to have a plan in place for schools when they started the year this year the school improvement team showed staff members what the teams thought were important goals and steps and then the entire staff was able to provide feedback feedback feedback feedback feedback and suggest additional steps aimed at success data analysis is an ongoing process and is included in the plans sometimes the data we look at is an autopsy of the work that has already been performed what schools try to do then is to look at the data from the past look at the results and then from there

060try to determine what it is that we need to do to be able to get at the aspiration this year all five high schools are also going through the advanced at accreditation process which is also another form of continuous improvement schools and their communities need to assess themselves in light of practice standards and show evidence of meeting those standards are we at middle school okay middle school still me middle school improvement plans are backward mapped then from our high school metrics so again the three areas identified for middle schools include standards-based learning safety and family and community engagement since standards-based learning has different meanings to different groups what we identified at the middle school level for college and career readiness is PSAT predictions that lead up to the high school SAT algebra readiness and then

061next year we're going to be adding a new metric around career exploration and career readiness again data analysis is part of each school plan and based on the data from particular schools different goals are written in order to obtain the aspirations and then there are resource pages added to the board packet that shows how data dialogues are used to help staff to look at their data and to engage in a continuous discussion good evening elementary school improvement plans are built around three robust goals the first one is standards-based learning and assessment the second one goal B is around early learning and early intervention and the third goal C is around family and community engagement these goals provide a high effect size frame for ongoing school improvement at the elementary level the effort of teachers colleagues

062administrators and the teams at the elementary level is to support a deep practice and deep changes in practice as opposed to a quick or or shallow planning in order to ensure that the improvement work is meaningful we've explicitly identified that these three goals these three simple focus areas would be the focus for through 2020 and it's for this reason that even throughout that process we expect that it would be an ongoing and iterative process so that schools are revisiting and refining these three goals throughout that time so that at the end of this time period we really have changes in practice that result in changes in the lives of our students [Music] so our 31 title 1 schools also have a title 1 school wide plan you saw those last spring and you asked the

063question will these be updated to reflect the changes in essa and those are the plans that you see before you today to address essa there are six components of each of the title one plans that you received which include what are the school-wide reform strategies that each school is undergoing based on their needs assessment as well as what supports to each of these schools offer for social and emotional to help their students meet their needs all the components that are addressed by our secondary schools have that post-secondary workforce readiness opportunity it also has a component which identifies what are the school-wide tiered model supports that are available to address behaviors within the school you'll see a lot of language around our PBIS initiative so the talk about what are the school-wide expectations how do they

064teach those two kids and reinforce them and what additional supports are available to students in those schools at tiers 2 and tier 3 it also notes professional development available to staff starting with the district level professional development but some school is also further elaborated on additional supports that they offer in their schools and then finally in each of our elementary plans there is a component of the plan that addresses how do we transition kids from preschool programs into our elementary buildings and the total plans are actually a link within each of the goals so if you go to the bottom of each of the goals you'll see in blue there's a hyperlink and you can actually link to not only the title plan but also the funding for title and for the record also doing

065I only introduced three of the members they were up there we also had Doctor Who Schmo shop resenting mr. Steve Buerger and dr. Trish Rove mrs. Thomas is now joining us the principal of Elgin High School and I'll let you introduce the team as they come up to present if that's okay as you walk through the Elgin High School template so we are definitely here tonight we have our entire image with us they are sitting in the back hello Elgin thank you for coming out to support could you pull the both of microphone in table close remember they want to hear you at home on the YouTube video so I just want to thank my entire administrative team they are here they are sitting in the audience with us tonight my name is Krystal Thomas

066and I am principal of the health elgin high school home of the Maroons and I am so happy to be there so to my right we have Sabrina Langley she is our English divisional we have John and Christina they are co-chairs we have RJ which is one of our students RJ Bartlett he's one of our students that will be talking tonight and we have Kane Easter know who is an English teacher and she's also our ETA building rep so that's who's joining us so good evening to our CEO Tony Sanders our board president mrs. Donna Smith and - are you 46 board members greetings to all in the audience from Elgin high school again home of the Maroons we are very excited to share our school improvement process that will be presented during our scheduled

067accreditation through advanced air in April as the new principal of Elgin high school I wanted to focus on building a collaborative culture with clear and concise communication both collaboration and communication has served as the cornerstone of our work this year communication loops have been developed at every level most importantly reaching our students and you four will hear from him tonight to streamline our communication plans our school improvement plan is our title one plan that is also our advanced at submission and all of these happen collaboratively and serve as our communication piece for what's going on at the Elgin high school there are a number of ways that we have a collaborative environment all of these efforts happen simultaneously within the school improvement process and can be evidenced through our plan as a school improvement team

068we review data determine action steps and monitor actions for effectiveness we are divided into subcommittees that mirror our school goals whose primary role is to Action Plan inclusive of collecting and analyzing data to further inform our work for example as a staff we reviewed and analyzed data from our five essential survey which is also included in one of the links there as a mean of as a means of informing our qualitative data each year schools across the state are asked to participate in the five essential survey shown on our school report card the survey can help schools to understand data points and academic performance attendance trends climate and culture the survey helps schools to make better decisions as they approach their school goals and for us here in Elgin it's kind of the why after

069we look at the what and researchers have found that if three of the five essentials improve you're more likely to see our overall increase in school improvement efforts the focus area of our school improvement plan are standards based learning safety and Family and Community Engagement which somewhat correlates to the five essentials we review and examine ambitious instruction which lay the foundation for our five weeks standards-based learning and assessment implement implementation through our theory of action our divisionals who are here tonight are responsible for assisting our teachers with helping to develop implement and monitor student progress we continuously use data to inform our instructional decisions collaboratively teachers team teacher teams within their contents are asked to select the standard that they are committed to teaching over a five-week peer that is not to say that other

070standards are not taught but based on our assessment results and in conjunction with our five essential survey our teachers make determinations about what we call power standards those standards that are really focused on once there is a consistence of consensus in regards to the standard teacher teams are then asked to select a research based strategy or action that teachers then use in their classrooms to teach the standards next they're asked to explain the impact the selected strategy or action will have on student achievement teacher teams are then asked to set an achievement goal a pre-assessment and post assessment is collaboratively developed by the teacher teams and administered at the beginning and at the end of the five-week cycle hence the process of developing our five-week theory of action is collaborative while serving as our communication

071about standards-based learning and assessment implementation at Elgin high school our English department had some amazing results and that our divisional Sabrina and Lange line will share with you a little later you will also hear from Katie sterno an English teacher and one of our students on how their focus on words and context helped him with a significant increase on his AC T lastly another example of our collaborative efforts came through our Title one plan which again reflects our school improvement plan our school improvement team composed of administrators staff and one of our parents develop the plan this year for the first time we wanted to ensure a more democratic approach to Title one that was in alignment with our school goals and reflective of our school improvement plan I sought assistance from our two chairs

072Christina and John to develop a request for have a tracking tool for expenditures that would explicitly support the achievement of our school goals and they are here to tell you a little bit more about the process good evening I'm Christina Cabrera and in the slideshow that you have on the left hand side of the screen is the tracking tool that we initially developed it is a Google Form and the title 1 funding is generally determined by the building administration but there is a portion of the funds that are supposed to be used for teacher improvement whether that is professional development field trips or activities to support the activities within the classroom and that are enrichment for student growth and so as a result of the ability to use these funds for teacher initiatives and to

073have teacher voice in that process we developed this form so that teachers could easily fill it out through the Google Drive that we have and then all of that information that we collect you know teacher name their email addresses the amount that they need why the funding is being requested and how it aligns to sip goals so we know that we are in support of both the title 1 goals as well as the SIP pools for the building and that we're constantly aware of student needs and student growth then with this title 1 tracking form we input all of that information into a tracker and that tracker allows us to more adequately figure out which funds are going where and then the teachers in as a building are allowed to democratically request the funds and

074we fulfill them as they support the goals of the building so the tracker itself will be further explained by John men : ok all right so we have this track if you guys can see on the lower left hand side it's kind of color-coded you can't read a lot on it but we have it so that we kind of see how we break it down we use the tracker as a ledger right so as well as we determine what items need to be voted on by the SIPP team so there's certain items that are the bigger financially whatever it may be and we we vote on as asset team if if we need to if need be so each color on the chart responds to different funding purpose right for example transportation field trips professional

075development supplies technology etc anything that teachers may need this allows us to be very deliberate and how we're spending our money and ensures that every expenditure that we approve directly aligns to our SIPP goals they have to actually put the SIF goal that it aligns to in the request form once a month we're going to begin working with Miss Solorzano the principal secretary to reconcile the requests we got to the point where we had these requests coming through but the end process process one wasn't quite there so we're trying to continuously improve how we're tracking the money we want to make sure that the title one money is being spent on our sip goals and in a very timely manner so the process isn't perfect but we have some tweaks and improvements that we're going

076to be making for next year it seems to be running pretty well our administration and SIF team feel that this is the best approach to ensure that our teachers have a voice in the process and our kids are getting the support they need in the classroom [Music] hello okay I'll be speaking a little bit about connecting our sip goals to our theory of actions with our ambitious instruction so while connecting goal four of our school improvement plan to ambitious instruction the divisionals administrators present tonight at Elgin created ten theory of action plans throughout all contents of the school so what you'll see today is just an example from the English department and there are also nine more happening at the same five week cycle for this particular theory of action we focused on a language

077standard and connected it to comprehending words in context which is also a focus on the reading portion of the SAT to drive the five weeks of instruction teachers shared lessons and collaborated using Google classroom our pre and post-tests were based on a 10-point practice SAT assessment and data was collected in three reporting strands as you can see the first where students who received a zero or two which represents the lowest band on the SAT three to five was the second category it was connected in and then a six plus as you can see the data on the top chart shows the total student growth in the lowest strand zero to two was pretty significant those are three examples of three different teachers across all subjects taught for English that Center one there in green highlights

