001Shapira, yes please. Mr. Barazza, here. Dr. Elliott-Shrimmer, here. Mr. Heiterman, here. Ms. Luzba, here. Ms. Newman, here. I would like everyone else who is present to identify themselves. Tamina Jansky, executive secretary. Tom Krieger, chief human resources officer. Erin Warner, chief communications officer. Tiffany Rowe, assistant superintendent for student services. Brian Omer, chief operations officer. Ali Mahan, assistant superintendent of finance. Debbie Finn, principal Highland Park High School. Katherine Anderson, principal at Deerfield High School. Ron Casbaum, chief information officer. Never gets old. Mira Ante, assistant superintendent diversity, equity, and inclusion. Shayla Holland, incoming superintendent. Bruce Law, superintendent. Public comments. We welcome your comments and questions and give them serious consideration pursuant to Board of Education Policy 2-230. Please identify yourself and if applicable, state the agenda item, which is one right now, to which your comment is directed.
002Please limit the length of all comments to no more than three minutes. As a reminder, public participation is not intended to be back and forth discussion between the public and the board. The public comment period will be for a maximum of 30 minutes for this hearing. Are there any public comments regarding the public hearing for driver education fees? Is there a motion to adjourn the public hearing? So moved. Is there a second? Second. All those in favor? Yes please. Opposed? Abstention. Motion carries and public hearing is closed at 7-0-4. I am reconvening into open session Township High School District 113 regular action meeting on Tuesday, May 28th, 2024. Still at 7-0-4. A roll call please. Mr. Pirra? Yes please. Mr. Barazza? Here. Dr. Ali? Mr. Heineman? Here. Mr. Nieder? Here. Ms. Newman? Here. Is there
003a motion to approve? You want, we'll still move up the item or keep it as is. Okay, okay. Is there a motion to approve the agenda as listed? So moved. Is there a second? Second. All those in favor? Yes please. Opposed? Abstention. Motion carries. First item is organization of the board of education for the coming school year. So we'll start with the election of president for one year. The floor is now open for nominations for the office of president. Are there any nominations for the office of president? I would like to nominate Ann Newman for the office of president. Ann Newman, do you accept the nomination? Yes. Are there any other nominations for the office of president? Hearing no further nominations, the nominations for the office of president are closed. Since only one member is
004nominated for president, I cast the unanimous ballot and declare Ann Newman elected. Thank you, Ann. Thank you, Ann. Thank you, thank you for doing this job. Thank you. Now I turn over the election of the other officers to Ann Newman, president. The floor is now open for nominations for the office of vice president. Are there any nominations? I'd like to nominate Hamli Brizara for the position of vice president. Barazza? Barazza. Do you accept the nomination? I do. Are there any other nominations for the office of vice president? Hearing no further nominations, the nominations for the office of vice president are closed. Since only one member is nominated for vice president, I cast the unanimous ballot and declare Jaime Barazza elected. Thank you, Jaime. Thank you. The floor is now open for nominations for the office
005of secretary. Are there any nominations? I'd like to nominate Dr. Jody Ellie Trummer for the office of secretary. Do you accept the nomination? I do. Are there any other nominations for the office of secretary? Hearing no further nominations for the office of secretary are, sorry, hearing no further nominations, the nominations for the office of secretary are closed. Since only one member is nominated for secretary, I cast the unanimous ballot and declare Dr. Jody Ellie Trummer elected. Make sure you send it to the right Jody. It is recommended that Ali Mahente be appointed to serve as treasurer of the board of education for a one-year term. Is there a motion? I motion, yes. Is there a second? Second. Is there any discussion? A roll call, please. Mr. Barazza? Aye. Dr. Ellie Trummer? Aye. Mr. Heineman? Aye.
006Ms. Lupa? Aye. Mr. Nieder? Aye. Ms. Shapira? Yes, please. Ms. Newman? Aye. Motion carries. Thank you, Ali. Thank you, Ali. Okay, moving on to board reports, my president's report. As a quick couple of quick housekeeping items, please remember if you do have any new or amended ISBE resolutions to give them to Jaime and I by June 4th so that we can move through that process. Also, committee assignments, we will be giving those out at our first meeting of the new school year, which is July 16th. So if you can please let me know your top three preferences and what you'd like to chair by July 1st, that would be much appreciated. Moving on to my report, we obviously had the Deerfield and Highland Park graduations. I think I'm going to speak for all of us
007when I say that it is a highlight of our job on the board. We also lucked out with absolutely gorgeous weather both nights, so fantastic. My family complained the first year because it was so cold and this year because it was so hot. I am done graduating kids, so I don't care anymore. It didn't rain. Yes, I know. And of course we wish our class of 2024 good luck in their next pursuits. We also want to wish good luck to our freshmen through juniors as they take their finals and thank the staff as we all march towards that last day of school. We will get there, people. And then finally in closing, the board supports 113 students cultivating and finding their voices through student-run publications, organizations that enable students to be seen, and access to
008resources to expand their critical thought development, all within the framework of federal law, state law, and district policy. We do not need to like what students say or who they invite to speak, but they get to develop their voice within our educational setting. That means they also need to sit with the discomfort their words may create, and we expect this community to ensure they and the staff that oversees their work, they are able to do that, they're able to safely learn, mentor, and teach. And that concludes my president's report. Moving on to administration reports, I believe. Yes. Dr. Lawson? Yes, thank you, Ms. Newman. I'd like actually to build on what you just said because I think it's worth explaining to the board the process for reviewing content for school-sponsored publications because the question has
009been raised about that. Anytime we have a question like this, the first place we turn is board policy. And the policy, it's in question here, it's policy 7-3-15. Actually, Ron, would you show that policy? Please, I know you have that up, and I've highlighted a couple things from it. You'll notice at the top that the policy sets out definitions, and a really important definition for us tonight is what is defined as a student journalist. A student journalist is not just someone who writes content. It can be someone who gathers, compiles, writes, or edits content. And all those things listed there, if a student journalist is working on a student, a school-sponsored publication, doing those things, that student is serving as a student journalist. This is a very important point. Now, notice that they could be
010gathering, compiling information from non-students. It doesn't matter what their sources are. As a student journalist, part of their work is not just to write, but they're pulling together information from different people, and that activity is serving as a student journalist. So when they're working as student journalists, they are protected not just by board policy, but by state law and the First Amendment. But I just want to keep working through this policy. So therefore, when we have school-sponsored publications are governed by the Speech Rights of Students Journalist Act. I'm just pausing this for a moment. Board policy is there are a variety of ways a board policy is developed. Sometimes the board articulates a policy that they want to use to guide the district. And then there are those policies that are modeled based on aligned
011with state statute. This particular policy aligns with the Speech Rights of Students Journalists Act. So when we're going through this, but we're actually not looking at the statute, obviously, but this policy aligns very closely with that statute. So when we have a student journalist working in the capacity as student journalists, working for a school-sponsored publication, then notice what this says, that student journalists are responsible for determining the news, opinion, feature, and advertising content. In the state of Illinois, the state has gone out of its way to carve out protections for student journalists. I don't know that they really needed to do that. I mean, I'm sure the student journalists have all the protections of the First Amendment. There are plenty of plenty of case law for that. But the state of Illinois said, we're going
012to enshrine this in state law. And this is why school districts have this policy. Okay. Now we know that speech rights are not absolute, no such thing. And this is the case in school. So policy provides limits on what students can create, produce, or distribute. And there are four basic constraints. Now, this is also part of the content review process, because when a staff member is reviewing content in a school-sponsored publication, whatever the content is, this is what they're looking at. Is it libelous, slanderous, or obscene? Does it constitute unwarranted invasion of privacy? Does it violate the law? Is it inciting students to commit unlawful acts, violate district policies, or disrupt school? So if any content that students would like to publish, as long as it is not violating those four, it is up to
013the students to publish. Because why is that? It's because the state of Illinois especially wants student journalists to function as journalists. Notice the next sentence as well. The district will not engage in prior restraint of material prepared by student journalists for school-sponsored media. Unless the material fits in one of the four prohibited categories above, then of course, they can say, no, no, no, we're not publishing that. But schools are prohibited from saying in advance, no, no, no, we're not publishing anything about this. That would be a violation of board policy, state law, and the Constitution of the United States. So notice that then staff members can't tell journalists anything is off limits. If it doesn't violate any of those four things, students are able to determine what they want to say. And this is exactly
014what Ann is talking about. Students developing their voice, and students who are exercising that voice should be able to do that. Doesn't mean we're going to agree with it, but it does mean that students should be able to exercise their voice in this way. All right. Policy also says that student journalists are required to provide the opportunity and space for the expression of differing opinions, says right in the policy. Provide opportunity and space. It is not always the case that in a publication, you have opposing points of view. Sometimes you see that in publications. They'll have an issue. They'll have a person writing on one side of the issue, a person on the other side of the issue. I read an article in the New York Times the other day about 401ks might have been
015a terrible mistake. And then I read an article in Forbes magazine saying everything they said in that article is wrong. So this is how this goes. In a liberal democracy, people are allowed to express opinions. And if people disagree with those opinions, then they are able to present a different point of view. So it's not been ruled out yet that there couldn't be a response to the opinion piece. And if the policy says that they have to provide the opportunity and space for differing opinions, but it may not be in the same issue that any op-ed appears. All right. So the state's gone out of its way to give journalists, student journalists, and particularly in high school, a wide berth in student publications. So I just want to make sure that the board knows, one,
016that there is a review process here and that anyone, a staff member, if this came to me, if an article came to me and said, what do you think about publishing this in a school-sponsored publication, I would look at board policy. And once I was satisfied that whatever they were wanting to publish wasn't violating one of those four things, at that point, my hands are basically tied. And the students are making the determination of what it is that they are going to publish. So I know the board is not even talking about changing this policy. The challenge here would be it's based on state law. And state law is telling student journalists, you've got the ability to determine what goes into school-sponsored publications, provided that it doesn't violate those four things. So I just wanted
