Board of Education Board Meeting 2-6-2024

001Calling to order Township High School District 113 Committee of the Whole meeting for Tuesday, February 6th, 2024. It is now 7 10 p.m. Ramina, can we have a roll call please? Ms. Newman? Here. Mr. Nieder? Here. Mr. Pira? Mr. Garaza? Dr. Elliott-Shermer? Here. Mr. Heideman? Here. Ms. Diaz? Ms. Dalot? Shahi? Mr. Strzok? Here. Would everyone else who is at the table please identify themselves? Ramina Isik, Executive Secretary. Tom Krieger, Chief Human Resources Officer. Michael Locke, Assistant Superintendent Curriculum Instruction Assessment. Karen Warner, Chief Communications Officer. Tiffany Rowe, Assistant Superintendent Student Services. Brian Emmer, Chief Operations Officer. Debbie Finn, Principal Highland Park High School. Katherine Anderson, Principal at Jaffa Hill High School. Ron Casbone, Chief Information Officer. Mayor Antti, Assistant Superintendent Diversity Equity and Inclusion. Bruce Law, Superintendent. Our first item of business is the approval of

002the board meeting agenda. Is there a motion to approve the agenda as listed? So moved. Is there a second? Second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? The motion carries. First up is the board president report. I'll be brief tonight. On behalf of the entire board, we all want to thank everyone who was able to participate in the community surveys concerning the superintendent, the focus groups, and in particular the panel interviews of the three final superintendent candidates. We were fortunate to have panels composed of teachers and building administrators, cabinet support and non-classified staff, and community members and students. The comments and insights provided by the panels were extremely helpful and instructive and the board has taken them into account in our evaluations. In particular, I want to mention the students who are who participated on

003the interview panels. Every time we have an opportunity to see our students perform or play or participate in public life, we all of us on the board find ourselves reassured about the future. We are fortunate to have an engaged and active school community that is committed to the high schools and to the fulfillment of the district's mission. I am hopeful that we will be in a position to announce the hiring of district 113's next superintendent at our next board meeting in two weeks. Although there were no internal candidates, we were fortunate to have an outstanding panel of candidates, any of whom would have been outstanding superintendents. Speaking only for myself, I am genuinely pleased that our three finalists gave us really gave us a really really difficult decision. I believe that building upon Dr. Law's

004dedication and commitment, we are about to embark on an exciting new era in district 113 and that's all I have for this evening. Next up we have administration information reports. Dr. Law, the mic is yours. Thank you Mr. Strzok, three things. This is national school counseling week, the first week in February is designated for school counselors. I'm sure there are groups in schools who don't get the recognition, but we do know that this week is national school counseling week and just want to mention that the important role school counselors play in the lives of our students as they go through high school and then proceed to whatever they're doing in life. School counselors are at the center of that and we appreciate them, so this is national school counseling week. I also wanted to say

005something about our tip line. There was an article published in the journal pediatrics that looked at the effectiveness of a tip line and this was the particular, the study looked at North Carolina and the study found that this tip line in the state prevented 38 possible instances of gun violence and more than 100 planned suicides. It reminds us of a couple things, how important tip line is. We think about security, we're constantly working on trying to improve security, enhance our security and we do have a tip line in district 113. It started in January of 2020, before that there was an unmonitored Google form that for a period of time from December 2016 to January 2019 got five tips. From January 7, 2020 to January 2024 we've had 179 tips and that includes the pandemic

006when no one was in the building. So mention this to the board because there's evidence the tip line is effective in helping prevent things in school that we do not want happening in school and also never miss an opportunity to exhort students if you hear something, if you see something that's causing you concern to let us know through a tip because it's helpful to us, particularly if there's enough information that we can follow up. Also on that note though, we are investigating if there is a better tip line than the one that we currently have. Again we don't talk about security at every meeting but we are constantly working at improving it and just wanted to share that study with pediatrics indicating tip lines do work, they're effective. We're fortunate that we have a really

007good one but if we can find one that's better then bring that back to the board. Last thing I wanted to mention is the art show. This is the annual district 113 student art show which is at the art center in Highland Park. It closes on Thursday. If you've not had a chance to see that I had a chance to go today to see the art show. It is amazing. We're always celebrating students academic achievements which you know we would come bring to the board. We can see in newspaper students athletic achievements or their achievements in the arts. This is another way in which our students just absolutely excel. If you walk into the into that space which is a beautiful space and didn't know it was high school students you would it would be

008understood if you thought this was an art display for talented artists somewhere. It just happens to be district 113 students. It closes on Thursday so if you have the opportunity to check it out I would strongly encourage you. I'm sorry Saturday closes on Saturday. I'm sorry closes on Saturday. Thank you Karen. Thank you Dr. Locke. Next up are our FOIA requests for the last two weeks. These are the FOIAs received in process. These are the FOIAs received in process since the last meeting. Thank you. Next up we have a update from the develop schedule committee. Now let me I mean while Kathy is getting set up this is a committee is one of several committees that is working in district 113. Administration members of the district 113 education association working together to solve problems and

009and figure out solutions and improve what we do so we can do better for students and and so very happy to have this committee. It's required by the contract that that the board has agreed to at the district 113 education association. This is update on that. I also want to say just and we'll probably say it a few times this is not for the upcoming school year. This is for the 25-26 school year. This is not for the 24-25 school year. Okay Kathy's ready to go. Well thank you Dr. Locke. Hi everybody. I have the honor of chairing the district 113 common bell schedule committee. Sorry I have two clickers that I have to work on today. First I want to thank all of the committee members. We are comprised of staff from both Deerfield

010High School as well as Highland Park High School. If you take a look at the name you will notice that we have several staff members who have been here for one two three decades and have been a part of multiple bell schedule committees not only over the past four years but from two decades ago. So we're going to go over some of that information but to speak very highly of the members it really has been really a wonderful experience to work with such passionate and thoughtful staff members at both schools. So these are the committee members just to highlight some of the things that Dr. Law said. The presentation that I'm giving you today has been presented to our staff in part and we will also be presenting it again at the institute day. As

011we're talking about the bell schedule committee work it's important to discuss the scope of the committee's work. As Dr. Law indicated the scope of this committee is actually not for the 24-25 school but rather the 25-26 school year. So just to take language directly from the contract to establish the purpose of this committee. With that being said there are two pieces to our committee work. There is the initial recommendation that will take place by the end of this school year. So we are to conduct a review of the potential school schedules gather input from stakeholders and create a written report presenting at least two options for a common schedule to the board of education until later than June 1st. So that is the first part of our work and the second part will come next

012school year by December 1st of 2024 where we will be utilizing feedback that you share with us in June so that we can make a final presentation to the board by December 1st. So with that said I want to present to you the timeline that we have come up with. So the contract between the board and the DEA was established and we were able to begin our work in October. With that we established a pretty quick timeline to get everything done. We started with a half-day workshop and went into department listening sessions and I'll go through kind of the rationale for each of these pieces in the coming slides. We had those listening sessions in December. We conducted research. We had an in-service day presentation to staff. We conducted a survey and we have started