078a special education classroom that adopted the English theory of action as well where you saw 11 percent growth the second graph on the bottom shows the growth in that top category that's 6 plus and students who receive a 6 plus are more likely to score in a college readiness range on the SAT the blue highlight on that section there shows a 21% increase in one of our AP honors courses of the 21 teachers who participated in the theory of action 100 percent increase or maintain the numbers of students who scored a 6 plus you can see we started over there on the left with 664 students receiving a 6 plus and ended with 814 which is a really significant increase one of our teachers who not over only experienced a could we take little break

079short mr. Castelo on the phone you are joining the meeting we're in the middle of school approval and you so one of our teachers who not only experienced a 13% growth for the students in the top range but also saw the largest increase in overall average is here today miss Katie sternal to talk a little bit about the implementation and success of the theory of action good evening could you go to my site thank you so the data that you see up on the screen right now or in your PowerPoint is the data specific to my two freshman classes as well as mine on co.labs senior English class as Sabrina said both pre and post-test were out of ten questions and from my data for those of you who can't read my zero to two

080correct answers so the bottom band I had 14 percent fewer students and that band on the post-test for my three to five correct the middle band I had three percent less however the most significant movement that my students saw was in the six or more correct answers and that was increased by 13% and again those are the students that are going to be most successful on SAT so what I'd like to tell you about is a little bit with what I did with my students with my freshmen students I dedicated a day a week to working on words in context and the skills required to improve that we started the five-week theory of action with Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky and I believe that that was a great way to begin because it is completely inventive and

081they students worked with a partner to translate that into English that they could understand that activity pointed directly to the idea of parts of speech which is something that some students are lacking at coming in freshman year and it is a vital skill to know in order to be successful in figuring out what a word means in context after working with and teaching my students that skill students were then able to determine unknown word meanings based solely on context clues on unfamiliar text both fiction and nonfiction with my seniors I incorporated our theory of action into literature circles one of the roles during these lit circle discussions was the vocabulary and richer that student each week was responsible for keeping track of words she or he didn't know and then the student worked independently and

082then as a with their group to determine the meaning based on the context the word was found in and to talk a little bit more about the impact that it had on students I'm going to turn over to RJ good evening I haven't really been a strong reader in my past education I have been in reading support classes to help me better I guess myself and I was always on the low side of comprehending and getting good grades and stuff within my peers but the book that I had chosen for my Lit circle class for English class I mean I'm sorry was have gotten my attention really fast and had helped me get to reading I guess you could say I was able to reason raise my AC T score from a 14 to 20

083which was really great in my eyes and is also others I believe this is because of the skills that we learned in English and because mr. Knoll had helped push forth reading onto me because I don't really like reading but the reading section that and on the AC T the first time I had taken it was at 10:00 and then the second time I took it was up at 8:20 because of the hard work I had put in um also basically what we did in class to help this is we had like little peer groups and stuff to discuss about words that we didn't quite understand and stuff like that and basically ways to figure out what the words meant which was read sentences before and after the word to help figure out what the

084word was and then um if we were still unsure we would have to like figure out different words that we could place in there that would make it make sense like sitting-rooms of the word and um this helped me raise my score because it helped make me understand the and I spit it out I'm sorry basic basically comprehend the different words and comprehend the reading and the context the context of what I was reading thank you did great does that conclude the presentation okay then I think we'll keep a few people of each both central administration and school administration in case the board has questions as a quick wrap-up RJ you and I were gonna start a Reading Club together get you some really good books when I was your age I also was not

085the best of readers and and some really good books turned my life around too so I'll be following up with some of my recommended readings okay also before we wrap up I would like to thank the Elgin high school team for being here this evening they start their day every morning around 4 o'clock right to get up and get to the school on time so I appreciate you being here this late in the evening we have 55 more schools to go so they're lined up outside no series in the past we've always brought forward at least one school to walk the board through the school improvement planning process as you could tell from the documents we do this with all of our schools and I like the new sleek format and the focus on continuous

086improvement and the alignment of the school improvement plans to the funding how we use our title $1.00 so just high praise to the team for continuing to improve our internal processes that support schools and with that if the board has questions and there any questions so I just wanted to say how impressed I was with these school improvement plans compared to the ones I've seen in the past I mean they're so much more comprehensive and understandable and just a couple of things I would hope that schools look at each other school improvement plans to get ideas of what schools are doing in terms of since everyone's has the same goals it would be helpful and I would also urge the district to make these available on each school's website so as a parent can see

087a school report card they could also see the school improvement claim but great job because I really I went through two of them in detail and I've got 55 or 54 more to go so thanks again that was our reasoning for putting them into Google Sites so is this much easier to share and for others to to view others plans as well any other questions comments Melissa so do parents the individual schools that they request information are they able to see information then on the school and Purim plan they notice that some you know schools have a number of parents members of their si P teams other schools might not have as much participation so what is the level of information that parents can expect to receive on their as a piece usually we ask

088our administrators to actually present their school improvement plan whether they take it apart and present it but to present it to their community multiple times so that people can see because obviously data comes in multiple times a year when are we presenting our goal on safety when are we talking about our goals so we can refer back to it multiple times of the year rather than just saying here's our school improvement plan as you all just have access to all of those documents and it's very overwhelming so to break it down into specific goals and specific pieces of data okay thank you any other questions okay Oh Phil let's check in with Phil Phil do you have anything okay thanks thank you all for coming tonight great job [Applause] you're fine so originally we have

089the discussion with the board about making this presentation more of a work session and the other room 139 it is my hope that we can still have that work session after we presented the data here this evening and then also in hindsight we should have flipped two presentations and had the equity presentation first so we could align it then to the school improvement planning process which is something I'm sure we can do in the future with that as a follow-up to a report we did in January there was additional requests for data that I know port member Ellis had requested requirements in our school board policy that we're trying to meet with this presentation tonight but this was the one and only night that we could get most of the board members together to hear

090the data presentation so with that this is the state of equity in school district u46 and I'll let mr. Raglan kick it off and if individual members would introduce themselves as they're presenting good evening school board president Donna Smith CEO Sanders and other board members it's an honor to be back here to present to you again the equity presentation or information I'll let the presenters can introduce themselves now and then they can reintroduce themselves as they present good evening Terry loser good evening Suzanne Johnson deputy superintendent of instruction Melonie my delts it's a super ton of HR John Hunter site director of safety and culture and my name is Ron Raglan assistant superintendent of education support programs and alignment our purpose this evening is a continuation of the January 22nd 2018 Board of Education presentation

091and title the state of equity for students in school district u46 our agenda for this presentation is three four one is academic performance to student discipline and support and three diversity employment data for teachers and administrators now turn it over to dr. Johnson good evening as we begin this evening's focus on the educational programming component I will take an opportunity to actually do just what Mr Sanders suggested provide a little bit of background on how our programming whether it being gifted honors classes Advanced Placement or specialized student services aligned to the work that you learned of tonight within the school improvement plan so I am going to provide an overview of our curriculum instruction work and certainly our efforts around standards based learning and assessment how that relates to all students in u46 and works

092to foster success for all of those students before we take a look at data within all of those programs for all students and you for you 46 we have a rigorous curriculum and instructional design process that implements the philosophies of understanding by design establishing end-products and objectives and then aligning to the appropriate standards and skills benchmarking student growth with formative and summative assessments and selecting resources that are accessible to students in English and Spanish and support rigor relationships and relevance via student choice and engagement this process begins with a call to committee that seeks participation from teachers administration and community most recently we have collaborated with our professional counterparts at Gale board and public library to align and support this curricular effort in identifying resources that are developmentally culturally and linguistically appropriate for all of

093our students to be able to embed those resources in our k-6 literacy curriculum as we work to also integrate social studies and science within this work we feel that this certainly represents the continuum of u46 programming and celebrates our diverse student body finally these proposals are reviewed by not only the professional development committee and instructional council but then finally by you the Board of Education for formal approval we are currently in the process of transitioning all curricula and content to standards-based learning and assessment pre-k through post 12 transition currently math and language arts courses at the secondary level and all courses within elementary our standards based learning classrooms science will move into this programming for the 2018 2019 school year and within this u46 place is a focus on standard and skill and the proficiency

094around those standards and skills as opposed to specific content for students additionally providing seven guiding principles to increase educational opportunity for all students that focus on the assets of our students and a growth mindset these seven principles include number one grades should reflect proficiency and well-defined standards-based learning targets that are clear to all stakeholders notice this is a focus on standards as exposed as opposed to either implicit or explicit content within a classroom number two grades should be based on academic performance using formative and summative assessments this notes a separation of academic achievement and behaviors within classrooms for our students number three grade scale should be devised to give equal incremental value to each letter grade with this revised grade scale it provides an equal opportunity for success for students number four students should be

095expected to complete work for credit this item is to remove excuses for from students for not doing work and five students should be given multiple ways to demonstrate their and we recognize we have multimodal learners in our classrooms and many of our students benefit from hands-on learning and assessment opportunities number six feedback should be timely specific and related to learning targets and this again works to really focus on skills as outlined by a rubric as opposed to modifiers of excellence the last component is number seven students should be given multiple opportunities to reach proficiency on standards and specific standards concepts and skills again encouraging reassessment and reminding our students that we look forward and provide supports for ongoing opportunities to provide success grades are also determined by mode or central tendency which determines the grade

096based upon the evidence that is observed most frequently as opposed to averages which can on occasion punish students long-term for one or two poor performances or even poor decisions rather grades are more accurate when based upon this evidence these same components then are the anchors for the programs we will be discussing this evening and the data that we will be reviewing the first program that dr. Loe sure will provide a data overview for this evening is our gifted program good evening again Terry looser beginning in the 2013 2012-2013 school year all third-grade students were were screened for gifted identification Universal screening is the term used when all students at a particular level are included in the testing Universal testing for sixth grade students to be identified for gifted programming for middle school placement began in

097the 1516 school year Universal screening gives all students an equitable chance to be identified for programming a misconception held by some is that the number of seats identified is that their misconception held by some is that the number of seats identified for gifted students is limited and there is a quota of students who need to be enrolled school district e46 does not have a limit on the amount of gifted students identified nor does it have a quota requirement school district you forty six invites all students who are qualified to enroll and gifted programming the the identification process is the same each year a gifted identification team comprised of teachers administrators and school psychologists look at map and Co get data the entire cohort of student performance data by grade level is placed on a continuum