017to review this process for reviewing content and how content actually appears in school publications. So really, this came up recently. I really just wanted to talk about graduation tonight because it was wonderful. The weather was perfect. It's a beautiful setting. And since this was my last one, it also meant a lot to me. But this is also, I think, really important. So I know board members have questions or comments about this. But we expect students to engage the world. And when they engage with the world, they often have something they want to say about it. And there are going to be a lot of things that are going to be happening in our world. I think students are going to have something to say about it. And this state law board policy, and arguably, the
018Constitution of the United States, gives them the space in which to say it. I think an email that we sent out a while ago states it perfectly in the sense that we need to be able to have civil discourse with each other. Because when we lose the right to have civil discourse, we've gone down a rabbit hole that no one wants to be in in this community. And it is one of the extraordinary things that brings us all to this community. And our teachers pushing that civil discourse, I know from my three sons, made them extraordinarily better thinkers, made them extraordinarily better community members. And to be quite honestly, it made them more empathetic people to the world. And when we stop letting people push the envelope, we got a problem. What I also hear
019you saying, Dr. Law, is in the state, federal law and policy to give students that wide berth of voice. At the same time, it specifically limits what the adults around them are able to do. So whether or not that adult is a sponsor, or leadership within a building, they must abide by the limitations that are presented by this. That's correct. And we're still a teaching institution. And I'm sure that people who got into this business to teach are using whatever school sponsored publications that we have as an opportunity to teach students. But to your point, it can only go so far because of the space that has been carved out by board policy, state law, federal law that allows students to express their opinions. And that can come in many forms. Maybe they write it,
020maybe they're publishing something someone else has written that really is up to them. All of that work is the work of student journalists. And it's part of the learning process. Absolutely. What to publish, what not to publish, et cetera. Anything else in your report? No. Oh, thank you. No, thank you. But what number of graduation was it for you? Number 23, you said? 22? 22. 22. That's an extraordinary thing to think of the number of students that you've gotten the privilege. It is extraordinary. It was a moment sitting there looking out over proud and, you know, graduation is a little bit like a wedding. No one cares about anyone except the person they came to see. And so to see the faces on the students and see the all that just feel the joy in
021the ceremonies. And I should mention how much work it takes to put these things on. So thank you, Debbie and Kathy and everyone at your schools, Brian and your team for all the work that went into making it run so smoothly that no one noticed that it actually was a running machine. But it was wonderful. And I'm deeply humbled and grateful that this has been part of my life. Dr. Holland? I also just wanted to comment on graduation. I went home thinking after the second graduation, Highland Parks, our graduations are beautifully unique. Both days were wonderful. I really enjoyed attending them, meeting new people, celebrating with families. Thank you to Debbie and Kathy for your warm welcomes and for your staff members hosting me as well. I had a great time. It was also a
022reminder that graduation is not only a celebration of students but everyone who has cared for and demonstrated love to our students throughout their educational process. Thank you to our staff. It's also a celebration of you and our two wonderful principals. I want to say congratulations on your retirement. I hope you felt celebrated and loved during the ceremony. Well deserved. Congratulations. And Kathy, thank you as well. I'm really looking forward to all that's ahead. The ceremony was beautiful. Your speech was wonderful. And it was just like an amazing experience to attend both of them. And it made me really proud to be the incoming superintendent and to know that I have these wonderful celebrations to look forward to. So thank you. And remember, we get the opportunity to celebrate Bruce and Debbie on the 11th of
023June. So we are looking forward to that in this room. My next favorite part of the agenda, I'm not sure Debbie and Kathy would agree with me, excellence and effort. We all would love to hear what is the great things happening in our buildings that the students don't always report on. It's only tough because there's so much to choose from. So what can you, out of all the amazing things. So for Deerfield High School, I'm going to start with our English department. And in academic literacy taught by Sarah Toplinski and Kevin Balava, their mission has been to invite various professionals into the school to share their expertise and ways that literacy, reading, writing, speaking, and listening informs their practice. All of their invitations were how to read and write like, how to read and write
024like a historian. Dylan Zavango from Deerfield Public Library spoke to the class about history of Deerfield, specifically the fight to integrate Deerfield. How to read and write like a scientist. Jason Robin, a well-known cardiologist in the community spoke about how reading played a vital role in his journey towards becoming a doctor. And he even brought in different types of texts, medical books, journals, et cetera, to talk about strategies he uses to glean the most important information to stay current in his practice. Reading does in fact save lives. How to read and write like a mathematician. Welcome Matt Good, a community member who is a finance and in real estate, showing students how math and literacy skills are essential for successfully doing his job. The students had a fun quiz at the end to test their
025knowledge. And how to read and write like a literature expert. With famous author Lisa Barr, she was scheduled to come and unfortunately we had a school conflict and she was unable to speak to the students, but luckily the students had two great experts and their teachers to learn a little bit more about being a literature expert. So it was a wonderful experience for our students to not only hear from their teachers who are experts, but to bring in some experts in different careers so they can see how important reading is no matter what they choose to do down the road. Next, a little bit of a annual update on our counseling department and student services. Our team including school counselors, psychologists, social workers, 504 coordinators, nurses, administrators, and deans took proactive steps this year to
026enhance collaboration with our community members by inviting them to engage directly with our staff. This initiative aimed to foster mutual understanding and strengthen connections that benefit our students. First the team met with local government entities such as West Deerfield Township, the Lake County Health Department, and the Deerfield Police Department. Through these collaborations we gained valuable insights into various services and resources available to our students. Furthermore, the team explored credit recovery options through Illinois Virtual Catalog and secured funding for a student in need after partnering with Mother's Trust. The engagement with community mental health resources including Jocelyn Center, Haven Children, and Family Services, and Rosecrans provide additional avenues of support for our students as well. In our meeting with the Families in Transitions program we obtained vital information about resources available to students experiencing homelessness. Additionally,
027we invited three intensive outpatient and partial hospitalization programs to further broaden our support network. These partnerships have transcended mirror meetings. They have led to a deeper understanding of community resources and expanded networks of support for our students. By leveraging these collaborations DHS is better equipped to address the diverse needs of our student body and promote their overall well-being. And I know that this type of work is done at Highland Park as well. Really forging those community relationships is really incredibly important not only for providing support directly within the schools, but ensuring that our families have all the necessary supports that they can have no matter their situations. Fantastic. Thank you. Thank you. And Debbie, your last one. Your last, yeah. Oh my god. Stop doing this to Holly. We also have to cry. I might
028not show up on the 11th. We'll come and find you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Look at your husband to drive you. I'm not sure I told them about it yet. Sort of like Kathy though, just almost too much to share so I've chosen themes so I can get away with it. My first theme is some amazing things, interviewer things going on in our classrooms. It's kind of funny because I'm going to talk about you. So one of them is I love going to the immigrant voices presentations. I know, Bruch, you've been to some of them as well. So I didn't get to go to as many as I always like, but it's this culminating project in these classes where kids put out something they are interested in or put a question out there and
029research and present it. And it's pretty, it's just really amazing to watch. And a lot of effort and time has gone in and it's a formal presentation. And Elizabeth is one of them and her other teachers in that teaching that course invite people in to see it. And so they just never know who's walking in to see them speak and present. So I always think that's a great culminating event. And I honestly didn't know you're going to be here, but glad you are. Secondly, our APR program, Blake Novotny students have been providing, submitting murals to go around the school and they are now being placed. If you come around Highland Park High School, you will see all these new murals being put up around the building and adding color and beauty to the space. So
030some of them are like half done. You can see parts there. So that's also been happening. And then I mentioned this a little bit at graduation. You might've thought I was joking, but I wasn't. Heather Hernandez has a cicada cookbook. There's been a whole biology lesson. The protein that is available to you should you decide to go that route. She's made chocolate chip cicada cookies. We've had chocolate banana bread, cicada banana bread. She's been offering samples. She's making videos. How many people have been taking those? People have been going in. I was not a taker. I just as a watcher, but I find it really, you know, it's the end of school. Sometimes it's hard to get your energy up and all these really kind of cool things are happening in our classes. So I
031just wanted to put that out there. And then the other theme is really about celebrating the diversity of Highland Park High School. You might've noticed at graduation, in fact, I got one that some of our students were in these very colorful stoles. So our EL students go through a graduation process. All right. We have like a little celebration before graduation. And these are a culture representation that is familiar to their culture to mark this, you know, this auspicious occasion. And Alicia Margatis and I attended the free party and they gave us both one of those. So that was really special to me. So that was one. We also hosted the Chicano College Bowl. I'm trying to remember how many schools were there. Maybe there were like eight, nine, ten schools there. Our JV team came
032in second place. We host that every year. It is an empowering, very special occasion. And our students run the show for the majority of all the schools that come in. So it's a pretty, pretty outstanding event for them and it really feels good to them. And then we also had our unveiling of our Black History Month photo gallery. And if you haven't seen it yet, you got to come by and take a look at it. It is stunning. And it's really Dr. Stevenson put together a reception in advance. All the people photographed were there, were able to come bring family. It was just beautiful. And it was such a celebration of our Black staff members and pointing out how truly exceptional they are and beautiful. And these photos, you look at them and if you
033don't know, Brandon, you're on my wall, right? So there's a beautiful photo. And I look at your picture and there's like a whole other side you will see in his eyes. There's a sparkle or something just the way you're standing. I don't know. But it was a beautiful occasion just to see our staff again, the diversity in our school. You don't always feel so special in our school. We're working to change that. And so it just felt like people felt very empowered and good about themselves. So that was my diversity theme. Okay, I'm done. Thank you. And as you both said, all you can do is give an example. You know, and it's there's so many layers to the wonderful things that are happening in our buildings. So thank you for doing that. So team,