013to do put together some bell schedules. We have our board of education presentation today obviously. We will present to our staff again at our institute day on February 16th. We will continue developing bell schedules. We will do some more research connect with different schools. In March we will get some feedback on bell schedules. We'll be reaching out to our students to receive feedback from them. An important piece for this is we want to make sure tonight that we are on the right path that presenting to you that this is the direction that we want to go in. Be able to identify some constraints, put together some bell schedules and then get feedback from our students so that we don't leave it so wide open where you know we would all love a bell schedule where

014we only have to go to school three days a week but we can't do that. So there are some constraints that we have to make sure that everybody is aware of. So we're being very thoughtful about how we're getting feedback from our stakeholders and how we can use that to develop bell schedules that we will eventually present to you at the end of May. We will again present to staff at our institute day in April. We'll do another survey. We'll hold focus groups and then we will do a final presentation. So our final information to you is due on Friday May 24th and I look forward to coming back at the end of May after graduation to present to you our initial task which is at least two models for your consideration and then we'll

015jump into phase two of the committee work after that. All right so diving into some of the work that we have already done and then we will eventually get to the point of where we are today. So when we started talking about bell schedules then it was important for us to acknowledge where we're at and what we've done in the past so that we can move forward. So the current Deerfield High School bell schedule was implemented in the 2004-2005 school year. So two decades old. This actually was a four-year process to get to this. So back in 2000 and 2001 this was a discussion that they were having at DHS that is when Deerfield went to an eight-period day plus early bird in homeroom every student had a lunch classes meet four times a week.

016Based upon feedback from staff there was a rejection of the traditional bell schedule meaning that there would be eight periods a day every single day of the week and tweaks over time originally when that bell schedule started there was a class period where you went to class for 30 minutes you had lunch and then you went to you returned back to the class for another 30 minutes so we refer to that as a split class with lunch. Highland Park their bell schedule is more recent it was implemented than 22-23 school year. Some of the similar characteristics eight period day plus early bird in homeroom every student has a lunch classes meet four times a week there's a later start time based upon brain research more staff collaboration time flex time for students and an end

017time to support a two campus facility. A note on both of these schedules is that we all know that as a result of the pandemic we did have a period of time where we had a different bell schedule so when we're talking to students our seniors that's what they experienced their freshman year so there will be some references back to do you remember the pandemic schedule how nice that was so oftentimes we will go back to a schedule that we had momentarily as well so even though that Deerfield High School has had it for two decades we have momentarily had a different one and Highland Park has been making some great adjustments over the past few years so Highland Park is very recent in the work that they have been doing in terms of surveys

018and receiving student feedback whereas for Deerfield High School it's been a while. Now ironically when we started the committee work we wanted to discuss our values as a team and we started that conversation by looking at values that actually came up when our current bell schedules were used. If you take a look at some of these value statements you'll notice that there are a lot of similarities from two decades ago as there are currently for Highland Park High School in their current bell schedule that was just developed a year ago. When we started having conversations within our committee some of these same themes came up so we immediately knew that we had to go back and talk about these values what emerging themes came up when we were talking to our staff are these still

019the things that we value. The best way that we thought that we could do this was simply by listening to people a survey right away wasn't necessarily going to capture all of the thoughts that our staff have. Again when we talk to our staff members it's something unique because we do retain our staff for a very long time so we have staff members who are not only living this bell schedule for four years but as I said two three decades and so their experience is incredibly important to listen to. So we actually our entire committee broke into groups and listened to every single group of staff members in our building. We listened to every single academic department. We listened to our non-LSM so our admin assistants to building and grounds. We wanted to make sure

020that everybody had a voice in this listening session about the values. We had values over food and computers obviously but some of the themes that came across when we had these discussion was a discussion about start time and early bird. Oftentimes staff members were bringing up a start time that was geared towards brain research and we'll get into some of that research later. Highland Park brought up that this was a number one ask from their students when they had done a survey for their current bell schedule. Period length staff members said that 80 minutes was too long 35 was too short and somewhere about 60 minutes was ideal. There were requests for the same amount of instructional minutes for all department courses. For period structure this was sort of a conflicting conversation. For some staff

021members when we talked about the period structure if you think about the Deerfield High School schedule it's a seven eight five six three four one two you remove two periods every day. That's a schedule that changes every single day. So some staff members talked about the desire for consistency. They wanted the same structure every single day and start times that ended on zeros and zero fives versus a schedule perhaps that ends on 14 or on 12 or on 20 that variation. While others said that that flexibility is okay and that we need that flexibility we need break from classes and a schedule can be understood by those who live it. So a lot of differences in what people were talking about based upon their experiences with their bell schedules. Homeroom came up very often something

022that really came out of it is that we really value SEL however there was a question about structure how many days a week and how many minutes. For staff collaboration time Highland Park identified that they liked the time that they have 75 minutes plus 105 minutes for flex time and Deerfield said they wanted more more than 60 minutes but there is a question about the days and times that it occurred. For Deerfield should it still be on Mondays or should we move it to Wednesdays. Highland Park same question is it where its place is that the correct place for it to be. In terms of student support time many conversations came up about how do we support students within our current bell schedule whether that's through our MTSS team whether that support that students can

023receive by going to the ARC or going to the counseling center when can students find time to go to those people that can support them during the day. Highland Park liked that they had flex time at the beginning of the day an optional time for students and staff to meet. Deerfield likes to support students on their own time before during and after the school not necessarily a dedicated time in the bell schedule but there was a piece that came up about the consideration of a win period. A win period is a what I need period it'd be a time during the day where all staff are available to all students. So that was a big question that some staff had about this student support time. In terms of lunches staff agreed that we needed a

024dedicated lunch everybody should be able to eat during the day and that they do not like the split classes with lunch that you should be able to have a full class and then go to lunch. In terms of passing periods discussions about how we needed much longer passing periods for students to have breaks but then also the recognition that more time in passing periods means the extension of a day. And then there are some other important factors that came up that we just needed needed to consider transportation across our district. What does that mean for transportation making sure that we talk to our transportation department can we start and end at the same time? What does that mean for our athletic teams or extracurriculars that might depend on the buses across the district? Another important

025part is that Highland Park has two campuses and Walters Field has a light restriction and so that's really important about scheduling how our students get to Walters Field but also the impact on that shortened period of time that they have once they get here because they only have daylight. And then also Tech Campus we have many students that are in our district that attend Tech Campus during the day and we need to consider when they have to leave school to go to Tech Campus and what that means in terms of the number of periods that they can take before they actually attend those Tech Campus classes. So based upon all those themes that came out of those listening surveys we developed a survey for our staff because those were large group conversations within departments we

026wanted to make sure that everybody's voice was heard based upon some of these values that came out of those conversations. So here are the survey results and a lot of the results mimicked what we heard in the listening sessions but provided a little bit more specificity in what our staff were looking for. Our staff indicated sorry we had 170 responses this was sent to all of our staff non-LSMs and LSMs. 53.5 percent of the responses came from Highland Park whereas 46.5 percent came from a different high school. So in terms of frequency of contact staff wanted to see students four days per week that was 82.9 percent. They wanted a mix of short periods with long periods during the week at 64.1 percent. Class period length on short days was between 35 and 45 minutes.