098looking for a natural breaking point or identified Talent once this point has been determined that this becomes the number to which the entire cohort of students is measured and then identified in order to be equitable we then take each subgroup identified as underserved and look at sub subgroup cohort data again and find a new point for identified Talent and invite those students into the gifted program as well so data on the slide shows the percentage of students by subgroup enrolled in gifted programming in school dist in grades four through six for the last five years as a method to increase access for underserved populations we have a Minh struction which is access to inquiry and meeting offered at 17 elementary sites covering 140 general education and dual language classrooms aim instruction is delivered by teachers

099with special training in giftedness they deliver a pushin model and ask classroom teachers to remain in the room so they can learn some of the different thinking skills and then continue the process aim training is also available to teachers who are not in the 17 identified schools those schools do not receive push and support but rather the classroom teacher is trained to deliver the same instruction should they want to do so something like thank you okay yes it's hard to see the enrollment trend in honors classes as seen in this slide has remained relatively consistent across all subgroups over the past five years with some minor fluctuations the largest overall trend decline is ten percent for males identifying with two or more ethnicities and that's from the years 2015 to 2018 not to diminish any

100hope to have all students in honors classes this 10 percent drop equates to three students from Larkin and/or Streamwood as over three years and four students from Bartlett Elgin or South Elgin High School over three years students are generally placed in honors classes at high school based on map score trends from middle school typically once a student is enrolled in an honors course they remain in an honor sequence until they request to drop back to general education high school students can also be recommended by their teachers for honors classes based on work performance and proficiency standards students and their parents always have the right to request honors placement and or deny honors placement yes the number of unique students enrolled in AP classes has gradually been increasing over the past five years in 2013 there

101were two thousand six hundred and thirty three unique AP students enrolled in 2017 there are twenty two thousand eight hundred and ninety five unique students enrolled the number of AP classes taken by these unique students has increased over five years as well in 2013 there were five thousand seven hundred six AP classes taken this year there are six thousand 192 AP classes for an increase of 486 classes taken one of the reasons given to me by students that I speak with who are not enrolled in AP classes is that sometimes they don't know what AP classes available so this year we made a very urgent request of all teachers guidance counselors and school administration to make sure that every single student knew all of the AP classes that were available to them one of the

102board of education metrics for college and career readiness is increasing the number of students enrolled in AP classes then increasing the number of underrepresented students also enrolled in AP again this goes back to our strategic plan this is so important that the assessment office has gone into advantage and placed a marker for schools so they can check their ongoing status for enrollment in AP classes each school identified in their school improvement plans how they were going to work on offering access to students the College Board has an equity statement that is shared each year with AP teachers and discussed at length with building administrators the College Board strongly encourages educators to make equitable access a guiding principle for their AP programs by giving all willing and academically prepared students the opportunity to participate in AP

103they encourage the elimination of barriers that restrict actus access to AP for students from ethnic racial and socio-economic groups that have been traditionally underserved our schools are making every effort to ensure their AP classes reflect diversity in their student population the college board also believes that all students should have access to academically challenging coursework before they enroll in AP classes which can prepare them for AP success currently the only AP classes that have a prerequisite are the science and math classes all of the other AP classes have open enrollment and we encourage students as early as freshman year to enroll in AP classes we have also written expectations for AP teachers to meet tied to whether or not the schools are meeting the Board of Education metrics our AP the expectations are around teachers attending

104day long or week long summer Institute's and when their AP course syllabi need to be submitted to approval to AP the data on the slide for specialized Student Services represents the number of students who are eligible or have an active individualized educational plan as of February 15th this year for students identified as an exceptional learner and in need of additional support for cognitive social and/or emotional needs an individualized educational plan is created the plan identifies specific goals for students explicit to their areas of growth strategies are also identified to support the student in those areas of growth that again might include academic areas social or and/or emotional areas additionally specific data is created enta fide that will be used to monitor the plan and continue to establish appropriate growth metrics for the young person currently

105within school district u46 approximately 13% of our student population has an IEP this is a slight increase over the past several years within the following areas we have identified an increase our african-american males our males who identify as two or more races and are our Hispanic males have seen an increase in I EPS notably within our early childhood programming we have seen this increase as well within our individualized educational plans specifically two areas including speech and language developmental delays and crossed categorical resources one thing to keep in mind as I share that this information share that this data has grown as we have also increased our abilities through child sign and our expanded preschool offerings we are identifying that some of our students are in need of additional support and potentially through IEP s one

106of the positives to this piece though should be noted that as we find students at a younger age and are able to provide interventions and or support sooner to them we identify that students will be more successful moving forward independently with fewer supports in their educational environment a goal for all of us in new 40 our ongoing plans for monitoring this data within specialized student services includes careful review and monitoring of the eligibility criteria as well as ongoing professional development and training for those responsible for identifying students who are eligible for specialized student services ongoing professional development for interventions within all of our general education courses and review again of that criteria as well additionally we will be working to increase our outreach and collaboration with our community groups including Citizens Advisory Council the african-american

107parent Leadership Institute and our Hispanic parent Leadership Institute as well to share our available resources next steps within the areas of educational programming include the review of the assessment process and/or identification process for programming and work to remove barriers for all students that they can access programming to best meet their needs provide professional development for colleagues to make sure we are informed of the practice for identification and expected expectations moving forward to best support students examine and review scaffolding strategies to provide support to students in least restrictive classrooms and within classrooms that are also challenging for our students to be successful in our honors gifted or advanced placement settings this will support students academically socially and emotionally this effort might also include large and small group instruction and be supported throughout by administration teachers guidance

108counselors and social workers as we work to make these revisions additionally we will work to pursue the review of potential and potential for increasing parent educators available to support our families who are unable to access early learner initiatives within our community and lastly we will document each of these steps and our ongoing work within the equity plan and provide ongoing board of education updates of this work at this time I have the pleasure of introducing mr. John heiderscheit hi and thank you very much staged as a student discipline and support and what we have in place the first slide I have here is done oh no I'm sorry we forgot about this part what is he referral in the discipline system what is referral how do students get referred and how does that relate to

109out-of-school suspensions and our our most severe form of exclusionary discipline which would be an expulsion a referral is entered by either a teacher or an administrator for the purpose of documenting a behavior event and looking for a consequence or an intervention to address that behavior event and our intent what that process is to increase academic success by helping that student change their behavior in some way or make a different decision and hopefully mentor that behavior into a different decision-making process our system of discipline is not as traditionally thought of as disavow punishment our system is not built on punishment is built on interventions and consequences to help students make better decisions for their academic success and success I should know about just real quickly that noon-hour Supervisors Dean's assistants para educators can also be involved

110in the discipline referral process through a teacher or an administrator so the first slide is a little bit different than I showed you in my annual report and I'm providing you two years of data what you're seeing here is all students represented uniquely by ethnicity all students represented here uniquely by ethnicity if they have one discipline referral or several discipline referrals they're represented once and what you're seeing is the percentage of the students that are involved in our discipline system overall we have a twenty-two percent twenty two point three percent of our students are involved in discipline that's what is represented by the blue bars the blue thick shaded bars on the bottom the lines are the ethnicity of race and ethnicity of students as represented so on average we have 22 percent of our

111students involved in discipline black and Efrain black african-american students is 51 percent so in other words if we have 39,000 students roughly 8800 are involved in discipline for african-american black students we have about a little over 2,500 under 3000 and half of those a little over half of those are involved in our discipline system so and what you're seeing here is an increase from 2015-16 and that increased by a couple percentage points upwards this is specific to african-american males african-american black males buy the same type of chart here as by unique students by race and ethnicity if they have one or several referrals you can see that all males in these categories are have increased their percentage of representation boys are more likely involved in a discipline process than girls are in our system and

112you'll see that the african-american black males are even a higher percentage than the whole of African American males this chart is representing I'm sorry this is the percentage of students I'm sorry this is a number of students number of unique students receiving referrals I apologize and so we're looking at four years of data and what you're seeing is the top line is the total number of students involved in discipline and then as you go down you have the three major race ethnicity groups by white being the gray bar hispanic latino being the green bar and african-american black students by the orange color there so what you're seeing over time there is that we were we have been able to reduce the number of students or their behavior we're effective with our consequences of referrals to

113reduce that number of students involved in our discipline referrals but that's not true in all race ethnicity groups so as we see that it has decreased for white students and has since 2013 14 it has decreased for Hispanic Latino students and whereas african-american black students it has remained about the same fact that nudge slightly up that's the number of students involved that are disciplines system this is the number of referrals the total number of referrals for the last number of years again the same type of chart where you have the total number on the line and then the major ethnicity race groups below that in a stackable chart so you'll see that we have a seen a reduction of 3,000 referrals just about since 2013-14 white students are down by 2100 referrals by race and

114ethnicity hispanic latino since 2013 are down by fifteen hundred and sixty three referrals by race and ethnicity where a black and african-american students have actually gone up by eight hundred twenty-five referrals by race race and ethnicity over the last four years what i'm showing you in this chart is our data ours from our student information system all that all this data comes from our student information system this is the district all students and this is the ratio of referrals per unique student by ethnicity so what this means is the number of unique students by ethnicity that have received one or a hundred referrals if you will i hope there's no students receiving a hundred referrals but that so that number over the last four years so the blue bar again is the all or the

115average if you will the and you can see the ratio the lines by race and ethnicity there so what that means in 2016-17 if you're a black and african-american student and you received one discipline referral on average for black students african-american students who receive set an average of seven point one four if you're hispanic latino that's about the average for all students is four point six one and if a white student is the average is 3.2 - so this this next chart is by request and what we did is here is responding to the question the top ten of behavior incidents for african-american male students and then what we did is we took those top ten and we included the information for those other the other major ethnic groups in our district Hispanic Latino white