034team finding. I have to I have to say something one on the DHS and the fight to integrate Deerfield and Highland Park High School and the Chicano Bowl. On a personal note, I was incredibly bummed to miss graduation both Deerfield and Highland Park. It's the highlight of the year by far. But the reason that I missed is because I was on the steps of the Supreme Court with the California Association of African-American Superintendents and Administrators and the National National Council on Equity Education talking about 70 years post Brown Board of Education and what that means for our country and what that's meant for our country and the devastating effects that it had on black staff members, post Brown Board of Education and all of the work that's gone into our education system. But the nod
035is to the Chicano Bowl because one of the opportunities that I had was to present on the power of storytelling. And part of that power of storytelling is the Chicano Bowl. And what that did for me as a student a few years ago, I won't say how many. A few. Okay. And identity and yeah, ish. And what that did for me. So a huge nod to Pinellaford High School and the staff. So you do know that I'm now going to ask you to present to us what the Chicano Bowl is for all of us to understand what it is. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. But just thank you. So it was absolutely incredible. Thank you. Foyas. No Foyas. All right. Thank you. Okay. Public comments. We welcome your comments and questions and give them serious consideration pursuant
036to Board of Education Policy 2-230. We will go and I don't think we have anyone for public comment. So do I? Good point of order. Thank you. Okay. Let's move right on. I even worked on my speech and got it better, but we'll do it next time. Okay. We're now moving on to discussion items. The first discussion item is determining the date and time of our regular meetings next year. I do want to thank Dr. Holland. Sorry, you're done on this stuff. Dr. Holland and the cabinet for and Romina for really working on putting together a board calendar, a meeting calendar for next year that tried to really look at our budgeting cycle as well as the different due dates we have for submitting information to the state so that we can minimize the number
037of special meetings that we have next year and so that we could plan accordingly. Of course, we know we will have some special meetings, but I wanted to really try to make sure that things we know about we can plan for. And so this is the planned schedule for next school year. Are there any questions or statements? Okay. All right. And then the next item is the daily and weekly bell schedule update. I'm guessing that is Dr. Anderson. Everybody. All right. So I am returning since I last presented to discuss the common bell schedule for the 25-26 school year. I want to start off by thanking the committee members of the bell schedule committee. So myself from Deerfield High School, Lily Brandt, Stephanie Chambers, Peter Comerford, Rich Grady, and Mike Moran, who's with us today,
038from Highland Park High School, Lenny DePasquale, Dan Kleintrot, Elizabeth Berlman, who's with us here today, Lauren Stillwell, Annan Washburn, who's with us today, and Katie Zoloto. So as I pointed out, some of the members that are with me today, if there are any questions, they'll be jumping right in or if I missed something, they'll tell me that I missed something so that we make sure that you have all the information that you need in terms of our bell schedule. As we go through this, I want to remind everyone about the scope for the bell schedule committee with the collective bargaining agreement between the board of education and the DEA. One of the things that was necessary for this agreement was to acknowledge that we wanted to have a district-wide standards in regards to instructional minutes
039and use of resources. And therefore, a committee would be established by October 1st in order to come up with a common bell schedule for the 25-26 school year. There are two recommendations that are part of this process. The initial recommendation is today, and that includes conducting a review of potential school schedules, gathering input from stakeholders, and create a written report, presenting at least two options for a common schedule to the board of education later than June 1st. The board of education, you do have the written report. Everything that is in the written report has been discussed in the previous presentation to the board as well as what will be covered this evening. It is just written down into words, not just slides. The final recommendation is to gather feedback, revise, and present a written report
040with a final recommendation for the shared schedule and any professional development or resources needed to implement the common schedule by December 1st of 2024. Just to give you a timeline of the work that has been conducted by the bell schedule committee, to this point, we have had nine meetings over the course of eight months. Our work really was to enhance what has been done by our schools over the past two decades, and most recently, in the past two to three years. It began with department listening sessions to understand what our staff valued and themes that were coming out of what they would like to see in the future. As I shared in our previous presentation, many of the themes that we saw even two decades ago are still coming up in terms of what we
041value. In listening to our staff, we created six bell schedule concepts in January. We were purposeful of creating bell schedules first before presenting to students because we knew that we had constraints that we had to work within, and we wanted to provide a framework for which our students could understand what we're working with, and so by presenting them with schedules, we could understand their values and the themes that come from those. That comes a little bit later, but in January, we had six bell schedule concepts that we presented to staff after receiving their feedback, and then we made some adjustments to present four bell schedule concepts in March to students and staff. Using the feedback from our students and staff, then we created three bell schedule concepts that we'll be sharing with you this evening.
042I want to be very clear as we're sharing these three bell schedule concepts that the goal right now is to get your feedback and to continue to get feedback from our stakeholders in the fall so that we can finally have one bell schedule concept. We have amazing staff and students who have wonderful thoughts and advice, and it would take us decades, if not more, if we wanted to come to a consensus of what everybody can agree upon. What we're looking truly at are those values and themes so that we can, number one, ensure that everybody's voice is heard, but also that we can come to a bell schedule that might not be perfect in everybody's eyes, but that we can all agree upon has met our values and the constraints that have been identified. I've
043been talking about constraints, so the next thing that I want to review are the constraints that we started with. We are working within a American high school education system, so there are some things that we have constraints on right there, but we wanted to take a look at what the district administration, the board of education, our current staff work schedules, the fact that we have two campuses at Highland Park, and constraints that come along with that, our participation in the College of Lake County's Tech Campus, and school code. So these are the starting points for the constraints for our bell schedule. Number one, we looked at the number of periods, eight periods plus one optional period, perhaps an early bird, we even considered a late bird. That one went out the door pretty quickly, but
044early bird. Instructional minutes, our instruction minutes that we started with were the minimum current instructional minutes per period at DHS, which is approximately 206 minutes. That's complicated, some have 206, some have 211, some have 200, we won't get into that. Teacher work week, the length of the assigned teacher work week should be no more than 35 hours and 30 minutes. A change to that would require discussion with DEA and board of education, so we were starting with 35 hours and 30 minutes. Mandatory lunch periods per the law and per school code is 30 minutes for staff, and 20 minutes once they actually have their food for students. We also know that just historically we wanted to ensure that our students do have a lunch period and that they're not opting out, that we need to
045ensure that our students are eating. For Tech Campus, our Tech Campus students, Tech Campus offers three different sessions and we wanted to ensure that our students could at least attend the afternoon session at Tech Campus, which means that we would need to have them ready to go around 12-15 and we wanted them to be able to have four classes at DHS and Highland Park respectively and that they would be able to have their additional course over at Tech Campus. So that was also a restriction on the Bell schedule as well. We want dedicated collaboration time for our staff outside of the instructional periods and end time due to the two campuses at Highland Park with busing and Walters Field light constraints. The end of the school day should be as close as possible to its
046current end time at Highland Park High School, which is 3.05. And the biggest thing for that is that if we push that back any further, that means that there is less time for our student athletes at Highland Park not only to practice but also to participate in games. Sorry, not Debbie, Kathy let me say thank you very much for valuing our students actually having lunch and not opting out of it. That is an incredibly valuable thing for them and that they with their not fully formed amygdala and brains do not realize that that is exceedingly valuable to both their physical and their mental health. And then the other thing to make sure that our kids who attend Tech Campus have every opportunity as are at our buildings that they are entitled to and should be
047having. So thank you for making sure both those continued in your process. Absolutely, thank you. So as I indicated previously, we started with six bell schedules and then we went to four bell schedules. I'm not sharing, you do have a copy of the four bell schedule concepts that we shared with students and staff. I'm not sharing them right now simply because it's a lot to take in. So I'm going to share with you the feedback from our students and staff because that's truly what we want to get out of this. The great thing is that our students and staff, they mimicked each other in what they said, which was exactly what we were hoping to see. And I'm going to go through first some of the key themes and then I will go through the
048values. And those are the same thing. But when we talk about themes, we're really talking about components of the bell schedule. And when we talk about values, we're talking a little bit more about some broader aspects of what that brings to our students and to our staff. So some of the key themes that came out of reviewing the four bell schedule concepts, number one was consistency and predictability. Both students and staff value a consistent and predictable schedule. This includes a regular start time and end times and predictable class lengths and periods. Number one thing that students said was this is so confusing. I don't understand it. They live their bell schedules that they have been living for, whether it's a year or multiple years, and they grow accustomed to that specific type of bell schedule,
049the times of the different periods. And even as outsiders, we might think that the respective bell schedules are complicated at each school, but our students understand them. So it was really important for them to ensure that they could understand their bell schedule and have some consistency over time. Students and staff both find complex and inconsistent schedules to be confusing and challenging. When we start looking a little bit later, we'll talk about certain end times and how that plays a role in that. Support and collaboration time. One of the biggest things that came out from staff is how do we provide interventions to students? How do we provide them with support during the school day? And the students said the same thing. How do we receive support from our teachers, from our counselors, from our support
050staff to ensure that we get what we need? So the inclusion of a what I need period was something that we included in the bell schedule concepts we provided to both students and staff. And this is something that other school districts have included in their bell schedules. This was really valued by our students and staff. They really focus on that or a similar support time so that they could have time not only to meet with each other, perhaps for our teachers to collaborate with one another. Staff specifically valued built in collaboration time, but are also concerned about adequate time. So there were some bell schedules that provided short chunks of collaboration time, perhaps 20 minutes, and the recognition of 20 minutes really doesn't provide enough time to really dive into those conversations with one another.
