001good evening and welcome to the august edition of the wheeling community consolidated school district 21 board of education this meeting will come to order uh first order of businesses establish a quorum secretary phil hi debbie bye i am here stacey allen yes arlen hi bill i and stacy yes we have a quorum thank you if everybody would please rise and join us in the pledge [Applause] thank you all normally the first thing that we got into is board communication uh this month we had i'm going to uh vary from that just a trifle we have a special guest with us this evening and i'm going to uh have him come up to the uh the podium i'd like to welcome a former park district commissioner former long time uh staff member and former village president
002greg klitecki greg welcome thank you i'm here representing eight retired former employees of district 21. cumulatively we have over 210 years of service in this district we have seven of our kids who went through the school system you may know some of them ellen anderson kathy here jim christopher t.r frye paul wagner marty hopkins former principal at homes and sue stein current president of the wheeling park district we're here to thank the school board the superintendent mike conley the assistant superintendent michael debartello did i get the names right [Laughter] for joining with us in honoring bert pirlo a teacher at homes for 22 years he was a coach also bert was probably the most misunderstood person i ever knew but he was kind he was gentle and he was generous and he was shy when
003they dedicated the weight room at homes in his honor he was embarrassed well today he's probably mad at us because we planted a tree with a boulder and a plaque after everything was said and done we realized we had some extra money and we decided it to donate it to district 21 for equipment in the purlo weight room at homes thank you [Applause] thanks [Laughter] [Applause] [Laughter] you phil can we say something sure go ahead so greg uh it has been an honor from the day i got on this board to know you and watch your contributions to this community i remember being in your classroom and how you taught the kids and how interested you were and how dedicated you were to seeing them learn and then watching your career to become village president
004and how you always wanted to partner with district 21. i remember when you got a hundred thousand dollar grant for us from the state of illinois that we needed so i can only tell you that it it's a thrill to see you here tonight it was unexpected and i thank you for everything you've done for district 21 and the community of wheeling over the years thank you greg thank you greg is one of the very few people still alive that remember my first day here on as a board member that was nice that was very nice that greg go and the former staff members uh elected to donate the money and in bert's name uh to the district that's and just for the board's information that donation was just a little bit over twelve hundred
005dollars wow wow just a little bit over twelve hundred dollars the outpouring of support when when before the district knew what they were doing oh hold on ireland all right are we good now ireland can you hear speak into the microphone okay i'm gonna speak into the microphone thank you so initially when it went up on facebook that that's what they wanted to do john colsack posted something and the amount of energy that that post generated was amazing of former staff and so all of the people that he named off are some of my favorite people in the world so that day when greg came for the presentation he said something which is not light-hearted for clark kentucky he said i'm really proud of the district and when greg says something like that you know
006that's exactly what he means so um the feedback from the community has been really nice and i'm thrilled that we're able to do that absolutely that's very that was very nice uh as we go into board communications i just want to say at tuesday's opening uh institute i made a i was fortunate enough to make a uh had the opportunity to speak to our staff via zoom and the one thing that i mentioned um we're unfortunately and it's in a point in time when there's a lot of noise that's surrounding us in education about a whole number of issues and i ask staff to try and just focus focus on the reason why everybody's here while they're here in order to make sure that the students know that they're number one as they've always been
007in this district but with all the noise surrounding us it's easy to get sidetracked it's just a matter of making sure that we continue to keep the eye on the prize which is which are the students in the district so um i just wanted to share that uh before i go into the nsseo and the rest of the updates i did have one uh program that i attended that which is last month which was a combined cream social at one of the wheeling parks with state senators uh adrian johnson and julie morrison and it was sparsely attended but they did a nice job going through what's gone on uh in springfield a couple of um uh bills that they're uh watching i'm not going to go into those until they get a little see if
008they get a little further one has a direct impact on on school districts across the state but i don't know what the what type of traction that's going to get so with that i'll move over to ssco update thank you um i talk better without this enfa right now um we had our first meeting we didn't have one in july as usual we talked about we had a presentation from brian bulger uh who is the head of sunrise lake and if you haven't been out there it is the most fantastic facility um he announced that with this past year or a year and a half we have been the beneficiary of several eagle scout projects um including some new benches that were built and installed and one of the scouts replaced a large portion of
009the dock that was on the lake making it easier for people to get in and out of the paddle boats which are a lot of fun if we have if we ever have a chance to get out there i would really like to do that as a group it's a nice bonding thing um however we had a very interesting meeting because at 7 30 our meeting started at 7 00 at 7 30 we lost power um fortunately the gym we were in had the emergency lights uh people brought out their phones we had the laptops up so we had enough light we kept going until 9 10. we kept who just stuck it out it's like we want to get this done it was getting warm in there i had my fan um but we