116and black a black african-american we also did that by gender and by I'm sorry gender male and female so what that shows us is that the overall behavior offense that causes the most discipline referrals for all students is defines disrespect insubordination non-compliance and in the shape the chequered green is for females or the chequered is for females for all subgroup for those three and the solid colors for males so as you can see for for all male students that's a significant and one of the most significant discipline referrals and we go right down the line to chronic truancy truancy physical aggression loitering disruption or disturbance minor disruption minor defiance minor disrespect those are handled by teachers or minor offenses and then we have inappropriate physical contact going right down the list there for the top

117ten and then these next two slides are the top ten and how I put these charts into place was for african-american male students I started with the top the top offense which is verbal confrontation and from that we we go down the list for and following the going from top to bottom for african-american male students so verbal confrontation fighting without injuries physical aggression disruption disturbance abusive language and you can see other proportions of those three groups or six groups that consistently the same file that same chip just charges before and the next chart goes the last five defines disrespect for african-american males of the kids who are referred for those offenses in our discipline system sixteen point five five percent are african-american males it's at work so this is by the kids within that group

118the students within that group what this chart is referring to is out-of-school suspensions so out-of-school suspensions if a student received an out-of-school suspension that resulted from a disciplinary referral this is the percentage of students by race ethnicity within that group of receiving out-of-school suspensions so as you can see the Green Line on top is for Hispanic students both male and female are representation of students who are spent Latino is about 53 percent so that's consistent with our population whereas the orange bar for african-american black students is ranging and remain consistent since 2013 to 2015 16 and it's starting to nudge upwards in 2016-17 for black and african-american students where the population of those students is six point three percent six point three percent and then you can see that the chart for the white students

119actually going downwards in 1617 from a fairly flat line for the last two years and but lower since 2013-14 this chart is looking at the ratio of out-of-school suspension days per unique student by ethnicity so if you received an out-of-school suspension what we're talking about is a number of days and comparing those days by race and ethnicity if you received out-of-school suspensions so you see it goes back to 2013-14 same concept the blue line is the average for the students who have received out of school suspension the number of days has been that average so in 1314 is the average number of days or per student who received out-of-school suspension was three so if there were three occurrences there could be three days for that student for the year hopefully that explains that so you

120can see that the Green Line again is Hispanic Latino students the white the grey line is for white students which are below average and African American males I'm sorry African American students both male and female have been above average for since 2013-14 and probably years beyond that we we have so the comparison is in 2016-17 if you're in African American African American student we did see a reduction from the last year down to three average of three days per student from from a high of three point three nine whereas the other numbers start to nudge forward and we were working to make sure we're consistent in our implementation of out-of-school suspensions one that is needed and the last slide is of the expelled students this data is from 2016-17 and remains fairly consistent for the

121years of students who were recommended for expulsion there was 21 total and that is the percentages of those students by race and ethnicity by race and ethnicity so the next steps as I told you in my presentation in January to you about our annual my annual update is that I continue to bring awareness in my safety training regarding regarding race and ethnicity and the disproportionality and our discipline and continue to raise that awareness as we talked about that with escalation and CPI training and how we intervene in our our escalations that we manage interventions of believe that we need to build more interventions that are actually Ferengi ated for all students our interventions are working for some students as parent that that's not working for all students and training we're working in a trauma-informed care

122arena with our pilot schools through the alignment collaborative for education we the folks at the team if I can speak for them we believe that this trauma-informed care training will also help us with all of these topics that we just that I just discussed here and next is assistant superintendent for Human Resources Melanie my dog good evening so moving forward first I'd like to introduce Donald Evans our director of HR Judi Kane who is our HR is systems manager and Emilia Covina's are three individuals that actually I'm speaking to our information but our team put this whole thing together for human resources and were the third part of this presentation first of all this is what will be an overview of the student and teacher ethnicity and their populations we begin with a national nap

123shot of student and teacher enrollment in secondary programs to help identify the growth in student populations and then the status of the teacher preparatory enrollment in various programs advances like for the so when you're looking at this particular slide you'll see that the data sources that are from the US Department of Education shows that increase of student enrollment and the significant decrease in the preparatory information for teacher prep enrollment when you look at this over a period of time it highlights a continual slight increase of the student enrollment when at the same time we see a sharp and continuing decline trending and teacher prep program enrollment over the four years shown here additional information this slide is a national snapshot of comparing the student information and slide of an overall enrollment the slide shows various

124teaching institutions with their related ethnicity to student population this nationwide snapshot is shown is from the 2015 school year it is important to note the increased enrollment into alternative Institutes of higher education and non Institutes of higher education in the black and Hispanic categories a note to this is this is the enrollment does not reflect the post-secondary graduation percentage so again this is enrollment into the teacher prep programs not the graduation percentage this next slide is utilizing the isby data we now move to the statewide and local comparison of teachers and students these numbers tell us how we as a district compared to statewide numbers related to student and teacher diversity we see in the American Indian category both district and statewide the teacher and student populations are relatively flat no change as we look

125at the Asian category and all the percentages what this is telling us is that district-wide for every 100 students eight are Asian and for every 100 teachers to our Asian for statewide for every 100 students five are Asian and for every 100 teachers to our Asian moving to the black category district-wide for every 100 students six are black and for every 100 teachers to our black statewide for every 100 students seventeen are black and for every 100 teachers six are black in comparison to statewide numbers the district is about the same in this particular category and the Hispanic category although a much larger population we see here district-wide for every 100 students fifty-three are Hispanic and for every 100 teachers 21 or Hispanic statewide for every 100 students 26 are Hispanic and for every 100

126teachers six are Hispanic the district in this comparison is outperforming statewide numbers looking at the white category in Reverse for every 100 students 28 are white and for every 100 teachers 74 are white statewide for every 100 students 49 are white and for every 100 teachers 83 are white for the Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander it is static in both student and teacher categories with the focus on u46 data specifically with teachers the ETA union group this includes social workers and guidance counselor's as well this slide highlights our teacher ethnicity using a baseline from the 2015 school year compared to numbers and percentages over these past three years showing the growth and decline in the various categories of the district workforce beginning with the category of American Indian we see that the numbers are static

127where in the next three categories we have a different outcome Asian teachers have a growth rate of 21.6% black teachers growth rate of 11 point 1 percent Hispanic teachers with 12 point six percent Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander teachers remain at zero with a static number no increase and teachers of two or more races two or more races show a decline of 30.3% white teachers are almost flat with a growth rate of a point eight nine percent the overall diversity for teachers in the diversity area is 10 point six percent from 2015 to the present year this next slide representing the administration this represents all information for administrators this slide represents the ethnicity of our administrators over these past three years again the administrators we begin with the baseline of 2015 highlighted here in yellow

128and compared to current numbers as highlighted in green and showing the shift in the diversity of our workforce American Indian and Asian category is static we have have a growth rate today of four point two percent in black administrators a growth rate of 17 point nine percent with Hispanic administrators and again Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander administrators and administrators of two or more races have no change looking at the white administrators however we have seen a decrease of 17.2% in the same time period overall our diversity recruitment and hiring of administrators has a 13 percent overall increase our recruitment and hiring practices include but are not limited to our interconnect and university and college partners which include Aurora University Concordia DePaul ISU which is Illinois State not Indiana State Judson NIU U of I Western Illinois

129Eastern and Wheaton College our student teacher replacements annually we place over a hundred and eighty to two hundred student teachers annually those placements include pre-k through 12th grade gen ed special ed and early childhood we are a lab for all of our neighboring partners we also support internships for Social Work and guidance counselors with the University and college programs annual career fairs that we have participated in and are presently participating in our Northern Illinois University national Louis Northeastern University of Illinois Chicago Chicago State Department Community College Roosevelt Southern Illinois and Judson other college and university job fairs that we have participated in our HBCUs historically back to black colleges and universities we traveled to North Carolina in March Fayetteville State University and Nashville area career fairs Illinois State Board of Education recruitment we do a

130cultural teacher exchange we've been doing that annually with Spain we are also actively recruiting in Puerto Rico annual u 45th u 46 job fairs include our bilingual and special education recruitment of teachers and pair of that on-site here at the ESC Center in addition to our u 46 website vacancies are posted in various professional periodicals and websites that include in deed LinkedIn HBCU teachers of color and Education Week we've expanded our partnerships with a diverse pool of teachers and administrators to promote and participate in recruitment activities and look to include district administrators in upcoming job fairs and university career days presently and through the staffing process we met with every district principal and administrative team to ensure their participation in hiring principals have been advised of the current ethnicity break down both district-wide and for

131their individual schools and discussion is ongoing to ensure a consistent practice that is in alignment with the district strategic plan and goals to develop and recruit a high-quality workforce that honors and reflects the diversity of our students next steps continuing through as we move forward first presented in February of 2014 we did present a human resource recruitment plan we are now updating and have been presently using and moving forward and updating and aligning to the district strategic plan that was adopted in 2016 and we will plan on presenting to the board in the spring of 2018 an updated plan that we'll be focusing on and we continue to focus on diversity recruitment school district employment branding our talent acquisition processes professional partnerships and updating KPIs and timelines that will align to the district strategic plan

132also with the intentional focus on equity training this has also become a recruitment tool as a professional development benefit that enhances the success of all of our present and future professionals and back to mr. Raglan thank you miss my Dale and on the last point as you see there the numbers we are now over 500 plus who have participated in equity training to date this year and that concludes our presentation and we're open for questions and also know we have the remainder of cabinet or sitting behind us in addition to the HR team who are here that can respond to questions as well mr. Englin could you just give a quick over I did one update on the professional development from before but we just went through another a few days of professional development I

133know you've had some additional trainings ongoing can you just give a quick overview of some of the the sessions that were offered during this latest professional practice day sure dr. James Cohen from NIU who is one of our training partners who has been with us since the beginning of this journey gave an equity training session on the professional development practice day there are 28 to 30 u46 staff members in attendance it focused on on equity and really really is it really really can are assessing before we can help and talk about equity issues with others of a large part of that had to do with ourselves who are we as as human beings how do we get to know each other how do we reach out and extend ourselves to get to know what are