051So the number, the total time that our staff are able to meet with each other, not only in one sitting, but over the course of a week. And we know from John Haddy's research that collaboration is key to ensuring that our students get what they need. Start and end times. Later start times are generally preferred by our students. I know you're shocked right now. Of course, our staff were also supporting that based upon brain research. So if we could get it past 8.30, that was really ideal because that is what brain research says, is that we should be looking for those later start times. Not only a later start time, but for our students, especially at Deerfield High School, a late start day was also key. And the exclusion of a late start day was
052really seen as a drawback. Staff really appreciate the flexibility and start times as well, particularly when it aligns with child care needs. Class length and structure. Students prefer shorter class periods with fewer periods per day, so not an eight period day, which was seen as less overwhelming and manageable to have those shorter class periods and fewer periods. There are mixed feelings, though, about longer class periods with some students appreciating them for more in-depth learning, while others find them very challenging. So you'll see this in a lot of the feedback. Every pro can be a con, but these were really the major themes that emerged. Homeroom. The presence and frequency of homeroom periods are important to some students and staff for announcements and other factors. Other students and staff question the time and the frequency of
053homeroom periods. We will get to this when we go through each of the bell schedules, how we included homeroom, and that this will continue to be a topic that we discuss with our students and staff. Flexibility and complexity. Schedules that offer flexibility, such as a flexible when period, the what I need period, or longer lunch breaks are appreciated. However, overly complex schedules are viewed negatively by both students and staff who prefer simpler and more straightforward structures. And perhaps not as a shock, but our students and staff prefer their current schedules. So over and over again, there was a tendency for students and staff to prefer schedules that closely resembled their current ones, indicating a resistance to drastic changes and an appreciation for familiarity. All right, to getting to the themes. When we start to take
054a look at what emerges as the values from each of those themes, we start to think about things like student support and well-being. There's an emphasis on the need for built-in support periods, which reflect a value placed on student well-being and academic support. There's an appreciation for school life balance. Later start times and predictable schedules indicate a value in balancing school demands with rest and personal time, important for both student and staff's mental and physical health. An effective learning environment. Preferences for shorter, consistent class periods and fewer periods per day highlight a value on maintaining an effective and manageable learning environment. Collaboration and professional development. The need for dedicated collaboration time underscores the value placed on professional development and teacher collaboration for improved educational outcomes. And adaptability and flexibility, which also was a theme. Flexible
055schedules that accommodate diverse needs such as childcare for staff and support times for students reflected value on adaptability within a school community. So with all of those values and themes, something that we continue to come back to was instructional minutes. While we believe that we had many of the components that our students and staff were looking for, we were still questioning what were the right instructional minutes. I know this is something that we also discussed when I presented the last time to the board of education to discuss what is the right number of minutes because the number of minutes varies across our area and in other schools. And so the bell schedule committee actually delivered a survey to staff regarding preferences, instructional minutes, and much of this was based upon feedback that we had received
056with a change to single period science. Many staff members had changed some of their values and some of their themes based upon the understanding that the way that they had been teaching would be impacted by the future bell schedule. And as a result, we had this survey that went out to staff and 75.3% of staff said that 205 minutes that we had been presenting in the bell schedules and those bell schedule concepts seem to be the right amount of time for them. They emphasize the importance of effective instructional time, advocating for longer periods only if they maximize engagement and quality. They also support flexible schedules for deeper analysis and varied activities while the science department particularly calls for more time to facilitate hands-on learning and meet standards. Concerns about student well-being and attention span prompt
057discussions on scheduling that considers sleep needs alongside a debate on balancing quantity and quality of instruction with many staff members content with the current structure. Now both schools, we did show students here's a schedule that has 205 minutes, here's a schedule that has 220, 230 and our very astute students said, but what's that going to do for us? What will the extra time, how will we really benefit from that extra time? And I really love the way that they were thinking about what would actually be done in the classroom. They started thinking about things like homework. Are we going to have more homework as a result of this? Are we really going to be able to dive deeper into it? Aside from science classes where they've been experiencing that and they know that they're going
058to have more time to do science labs for example, they were concerned about what the impact might be in other class periods. They preferred to have a schedule that met their needs in terms of a later start time and end time that allowed them to do extracurriculars and still engage in the robust curriculum that they have been thus far. So that was where we are at at the time in presenting you with Bell schedules that have 205, 206 instructional minutes. Of course we understand if there is a direction to go otherwise. We also have some different models that increase the number of instructional minutes as well. We know of course that any change in one component of the Bell schedule means a shift and another aspect of the Bell schedule. If we have more instructional
059minutes that might mean a later end time or an earlier start time, less collaboration time, less win time, less homeroom time. So we're really trying to manage all of those different components so that we can create a Bell schedule that meets the greatest number of values and themes that emerge when we surveyed our students and staff. All right without further ado, the three Bell schedule concepts for your review. Are they presented in order in any particular order? They are not presented in any order except that if you take a look at the top, concept one has one anchor day, concept two has two anchor days, concept three has three anchor days. I will explain anchor days. Yes, so our board members have a hard copy of this. It is exactly for others, it's exactly what
060is being presented on the screen. When freshman parents come into Deerfield High School, I spend a good chunk of time going over the Bell schedule and it's still confusing for families who've been in the school for over a decade. So I will carefully go through this Bell schedule and if you have any questions please let me know. I feel like each neighborhood should have a liaison to freshman parents. How does it explain the Bell schedule to their students because you as parents don't need to know? Correct, yes. The students know and our senior advisors for advisory and our link crew students do a fantastic job of guiding our new students. So we'll start with concept one. An anchor day is a day where all class periods meet. So you will see that we have periods
061one through eight on an anchor day. When we take a look at this anchor day, collaboration time is for our staff that is from eight to eight thirty five and then each of the periods is a different color. So you'll notice that period one is a pinkish color, period two is an orangish color and you will see the start time for each of the periods and that you will notice that we have not indicated passing periods on this Bell schedule but you will notice that there are five minute passing periods between each of the periods. One of the areas that is newer for at least Deerfield High School is how the lunches are presented. This Bell schedule has three different lunches. There is a lunch one and then a split period four. You would be
062either in period 4A or period 4B. If you are in period 4A then you go to lunch two and then period 5B. If you have lunch one you go to period 4B and then you go to period 5B. If you have a lunch three you go to period 4A, period 5A and then lunch three. This is a little bit complicated for our master schedulers. I just want to identify this. You schedule students into periods four and five and then you have to hand split our students into these different periods. So it's just something to note because we're going to look at another day and you're going to see it looks a little bit different and I will explain that to you and then you will see periods six, seven and eight. The day starts at
063840 for our students and it ends at 310. As indicated in our constraints, we want it to be around 305 because that is the current time that Highland Park High School gets out and that's because of the two campuses that we need to be able to support our students in that regard. All right, the rest of the days are called cycle days and that is that we are removing periods each day. So if you go to the next column, cycle four, five means that periods four, five do not meet on that day. Now if you're following along you're thinking, but aren't those how you get your lunches? You're right. So I'm going to go through this one carefully as well. Our cycle days are when early bird classes meet. This early bird class, I'm sorry
064on that anchor day if you notice those class periods are 40 minutes. When we were asking our staff what's the ideal number of minutes on an anchor day, it ranged between 35 and 45 minutes and the most for 40 minutes. One of the biggest complaints about the anchor day for a deer field right now is it's at 35 minutes and that seems too short. So 40 seems like a good area. If we look at the cycle four, five day, this is an early bird class that starts at 725 and you'll notice that right next to it says staff WT. Staff WT is staff work time. This really isn't a part of the bell schedule but we wanted to ensure that we included on the bell schedule the certain end times for our staff so that
065we could get to the total number of work minutes for our staff and this is just to give a visual for our board of education and our staff about what the start times would be on those days. We already know that our staff are coming in well before the start of the school day but this would be an idea of when that the staff work time could be. It says choice one on there to give our staff a little bit of flexibility. They could have staff work time at the beginning of the day or they could have staff work time at the end of the day so that's why you'll see a choice one and two on this schedule. The school day starts then for all students if they do not have an early bird
066at 825. Remember the day before on Monday it started at 840 so 825 on the cycle four to five day. It goes into period two. There is a 10 minute homeroom and then we have the lunch periods because we do not have a periods four and five. We have a period three and a period six. I told you it's really challenging to do master scheduling where you split two classes two periods. It's even more impossible to split four. This specific day we are splitting period three only for students who have a study hall. So this is a day where it will be a little bit busier during the first period lunch because students who have study hall during that time that's when they would have their lunch. All their students would be in the other
067period three. Period six we are more easily able to split because they are not having to work around a period three split so they would have their lunches two and three. Then we have period seven and eight and as I indicated there is staff work time that is at the end of the day that is a choice. If you're an early bird teacher that's when your staff work time as well. All right going into cycle one eight day the difference here is that we are no longer have periods one and eight. Collaboration time starts the day at eight o'clock to eight thirty five and for our teachers who teach early bird this is a complicated factor for this one is that our early bird teachers would have collaboration time at the end of the day.