010still managed to take care of business just like we all do we that's what we do we take care of business um we announced our new committees uh as i'm on the policy committee here i am also on the policy committee there so it's nice that i get the input from all the other districts in the co-op and i have also been added to the facilities committee and one of the things i just found out is that nsseo owns part of twain it's a it's yeah it's a small there's a small portion somehow yeah so so many many many years ago um there was a an intergovernmental agreement that was conducted um where nsseo does have um a property claim to um it is twain but but ultimately it's classrooms in the district right and
011so we are always furnishing um classrooms it doesn't it's not always at twain um right now um but yes so that is that is true because they gave us a little they're doing an update because there's so many new people and they mentioned that and i'm like whoa i have to ask about that one yeah um but yeah i knew that it was officially twain but it was actually riley that we were using um and then the last thing if anyone is available on the 25th at 1 pm it's a wednesday the minor school accessible playground is having their ribbon cutting and as ireland can attest it is it's not just for you know that kids that have disabilities can use they have swings that they can roll wheelchairs onto and they can swing it
012is the most fantastic thing so if you get a chance it's at one o'clock i've got information here i'll pass it on if anybody wants to come they would love to have it it's just the most phenomenal it's a nice warm warm feeling when you go over there okay that's it thank you debbie um all right add red update okay thank you phil does that help there we go um first off on edward we will be having our legislative priorities retreat coming up where we determine what legislative priorities we're going to have in the coming year as opposed to reacting to what happens uh downstate so if you have any suggestions or thoughts please feel free to contact me second the edward kickoff luncheon will be friday september 24th the guest speaker will be state
013senator rahm villy volume he'll be discussing both the bills that were passed that he worked on this past session including the teach act and the amendments to the sex education rules as well as what he's working on now which is trying to [Music] take a good look at unfunded mandates and see where we can reduce them there will be an opportunity for questions from the audience although we're asking is if you are do have questions if you could submit them in advance so that bridgette can make sure that a wide variety of questions are asked if you're interested in attending just let leticia know and she can sign you up that's it for edward thank you uh you want to move right into isb certainly the take my glasses off here the north cook fall
014dinner meeting will be held on wednesday september 22nd the featured speaker will be dr courtney rozelle you will be receiving an email shortly for registration once a final decision is made as to whether or not to have the meeting in person or virtual or some combination thereof and then one other additional thing this past month i was able to attend with a number of other board members the national nights out that were in buffalo grove and wheeling i didn't get to prospect heights but i was able to carpool with ireland to buffalo grove and the wheeling i know we saw debbie there as well it was a great event it was great that we actually had a table out to be able to interact with the community and give them information they need as to
015the opening of the school year so that worked out i think very well that's it thank you bill uh north cook intermediate arla no but if i may i've got a couple of quick things for us uh i as bill did went to night outs or all of our staff both in wheeling and buffalo grove doing a marvelous job and we appreciate that i've been to a few of the buildings as i know fellow board members have the last couple of days cooper kilmer tarkington and the energy in the hallways and the the happiness of the parents and our staff and the kids is absolutely you can't quantify it's just absolutely amazing and then finally a new project which will be of interest to this board going down the road there is something called a
016708 board that is now legal in illinois uh i'm part of the northwest suburban mental health task force and we are working on getting that on the ballot a year from november what that would do if it passes and tomorrow we have the police chiefs who have signed up because they all understand the need for money to help fund mental health services for police departments it's a very hot topic right now so we are working to put that on the ballot a year from now it will allow us to if it passes raise money for mental health within wheeling township and could be very important for district as well as the entire community it's a great organization that is working to put this together and we're doing it in conjunction with nami uh the national
017mental health association so yes please so i just wanted to note um that kim klein uh is one of the founding board members of the 708 uh board in bloomingdale township um so um she is intimately aware of the 708 boards and um you're still on that board right kim yeah yeah so i thought somebody from bloomingdale was coming tomorrow at lunch to speak about it i'm not sure michael murray i think so yeah that's great thank you i didn't know that yep great excuse me arlen can you get me more information on that i'd like to become involved in that absolutely i'll i'll get it for you thank you i'm done thanks arlen appreciate that uh there was a committee meeting before our meeting tonight stacy did you want to give an update on
018that i would love to so the um the community partnership strategic uh partnerships committee met before this wait board committee community engagement and strategic partnerships which is a very long title but i got it um we are we got a report from dr conley about an upcoming um leadership breakfast currently planned for saturday september 25th as things roll out the guest list to include board of education congressional state and local representatives city and village officials um isb a long list so dr conley is going to work internally with his staff to get that rolled out to be hosted here at london in the north commons and then we talked about a topic of conversation near and dear to all of our hearts which is family learning and the new rollout of family learning going forward