134the values the aspirations of others that was the main a part of that training and then ongoing just today in preparation again dr. Cohen and then dr. Flynn from NIU were in training today with curriculum and instruction Department and others and again by training those staff members colleagues on how do we get to know others but first how do we get to know ourselves and the work and how that is important as we move forward so it's all about self first others and then tools a lot of times people want to jump to the tools give me something that I can put out there to help somebody else but we first must look at ourselves and ask questions of ourselves where we've been where are we where we to go how do we share this

135space together how to respect one another how do we value one another how do we when we disagree how how we can be disagreeable can disagree without being disagreeable so that's the thrust of a lot of the trainings sorry are there in question so Tracy yes of course I have questions and I want to first apologize to Tony and administration for not sending my questions earlier to be honest with you I looked at the data over the weekend and just couldn't I just couldn't pull it together distressing I think is the best I can say about it so it really took me until I left work at lunchtime and spent some time collecting my thoughts and I've struggled with how to talk about where we are today because unless we unpack 400 years of history

136it all seems to be out of context but I can't unpack 400 years of history so I'm gonna start with first of all I mean I've got notes and questions all over the place but I'm gonna start first of all with a disclaimer that for anyone who believes [Music] the so you don't have to write me you don't have to call me you don't think about it if if you believe in this historical negative wrong narrative that depicts black males as violent anti-intellectual and resistant to Authority that I'm not talking to you because I would need to I'm just not talking to you because I got to start and I've got to start now and I don't have time to that's in the context so if you believe those narratives then this is my comments

137and questions aren't for you so you know - now for anybody else who may not understand but is curious and willing to entertain a new paradigm and then for those of you who who I believe to be most but certainly not all of the people in this world who do understand where we're at I guess I'm talking to you so I am emotional and deeply frustrated what I'm not is angry at you 46 because this is I can't single you 46 out this is an American systems problem not a you 46 problem and the truth of the matter is is that American systems were built and constructed by white people with a Eurocentric lens for white people and I'm not even casting judgment on that I'm just saying that that is what has happened with

138our systems and then what further happens is that everything because it has only that lens on it everything else that is not a Eurocentric lens gets defined or other eyes okay so if I just jump in with discipline I guess you know how do we define how are we defining defiance disrespect insubordination non-compliance because especially through a culturally competent and aware lens we are the research already shows that black male children do not act out more than white children they act differently and so if you have a lens on that different that other behavior that different behavior that you can't put in context and can't understand as a cultural component then you see it as negative and it needs some punitive measure around that I hear you John that we're not trying to punish kids

139but when over 50% of black males in this school district are out of get out of school suspensions we're punishing kids okay and when 80 something percent of the expulsion x' or black and brown kids we're punishing the kids and again I've said a number of times I'm not saying that kids aren't doing what they're being accused of doing but I'm I will say when I look at this data the data will suggest unless you all tell me a different story the data suggests that you 46 has well the nation I guess had like white kids just are just the best behaved people in the world and this data the percentage is mirror what happens our kids are being if I put it in the police context over identified for stops over charged with conduct

140sound disproportionately guilty and then disproportionately sentenced that's what's happening it mirrors what's happening in the criminal justice system so I guess I want to understand this is egregious so while we're trying to create awareness fifty some odd percent of black male students are out of school what are we doing about that what are we gonna do about that because this is about I asked the question in the context of our equity policy equity work is about recognizing the disproportionality and then disrupting it and so we recognize it I don't see the disruption to it and so what are what are we doing about that let me start with the discipline that has to stop kids can't learn if they're not in school what are we doing well first up we have some drops use about

141a school suspensions over the last ten years what we did see is what those drops the proportion of African American students it was relatively the same when there was 7,000 students being out of school suspended as to 870 so we did see the proportions stay in lying and as we reduced the whole number of students receiving out-of-school suspensions so and that's been a significant effort over the last decade that and that I've been here and that we've been working on under dr. Torres and under CEO sale right but it would stay the percentages would stay the same unless we disrupt the profiling because what I mean the reed look we got I'm gonna cut right to the chase we have I mean it's any number of the read we got rooms of data right that

142rooms of data that show that we have to address implicit bias that that really is that systemic it's pervasive it's systemic and it's clearly implicated in the discipline of black male children and so while it is terrific and I applaud the district I'm I am I know the numbers of expulsion --zz have dropped just in the seven years that I've been on the board that is good work and I don't want to minimize that at all at all that is important work it is the right work but what I'm saying is is that it is not benefiting the children who are being most impacted by this discipline and again unless if we unless we believe that false narrative about black male children then this has to be an imperative this is a crisis and I

143only can talk about yes it's a national crisis but I'm not a school board member of the nation I'm a school board member of you 46 so I can only really focus on us right now and so I think that this is worthy I mean I mean the whole policy needs a plan that's what I'm ultimately going to get to is and I would like this board to agree that we need a plan for how to address the policy so that you know we can implement the policy what is the plan for that and I think that a component of that plan has to be crisis level intervention I don't care if we stop out of school suspensions I really don't I mean because something is going wrong something is going very wrong we are

144I don't even know black males specific but the whole black males and females are 7% of the district but black males are 50 greater than 50% of out-of-school suspensions no no it's 20% cows actually 50% of black males so you're right 50% of light which is egregious 50% of black male students receive an out-of-school suspension a discipline referral okay students at our school suspended its 27% in the 20% oh and there's one frame which i think is a good frame okay is that as we that proportion remained as we significantly reduced out-of-school suspensions that the opposite happened right there being a bigger problem and that has happened in some school districts from I get every and they have seen that type of result which resulted in some so I get it I there is some

145recognition right I this is your right but the work is not your right I let me stop and pause and acknowledge that that is a true statement and I hear what you're saying and that is good work but we're in a crisis and so if I could say that you know the house is on fire and it's really mostly only burning black kids and so while we're you know bringing in we're thinking about it and make you know doing a lot of awareness training around heat and fire some kids are burning up and so I think one piece of it is a plan for all of this but this has to stop it has to stop and I'm I'm fair warning going to be on it like I'm not gonna let this go like a

146rabid dog with a bottle I'm not gonna let this go right but but but we have kids who are passing through while whatever we're doing isn't working and I'm gonna suggest that if there if this were a different problem if we saw this disproportionality among white students this would be fixed because the community you wouldn't stand for it and everybody's job will be on the line right and I want that same sense of urgency for our black male students so John wouldn't when we have out of school suspensions it could be any grade and I know we've reduced him but my understanding if we integrated from kindergarten through 12 it is possible that kindergarten through 2nd grade students but highly unlikely that actually has to go through a process of being approved by CEO Sanders

147okay okay so be really unusual because what strikes me is we we've got a you know these kids start young and if they're if they're having referrals it in second grade first grade you get into this the system I mean were they this little doomed and and how do we address that how do we get them out of that track and adjust things so if I may it we have a community problem also because keep trying to do the same things the same ways that we keep getting the same results and you can see you can't love that and discipline and pearls and discipline referrals they actually lowest level of african-american students be involved in dis remote discipline referrals is in elementary school when you get to miss school hit jumps jumps actually significantly almost

148doubles then when you get to high school hit levels a little bit lower in the right around 70% I'll give you the exactly years so if our interventions are working our community-based interventions our school-based interventions to help change our consequences interventions ourselves and change havior we should see something different and we're not seeing that so that's the challenge and that's the exact statement I say to every school that I present the annual safety training if our interventions are not working we have to take a deep look at our interventions and and and that and that is happening there is there is a significant area and interventions that's going on right now with our MT SS change and shifting but is that going to be the fix also you know we'll see in time when that

149gains traction we'll see in time when it gains traction but that you're seeing that this is this is about the bottom and I guess my other point would be that this ties into the academic part of it because the kids who've got all the discipline problems turn off of school and so they're not going to get into the honors of the AP classes they may not even graduate you know I'll be honest with you I went to a primarily a white school district but I to this day remember the kids who were always in trouble in second and third grade they didn't graduate with me and they just disappeared and so trying to reach those kids early is is so important have we looked at other throughout the country everyone's addressing this have we looked

150at other initiatives so at the country have considered highlighting something just to try things to see what might work with our kids so the trauma-informed care is one step into that arena that we believe that will as a community-based organizations with our community partners through the alignment collaborative that we believe that trauma-informed care will help respond in those areas to families and to kids training is something that I've seen with other school districts that have much worse data than where that more than we have and we're experiencing and we see that that's a requirement and that's something is those school districts must do as a requirement from whatever finding that the u.s. different of Education may have and how that works so we're we're and I believe we presented earlier that you know we're not

151in the high range category of school districts around the country as as badness we're not in the lowest level either we have a lot of work to do and somewhere in the middle we stand and see just to me if you know any adding on to that a little bit working with the consortium of large and kinda white school systems most of our districts are moving towards the the career pathways we have to look at a different model specifically for our high schools a large comprehensive high school does not serve all kids well in fact it serves some students very very poorly so we have to build a model that every kid feels connected they are in a smaller learning environment they're traveling with a group of kids that have similar interests we know the

152things that get kids to want to come to school and stay in school and be engaged and a 2700 student school where you can get lost it doesn't do it so so - also to answer your question you know some of the models I looked at and it was one of my former colleagues who works for the Oakland Public School System Bernard McCune and one of the things they did and I and I spoke to this at the brother-to-brother conference one of the things is having more black males I grew up in the heart of the city on the sunstone south side of Chicago it does not look like it look when I grew up I'd have taken on the Westside weird look but I was fortunate to have Mentors black male mentors for it

153into me and then also is not only on the personal thing which sometimes people will be heavy on that but to us on the structural things you talk about I read my canon of reading we're different you know I read black authors and so that's part when we talk about instruction that's that's part of it green black authors and with all due respect more than Martin Luther King I read Malcolm X I read Booga lazy I read a w/e the boys Booker T Washington I can go on and on with the list Paul Robeson Paul Laurence Dunbar a lot of those names probably a lot of people have never heard of and so but but being able to have a dialogue being able I think the one of the biggest issues - we find what