027When we broke it down we had 45.9 percent that said you should have a class that is 40 to 45 minutes and the other 29.4 percent said the classes should be between 35 and 40 minutes. What does it mean to have short class periods versus long class periods? If you think about the late start day for a different high school we have all eight periods meeting and those are the days where we have shorter class periods and Highland Park has the same structure where they have all eight periods meeting three days a week so those would be class periods with shorter length as opposed to the days that are longer blue and white days blue and white days for Highland Park and then our seven eight five six three four one two cycle days at

028Deerfield High School would be an example of those longer days and that was between 55 and 65 minutes and that was broken into 55 to 60 minutes was 40 percent of the responses and 60 to 65 minutes for 31.2 percent of the responses. As you're starting to see some of these results you will see that there's a good mixture of our current bell schedules so a lot of the components that work that we currently have in our bell schedule have really come out to be some of the things that we're valuing in our current bell schedules. When we asked about start and end times 64.7 percent of staff said it's okay if our start time is different during the week so that actually is what we have right now we have a late one late

029start day at Deerfield as well as Highland Park but 64 percent said that we should end at the same time so a same time like a Deerfield would be 314 and then we specifically asked about what does it mean about the cadence of the bell schedule should it end on zeros and oh fives and 58.8 percent that's not necessary we really wanted to get into very specific details because this was going to help us to design a schedule based upon some of that feedback. It got a little bit more complicated though when we started talking about things like homeroom you will see that the responses here were a little bit more varied so 86.4 percent the responses opted for fewer days and minutes than the current DHS model whereas 58.2 percent opted for more days

030and minutes than the current Highland Park model Deerfield High School has it four days a week for 12 minutes and Highland Park has it one day a week for 20 minutes. However when you look at the options that are on the right hand side there wasn't an option for zero and so staff members pointed that out to us that some of them wanted to choose zero times per week and so that could skew the results and so we wanted to mention that because that was an important piece of information to us for us to think about as we would start looking at bell schedules. Another piece that was a little bit more complicated was staff collaboration time again the results were varied 62.3 percent of responses opted for more days and minutes in the current

031Deerfield High School model remember that's 60 minutes and then 91.7 opted for less days minutes than the current Highland Park model. We want to point out though that Highland Park technically has 75 minutes of collaboration time however there is an additional 105 flex minutes that are optional for staff so it could be interpreted that we need less than that total amount of minutes or less than the 75 minutes so we just want to be sure that people understand that that collaboration time could be looked at differently so that's an area that we want to explore more. All right and then in terms of student support time we asked when would you want a student support time remember that win period when would you like that to be designed into the bell schedule if that was

032an option 37.1 percent said at the beginning of the day then the next was in the middle of the day and then never and never meaning that our teachers are meeting with our students all the time so that they didn't necessarily need a dedicated time during the bell schedule but they wanted to be able to set up time with students so that they could meet with them based upon the student schedules. Lastly we asked about the importance of these six different factors and we wanted staff to rate them we asked them what's the most important and what is the least important when we asked what's most important this was the order of our results frequency of contact with students per week and the length of the period was the number one factor that our staff

033were considering when they looked at a bell schedule the frequency and length of homeroom was the least important when they were thinking about the design then when we asked the question reverse we basically saw the same results which you would hope to see but we wanted to highlight the first and last one because those were consistently what the majority of staff were analyzing and prioritizing numbers two through five were were a little bit flux between the two but again numbers one and six were consistent some additional feedback from staff we actually had an open-ended question that staff could fill out there are strong feelings about the happiness of bell schedules at both schools there is a focus on diversity equity inclusion when we're developing a schedule thinking about all of our students and making sure

034that our students are at the forefront of our decision making there's a concern about losing science instructional minutes there is pointing to research regarding later start times and instructional minutes for student engagement again that brain research an earlier period for students to get help a big consideration of that a bell schedule isn't the only thing that we should be focusing on we need to be focusing on curriculum student engagement sel space design furniture there are mixed views on homeroom we saw that in the results and then again we have some additional considerations such as a flexible schedule for students who job train in the community considering our related service providers how it's beneficial for them to have 60 minutes so they can see two groups of students and even considerations for the metro train schedule

035because there is a 329 train and then a 429 train and what that would mean for staff members perhaps that have multiple jobs that need to take the train so some factors that we can control and some factors that might be a little bit beyond our control but we still need to think about so we have broken our committee into two different groups an internal committee that's really working with our stakeholders our staff will be working with our students and then an external group that is looking to other schools and to analyze some research when i start talking about research and learning from others there is so much information out there i will inevitably forget something or not include something here what we have to be able to do is be able to take what

036we know from others and from the research and be able to use it the best that we can when we're learning from others we've been collecting a lot of information since 2021 so much of the feedback that we have is based upon many of the surrounding schools who ironically are also looking to change their bell schedules now so some of this information might even be a little bit old or could even change next school year so if you start taking a look at the surrounding school bell schedule analysis we started looking at you know the number of periods instructional minutes lunch period minutes all the factors that we want to consider when we're developing a bell schedule you can look at the minimum the maximum the average and you start saying oh how amazing we

037can have school until 420 and have 250 minutes of instructional minutes and all these other factors we know that when we impact one component that it's going to have an impact on another component i'll point out the one that's the end time of 420 that's the illinois math and science academy where the students live there so there's a difference when we start taking into consideration some of these factors that are influencing these specific schools the instructional minutes at 250 minutes is also msa when we start looking at other areas lunch periods that are 25 minutes versus 50 minutes some schools might have an eight period day so they have a full period dedicated to lunch where it's 50 minutes on their schedule now some things you can only gather so much information by looking at

038a bell schedule you really need to talk to people in the school because in some schools you might have a 50 minute lunch period but the students only get 25 minutes for lunch and the other 25 minutes is a study hall or it's some other component that they have worked into their bell schedule so it's been important for us to talk to colleagues in other schools to get feedback from them to learn more about what works for them and what doesn't work for them and to make sure that we have all this information when we're analyzing what we want to do when we look at unique characteristics it's something that all of us have noticed is that we have a lot of unique characteristics that other schools don't have that they're coming to us to