068Cycle two seven shows an option where there is a win period and a rotation with collaboration. You will notice on this day that early bird starts earlier than the other days at seven fifteen and ends at seven fifty five. The win period starts the day for all students at eight o'clock so that they can attend even our early bird students that they can meet with teachers and it would be our I thought was that it could be on a rotation that you have half of the teachers available one week and half of the teachers available the next week. You will notice that all the other periods mimic the day before starting at eight forty and ending at three ten. Again this day periods two and seven do not meet and then lastly on Friday is
069a cycle three sixth day meaning periods three and six do not meet. This one does not have collaboration or win time but it does have a homeroom and the start time is eight twenty five and ends at three ten. I'm going to pop ahead to another slide so that you can see how if you want to get a glimpse of how this meets different constraints we have a chart that shows each of the concepts whether they meet the constraints and then it breaks it down based upon all the information. How many instructional minutes are in this schedule? How much homeroom and win time? How much collaboration time? Office hours? Staff hours? Start time for staff? End time for staff? Start time for students? So when you're looking at this spell schedule and you're confused beyond
070belief go to the chart because it's providing that basic information. Yes please Mike. Mike you want to come up here? Yes please. There we go. One of the reasons we have cycle four five one eight two seven and three six is it's going to give the classes one through four will always be in the morning, classes five through eight will always be in the afternoon. So like gives us that extra classroom or class time for the tech campus and also gives stability for special ed and stuff like that. So there's a consistency you can say we can come in on in the morning from periods one through four and the afternoon's five through eight. So that's another reason why it doesn't look like the deer field we actually took that out usually as a one
071two three four day but we made it the cycle four five one eight two seven three six for that reason. That was my question. Thanks Mike that was key. This was the biggest confusion for deer field students like why do you change the cycle days and once they understood this was a reason like oh that makes a lot of sense. It was mine too when I saw it I'm like would you literally I felt I had the visceral reaction like no there's one two three four five six and then I thought you know change you can adapt to change take a breath and it still accomplishes the goal but it was that visceral reaction of no I know the schedule I understand the days and why they're grouped. It took me until third child figured
072out that one two Was there what is the feedback on this concept one of early birds starting at a different time like three of the days. So these concepts have not our students haven't seen these concepts yet. We created four concepts and using their feedback they saw concepts that were very similar to this so they saw w x y z we combined w and x as a result coming to concept one. Okay the biggest thing for when we were looking at early bird and a lot of the models was that it was early bird and then collaboration and so there was a big chunk of time where our students would just be sitting in the school and they're already getting up early so we that was the number one thing that we wanted to change
073was to ensure that early bird students who were an early bird didn't have to be there for an hour just waiting around so that was the biggest change. Yes there is a change in the minutes and the start time for early bird but as soon as we start to play around with that then because if you move the early bird on the cycle two seven day to be at 7 40 then they're missing out on that wind time. Some of the feedback is that that wind time is too early so include that during the day but then you're moving back the start time for period one so these are all things that we're going to continue to have to get feedback on and we continue to make small tweaks along the way so this is
074just to present where we're at currently and our students have been providing some really great feedback. When we look at each of the models you'll notice that there are just two days in each of the concepts where there's homeroom and wind. We know that this is too much for some staff and students and it's too little for other staff and students. When I was talking with a group of students there was a suggestion to have a wind period for 35 minutes every day but then it pushed the start time to eight o'clock and the next group of students that I met with they're vehemently against a very early start time every single day so it's really trying to trying to manage the needs of all of our students and understanding why students are requesting some
075of the aspects of the components of the schedules that they are so again this is just where we're currently at and we still need to gather more feedback about this concept along with all of the other ones so hopefully your feedback today too will help us will help guide us further so our goal in the fall is to come back and to continue working on this have more surveys have more focus groups to continue to work on these. I think one thing that you mentioned before in terms of having some continuity in terms of when classes are happening is important as we look ahead to apprenticeships and internships and how that will be coming down the pipeline eventually that might change what school day looks like for students and this might allow some flexibility in
076terms of how they can accommodate that in their schedule. Absolutely. So is an anchor day always a Monday and the cycle four or five always Tuesday and Wednesday or does that move around as well? Okay so during a five day week yes the anchor day would be Monday cycle four or five would be a Tuesday and so on. When we start looking at four day weeks typically at Deerfield what we've done is we take out the anchor day. When we go to a three day week well that's fun because David Hirsch if you're listening it's called a one two sandwich. Staff members you know what I'm talking about there when you get to a three when you get to a three day week you have to look at the next week to see how you
077would place these days. What we've learned over time is that it's a lot easier for our students and our staff to be consistent with what the days are so to have a Tuesday be a four or five day makes the most sense but then what happens when you have let's say for this I think upcoming school year we have election day on a Tuesday so what do you do on that day? It's actually easier to say the four or five days on a Monday so it gets a little bit complicated where there are some things that we have to change that's why we have a cycle template a calendar so that you know what each day is but you'll see that when we look at concepts two and three when you have more anchor days
078during a week that you have a little bit more flexibility. I'll just go to it really quickly to show that on this three day and this concept too if you had a three day week you could take out the anchor days and just do those three days in the middle or you could choose to do all anchor days during that week. It's really working with our staff to figure out what works best during that week. We know that these anchor days are really challenging for our students and our staff to have eight periods for three days in a row can be very taxing on students and staff who haven't been doing that typically. Well and it's also then that following Monday so you could be five days yeah potentially or whatever yeah absolutely so we
079just really have to consider what the needs are during that time to identify what specific days that they are. So this back to concept one what was the feedback on two or was it yeah two 10-minute homeroom periods? Homeroom feedback is all over the place so homeroom we have everything from get rid of homeroom to we need homeroom every day up to 30 minutes or even longer and you could you'll see an option where we have homeroom slash when so that it could be used for either. One of the biggest things that happens at I think both schools is an extended homeroom so as a result of the college and career pathways with a pace framework is that we oftentimes use our homeroom time and have an extended homeroom it's a special schedule so that
080we can do special counseling programming because all of our students are meeting at the same time in their grade levels so that we can have special freshman programming special sophomore programming. So one side of it is should we just have a longer homeroom once a week so that we can always have this extended homeroom and not always have these special bell schedules. So there are there are lots of ideas and it's really all over the place and there isn't the most the most consistent theme is that it's inconsistent or that it's all over the place. So that's something that we continue to look at we had variations even when we showed our students and staff back in March we had options with four homeroom periods during the week and there are some students who really
081appreciated that and others who didn't so again this is an area that we know we have to continue to gather more feedback on and really talk through what the impact of changing what our homeroom looks like at Deerfield and Highland Park because right now Deerfield has four 12-minute periods and Highland Park has one 20-minute 215 just kidding those last years. Last years right yeah yeah yeah oh my god so so the change does is something that we have to continue to talk about and what we want to get out of those periods. The first one from transportation from transportation so specifically the first week and that's early the students can climb transportation of adjust which is looking at the first one I see you one two I see three versions of the schedule that they
082would have to memorize and if students come in the period one I see two bell schedules they have to memorize that one's pretty easy to have like start a regular schedule now but I can see a challenge with that they're freshmen specifically the freshmen and then everyone else is getting a new schedule they have to memorize so many schedules a brand new bell schedule it's it's a lot to to adjust to it'll be a hurdle but I can see a lot of challenges the first couple of absolutely so I think to that to that comment with concept one if I am not taking an early bird class I may or may not be in when on cycle day 27 I would start at 8 40 unless I am participating in when then I'd start at
083eight o'clock yep okay and if I'm an early bird then I'd start at 7 15 and if I'm not participating in when then I'd have that 8 to 8 35 as an extra study all doesn't start into first or yeah first the when time is completely optional so you could be a student who decides to arrive at 7 15 for your early bird class a student who wants to attend when and arrive at eight or a student who has a first period and attend and start at 8 40 that sounds incredibly difficult for bus drivers right so the way that we work up many of the schedules currently is that there is a consistent time and that they have basically built in time so that they can study so we'd have to obviously work with
084Brandon in terms of especially that cycle one eight day our students are always coming at 7 10 on a daily basis so that they have a consistent transportation time so that they can get to their 7 25 7 40 7 15 and 7 25 class so that is the complexity of working with a schedule that has a different oh I want to say drastically but varies yeah throughout the week that does feel challenging I'm just reiterating what's already been said but I can envision this being very challenging because there it doesn't seem like there there's necessarily like rhyme or reason where it'd be like Tuesday Thursday this is the start time Wednesday Friday this is the start time it really does that we are banking on the students really looking at their google calendar and
085knowing what time they're supposed to be at school and I can see that being challenging particularly for freshmen what time to catch the bus well it sounds like the bus time would be consistent that's what it Cathy was saying just to put it out there yes that you are 100 correct our students who have early bird science are doing this already so they have a nine o'clock start on Mondays 7 35 36 on 39 thank you Marty on um on one of the cycle days let's say that's Tuesday and then on Wednesday they start at 8 10 so they already are looking at so yes but also our students are doing it too I think I may ask this but I didn't quite catch the answer on cycle 227 sorry the early bird class is
0867 15 to 755 is the win and collaboration optional the win is optional for our students so the early bird kids just have 35 minutes of nothing until first period they can choose if they choose they can go and they can study in the library they can meet with a teacher yes can they leave school no okay so they have to stay at the school once they're there I mean I don't know any students that would leave for 35 minutes but they have to stay in the building so they don't have to do collaboration or what I need collaboration it's for staff um but the win period is for students that they would have that time that they could meet with teachers but if they're not doing that then they have to be still in
087the building yes yep all right all right but the cafeteria is open cafeteria library arc tlc yep all right I just have a quick question um Brandon what's our longest distance in travel on the bus approximately okay so what would be the earliest pickup okay just wondering what that was thank you that my kids were early bird science and I live on the farther end of east end of deerfield high school my kids have six 18 I think it was um Jody but I was just curious because I forgot to even think about that um before in the sense of what that means really for the beginning of the day yeah thanks and we recognize I mean we had even more variation more time between between early bird and a win period and period one
088and what you'll see and the start times based upon when you have homeroom in there so homeroom is why we have an 825 start on that Tuesday and Friday and have an 840 start on then Wednesday and Thursday so if you inserted homerooms on those two days then you'd have 825 every day right so once you start adding things or subtracting things and you start to see a variation and when we have start times now when we when we asked about certain end times having a consistent end time was more important than a consistent start time and that's I think that's because that's what our students are used to they're more used to a consistent end time than to a consistent start consistent start time well and I think the reality is is that the
089IHSA would probably require us to have a pretty consistent end time because we have to be ready for our games etc that they have to be able to get to if it's a farther game etc that I mean we only have so much flexibility with that end time based on and I don't mean to sound rude that we have to based on IHSA but I don't know how many student athletes we have but I guess we have quite a few and IHSA would not allow us to because I know it was a Barrington issue and Barrington tried to back up their whole day and hour. In terms of bus times when people get the bus and I don't necessarily expect any answer now but what percentage of our students take the bus and are there