154what African American males is people fear or never I still deal with a level of profiling myself and I consider I think I dress nice etc presentable and I still have people you can see the fear in them sometimes when you're around so a lot of our equity training goes deep beyond awarenesses goes into cultural proficiency right and as I said before in our last presentation critical race theory in the classroom and all the dynamics that come into play we really really got unpack that and really grew really going in there real real deep so this model around in Oakland around black males it's around structures around the policies etc it's around careers and college it's not either/or proposition but it should be both really really really gets at that and it needs to be

155it has to be ongoing so people have to come forward and be willing willing to partner with with students as we all know students will rise to the expectation that we set for them right and in one person who happened to be absolutely once said teens by logic against rules but against relationships so in the data we see where maybe rural students are rebelling against students are crying out for relationships they may not have the sophistication may not have the language to say I need a relationship with a significant male that's what the cry is for and so we have to be willing to step forward to do that and so we just need everybody to come on board and really really connect with young people and not say you know it's all individual or

156it's all structural it's a combination of all of that and then some so how did you I'm sorry I might have blanked out when you talked about training so I know we had the two people from NIU but in terms of the implicit bias and some cultural competency training what is the plan for that for certainly you know folks 25 on your teachers but even the larger so we're so that is happy right like the training today is like we're trainer trainer model today that's what I thought you said so I appreciate that and I so I'm not getting right trying to throw you under the bus or and I appreciate the train-the-trainer train-the-trainer model my concern with the train-the-trainer model is we haven't demonstrated that we have the competency in u46 and so while

157we're trying to become competent we're training others in competency and I feel like that until our data shows that we have some level of competency to be turning around training other people that we might need to take a look at how we are doing our training and that may be train-the-trainer probably the cheapest model but might not be the best or the most effective model so I have other questions but I'll let other people who just unpack that a little bit miss Alice you have the trainer of trainer models back to that earlier point I made it's it's those that are round the table in that training to look at themselves on these on these issues and really to look to look deeply on how we react and respond to others who are different from

158us and to your earlier point to a lot of that too is bringing looking at the historical as you said and also bringing that up to the to the current and really really getting into that pedagogy getting really into that historical aspect and really get that engagement of how we engage each other and really hidden those barriers really separate what is whiteness right from white people what is whiteness is a system right that we all fall victim to and so really really having those courageous conversations around that how does that look how does that feel how does that sense that's what the level of the training the only word dr. Cohen and dr. Flynn from NIU but dr. hat and dr. Hoff who are the two professors that come from ISU they're trained with the

159principles right a my concern about that is that as I'm getting that awareness perhaps for the first time now I mean now I'm gonna turn around and be training some people and I I'm really wrestling with it myself you know what I'm saying so I don't want to belabor that point I'm just thinking that's a good point there are and it's not to have people prematurely turn around and try to train but it's like is that like I say some people are in the know Lane they just flat-out just they say they don't see color alright but I have a whole set of questions for them right then there people are so they are what is a lot because they only said that the people of color write some color Watson there are people in

160the slow lane and they're people in the full Lane and the goal length so it's really individualized and and assessing where people are but not asking someone who this is new to to turn around and train right but it's just taking them and going deeper and those that are ready to train to sense that is is having encouraging them to help with that right and then looking for outside help as well as an internal health and like masalas said I mean I I recognize that we're doing this training and I recognize that we that we understand the problem but I just you know again when 50% of our black males are receiving referrals and even to me more alarmingly more you know 7 referrals per students on an annual basis that's really really really alarming

161and so and it hasn't gotten better it's gotten worse so if we've been doing this training you know the hope would be we would start to see even if it was a gradual reduction mm-hmm we would hope to start seeing some reduction and we're not seeing that we're seeing an increase and it's that's that's jarring mm-hmm and you know I don't know what that means does that mean that we're not training fast enough does that mean we're not training well enough does that mean we're not I don't know what that means but it you know what point do we take a look at other options and and reevaluate what we're doing because it's not working so I disagree that white kids are the best behaved kids in u46 the data shows that Asian kids are

162the best-behaved and so I don't think that Asian students are reading Asian authors and I don't think there's very many Asian teachers in our district so my question is what can we learn from the Asian students why are their discipline rates so low compared to all other ethnic roots and by the way I hate dividing people up in the ethnic groups but since we're doing that what can we learn from the Asian students well I'll speak as someone who taught agent students in California who spoke among men and Lao yes they were reading authors and they what maybe not reading them in school but they were reading them at home I'm part of not a part of but I have frequent contact with the Lao organization here in Elgin and I go to a lot

163of their events and I see how they the day how they embrace their culture from where they come from and how they make sure that this generation does not lose that connection with their culture as they are acculturating or assimilating and so yes it may not be where in some cases again where Asians are reading authors in view of us but at home they are being taught those those those practices and those beliefs of their heritage also I would point out that I mean the Asian students looking at the male students with referrals Asian students I believe correct me if I'm wrong about 8% of the district yes 9% and they're at 10% so there isn't a disproportionality issue mm-hmm there's a reverse disproportionality issue with white kids they are a higher percentage with an

164egregiously disproportionately low rate of discipline so yes the data does show the white kids must be the best behaved proportionately other slides show that the Asian kids are the best behaving in the are you I interpret the data differently the point is is that black students are egregiously just portion utley by any measure any interpretation of the data harmed in this district egregiously harmed asian students are not disproportionately harmed white kids are not disproportionately harmed that wasn't my question I asked what what can we learn from Asian students so I heard Mr Raglan say that the home was very important so I think that's something to take note of also my understanding of critical race Theory since you brought it up and you said that whiteness is a system we fall victim to it does

165critical race Theory teach that white people are inherently racist and that black people cannot be racist it takes on the it's critical race theory starts in the context of the classroom and it starts as I've said before I said that the brother the brother it starts with the witch what the data of young white females and an african-american male and with dreadlocks and all the dynamic dynamics that happen in a classroom all the dynamics around teaching and learning around choosing the literature around classroom management around when a is brought up in the african-american culture we debate rigorously and the volume that the conversation may escalate someone else may look at that as defiance etc etc and it's just articulation it is going back and forth it is very very rigorous and at the end of

166it it's like okay I see your point or you see my point but but critical race Theory gets at those dynamics of when some people some students are invisible in the structures and others are visible very visible the signage is visible the literature is visible the rules are visible the culture is visible so that's what critical race theory gets out that's what bails critical race Theory gets that and from that you raise from that issues of of race or who's in the wrong or who's disagree comes up in that so the issue of inheritance don't necessarily put on the front side of that conversation it comes up in the conversation of the discourse and what it is the issue that is between the teacher and the student that is becoming forth to to talk about

167to debate to discuss and great death the sources you use right is it just coming from one viewpoint or is it allowing space for other viewpoints to come in I talk a lot about sources I've heard a lot of evidence on my phone and I had a couple of questions about first of all dr. Lozier and dr. Johnson about barriers and I was curious as to what if you define that or not I wasn't sure so I apologize if I missed something mr. heiderscheit you had mentioned differentiation so I wanted to clarify that as well but I guess my overriding question is is anyone suggesting that the district has biased or prejudicial tactics that were employing that are creating this or is this I think to Mister Raglan's point is that there's some implicit bias

168that may well be they certainly are borne out in the statistics but there is no explicit findings that you have ever observed that says the district is doing anything wrong is that the correct to say that I would say that the data suggests that we're doing something wrong we have fitfully there's no observations oh we are there are there any specific instances where the district has taken one race over another and said we're treat it differently if this person is that background versus that background I would prefer not yes not even in the law I'm not done excuse me I'm talking to I'm still talking so I think you need a philosophy well we can address the lawsuit unparent lee we've opened that door address the loss you asked are there any out specific and

169I'm Tony I was just looking referring to recent saying the losses so lawsuit is that a recent one or is that ten years ago it's the one that was settled in 2014 2014 so before my time at least and I appreciate that that was out there but I don't think that there's anything specifically in the last four years then if that's a time frame we want to use that says we've anyone here or any knowledge of our school units has ever done anything wrong it's a critical problem I agree with mr. Raglan 100% though that's all of the everything that I've heard tonight says there's a problem I believe in awareness I believe in training but I don't think we've done anything wrong can I ask what that's based on question is that have we

170done anything wrong and I did not hear one answer okay so go ahead that's interesting because I think your administration isn't going to want to answer that but let me just say I don't think I said we have the data suggests that we have okay and if if in mr. Irish I brought this point up at the brother-to-brother symposium that if we share our data out as if we were under an officer civil rights complaint there could be a finding based on our data it's not been reviewed by the Office of Civil Rights I'd rather not be reviewed by the Office of Civil Rights but if they were to come in and look at our data there are discrepancies between the outcomes and the disciplines for black males versus white males black males versus Asians

171black males versus anybody else and so I would say the does show that we have a problem and I have in my little notebook here pages of stories from black families that absolutely show that there's discrimination in it so I you asked the question but you then can draw this conclusion that there's been no overt discrimination I call BS there's been no overt discrimination I just need the evidence then hello then share that with the district is I think that's very important that you share it with the district in the public well as appropriate I have I've talked to several of the administrators mr. Berger shaking his head yes so as appropriate I have the data the anecdotal stories are here so to suggest that in us really to suggest that in any system especially

172a system this large in America that there's no discrimination is ingest that by the way huh I didn't suggest it I'm just looking for evidence I thought yes I thought you've concluded that there was so I have I have plenty of stories our data suggests that there is a problem and it's and the research says that when you see this that it is bias and discrimination Simplot biases and implicate it and then I have a notebook full of anecdotal stories but there is no empirical evidence drawing that conclusion and that's all I'm looking for if you've got evidence I think that there it should be borne out in what the testimony is and how we deal with it and I'm looking for outcomes and it's be great to find out what you are all and

173and actually board members are suggesting as to ways we can alleviate this problem because it is a problem there's no question about that no one wants to see that as we raise the bar for everybody everyone succeeds and I think that's what we're all about but I think we're kind of drawing something the conclusions that I haven't seen the empirical evidence for okay so can we any other questions before I continue okay just D and I'm not sure if you want to address it now or later but the barriers and the differentiation that mr. heiderscheit mentioned dr. Johnson so specifically many times within early childhood and I suggested that we identify that we're working to provide services to more students in early childhood we know that not all of our families have access to early