039look at what we're doing so we are trying to figure out what is new and exciting and it's interesting because i think we're all kind of trying the same things already but we want to be very careful to be very careful when we're we're thinking about what this might be we're going to be doing some school visits or check-ins talking with colleagues two schools that we'll be looking into next are lakes and lake zurich they're not the only two we've been having lots of different conversations with schools around the area the lake zurich one is unique because they have a much later start time but also a later end time we know that might not work for us though because we have for at least highland park two campuses that would be majorly impacted for

040a much later school day so we want to take in this information but also consider the factors of our school district i just share a few different bell schedules not for anything other than to show that there are a variety of different bell schedules in the surrounding area lake forest high school has a two campus school so i thought that was important to show what they are doing but they don't have light restrictions for their other campus so they might have a later start time but that is not something that they are having to think about as far as their end time when netca campus for a new career has a blue day green day that they go back and forth between and then the barrington high school bell schedule is a nine period day

041a very traditional bell schedule so just to show that there are a variety of different bell schedules out there there are some schools that still do a traditional bell schedule and there are other schools that are doing more of a block schedule all right research research is really difficult because you can find research to support any type of opinion that you have we wanted to make sure that we were looking at meta analyses luckily we have a couple doctors on the committee who are well into research as well as a librarian and amazing teachers who do this for their job on a daily basis of our research so we've looked at a variety of different meta analyses especially about start time actually the most positive impact is when your schedule shifts an entire hour so

042from 730 to 759 to 830 to 859 it doesn't get any more nuanced than that though so what if you start at 825 does that have an impact so that's where it starts to get complicated one thing that was really important in a lot of the research though was the importance of working with your community because if you make changes with a start time especially within a unit district or even considering the feeder schools it's really important that you're working with your community because of child care and those sorts of things for scheduling models when we talk about scheduling models we're talking about a traditional bell schedule that might be eight periods a day every day a week versus a block schedule there was no specific bell schedule that had any correlation with student achievement

043however block schedules have shown to be more flexible to improve attendance and behavioral problems a greater ease for accommodating the needs of remedial and accelerated students in terms of scheduling wise i would say maybe even two decades ago there was a push for doing block schedules where you only had four classes per semester so a four by four model that has actually shown to decrease student achievement specifically in math and that's because you might not take a math class for an entire semester so there is a little bit of research in extreme examples with block schedules for instructional minutes there really isn't any clear evidence about what is the perfect class length however there is a lot of evidence in terms of the effectiveness of different instructional strategies used within a class period so if

044you have a 90 minute class period it's only as effective as the instructional strategy that you that you use the same thing goes for a 35 minute period or a 60 minute period even if we start looking at extra time for reading and math so we have lab periods at our schools where students can engage in additional minutes for reading and math for example again the effectiveness depends on the instructional methods that are used again we have to consider factors that are within our community and what works for us so we can definitely point to different research about what some of the pluses and minuses might be but we really have to consider what would be best for us that was a very long presentation the next steps are for us to continue those conversations

045with surrounding schools in particular about the win periods and other special features and we're going to develop several bell schedule models for feedback not only from staff but also students one of the biggest things that we're hoping to gather some feedback from you is to make sure that we're in the right direction we have developed the following constraints for developing our bell schedule we will be developing a bell schedule that has eight periods plus one optional period that could be an early bird that could be a late bird looking at instructional minutes that we're looking at the minimum to be the current instructional minutes per period at Deerfield high school or per class at Deerfield high school which is approximately 206 minutes our question is can it be less than that is 205 okay what

046about 204 how about 203 or should it be more than that should it be 206 or greater so there's a lot of discussion about what is that threshold we've established that the teacher work week should be no more than the 35 hours and 30 minutes that we currently have if it would be different than that then there would be engaging in conversation between the DEA and the board of education mandatory lunch periods we're going by the law by the law we need 30 minutes for staff and for students the law is that it's 20 minutes once they get their food we want to strive for balanced lunches and we say that because if you know the Deerfield schedule we have four lunch periods but we all know that B and D are the are jam-packed

047A and C are very small and that's because they are filled based upon our science labs Highland Park has three lunch periods and they have really strived for those balanced lunches we all know that it can't be perfect but that's what we strive for for Tech campus the for the afternoon session for Tech campus is one o'clock the latest that students can leave Highland Park High School is 12 is between 12 and 1215 Deerfield is a little bit later we can move by that by about 10 minutes but we share a bus so we really go based upon the Highland Park schedule we really want our students to be able to take four classes at our schools in addition to their Tech campus classes and then collaboration we want we want dedicated time we haven't

048indicated an amount of time but we want dedicated time for staff to meet to collaborate and then for the end time we're very cognizant of the restrictions that we have with Walters Field and so we need to end our school day as close as possible to their current end time which is 305 in terms of Walter Walters Field Paul Harris the athletic director has given us a little bit of information in terms of what does that look like um so what happens currently is the school day ends at 305 the shuttle leaves for Walters Field at 315 and the students arrive by 325 then they can change for practice the practice on competition fields begins at 340 to 345 and it must end 20 to 30 minutes before the game time starts which allows for

049about a 60 minute practice most games uh begin at 4 45 5 or 5 30 because the lights need to be off by 8 o'clock so we really need to consider that when we're structuring this and that's what's in the back of our minds in terms of an end time one last thing um that I didn't put up here but it is about lunch periods is we're really thinking outside the box we want to have every option out there and when we're starting to talk to students we want to make sure that we have the right information as well there is a consideration um that we're not sure would be feasible which is going back to our days of the of the pandemic where we had an hour lunch and off-campus lunch for students we

050don't know if off-campus lunch would be allowed so presenting that to you today um some things to think about making sure that we're in the right direction um any of the feedback that you have would be greatly appreciated um I will come back know that our students could leave campus so um yeah and so we're really we're trying to think of any possible scenario we can already think of reasons why that might not necessarily be a good idea in terms of security with student traveling but we want to explore it because it is something that we have done at least during the pandemic we know that was a different time we know that we had maybe half the school coming in half the school um leaving so there are some factors but we want to

051make sure that we do our due diligence in exploring all those different things I'll come back to this one um I just want to um identify that what we'll be doing as our number one priority is the frequency of contact with students per week um we're going to look at a variety of different factors we're going to look at or different ways to organize this one period anchor day with rotating blocks similar to the current Deerfield high school model two anchor days a week with three days of rotating blocks a hybrid of our schedules or three anchor days a week with two blocks similar to the current Highland Park model as you heard me say our staff have shared their happiness with our current bell schedules and what we have seen in the results from

052the survey is a sort of a variation of what we currently already have so we want to give some options that are based upon our current bell schedules but also provide some new options that might be even a mix between the two so when we present these models to staff and to the students we're hoping to get some feedback about what is maybe what we're not seeing or what they are seeing to be as something that might be beneficial and something that might be um more of a negative we already went through the committee timeline we're going to be presenting to you again in May I am going to go back though to the spell schedule constraints just so that you have that there and any feedback that you have would be greatly appreciated I