090differences in for example socioeconomic questions in terms of who takes the bus and who doesn't I'm just saying those are things to think about the question it's a just over a quarter of our students that actually utilize the bus but anyone that's above 1.5 miles walking distance they're assigned to a bus so they can use it but it's really it's everyone isn't using it right one is assigned but we're just about about 700 students are actually boarding the buses across the industry great thank you if you could get to us because I don't expect you to have it off the top of your head but it would be an interesting thing just for us to have is how many of our students are utilizing the bus for early birth and I said that just because
091it is such an early thing how many of our students are utilizing that or having caregivers etc or personally there's a way that we could just know that for our next week just so because I think that is a big part to this yeah we have a running spring issue thank you Kathy let's move to concept two okay okay this one concept two two anchor days you'll notice that the anchor days are on Mondays and Fridays remember that means that all periods meet in this example even early bird meets on these anchor days right on this example Tuesday's a three seven eight day and you'll notice um let's take a look at the instructional minutes for each of the periods so on these anchor days the classes are 43 minutes now you'll notice that from
092the last concept schedule one of the things that we had asked our staff and students about what was about the how our schedule ends is it confusing do you want our schedule to end on zeros and fives and that was all over the place because we have some students and staff who are used to having a schedule on zeros and fives and other Highland Park and Deerfield has does not have it on zeros and fives this bell schedule mixes those two together so the anchor day on Monday and Friday you have 43 minute periods so you'll see that start times at 8 10 but then you'll see that it's all over the place uh you know 8 10 to 853 858 to 941 but they do end at 305 so 8 10 to 305 on
093these specific days um then you will notice that on that three seven eight day that there is collaboration time to start the day period one starts at 8 50 there is a homeroom win period towards the end of the day which is 20 minutes and classes end at 3 10 on cycle 2 6 which would be a Wednesday we have early birds starting at 7 22 the rest of them are around the same time 7 22 7 23 and then these are 60 minute periods and again we have our classes starting at 8 10 and ending at 3 10 looking at cycle 1 4 5 a Thursday this is where we have a 77 minute period and we also have collaboration this provides an option to have a longer chunk of time this is the
094longest period that you will see in this concept to provide some more time for perhaps there is a specific class that needs one period a day that would have a larger chunk of time but this does get in the way with collaboration so if you are an early bird teacher you would not be able to attend collaboration with a specific group of teachers unless they were early bird teachers during this day in this example on this day homeroom is towards the beginning of the day and the day ends at 3 10 so you will notice that in this schedule that the start time for students is 8 10 on Monday Wednesday Friday 8 50 on Tuesday Thursday on Monday and Friday it ends at 305 and 3 10 Tuesday Wednesday Thursday 43 minutes on the
095anchor days 60 minutes on the cycle days this one nods at having a homeroom slash win period maybe we don't have to have homeroom as we currently have it every single week that perhaps a win period could provide some students with the opportunity to go meet teachers or counselors or whomever during that period of time as well so providing some flexibility perhaps homeroom is the base for our students one of the concerns that students brought up with a win period is how are you going to manage that it's hard enough to talk to a tutor during lunch periods how am i going to find the teacher that i want to talk to when all of the students are looking for that same resource so that's when we had the idea of this kind of homeroom
096slash win where students would go to their homeroom and if they had an appointment then they could go see a specific teacher or staff member so again our students are so bright they think about all the things and how the time might be best utilized question about that and i think same question that students have if i am homeroom teacher i'm either doing homeroom with my homeroom or providing when if i'm providing students with those appointments what happens to my homeroom so all of our homerooms have partners got it and if they don't currently they would also be up to like how it's implemented that week so let's say there's something that needs to be delivered that week then we could say that this is a homeroom week it's not going to be when and
097then on their on days where homeroom doesn't have as much to deliver then we could make it when so it could also be implemented and it can be implemented so the schedule would be the same it could be implemented differently at the different schools so if there's something deerfield had to deliver one week that could be a homeroom week part could make it a homeroom week a different week but we could have that flexibility what was the thought process between the fact that on this concept to homeroom on thursday so it's in the morning and homeroom is in the afternoon on tuesdays was there logic i know there's always logic but what was that this one gives the best of both worlds we have some students who really prefer it to be earlier in the
098morning they're thinking about round carbs even having it right before lunch some students said to me well that doesn't make any sense for it to be right before lunch so there's a lot of thought about when homeroom and this when period are and this option gives kind of the best of both worlds we have a homeroom that's in the afternoon for a little bit of a break and we also have a homeroom that's earlier in the morning although it is close to a lunch period it still provides them with that check in earlier in the morning does it help too with the students are going to tech campus that if you do need to have a program you would have one grade level you could schedule it for thursday or the case maybe okay okay
099and sometimes when you start looking at the the schedules you can see like okay it makes sense you can remember in your head monday wednesday friday this is what the schedule looks like in the morning and tuesday thursday it looks this way in the afternoon noon if we shift to where homeroom and when are for example to shift the homeroom even to that friday now that friday doesn't look like the anchor day on monday so then are you better off putting homeroom on the anchor days so again anytime that you move one thing you're impacting the placement of of another another area now as a result of doing this by splitting them in the morning and afternoon you are going to see a difference of one specific periods meet right so 850 to 950 for
100periods one on two in those days but then that's when everything is kind of thrown off period two is next and then lunch versus homeroom and then lunch so tuesday and thursdays those schedules aren't consistent although that they are 60 minute periods so as soon as we make a change it throws off consistency a little bit and students have not seen these yet they've seen a variation of it so this would be closest to concept y that they saw so we use their feedback to make adjustments to make it look like this concept too so before we present it to them again we wanted to do a pulse check with you to make sure that we are going in the right direction if there's anything that's glaring then we would make adjustments before sharing it
101with them yes yes it is yep yep and so as soon as you start moving as soon as you start trying to accommodate four different lunch times then you're moving other things right so if we want to have lunches a little bit later then we're having to move either period one to a we're having to have that as a later start time and that means at the end of the day is later as well or we can't do 60 minute periods so like any any aspect like that it's like we acknowledge that it's not ideal but also the alternative is that we're just going to have to make an adjustment where we say lunch is not going to be any earlier than this specific time and then that will impact what we can do with
102the um the start times and the end times and the length of the periods on those days i think one of our theaters still has a 10 15 lunch time for one of the grades yeah you're absolutely correct yeah so that's who the southern students are at coming from school are used to that lunch right not that it's a good thing but they adapt yes i think it works they eat and they're very good at mashing in the hall concept three all right concept three concept three pre-anchor days monday tuesday and friday are the anchor days so all eight periods are meeting they are 45 minute periods on these anchor days early bird is consistent with 41 minute periods every single day you'll notice that in concepts one and two early bird did not meet
103every single day this one it does as a result when you take a look at the cycle days so that would be on wednesday and thursday two four six eight one three five seven you'll notice that early bird meets for 41 minutes and then there is collaboration time collaboration time is just for staff this means that students who are an early bird they have a chunk of time where they will be in the library or they'll be in the cafeteria and they can study for the start time pretty consistent 8 50 for monday tuesday friday and 8 45 on wednesday thursday wait no isn't eight o'clock on sorry eight o'clock on sorry eight o'clock on monday tuesday friday and 8 45 on wednesday thursday this is another homeroom win combination and these are 35 minute
104homeroom win periods so you'll notice that in each of the concepts again we've only kept two days a week but you saw a variation from 10 to then 20 to now 35 so again this is really getting at the feedback that we've received and it's kind of all over the place i mean we even recognize that we could have additional days of the week but then we would be showing our staff and our students if we want that this is what it's how it's going to impact the rest of the schedule you will notice then that on those anchor days that it ends at 3 10 and then non-anchor days the cycle days the school day ends at three o'clock this one does not have staff work time that is listed anywhere because this is
105exactly 35 hours and 30 minutes for staff from 8 to 8 45 to 8 to a 40 to give the early bird students a little bit of a break could you flip the collaboration time earlier with the earlier bird schedule let them sleep in a couple days a week so that would be i'm assuming something that the board of education and the dea would discuss in terms of start times i figured but just and that is actually something that we um had kind of questioned our staff in terms of start times as well but i think that would be something more for type of agreement notice in the schedule something a opportunity for transportation and athletics on the uh the days that it ends at three o'clock this is probably would be the day for
106athletics to schedule those further games because we can get back to school quicker to get to those further competitions just to note again that in every concept you saw a different number of minutes for the periods so on the first concept one you saw anchor days that were 40 minutes concept two you saw anchor days that were 43 minutes and this last concept you saw anchor days that are 45 minutes concept one you saw cycle day periods that were 55 minutes concept two 60 minutes and this last one 70 minutes now if you look at them closer if you haven't already realized the first concept is very similar to the deerfield model concept three is very similar to the highland park model and concept two is a mix between the two and that is what
107came out of the um the feedback from our students and staff an appreciation for what they already know but also looking to see maybe something that's a little bit different so you have to remember early bird is an option where kids take it they don't they're not forcing early bird so when you see a start time at 7 14 they're not they're not putting into that class they chose to take that class so those are your students that either go getters they want another opportunity for another class so don't let that early bird at 7 14 start get you nervous not every students are going to do that they chose to take that class actually more often than not want to and can't get it if i remember correctly but you are correct but i
108just want to say that you're right um is early bird gut is early birds when thinking towards us i which i don't know if it even still is the case that it's strictly science classes that are offered early bird or there are other classes and jim you know science pe but at highland park i know that english doesn't and there's other classes too we also have performing arts classes and okay great thank you and just as a reminder there is a shift in the future to a single period science and early bird science is not a full period for early bird it's a portion of early bird so even that could change if we're looking at what early bird science looks like in the future because it was early bird period one with period one
109being the primary period that the that science meets so that being in the early bird so that two couple of questions one for the early bird just out of curiosity do we know what percentage of students take early bird classes i think there is a so it's it's a complicated question because there's pure early bird classes like an early bird pe or an early bird um orchestra class where they truly start their classes you know early in the morning and they meet that entire period then there's early for deer field early bird science classes where they only do early bird twice a week and it's not for that full period so i don't know the percentage jody's right that there is a high percentage at deer field that want an early bird science class and
110it's only for science we can only offer as many classes as we have teachers in rooms so um right one of the reasons they want it now is because that's their two periods and it frees up a period during the day to then take something that might be in us they might be interested in so some of that might go away all right so what do you i think you've got the glazed overlook from us um so what do you need from us any feedback that you have in terms of if we're headed in the right directions any corrections to our constraints um to what you'd like us to look at um our goals for the fall is to utilize your feedback and um make any adjustments that we need to before presenting it once
111again to our students and our staff for their continued feedback we are getting um we are surveying our staff just to get a sense of where they're at with these different concepts so that we can make um any quick adjustments in the fall as well based upon your feedback so that we can once again present it to our students it's really valuable to have our staff be informed about the schedule so that if we're using homeroom that our staff are able to answer any questions that our students have as well but we'll most likely have to continue with different focus groups that we've been running to get smaller group feedback so that we can make adjustments to eventually get to that one common bell schedule that we'll be presenting to you in december so one