174childhood or early intervention so we do recognize that we have seats in our early childhood learning centers not only those within u46 but throughout our community that go unfilled and in actuality we have more three-year-olds or four year olds than we actually have seats in our early childhood learning centers throughout view 46 attendance area so we would expect that those seats would be filled and we identified it sometimes for our families it's a variety of barriers that we are working at trying to overcome - to provide access to early learning opportunities so whether that be transportation whether that be fees and funds to be able to support early learning opportunities resources active learning opportunities even in non-traditional sense so what does that look like for preschool on-the-go preschool that pops up within neighborhoods preschool centers

175and that could be available within our libraries how do we go about doing that to remove barriers for families additionally then what we see is that when oftentimes in our in our community families if they are not able to access early learning opportunities early intervention for some of our young people also then is not identified and we lack access to that as well so there's certainly some of our work that we look at and expanding within early childhood and and also our efforts with our community most notice of most notably at this time the alignment collaborative that is one of the work teams there where we're looking to increase that additionally sometimes within our our sites as well students who once they reach grade level are actually grade school rather through sixth grade for example

176sometimes removing those barriers and information around the tutoring or other supports that could be available for families as well not all not all families have have access to some of those opportunities again depending on whether or not the student requires transportation to or from school sometimes resources are made available after school ongoing communication with the family and and helping families advocate for the needs of their students as well so those are specifically barriers in that area and I know dr. Lucia can speak to some of the barriers for Honor's and Advanced Placement so for the longest time people thought that there was a prerequisite for AP classes and they would not allow you into an AP class unless you were in honors freshman English on her sophomore English and then you could go into ap

177Lang or AP lit and the College Board has come right out and told us that that is not a prerequisite that if a student has a desire and wants to take an AP class we should allow that student to take the class and we you know we still have people that in our high schools that are thinking or will blatantly ask you understand there's a lot of work in AP you understand that you're going to have to do a lot of reading you understand that the workload is heavier and they ask those questions to certain groups more than others and in particular the students who haven't been in honors classes so I don't think it's necessarily in preparation or you know trying to get them to understand sometimes I believe it's to discourage them from

178taking the class and then there's also the community barrier outside of the walls of u46 in our schools we have groups that do believe that you're watering down a curriculum or making it less rigorous in order to provide access to more students we've seen that come forward from questioning from different community groups we see it April Wells is with us tonight she knows from the gifted selection process that anytime a student gets access over another student that there's instantly a question as to why so there is also the community barriers that they come into play thank you very much and I'd also say and you probably do it at judging by some of the other things I've heard not tonight but other evenings about the marketing for it just opening up the communication links to

179make sure that they have access to it and understand I think to dr. loggers point that you know some of the things that you you're frequently asked questions and how you can resolve so good answers so differentiation is really making it different based on this the person making it specific to the person the family example would be in our loved one consequences and interventions and our Student Code of Conduct an apology group letter could be written for any infraction of any kind of behavior event or we could try conflict resolution conflict resolution would be done by staff there it takes time restorative practices takes extraordinary extraordinary amount of time to work with students to help them realize the harm that they caused to help repair the harm that they did in doing that while all

180parties to the event are present so differentiation means changing for the person it could be that that student is suffering from multiple adverse childhood experiences severe poverty multiple things happening in their lives but yet we're using intervention that's very standard routine like check and check out or something more routine that's a parent contact or a see change and and and you know those are more structured in a large system like we have and there we can do those pretty quickly and make those happen the more complex the situation the more complex the adverse childhood experiences or the more complex the factors and that students lives that is out of our control it differentiating means approaching it differently and changing it to match the student where they are so I yeah I would like to add

181on to what mr. heiderscheit is saying in that we have students in our buildings and more students on a daily basis who have pretty significant mental illness and mental health problems they don't have individualized education programs because they are being successful academically but sometimes they can't control the thoughts or they can't control their movements or there are other things and so we will implement a 504 plan which may include a behavior plan and then if we have a behavior plan along with that then we are following the steps and making sure that we're doing like behavior interventions behavior therapy I don't want to say like Pavlov's dogs or anything like that but you do have to make sure that you are consistent and that you are following through along each step and not just automatically

182jumping because the person has an illness and you are working with that student to help them you know become better and deal with their illness and first of all I think when we're presented with discipline without going to any specifics it appears to me that I think every member on this board is at most time looks at the person and not to to step back from what you're saying because I applaud it I applaud the way it's presented I would prefer not to even know the background the the the minority weather whatever the circumstances are what I think many of us have asked about is is the person expressed any remorse and I think that changes the whole that's stigma but how we look at that I mean if there's people do bad things but

183what happens afterwards I think is all of your points and we don't know all the background in which we are given a lot of information so I think you've explained it very well thank you I have to comment on something you said so using that threshold of remorse you need to be very careful with that kind of a criteria and I'm going to explain why without saying too much there are all kinds of disabilities and issues that students have I live with one in my house and remorse is a really high threshold and different for every single student and for some students remorse is something that they are not able to do or in the moment or and and that should not preclude them from getting that that level of intervention their education the modifications

184that they need so I would be really cautious about putting any of what we perceive as our thresholds or our limits on any student because it is so individualized for every single student i sat in a meeting today and it was about my child and the just the differences that I could perceive of the level of acceptance in this certain ways that we were going to modify things was very apparent to me and I can see clearly ok this person has had lots of training on this and they're ready to go there you know the same thing I may be talking about a special need and you're talking about cultural competency that flow and go and what stage are they at everyone is at a different stage and we're a huge institution that we're we're

185working to train people and and this is why we're here right because we're not really doing it well obviously we need to ramp some things up here because we're not getting where we need to be but it is so individualized and so unique for every student and for every employee and every provider that I would just be really cautious about what other limits we set because it is so critically important that we work together as a team for each student and there is no one-size-fits-all at all and I agree with that and I think I believe that's what you were pointing out is that we do have to look at it and when you all and other people outside this room bring it to our attention I listen to every aspect of it and I

186agree with you some people aren't capable and some people can say they're sorry when they're not so that's why we rely on you all to bring it to our attention and hopefully your insights and and deeper knowledge of the background before we act on discipline I think especially in these cases and especially when it is so hard to tell like you know what's going on with anyone particularly student link is it something that's going on in their community in their home life is something that has to do with mental illness so I think it I mean I'm I'm not an expert at all and this isn't in the ultimate answer but I think one of the things is like just finding out why and I say just like it's easy but it's not so I

187think working harder I'm figuring out why not so much the what should we do after it happens but like okay so why'd this happen though and I I know you've know this and I'm sure you're already working on that but that's something that I think would also be very important maybe even in these presentations to see like okay well this is the kind of stuff that's happening in school and this is why a lot of kids do that I had one question for dr. Lucia on the slides on pages 7 & 8 I guess when they number of kids in AP and honors class it would be interesting to see how many of our students of color have been through the avid program where they what percentage of them are in there so we'll make

188sure I heard your question what percent of the abbess students in AP & Bide race if you even had that but okay of the race I can come back to that but overall the abbess students in AP outstripped the district last year for example 25% of all non habet students were in AP at the students were 37% on on one of the we'll say a prerequisite or one of the things we look at is 8th grade algebra and lash and 8th grade algebra 23% of non Abbott 8th graders were in algebra 25% of Abba students in algebra and then to your point on one of the things that I've been really working at with my attic coordinators is around ethnicity right and the Abbott numbers have increased 9% of the students in Abbott our students

189of color are African American students and really really trying to push that as to that earlier thing we while we telling students what to say no to we also have to equally unfortunately tell them what to say yes to and provide that support for them to say yes to that and so one of the barriers as dr. Lozier was talking about that I had to really really deconstruct with some of our Abbott coordinators is even using added advancement via individual determination comes from the Latin word Abydos eager for knowledge using that as a barrier in presentations to kind of sort out students if you have those if those if condition statements if you have individual determination then we can take you from here to there and a lot of first-generation students students of color are

190not have no idea what you're talking about and it's up to us as the professionals to reach out to meet them where they are individually that's that equity piece to bring them to where they need to be so yes and I can prove I can provide that with greater detail but overall the average students because part of that we're on they must at least enroll in an AP course at least one or two AP courses before they graduate that's a huge push for us and have we bethought about our avid program doesn't start to middle school correct have we ever thought about piling it piloting in it a couple of Elementary's to see what had any impact kids think you're getting Ron excited yes tonight no it has been it has we've actually mr. Aikman

191and I've had that discussion about as they do operate for elementary as well we have had the discussion we have not made that commitment but but we've had the discussions that said the the Wicker strategies used in avid are also available to our teachers in elementary I know many times there's crossover between the teachers and the learning correct there are elementary schools that are really using the strategies even though it's not have to have it just don't tell avid they'll charge us right well we just keep that a secret yeah we'll keep that yellow keep it secret yeah I'm just getting this so can we flip to gifted so we've got roughly 6% of gifted students am i reading our black yes yeah males have dipped below 5 so black females are six and a

192half six and three-quarters and black males are below five are there can title one funds be used for gifted enrichment activities like outside of the school day so if your title in building yes you can use title one funds for gifted enrichment outside of the school day so I'm thinking more systemically how do we as a system access how do how do we system as a system use title one funds to increase access an opportunity for black children to gift it programming sure so as a system we can set aside we have district set aside so we could identify as a system how to set aside funds to provide access for students - to be able to make to be able to access those resources through additional either talent and development programs or gifted programming

193so do we do that not currently okay is there any reason why we don't since we are so under identified in the gifted program no I I don't have a good reason for you tonight miss Alice okay that's certainly start consider start that I mean that would be that would be the types that those would be the types of things that I would think would be in an equity plan yeah you know with respect to because that's something not every single thing can be measured but a lot of things in this equity plan can be measured and that's something that can be measured so we've got this identification gap and so what strategies are we using to close the identification the gifted identification gap so I'm not quite sure what you're asking okay let me