053just have a question a clarifying question so in your timeline it looks like you'll probably have a draft in April yes and you bring it to the staff you present is the plan then to revise in May so you'll bring it to the staff in a more complete form or are you hoping to seek their feedback make a bunch of changes and then come back sure I'm going to go to the um with that committee timeline looks like so we are going to be sharing a couple samples with our staff already in February when we have institute day we want to get some staff to provide some feedback we're going to revise some of those in March that's when we're going to be getting more feedback talking to students in April we'll present again and

054do another survey do some focus groups again we're continuously revising through this whole time what we want to be able to see is how much variation in the feedback that we receive we might have an answer already by April and we don't have to keep going back we've made slight adjustments to this timeline since we've met in October based upon information that we've received so we actually originally had us presenting to you in January we needed to push back a little bit so there will be a little bit of variation and what this looks like but the goal is between now and May to gather feedback make adjustments to those bell schedule models not only feedback from staff but also students to ensure that we're on the right path and that everyone has had an

055opportunity to share their their perspective now when I've spoken to some of our students with student advisory board and homeroom they're already sharing some feedback in terms of what it might look like to get their feedback or what they already think about our bell schedule we know that this is impacting our freshmen and sophomore students our current freshmen and sophomore students however it's really important to hear from our juniors and seniors who've lived it for the past few years so a lot and although it's not necessarily going to impact them they have had different experiences along the way speaking to some of our senior students for example at Deerfield High School their experience of homeroom has changed since they've been freshmen so what they've experienced has changed over the over the year so it will

056be important to continue those conversations make tweaks along the way I know one of the main concerns was and this was part of our negotiations I'm trying to find something here is from an instructional minute perspective that students at both schools were receiving the same instructional minutes and so I do believe that that is something as a board that we have stated so and it's my understanding that when so the 206 minutes uh how does that compare to comparable districts um to us sure um so it's complicated because like I shared it's kind of all over the place um if we look at average minutes I mean again we're including schools um it can the average can be up to 220 it can be lower based upon if we're looking at schools that have homerooms

057within their schedule it changes the instructional minutes so it's a little bit more complicated than um if we look at schools that have similar structures within their their bell schedule um it's going to be closer to the 200 to 210 if we start including things like homeroom uh different variations throughout the day then you might have a higher uh number of minutes especially those schools that have a traditional bell schedule so um the it's complicated to share an average number of minutes if we don't think about the things that uh the other components in the bell schedule okay I mean I think it and also obviously you guys are the experts when it comes to what occurs within the four walls of the classroom it's just imperative that students in our district receive the same

058level of education regardless of which campus you're at and part of that is tied to the number of the amount of time right they have in a classroom or in an educational environment let's not say even just a traditional classroom but in an educational environment so I know that is a key component of doing this any other questions I want to make sure that um we're understanding correctly because we were talking about the end time at Walters Field at 305 being important for all the reasons that you know you mentioned um and then you were asking well if we're difficult to 206 if that's what we're aiming for if it's 205 204 those two interact with each other right so you if you say well we need to end at 305 for these reasons we've

059got tech campus as a consideration there are all these I mean there are a lot of variables here we're trying to to make work um is then the question to the board might be if to make all the other variables work just to talk about a perfect world solution but we came in at 205 or 204 or 203 minutes what what becomes I don't know for lack of a better word a deal breaker for the board I mean there's a difference between 206 we've got a like the paradox of the heap you know how many minutes does it take to make a heap but um that I think that's important for the committee to know because they have to hit 206 but they also have to hit it in time with 305 and we're really

060concerned about when students start school because we just know that you know at that age a you know starting at 715 I know there are some schools high schools that started 715 it's crazy so we really want to be mindful of all that making all that work what if the number of structural density school was less than 206 well I know from from my perspective at least as on the board we those are the kinds of issues I can't imagine there'll be bright lines that oh 206 is golden 204 is is awful those are the kinds of distinctions that we're depending on on the professionals to be making and to provide us with guidance uh you know if there is a consensus by the committee that we need to increase Deer Highland Park needs more

061instructional minutes and Deerfield you know can we can find a happy place in the middle you know whatever that happy place in the middle is it's it's that's that's yeah I'm not going to start arguing about you know 204 versus 205 versus 206 similarly like with the lunch period you know I it's there are things that we we we trust our our professionals to be providing us with some guidance now if we come up with something crazy that's something entirely different uh you know if I could see well Walter's Field why don't we have longer days in the fall and get them shorter when the sun goes down earlier and do it the other way in the spring that would be totally unfunked you know dysfunction but I like the way you're thinking that's creative

062but no yes but this is but this is important and and not at all insignificant because for the committee and their work and and you can see there is a ton of work that's going uh into this and thank you Cathy for um leading it they want to make sure that they bring a very thoughtful two options and to make all this work it's not 206 but it's some number less than that that the board is not going to say well this is just unacceptable from from the from the jump because it was fewer than 206 and I'm so glad you mentioned it's the quality instruction within those minutes but you can you can have school for 10 hours a day right it does I mean if the instruction is in a high quality then

063that's when we're you know we're going to have concerns so um knowing knowing that though that's important I think feedback for the committee that one that the board trusts their judgment and two that they bring something back that's thoughtful and takes into account variables if there is some deviation from the 206 the 206 is not set in stone given these other constraints they're working under the rigor that we've seen in this presentation suggests to me that I'm very high level of confidence that this group will deliver to us great recommendations um I personally and I think that this may be a universal thing but I want to tell what I personally think we just have some general rules we want the best education possible for our kids our assumption is is that you know having

064lots of instructional time probably would help that out but what the number is I don't know um and I and I trust our professions I'm sorry um what I keep coming back to is when you're doing a project you can't lock in all three legs of a stool um and so you know to think that you must be a 206 you must have tech campus you must have 30 like it's not realistic um so there needs to be a range in some of these criterias um and like again supporting what Dan was saying that idea that you guys are the experts to give us what that range is just making sure that we're equitable between the two schools and just to that point as we're starting to develop some schedules we're looking at all the

065different components and we're identifying so you'll see this is the number of instructional minutes this is the number of homeroom minutes so that you can see it as a full picture um because that is important that will be hopefully when we're presenting to you if we're at you know this one has 210 minutes but there is no homeroom and there is no time for collaboration those are important things for you to know that those might be things that actually will negatively impact the students in another way so we will certainly make sure that we're being very descriptive about our decisions or why we're recommending something this is more of a question for the group than you know that is stated if there are going to be areas like this that are going to want input

066from us where does that fit within this timeline schedule right because if you're representing it to staff or for commentary in april or whatever it is or back to us in may when do you need that from us and when can we then have some information that we can use to provide you with the feedback that you need today but that is kind of what there is a part here i'm more than happy to come back in april and maybe that's where you're getting Cody in terms of like come back to us with some feedback or so we can give you more feedback we would be more than happy to do that well because i don't want you to do the final presentation and we're like wait a second right and then you're frustrated or