112question on the no no no go ahead over some of the focus groups maybe you could grab some you will be coming in using this for the first time having not experienced the high school schedule yet so there wouldn't be as much bias and maybe get a feel for what what they think is but they do really figure it out and yeah yeah yeah and they're and they are very used to different schedule each day and they truly figure it out you know just we have to stay out of the way yeah yeah um okay so um sorry how many you had a question so question on the constraints for the instructional minutes if i understand correctly the instructional minutes on concept three was that 35 was that 35 hours but that's including early bird
113or not including early bird so the 35 hours and 30 minutes are staff work time right uh versus instructional time for students so if you take a look at the um bell schedule comparisons and then you well you can take a look at the concept schedule comparisons i will shift this i'm sorry it's probably easier for you to take a look at them so if you take a look at the instructional minutes it's saying how many instructional minutes there are for each period during that week so concept one has 205 instructional minutes per period per week concept two has 206 instructional minutes per period per week and concept three has 205 minutes the differentiation of staff hours is that our staff are working from eight to three ten and the total number of minutes that
114they work for a week um is what was calculated so column instructional minutes and eb instructional minutes that's where i guess the question is that wasn't clear what's the difference between the second column the third column with instructional minutes and eb because right now for uh deerfield high school our early bird instructional minutes are different than the other periods for deerfield currently we have 200 minutes for early bird whereas the other periods one two three six seven eight are 206 minutes and four and five are 211 minutes there will be a quiz at the end of my presentation yeah no seriously okay let me start by saying this is a herculean yes let yes okay and we all know it and someone who was a scheduler for a district i get it okay it is
115a rubik's cube with 19 sides and a piece missing um my only thing when looking at this is that i look at concept three and i would really like us to think about switching our early bird kids in our collaboration um for two reasons first of all i think if all of our staff is sitting in collaboration for that 40 minutes we're leaving the inmates to run i mean i really worry about what our students are doing during that when all of our staff rightly so should be collaborating using their professional time and that concerns me what do we do with 1700 students for 40 minutes twice a week when they're you know i just okay well that's what i'm asking what no because it's only early bird only barely bird students thank you okay
116that already helped me a little bit yeah okay so that helped me a little bit um but i also like to say our early bird kids if we could somehow give them the break and have our staff be there first and our early bird kids get that those two days i think it's something to consider that's my yeah please and if you wouldn't mind standing up because i get a giant podium in your face thank you yeah part of when we looked at what's with country our contract negotiation we looked at what staff uh i think that was extremely important to staff was the ability for staff to have children to be able to have flexibility for child care needs and that's something that as a district we've had for years and years and years
117um and so again because early bird was a choice for kids that's why we didn't flip those um when we were talking because to ask staff to get there at 714 especially when a number of them and i'm not speaking for myself because my kids are old but i'm just thinking for the younger staff at this point that a lot of them for child care in the 714 was problematic and when i'm outside of dea when we were getting feedback of staff about things that they want that ability to have for child care was said again again so we were that was listening to kind of what the staff was thank you and by the way reminded me that it was only it was over kids made me feel much better because i was thinking
118they are no i knew that but i just meant i did not mean that they were finding them on so i'm sorry one of the things it was talked about was difficulty in scheduling on summaries i forget which is more or less difficult administration will deal with it but will it make it less or more likely that a student might have problem getting the classes they want because difficulty in scheduling to me implies it'll be difficult for kids to get what they need is that the case or is it just my no the difficulty won't be for students getting the classes they need though what it could lead to is it's just a challenge of trying to balance out the lunches as best as possible so it really won't impact our student schedule it's more
119so of trying to ensure that we have as balance of lunches as possible so it's more of just a the 19-sided rubik's cube with a piece missing type of puzzle so yeah the kids will be okay okay so to summarize i believe we all feel as if your constraints and your constraints are aligned with what we expect we expected to see very happy to see the 205 consistently across both campuses all periods okay you know it's it's really important i think to to we're not living this the staff and the students are living this so it will be important for us to hear their feedback as you move to this next step i don't think that there's any shock that when we when we asked our students for their feedback we asked students grades nine
120through 12 on grades nine our grades 11 and 12 aren't going to live this schedule it was so important for us to get their feedback because they've lived at the longest but there was much more feedback from grades nine and ten who are going to be living it so i think that we will get even more feedback next year to your point jenny of having we're going to have new students that are coming in as well so we will have three grades in the school who will be living that and we'll be able to utilize our now seniors coming in to get their expertise and feedback as well our students are nothing but honest yeah i know you already said this but when i say particularly someone who is the chair of the calendar committee
121which had all of maybe one and a half meetings this is a huge undertaking to all of you yeah i very very much appreciate the thought and care that went into this is it is an emotional topic it is to your point tricky it is so many puzzles and so um well i won't be here to live this i am so incredibly appreciative of the time and it's it's not easy people have a lot of thoughts and feelings about it and sometimes we have to dive in and live it i used to when i was at deerfield and we switched to the present schedule you'll probably remember this right everyone's like i can't live with this and this won't work or whatever you know what after we were okay after you're right well now now
122it went attached to it and he's on the right right i mean i feel the same way about how partly just sort of we all adapt eventually and we figure that and then it becomes second nature and then someone says we need to adapt the new schedule so anyways i just wanted to give a shout out to all of you i know how much our many hours you put into this so thank you and thank you for making that point debbie absolutely correct yes thank you thank you great are you okay thank you everyone i know that was a very long presentation and very complex um if you have any questions please let me know you also have the written report that summarizes all this as well thank you again thank you committee members okay
123thank you guys for coming tonight okay um individual and small group transportation services for student bids it's great i'll speak to you and then you want to come on the podium so my head's spinning i think i need a few drinks when i get home thank you for joining us brandon all right so um good presentation cathy that was awesome all right so uh this is special needs transportation um we do have in-house transportation but uh based on students with special needs especially in their iep plan uh different kinds of services may be needed which is you know could include um vans taxi we've had challenges dealing with different vendors that we use uh first is obviously the rate changes they could change the rates uh some of the rates could be about 350 400
124a day that's more than an air fridge transfer one one child uh so that uh was one of the challenges other challenges were um the insurance requirements are not all vendors were able to meet our insurance requirements as from our click insurance uh certain amount of uh coverage is needed uh for liability reasons and then uh brandon then can we talk about a few more things in the process we did uh he actually did brandon an excellent job managing the special needs transportation he uh was able to add a in-house driver with a bus wheelchair buses that he was about hundred thousand dollars so our spend is about averages between about 850 to a million dollars depending on what services are needed so brandon i'll uh let you take over this is your your thing
125so go ahead and you know um talk about the process thank you um so ron can we go to the uh next slide um so this is a little bit more background about this uh this transportation is specifically for transporting so our mckinney vento students that can include students as far as chicago or even some students that may get a plane ticket every week we're not uh bidding with delta or united airlines anything of that sort but it can go that to that magnitude and then also our special needs transportation for wheelchair students or any students that have just a lower number of transportation for our placement whether it's like a new hope or felicity just the list goes on and on for our outplacement students so typically we wouldn't put a school bus that
126gets a five to seven gallons per uh per mile um in a diesel bus to get our students it's about you know 20 20 miles round trip or each way uh so then we uh go to vendors like this to put a cab in place what's called a first division vehicle which is basically a car that goes to a safety lane every six months um and then a driver that has a school bus permit and just a little background on what that looks like um and then we have our special case transportation uh during the am and pm routes as well uh so we have um just under 30 routes and we have about 29 drivers right now so we are stretched to our capacity so at route time we just can't we don't have
127the flexibility to give up a driver for one student going let's say to lgm so then that's is that's where this comes into play where we use vendors like this so the current vendors are listed here we are currently using all of these vendors and all of them uh did bid i mean alice shared what the annual spend is uh for this at the moment um and he shared that at 8 30 8 50 um so becky and i um last year we shared a scenario and it actually it worked uh we were in a spreadsheet um it was a few students that were actually in a cab going to new hope academy i mean they worked and actually made that budget line come in a lot under what we expected um so we're just
128continuing on on finding more ways to uh save with this uh one of the largest line items in the transportation budget so can we move to the next slide around so here's a little background on the bid process uh legal advertisement uh we emailed the uh potential vendors which are currently the vendors we're already using uh the bid was posted issued uh from april until may 3rd the evaluation criteria wasn't just to save money it was a safety and comfort for each student so although let's say a city care or a 303 may have a good price it doesn't always fit each student's need so we may have a maybe a driver just doesn't fit that student or that family so although we may be saving some money with that vendor we just have to
129pay a little bit more to make that student more comfortable um so it's not price isn't the primary decision maker um and then moving on financial stability of the of the bidder um transportation requirements so again that's going back to does the driver have a school bus permit are their vehicles up to date as far as are they updating their safety lanes for all of their vehicles consistently do they have a good reputation with us as a district and what i mean by that is when we call and ask hey did you show for that student can you show us proof with maybe your gps yes you were there or are you being not so truthful i mean you've maybe overstretched yourself i mean you weren't really at that student's door or do we need
130to investigate a bit more maybe um little brandon was in there eating a waffle and i just missed a mr cat so the list goes on so can we go to the next slide ron so again looking at price here these were the bid results all were all of the vendors that we already currently have with the exception of one the collaborative student transport so we are losing one that we are currently using ever driven just because they couldn't accept the terms of what we what the bid um had requested um and then the correct collateral collaborative student transport initially when this was created um we were going to work in the bid as well um but they um technically are kind of like doing a middleman thing they don't own their vehicles um they're
131they don't own their vehicles so they're just third-partying out a lot of their uh their services to us and that's that just can't can't match what we're looking for so we're just not going to agree to uh move forward with that uh that vendor um and then moving on um oh actually let's go back to that so let's talk about the pricing a little bit more um so this is just breaking down the pricing i want to give a little feedback background on what this looks like on the day-to-day when we are looking for a company to transport our students so he may send a blind copy out to all of these vendors we aren't choosing one hey we like right left or city care more than the other we blind copy everyone and then
132they respond back to us and say yeah we'll consider the price but does this company currently have they've been dependable lately so on day one in august yes everyone can do it because they haven't filled up their roster you know come december january they may have lost drivers maybe they're stretched thin we start to know maybe someone doesn't respond so it starts to vary and then maybe we have to pay a little bit more so that's why we have sort of a rolodex so that we're sort of not backed into a corner that hey we're short drivers so now our students are filling you know the burden of them being short drivers because we're depending on one vendor so that's a little background on why we have multiple vendors and then a breakdown of why
133we're not just looking at the lowest price or the lowest bidder can we go to the next slide recommendation so the rationale so driver shortages are an active issue not only in transportation but in pupil transportation but all transportation so we are also experiencing our version of driver shortages but we're making it work i'll put in some audibles and we're adjusting with boys and we've made it work historically one vendor has not been able to manage all of our transportation that's why we're having a rolodex here so to be started with multiple contractors that will fill the needs and not guarantee a bid assigned to a minimum minimal number of routes so no one is getting hey you're all going to get five you're going to get 10 you're going to get 20 no you're