194try to be clear black students are under identified for gifted OCO gramming and so I'm wondering what strategies we have in place to address that well so the strategy we have is the way we identify black students as a cohort and so we look for the natural talent for those students so all of the black students who have that you know take that take the cogut have the map scores and qualify we invite and this past year I think we only had two declines a couple of years ago we had six declines but that is the purpose of our talent development program to go into our black and Hispanic low-income buildings in particular and to try to give our black students our Hispanic students our low-income students opportunities to talent development that they wouldn't normally

195be able to access from from home so are we only relying on test scores because we we already know from the research that that's not the best talent identification for primarily that is what we use right now we used to use a 10 tills which is a teacher inventory I think that is taken into consideration but primarily it scores how do how do we address language issues that might affect the scores for our Hispanic students for example oh my goodness I have to get back to you on that one I know we addressed it I just don't know exactly how we address it so then we look at subgroups though and we so it's still there's a different point but still it's a cut score on a test yeah it's more like where they fall

196out on the continuum yes I mean as opposed to saying you know like the top 5% right or means students in that subgroup or something top 10% top 5% yeah we don't we don't put a particular cutoff point but yes we look at the cohort of students are there I guess I mean so we forgive me but you know coming from EMSA so there are all these other identifiers so for talent you know for talented and gifted students besides a test score so I'm wondering that seems to me to be another point in an equity plan is that you look at something besides and I mean you have a gifted expert in the house so we I mean I guess I would look to April wells to say there's something besides just the test score

197to identify talented and gifted students so in these subgroups see and and I too will have to defer to April but when we relied on [Music] teacher referrals or teacher recommendation as an input piece we found that they were particularly biased and what I mean by that was rather than identifying specific skills we were told that they were a great student that they completed their work that they were to class on time right so that's a training issue because again that's not right looking there are these specific okay you know how to identify talent in black and Latino include students okay culturally linguistically linguistically and economically diverse students how to identify talent and I think we should charge April with that work if we're not already know that I mean that that to me seems

198to be a point in the in the in an equity plan and again as I said thinking about how to use title one funds as a system for talent development I didn't see middle school gifted data in this is that can you provide that absolutely okay I'm gonna I just realized I kept looking at that clock on oh yeah we got good time we're making good time it's 8:15 and then I just hit my phone I was like oh my gosh it's 9:15 you know I was gonna what I'm gonna try to what I'll do is send the rest of my questions and look forward to a future session where we can continue the discussion and I also wanted I also wanted to try to get the board because this is one part this is

199one part of you know a whole picture and we had talked about our next steps during our board evaluation and working with the strategic plan and more of a big and I'm trying to figure out how we do that and my first thought that I had kind of touch base with Sue and Tony on is maybe have one or two planning sessions a year and work on the entire strategic plan revisit the plan rather than although we get strategic plan updates and we do truly appreciate the holes I think besides those we need one time to put it all together rather than the bit you know we get this part in that part and somehow we have to fit it all together so I guess I want to ask you guys with these next steps

200from the board evaluation should I try to get a date together and try to structure something so that we can look at that overall plan and put the next steps into that discussion and because the next steps also they kind of centered around the strategic plan so are you talking about having it open to the public oh yeah oh yeah yeah so is that because one of the things that I want to come out of this is I would like for us to direct Tony to create an equity plan we have a policy with no plan I mean we we have a policy and no plan for implementing implementing it so I think that it's it is you know I'm gonna take onus as a board member shame on the board for allowing this to

201happen well and I guess that's what I'm saying is taking a look at the bigger picture because it's not just the equity it's not event but if we go to the strategic plan if we did an entire strategic plan and miss the equity part so if we only focus on the strategic plan and its components we're going to miss the I'm saying big picture everything and it may take us more than one meeting but I don't know I don't know right but what I get yes so I agree with you on that I am totally on board for that type of work session so that we can take a look at it I'm asking a more direct and specific question about whether or not this board agrees that we need an equity plan to implement

202the equity policy that's really separate and apart from the strategic plan we have an equity policy that has no implementation that has directives in it but no plan no formal plan that is reported to the board and measured and accountable to this board for one of our policies of a way to implement it and so what I'm asking for is agreement that we should have a plan I agree I agree and I I guess I'm gonna pull it to the bigger picture again because I'm not sure the equity is the only thing that's why I'm suggesting these workshops so we can I everything together I'm gonna I'm gonna agree with with Tracy here and that tying it all together is is whitewashing it and I don't wait and I know that's a really poor choice

203of words I should have thought of something else I just I don't want to wash it down I don't want to have it be part of that bigger picture like we did with the strategic plan and then it got put over here and then it got adjusted and changed and we really didn't address it and I think we're gonna do the same thing that's not to say that these other things don't need to be done and if that means multiple meetings great but I do I do not like the idea of putting this under the umbrella of something else oh I'm I'm not it I'm not suggesting put it under the umbrella what I'm saying is there are probably other things that are like that and yes the equity plan would be one thing that

204we could direct and there's gonna be other things we come up with as we have these discussions I guess what I'm saying is I I think we should make this bigger than a one night update we need to make this continuous uh I guess that's why I'm trying to go I agree but what I'm asking this continuous we do need a continuous review of strategic plan but when I'm asking for tonight is separate and apart from the strategic plan and rather than wait until we have a date sometime 90 days from now to start that first discussion we already know we need an equity plan so can we make the decision tonight to create and I could direct the district to create an equity plan I don't think we can because I don't think we

205know exactly what we want in it it's not up to us really we should the plan in the operational piece I believe the parameters are the big picture we okay maybe I'm not following you we have the big picture it's not our job to create the plan that's operational that's Tony's job that's the administration's job to create the plan it's not our job it's not the blade I agree so what we have is we have this data and we have a policy that direct administration to do certain things if you go back and look at the policy there are eight to ten directives in that policy okay and there's no plan for implementing any of that so I'm not I disagree that we need more data that we need to study this more the planet

206the policy is already in place and we have data it's not all the data that I asked for but we have a lot of the data that I asked for because I did ask for this broken down by schools and I see that's not there I don't have the middle school gifted there's a lot of stuff I asked for that's not here but that was part of came from the policy but I would agree the district I mean you know you look at the equity policy a district shall remedy any practices that lead to over representation of students of color in special education and student discipline we know they are over-represented in student discipline right so what I want to see is just like we do with this treaty strategic plan is what are we

207working towards what are what how are we going to measure this our metrics where do we want to get to by next year by five years from now that's what the equity plan should look like in my mind I mean it you know that's going to be a different discussion on what we what we actually want to measure but we we know that we are having you know problems as directed by the policy so now where is the plan to rectify that if we did a plan like that I'd like to see some study of what causes success why so an unsigned six yr Asian students at nineteen percent and gifted and seventeen percent respectively and again why are they under represented in in referrals like in slide 13 so if we're gonna if we're

208going to do an equity plan let's study success and the factors that contribute to success in addition to studying problems so I'm not looking to compare of Asians they have an entirely different experience in this country and you can hardly compare the Asian experience with the black experience but nonetheless I don't see how we have a very specific policy very specific with mandates but we're reticent it sounds an hesitant to ask the district to prepare a plan and either I mean equity workers around disruption disrupting systems that is the purpose of equity work it is not I mean we can't shy away from that and either we're going to do the work we're either going to be complicit in fixing it or complicit in perpetuating a problem and we need a plan and you're not

209not three months from now not six months from now not we need a plan I do understand what you're saying and I don't necessarily disagree with you on that part of it I just want to make sure that it becomes continuous because I like the way you make it continuous as you say that as part of the plan yeah or we can or we can fix the policy but in the plan it can and really should be policy we can tack on to the policy that the district shall prepare the plan and report annually or buy-in to the board yeah that's how you make it continuous that doesn't have anything to do with telling them to create a plan right so we can make a couple of sentences on the policy and revise the policy

210and make it a continuous review I just want to make sure we put that in place along with it okay you know so then let me make let me let me change my request then my request is that we then revise the board policy to add a requirement that administration developed the plan and report to the board on the plan twice a year once a year pick a time but there's the accountability and there's they can be continuity for it okay when I'm saying continuous I don't want to I want to look at bigger we can tell them make an equity we want an equity plan developed but I want to look at the equity plan and other things on a regular basis I don't want to keep putting you know equity and off the

211top of my head now but different things like we get those plans every I get I guess I'm missing I agree with you I'm missing what I'm missing the I'm there's a disconnect as to what does that have to do with telling them to create a plan right now and that's okay so I'm saying it's only great when we have all right and then we can predict the part about how we make it part of that that's part of our ongoing discussion that's what that's separate from so we have to charge we have two things we need to do create an equity plan and then create a structure for continuous review of strategic all of our strategic works yes those are two separate thing else but first there's where's the hesitancy around creating the equity

212plan I don't know that I am hesitant okay so then I'm asking again is there board there any other just I'm all for doing this Lampard mainly sitting here I've heard from of course miss Ellis miss Owens Miss Smith and Miss Nolan that we should receive that direction so far Melissa can I just add as the board the board shall the board directs the superintendent to develop action plans with clear accountability and metrics including prioritizing staff and budget allocations etc so it's just already in there it's a in the pilot and I'm gonna look for the date if it's okay with all of you it's probably not gonna be until the end of April because a doodle poll didn't show many dates available for us so I'm gonna try to get a date together and

213then maybe we can sit down and try to figure out how to put all this together are you talking about the strategic plan now I'm talking about yes okay these are two different things in my I mean yes one is inside the other but okay I'm gonna say what I've been trying not to say for the last 20 minutes is to me this sounds like you're taking black lives matter and making it all lives matter that's what it feels like to me I truly I just want to make sure that moving forward we have a we have something that we can process yeah yeah right and and now I'm just saying I'm gonna look for a date that's know we're ready we array directed them do we not yeah yes he said that he did

214that's why I said I'm now I'm gonna look for a date for April so that we could try to put this other stuff together okay all right okay that being the last item on the agenda can I have a motion to adjourn so moved second I'm sorry it was it broke off place so yes George yes fellow yes sir yes Nolan yes yes