067your team's frustrated because you've worked really hard for months and there's something that we felt was important to us as a group that wasn't communicated absolutely so i'll be back but it's fair to say that in general the board feels that the themes across the district are appropriate those that that page yeah this is contains and issues that are yeah that all need to be taken into account but we appreciate that this is a complex system that every moving everything is a moving part at the same time one last question do you envision changing instructional time for specific departments or will that try to remain the same or is that you heard the task of this committee that is not a part of our task here okay so if that should change that would be

068a a different person i would address that okay i it is certainly it is certainly coming up in conversation so i would imagine something right it's certainly something that is you know high a high priority for our staff and in consideration of that so we look forward to working with dea and district staff to make sure that we can address that and i had two questions that are more just big picture questions i'm not expecting an answer when i was going through the presentation and looking at the data when you went through the examples of student support and potentially student support occurring at the beginning of the day and or student support occurring when it made sense in the student schedule with the teacher the two questions i had was if it's at the beginning

069of the day or at the end of the day i just knew that was a very low percentage from an equity lens you know i would want to make sure that that was equitable for all students again we know lots of students have different home lives and how that gets driven and then the other is that idea of i love the idea of a student being able to collaborate individually with a teacher based upon their schedules and students need to learn to self-advocate and need to learn to to be able to know how to reach out and so my question would be if that is the route that ends up being pursued how will students be taught that and where if it's a built-in time there i would assume there's an opportunity then to model

070for them to learn right so those are my open-ended questions and they are all questions that we ask ourselves too you know if you think about if we're talking about brain research then well we wouldn't want to have a one period before the day starts where brain research is showing that they shouldn't be there so there's like these factors i'm like oh that's a good idea but and you know considering you know child care arrangements or transportation if it's in the middle of the day are students actually going to attend you know different sessions they just want to break will they be able to access you know teachers at that time is it better at the end of the day but what does that mean for for students who have a job or have extracurricular

071so yes there are a ton of questions that come with each of them and i appreciate your your your question statement about if we do decide to go down this route then how are we going to support provide guidance etc for our students anything else i mean dr anderson this is an incredible first step along the way and i think the board agrees that you're in the general directionally correct uh yeah your team on the committee your thank you to all the committee members it's been a herculean job i think you know when when we were negotiating the contract figuring out you know setting up the committees you know one of the questions which is going to be the toughest committee and i think your committee wins uh it's it's it's a project that has

072bedeviled this district and all our sister districts uh you know continuously trying to get the day right so we really do appreciate the effort well thank you thank you to all of our staff looking forward to talking to our students and getting more feedback from you so thank you so much and thank you to everybody for the long presentation thank you and next up we have public comments per policy 2-230 at each open school board meeting the board of education has a public comment period for a maximum of 30 minutes we are ready to listen and appreciate your comments we appreciate that it takes time and work to prepare a three-minute statement public participation is not intended to be a back and forth discussion between the public and the board questions asked during public participation

073may be sent via email to be answered subsequent to the meeting first up we have lena goretzky good evening everyone there you go my name is lena goretzky winters i have a senior at dhs and two freshmen and on december 14th mr struck sent out an email about brittany kenyon dearfield high school theater director and teacher that many people here believe harmed many of us and it specifically talked about miss kenyon's repost that and the said that it disparaged personal beliefs and human decency of a substantial portion of our of our student body that email divided our community and it hurt our children what's happening on our local social media pages is horrifying multiple adults feel comfortable enough calling theater kids anti-semitic in public and calling their teacher awful names and demanding that she be

074fired just earlier today anyone who defended her was called an anti-semite and jewish hamas supporters we have been threatened to the point that a group of us went to the police who are now on high alert and all of that is happening in our mostly jewish community because this board felt compelled to make its political view known and that has harmed our children and it's just not just because our drama one two three four students were crying in class when they learned that britney was driven to a mental health crisis and not because many kids no longer have that one teacher in the building that they come to crying when they didn't get into a college of their choice and it's also not because last week many of them lost an opportunity to present their

075student-written and student-led plays but it's because students are getting bullied in class and in the hallways because they have a different political view from that articulated by the this board in the school district their school district told them which political view is right so they feel compelled to shut the other view down most people around this table have social media pages where you identify yourselves as employees or district 113 board members and your political views are on full display not everyone here but many publicly you tell us your views on gun control abortion and israel so i'm asking you to think about that before taking action against britney this board can write this wrong you should withdraw the december 14th email and apologize for the harm that it's caused to this community and its children

076thank you thank you mr david winters uh hello again um so some of the things i say might sound a little uh uninformed i apologize for that but part of that is what's going on the last thing we heard from the district about miss kenyon and that's what i'm here to talk about was on december 14 we're in february now we don't seem to have a resolution for it and if anybody has theater kids you know that what's happening to britney is a big part of their stool experience now the district it appears based on what i know is trying to reprimand britney for sharing this post from dr kendy and i think that this is not only kind of a risky thing to do but i don't think it's actually helping u.s educators and

077students who support israel and i'll explain why i feel that way so honestly from the outside looking in i don't think it can be at one in the same time correct professional and perfectly okay for the board president to share the board's apparently official position on the israeli hamas conflict to everyone in the district in an official communication that's okay but at the same time it's unprofessional and wrong for britney to share the kendy post about the exact same topic on her personal instagram i know there are nuances to the issue but i don't think you can square that circle reprimanding britney from our standpoint and again this may be uninformed seems like bad risk management the district everyone knows faces financial shortfalls in 2025 and the future on the one hand reprimanding britney risks

078the costs of a litigation right because when does litigation happen when somebody's reputation and livelihood is at stake it creates a potentially bad the possibility of a potentially bad litigation result plus potential bad pr it also risks and i think you should think about this creating a precedent allowing other school districts with different demographics to take action against jewish educators who are voicing their support for israel which is happening all around the country on the other hand i don't really see a serious risk by not reprimanding britney especially if you communicate with the people who are upset by her post you can explain to them that reprimanding her faces if you don't believe you might believe you're right and that there's no first amendment risk but at a minimum it's litigation and that comes with

079a risk right and i think that there are benefits to avoiding it by israel needs people in the united states educators most of all to be able to exercise their first amendment rights and express support for israel if you shut down opposition you risk shutting down support and by the way in december a queens new york teacher posted on facebook a picture holding a picture saying that i stand with israel she faced a protest by hundreds of students chicago south is calling itself a ceasefire city reprimanding an educator in deerfield for expressing an unpopular political opinion makes it easier for other school districts to discipline educators who voice their support for israel that's not good for anyone i think the board should abandon its efforts to reprimand britney and by so acting create a precedent