134just in our list and this means that you're qualified to transport our students we'll share when we have opportunities to transport our students if you fit the criteria when we're putting it out then we will award you that ride at that time um and that's pretty much it any uh questions comments feedback on anything i share so from here you then are matching individual capabilities with that students need or location and that sort of thing yeah so let's say we have a student that's uh that's in a wheelchair um or maybe they need air can they maybe they need a climate control vehicle so right now we only have two climate control vehicles that also has a wheelchair lane um but that route is going out to deer field at route time and then all
135of our other drivers are busy with routes so at that time we would match that student with a company that actually has a driver available a vehicle available available to transport that wheelchair student um at that time so to match those needs of that specific student and the goal is to make it as consistent as you can for that student correct driver shortage or something change yes to make it consistent so i don't we try to avoid it jumping around companies even from year to year so if a student has a the same company right now and they're going to esy during the summer we try and let it roll over for the summer as well so they can even even down to the point they're keeping the same driver so they see the same
136person on a consistent basis pending that driver stays around so we try to keep it as consistent as possible it's not always that we're not always that lucky um but um that's what we're aiming to okay sorry one last thing based on the pricing you got here how do you think it's going to compare to our historical spend um so that varies it depends on who we get and where they're going so today one student could be going to outplacement in arlington heights but because that program just isn't working for them now they're going to LG and now we need to go with another company that probably charges less for mileage um it may vary or we may just stick with the same company or that company that that student was riding with at that
137time they say well that doesn't fit that driver's schedule anymore we don't have anyone that can be there at that time for that distance so now we have to find a new vendor i think this helps us a lot because during the pandemic a lot of vendors were kind of taking advantage of driver shortages so they were changing the prices so when alicia at that three hundred dollars a day our hands were tired we had to pay it because that's all we could do because everyone was short drivers so we pretty much just have to pay it we try to look into uber but they don't meet the requirements so we couldn't do much so pretty much with this the price is locked in for a year and then next year we'll go back and
138do the same thing either we'll continue with a uh a long term maybe two three years or maybe we'll stick with the one year because maybe we have a vendor hey you you haven't been performing well so we're because of this now we're going to take you out from our rolodex and move on moving forward let me ask the question this way you know these individual prices that you got here is that consistent with what we've had oh yes yes i'm sorry i'm i sort of gave you a long answer you were 100 percent right yes it's the same it's the same it's the same and keep in mind we do get reimbursement from the state yeah and depending on the proration level now the state says that they fully fund our transportation at 60
139percent proration it doesn't make sense that's your favorite line so sometimes it's 40 50 percent this year they drop the proration so on average we get about 40 back what we spent is there any value with some of these uh vendors to create uh two-year contract with these this vendor and then keep a one year with this other vendor or is it better to keep them all on the exact same plane well when we go to bid everyone has to have it even playing oh right right so that would be nice um but i don't think we can play that again so just want to again commend um brandon and becky for putting all this together but also just like kathy's bell schedule getting all of our kids to the right places in the therapeutic
140day schools and where they have to be uh is a tremendous ongoing moving parts task that they do every day and then linda make sure that you know it's such a great team effort linda make sure that the um the certificates of insurance are compliant with click and they have a very thorough vetting process with that to make sure that they meet all of those requirements so thank you to you and your team for you know just putting all this together it's great thank you i was going to say every time we have a child whose needs change brandon his team has to change and pivot and usually within 24 to 48 hours of notice so i thank you all for doing that because that is and i really valued what you said that the
141driver may not be the right person for a family or a student and that's a really important thing because some of these are our most fragile students yes and we've all said it that those drivers are the first people and the last people they see each day they can start and end the day beautifully or horribly yes and i do i do want to thank pete nutso their purchasing manager who created all these bits back so it was a lot of work to put this together this is the first time we're doing this bit for special needs transportation there was a lot of work so just want to thank him agree thank you so much thank you thank you moving on now to a little bit of a fun part of our agenda uh action
142items it is recommended that the board of education approve a multi-year employment contract for lisa delacqua delacqua okay as assistant superintendent of curriculum instruction and assessment as presented is there a motion is there a second second is there any discussion i know dr holland would you like to provide absolutely right so good evening tonight it brings me great joy to share my recommendation for our next assistant superintendent of curriculum instruction and assessment in district 113 this role requires an extensive breadth of knowledge and teaching and learning through the extensive depth of experience and practice the assistant superintendent guides effective ways to support and assess the growth of all learners the role touches all facets of our district and is critical to our mission to provide each student with the opportunities and support needed to reach
143their unique potential you may recall that the assistant superintendent position was discussed and posted in march in accordance with the collective bargaining agreement staff members received detailed information including the job description and they were asked to provide feedback regarding the profile that was developed they were provided with an opportunity to share their interest in serving on the hiring committee and to provide suggested interview questions we went through a process of determining hiring committee members with a focus on ensuring that the committee makeup was of a representative group of lsms whose roles and responsibilities serve as extensions of aspects of the cia's responsibilities both directly and indirectly all interested lsms were able to be a part of the committee in addition to lsms the other groups who participated were parents caregivers and students building administrators and
144all members of cabinet all committee members participated in an informational session on unconscious bias and an unconscious bias training to support us in truly considering the assets of each candidate 10 candidates were invited to participate in the first round of screening interviews six candidates were invited for a second round of interviews with cabinet members two candidates were invited for a third round of interviews which included interviews with lsms building administrators caregivers and students and what and a one-on-one with me reference checks began prior to the final round and were conducted prior to finalizing this recommendation it became evident throughout the process that our staff and community are yearning for a dynamic and future focused leader who understands how to support the growth of all of our learners and who has successfully supported district-wide shifts of
145systems and practices to do so throughout the process and across all stakeholder groups one candidate rose to the top wow where to start she's passionate about working with students teachers admin and all stakeholders she has a very impressive set of strengths stated one stakeholder others describe the candidate as personable passionate and thoughtful the candidate was described as extremely knowledgeable and data-driven the feedback regarding this candidate was extremely positive and inspirational for many who participated in the interview process one stakeholder wrote it's really important that we get candidates who are worthy of this district and i believe this candidate can definitely bring new exciting and innovative ideas and practices to our district well i agree with all of these statements and much more it is my honor to recommend dr lisa delacqua as our assistant superintendent
146of curriculum instruction and assessment in township high school district 113 dr delacqua's experience spans pre-k through 12 this has led all the curriculum instruction and assessment efforts in east aurora school district 131 since 2019 where she currently serves as assistant superintendent of curriculum instruction assessment and grants prior to district 113 one excuse me 131 dr delacqua served as principal in flossmore school district 161 for two years and held multiple positions in chicago public schools including principal assistant principal as well as a teacher of spanish and math she began her career in the teach for america program and also served in the peace corps in tanzania africa in her current role dr delacqua leads the district's curricular program and administration of all district-wide assessments working with academic departments to support student growth and achievement she led
147the development and ongoing implementation of district 131's dual language program establishing all components necessary to enable students to reap the benefits of dual language programming in today's globalized world she oversees the multi-system of supports aligning student interventions with district curriculum initiatives and monitors the efficacy of those efforts by analyzing key performance metrics additionally dr delacqua manages professional development programs in the district through coaching the creation of workshops presentations and activities for both school leaders and teachers dr delacqua earned a doctor philosophy in curriculum instruction from the university of illinois chicago a master of arts in educational leadership from the american college of education a master of arts in education from national louis university and a bachelor of arts in spanish literature from kalamazoo college dr delacqua serves as an adjunct professor at de paul university
148in governor state where she teaches courses in the leadership doctoral program focused on district climate evaluation and analysis and in the general teaching program for teachers focused on bilingual dual and english as a second language endorsements dr delacqua is widely recognized and published and has also presented on ap through our extensive work with the college board i am excited to welcome dr delacqua to the district and believe that she will effectively support our efforts to truly be the best we can in service of all of our students and staff thank you and welcome we will do the vote is there any other discussion after that fantastic synopsis wow yeah yes that is fantastic um okay let um a roll call please dr elliot trimmer aye mr heidemann aye miss lupa aye mr neater aye miss
149shapira yes please mr braza aye miss newman aye the motion carries welcome to our guest welcome to say something if you like but i don't want to put you on the spot the interview process itself was um i think a testament to the district's commitment to academic excellence and the thoroughness the thoughtfulness um the way that i was treated when i came in and the questions that were asked were so thoughtful and it meant the world it made the transition and the decision to come here um just very clear and i'm so excited to be on board so thank you so much thank you thank you we're excited and hopefully now completely understand their new schedules and you are all ready to go um in your schedule will be one three yeah okay moving on
150it is recommended that the board of education approve a one-year employment contract for daniella danielle excuse me um osman as chair of the world languages el l department at deerfield high school as presented is there a motion so moved is there a second second is there any discussion anything um great a roll call please mr heineman aye mr neater aye mr shapira yes please mr braza aye dr ali shimper aye miss newman aye motion carries it is recommended that the board of education approve a one-year employment contract for mar marquise russell as chair of the applied and fine arts department at deerfield high school as presented is there a motion so moved is there a second second is there any discussion a roll call please aye mr neater aye mr shapira yes please mr braza
151aye dr eliot shimmer aye mr heineman aye miss newman aye motion carries it is recommended that the board of education approve a memorandum of understanding regarding summer school pay for deans as presented is there a motion so moved is there a second second is there any discussion a roll call please mr neater aye mr shapira yes please mr braza aye dr eliot shimmer aye mr heineman aye miss lupa aye miss newman aye motion carries it is recommended that the board of education approve the resolution authorizing driver education fee as presented clear a motion so moved is there a second second is there any discussion a roll call please mr shapira yes please mr braza aye dr eliot shimmer aye mr heineman aye mr lupa aye mr neater aye miss newman aye motion carries it is
152recommended that the board of education authorize the renewal of bonds and the amount amounts required by law when they become due to cover the school treasure to handle district and other school funds is there a motion so moved no is there a second second is there any discussion a roll call please mr braza aye dr eliot shimmer aye mr heineman aye mr lupa aye mr neater aye mr shapira yes please miss newman aye motion carries moving on to consent next is the consent agenda the board member may pull any item for separate consideration does any board member wish to pull an item off the consent agenda for separate consideration it is recommended that the consent agenda be approved as listed is there a motion so moved is there a second second and i have the
153bills so i looked at college park athletic club as well as paramount events which is the highland park prom vendor as well as a payable bill to community the anti-drug coalition because of the arrangement we have with them was taking on their membership shockingly everything was in order and it looked good to go so thank you once again is there any discussion regarding the consent items a roll call please dr eliot shimmer aye mr heineman aye mr lupa aye mr neater mr shapira yes please mr braza hi miss newman aye motion carries closing it is 9 14 is there a motion to adjourn adjourn the meeting so moved is there a second second all of those in favor opposed abstention motion carries thank you everyone thank you all