080that will help jewish educators facing resistance throughout this country thank you thank you mr winters uh next up is lisa howard hi um i don't know most of you so my name is lisa bob howard i have um two kids at dhs and with my husband jeffrey a blended family of seven kids who by next year will either have been at dhs or all have been through dhs um i'd also like to introduce myself as a grandchild of a living holocaust survivor who was last year's um dhs genocide commemoration day speaker um as such i'd like to say that in our community right now there's a small group of people who have been aggressively using public platforms such as facebook to spread hate in the name of protecting the jewish people from anti-semitism okay hate

081is terrible hate against jews yes hate against black people people of color people of any religion and people as individuals hate against individuals is terrible and i have been reading on a parent's facebook page that both britney kenyon and the high school theater teachers theater kids she teach are anti-semites this is preposterous and it should be treated as such one piece of evidence provided for this on the facebook page includes the way that britney communicates with her students i don't know what channels she does use and what is technically approved but when channels for student communication are being held up as proof of anti-semitism i don't know how the board can justify participating in this hatred on a 600 member facebook page designed to answer questions about things like late start time and calendar dates

082a parent used a very hateful term about britney the moderator refused to remove the post and soon a new group was formed that stated it would not allow hate within two days that group had 570 members those people refused to stay in the group that supported hate speech they stood up the actions of this board have already harmed the dhs community i now implore this board to stand up to the hate that is being spewed against britney kenyon just as i hope you would stand up to any hatred in this community thank you thank you deb i hope i'm pronouncing this correctly rissetti my name is debbie rissetti i am britney kenyon's mom i grew up in morton grove and i was raised by two jewish parents and grandparents who immigrated from europe we respected

083and lived our jewish faith my father melvin dicker sang in the choir with canter dale lind who was from the deerbrook northbrook area i'm quite sure some of your parents attended the high holidays that my dad sang at you know who also attended those services britney kenyon my child britney watched her papa sing she learned to blow the chauffeur she learned the prayers in hebrew she was raised jewish and she is jewish today she continues to practice all her traditions in her own home britney's proud of her heritage but was so excited to come to dhs she brought her talent to the already talented students just this year mean girls went to theater fest a big honor for dhs despite these accomplishments she's been faced with hate name calling and bullying on social media for

084a few years parents even asking their own face group group members to write on other face group facebook groups in their district merely to cause more hate why didn't one of the haters come forward and speak to brit instead you called her anti-semitic and worse you hid behind social media you dug up old dirt because the truth is you just don't like her and that is the real reason her students love and respect her but certain parents in the facebook group set out to destroy her what an example for their own children it's appalling as for the board and the administrators you allowed those facebook parents groups to continue on you knew they were dragging britney's name through the dirt but you let it continued then before even speaking to britney the board sent out

085a slanderous letter to 40 000 people in the community who don't even know her and you believed that they believed her your words after all you're the school board although you only identified her as a teacher i'm sure you knew someone in the parent group would expose your name you've already you've allowed parents to continue to bully her parents who today are outwardly making rude comments on social media about her mental health leave really tell me what is your dhs protocol for bullied students the board helped feed the anger of those spiteful people i speak of the administration hasn't even allowed britney to address in her words what you would say about that teacher the public is unaware that she can't comment once again making her look horrible instead you sit back never in my

08668 years of life have i met with this kind of hatred never would i have warned britney about people of her own faith accusing her of being anti-semitic i'd love to meet up with those parents i'd love for them to say to my face that my child is anti-semitic if you're calling her anti-semitic you're calling me anti-semitic and that is not okay as the board you had the chance to make this right and you blew it i end by saying may this never happen to your family or anyone that you love and to all the parents and the students and the staff who support britney i thank you for all you have done she truly is one to know thank you um mr rich for setting good job i begin by addressing the misguided email

087by dan struck regarding a post on my daughter britney kenyon's instagram story the board decided to incite this firestorm then swept it under the carpet and as a result of mr struck's letter and the board's inaction that followed my daughter has been victimized mr struck we know your letter was in direct response to a parent's complaint i ask what makes that parent's opinion correct and my daughter's wrong did you ever research the motive of the parent did you ever think there was more to the parent did you ever think that this there was nothing other than an attempt to dishonor my daughter just wondering how you would handle this this was your child the fact that you would allow britney to have a you would not allow britney to have a voice in this slanderous

088witch hunt is unbelievable what are you afraid of being wrong well sir you are very wrong your letter was defamatory discriminating and wrong you are responsible for the anti-semitic slurs britney has endured you have instigated this firestorm in a community that is already on edge with world events you have thrown more aggravation at them my suggestion would be to compose two letters one of apology to my daughter and one of retraction to the community and then allow my daughter to have a voice to everyone affected by your gaffe you have put yourself in the board in a very vulnerable position for all the previous reasons i'm calling for your resignation from the board this unfathomable process continued with tom krieger while i know we cannot comment on confidential personnel matters even though my daughter has

089been granted no confidentiality in this process mr krieger you know what you did you made my daughter remember and relive the most traumatic event of her life which occurred 17 years ago and use that as part of the violation she committed due to that choice and your mishandling of the rest of the situation mr krieger you put my daughter in the brink of a nervous breakdown you are the reason why dhs theater program is currently without a director the real investigation the real investigation should be how you handled this assault on britney you had no right to handle this so brutally and you should be reprimanded for the insensitive manner of which you handled this harassment you embarrassed defamed and ridicule and nearly broke my child and that sir is unforgettable and for that i'm

090calling for your termination you gotta wait also to the parents who have accused my daughter of anti-semitism we know who you are and what you've done you are also responsible for breaking my daughter in closing i would like to thank the people who have supported my child to remind you that these board members are elected to these positions vote accordingly and if there is any long-term effect on britney i will be back to remind you how vicious you are scott teplitzky hi i'm scott teplitzky i'm speaking on behalf of my son rider who's a sophomore and my wife jamie who prepared this statement but unfortunately cannot be here today two months ago our theater teacher reposted a quote online that many felt was hurtful and inappropriate instead of giving her the decency of getting more

091information or allowing her to explain why she reposted the board did the presumpt the board preemptively sent out a district-wide email condemning her actions and stating quote we will not tolerate statements and actions that cause harm to our students however what has taken place after you sent that email has done exactly that not only have your actions enabled parents who know nothing about the situation of the teacher in question but they have brought upon tremendous amount of destruction not only to the teacher and the community but to the very people you said you didn't want to harm our students you also mentioned as a school district we are on the side of protecting all of our students abiding by the highest standards of conduct to create a school environment that nurtures and provides a safe

092and secure place to develop the unique talent of all our students which is especially important now yet today eight weeks after a repost on social media our students are the ones who do not feel safe secured and nurtured at all instead you've created chaos in the community by standing by silently as a group of disgruntled parents continually throw just grateful comments emails and posts towards a teacher countless students love dearly these same parents call our very own students many of whom are jewish anti-semitic and hateful individuals in public social media forums you as a board stood silently as you allowed this chaos to continue as it took a devastating mental toll on your most talented staff member and again you were silent when the brave teacher courageously shared with her students the community and the

093community that she needed to take a leave of absence to treat mental anguish she's dealing with i can assure you this is one of the most powerful lessons she has taught our students even in pain britney is helping our students by leading through the example of acknowledging and treating mental illness the majority of our students have spent the last two months sad worried crying and devastated not only to lose a teacher for a month but also to hate to see her in such pain and while one parent disgustingly celebrated her leave of absence while mocking her need for mental health once again you've remained silent at what point do you stand up to the online bullies that you've encouraged since your email on december 10th and hold yourself and others accountable for the destruction and

094war you've created within our community and most importantly our children the board needs to act accordance with the core beliefs and goals set forth in district philosophy core belief too speaks of support of exceptional staff the best that meets the needs of our students the exceptional britney kenyon under that core belief deserves constructive support rather than destructive disdain core belief three stresses that communicating leading should be in an honest transparent collaborative way that develops reinforces and strengthens and sustains relationships in this case there's been a lack of transparency leading to hurtful rumors and less than a full understanding of the matters by the school community as a whole significantly a lack of collaborative approach to address this as for the district goal on communication the district has seriously fallen short the goal is spelled out

095as a model and and it's still transparent respective and collaborative communication among and between all district stakeholders the district's initial communication was sent out without any apparent reasonable collaboration between and amongst members of the district and disrespectful communication has been allowed to fester and create a sad environment in the school community that deserves better for the sake of our kids as an educational institution it is a shame that incident could facilitate that could have facilitated a teachable moment we're all involved was allowed to evolve into a situation that created so much hurt and division now is the time to turn it around and be consistent with the district philosophy which is we as a district family hope the board fully embraces thank you mr chipletsky i'm hand maker short my name is pam handmaker i

096have a freshman daughter and an eighth grade son at caruso who will be joining dhs in the fall i'm going to start to talk about the before before the post up until a few weeks ago when people would ask how my daughter liked high school i would say she loved it she joined a theater community that she was so excited about she was cast in the ensemble of mean girls which is very unheard of her a lot for freshmen everything was great she would talk about her love for britney and how great it was to have the support and the mentor of a teacher that she really felt close with then came the after i remember being told about the post for the first time in fact i was at the holocaust museum for an

097event there and i remember showing a rabbi the post who happened to be with me and she's like the rabbi was like whatever i didn't like it i i was disappointed to see that this teacher who i admired so much said something that i didn't really like and that hurt and i was sad and i know she took it down i can agree with people disagree with people about politics it doesn't mean i think they have to be publicly rebuked and bullied for such a post i kept waiting for cameron to come home to tell me mom i felt really unsafe today just like that letter said i was gonna feel i was harmed it never happened she talked about how supported she was how much she still loved britney and she could separate what

098might have been a post she disagreed with with love and support and caring that britney had what happened instead the mental health of her teacher started to take a toll my daughter's mental health started to take a toll when britney announced her leave my daughter's texting me from school mom how do i stop crying how do i keep myself from crying because britney's leaving she came home from school that day crawled up in a ball on the couch and said the two words that no mom wants to hear honey are you okay i'm fine i'm fine can i give you a hug i'm fine she wasn't fine the worst part is i couldn't explain the why why did a teacher that put one social media post get this treatment she took it down and why

099did it have to be so public there are other teachers who talk with their students on social media there are other teachers who have vitriolic anti-semitic posts on their social media that are public why is no one talking about them and for the record i'm not saying we should be she had one post why is she being bullied why is she being reprimanded so publicly i recognize i don't know the full story she made a choice and she shared a post that clearly this district this administration this board thought was so extreme they had to go public with she has been bullied others talked about the social media post i'll say it she was called filth a mother in this community used that word on her for one post and the bullies are celebrating her

100mental health crisis it has impacted our children it has impacted her it didn't have to happen it can be rectified it can be rectified with an apology and it taking back of that letter and saying we are sorry and we will not stand for the bullying and for the harassment thank you thank you becca canastra hi my name is becca canastra and i have four children in 109 and going into 113 my daughter juliana canastra is a junior in deerfield high school and i just wanted to talk really briefly about our support for britney and i want to talk about just her amazingness because she really is an exemplary teacher and she's committed to her students growth and success she devotes her time her energy to ensure that all of her students receive the best

101education possible of all the teachers that we've had an opportunity to have and many of them are very wonderful at dhs she truly is the most dedicated of the teachers that we have experienced she's an asset to the school she gives herself selflessly in her time and her resources she's a role model of positivity and compassion she is tirelessly working and dedicated to the students also i i i am not jewish and i don't understand a lot of what's happening with the jewish community but i am a parent of four brown children and i know that there are other social media posts from teachers or people in the community that are um speak out against things or say racist hateful things as well i don't know why this has become something that the board wants

102to take on i think that it was not handled well but i think that if you are not careful it's going to explode in a way that you don't want it to so i do ask you to consider your actions and think about how we can come back together as a community and maybe how we can address these issues going forward so that teachers and students feel safe in their community thanks anybody else we'll move on then to our action agenda first up for action is the annual renewal of the agreements regarding the receipt of developer subdivision contributions and indemnification it is recommended that the board of education approve the agreements regarding receipt of developer subdivision contributions and indemnification as presented is there a motion so moved is there a second is there any discussion

103uh hearing no discussion can we have a roll call please ramina mr nader aye dr eliot schummer aye mr hinderman aye miss newman aye mr star aye the motion carries next up we have our consent agenda a 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 hearing none it is recommended the consent agenda be approved as listed is there a motion don't move is there a second second is there any discussion can we have a roll call please remain up dr eliot schummer aye mr hinderman aye miss newman aye mr nader are mr struck all right the motion carries uh we are now at our closing items it is i would like to ask the possibility for us to

104go back into closed to discuss personnel i don't know how to do that i know if it's possible to make a motion i move that we move back into closed session in regards to first second second second may have a roll call please remain up mr hinderman aye miss newman aye mr nader aye dr eliot schummer aye mr struck aye the motion carries uh so we will now be going into closed session two and i'll read the oh we're going into closed session i should have read this before the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees specific individuals who serve as independent contractors in a park recreational or educational setting or specific volunteers of the public body or legal counsel for the public body including hearing testimony on a complaint lodged against

105an employee a specific individual who serves as an independent contractor in a park recreational or educational setting or a volunteer of the public body or against legal counsel for the public body to determine its validity however a meeting to consider an increase in compensation to a specific employee of a public body that is subject to the local government wage increased transparency act may not be closed and shall be open to the public and posted and held in accordance with this act by ilcs 120 slash two and we are going into close uh we've already taken heard the motion so um we're going to go into closed session and once in closed session ramina will start the recording