019i shared that a couple of weeks ago in teresa cherry's honor teresa was a long time member of the family learning community who passed away suddenly several weeks ago i had the opportunity with greg crocker to take some of the original family learning ladies out to dinner and it was uh it was beautiful but they are still engaged and interested um in that program and going forward so it was um nice to see greg as well as well as some of the original ladies from family learning we had dinner over at mia's cantina or actually we had dinner at spears um and um and really just got to to they asked a lot of questions about going forward and so um working with dr conley we're gonna get several of those folks back together along
020with the new generation of people in the district who maybe don't know that much about family learning and how it started and and blaze a trail going forward because as we know um whether you live in the far end east end of the district all the way to the far west end of the district you were impacted in some way by the last 18 months or so but not necessarily in the same ways so um we'd like to use the opportunity with family learning and what what that program has been able to do for our community over the last several years and see what what it can do now um and that is the end of my report for that committee um as far as my community report i was able to be at field
021on the first day of school so i want to thank the field falcon family for welcoming me on to the playground to see the first day of school that was wonderful to say the least there are some community events coming up the chamber of commerce is rolling out some new community events um starting with uh on september 1st from 5 to 8 a.m business after hours at spears in front of wheeling and then tomorrow morning um at the dunkin donuts in front of the westin as well as the dunkin donuts over off of 83 in buffalo grove is the special olympics fundraiser with both police departments so you can stop in they have some donation tables but the the torch run as well as the fundraiser is starting tomorrow morning from 5 00 a.m to
022noon that's all i got very good thank you stacy jessica did you have anything to share tonight i don't phil thank you stacy i do not okay uh we'll move into staff communications and superintendent report we have uh four four items and the first one is uh an exciting one to introduce and to get into you know one part of the noise that's been surrounding us has been the uh negative publicity about a whole slew of things that public education is involved with and it's incredibly um terrible to see that the word equity is part of that negative connotation and it's it's one of those things that gee i think i would like an equitable distribution of inheritance if i was part of that and our children deserve to have to be treated in an
023equitable manner so that they receive what each individual child needs to be successful so with that dr conley anxious to hear your report well thanks very much um and we're joined by uh several members of of our district equity leadership team who along with the superintendent's equity advisory council which was uh two members of this board jessica and stacy uh were part of that as well as a number of of parents and community uh members uh over the course of the winter and uh spring of of 2021 those two bodies uh worked very hard on putting together the district's first equity action plan uh and so tonight we are going to uh provide the board with um a high level overview of of the equity action plan um and then later on this evening ask
024for the board to formally approve um the equity action plan now it should be noted that the already action plan that you're going to hear tonight is for this year it's the first equity action plan there will be successor equity action plans that will come on a yearly basis um because this work is uh hard work it's long work and it's it is going to take several several years um to and and really will never stop uh it's it's it's ongoing work and just to kind of of um maybe go a little bit deeper to some of your comments phil um and as it relates to equity i think you are absolutely correct um there is a lot of noise about what what equity is and um and what it is not uh simply put
025equity as we view it is identifying and removing barriers to a student's ability to be successful and to access education period full stop if there is this notion that equity or pursuing equity somehow brings in a zero-sum game where somebody wins and somebody loses that is not what equity is um and i think one of the things that you will find uh particularly as it relates to the the objectives within the the equity action plan that that members of our of our team will be presenting in a few moments uh this equity action plan is specifically designed to do just that to identify and begin to work to remove barriers to our students learning no matter where they are no matter what their skill level is no matter what their socioeconomic standing is no matter
026what their ethnic background is no matter what side of the district they live on it is about ensuring that our resources it is about ensuring that our work is to get what a child needs to them when they need it and that's all we're out to do this is not a political statement this is not some outlandish idea that again we're trying to create winners and losers we're trying to make sure that every single child that walks through our door has what they need to be successful period and so you can see we get a little passionate about that um and i know that this is something that this board is very passionate about as it is a major part of our strategic plan and so with that um while we um and carl can
027you just yeah advance um uh two slides well first let me say that that that the um we had well over 50 people involved um with the between the delt um the district equity leadership team and the superintendent superintendent's equity advisory committee so a lot of and a cross-section of experience and um background uh all came to pass in putting this plan together so the plan itself is really designed around five strands so really five different uh strands that we're going to be looking at doing work throughout the first strand being systems the second strand being teaching and learning the third strand being student voice climate and culture and then professional learning and then also really engaging our family and community really understanding that family and community as agency meaning the the the support network
028that's going to allow for students to really engage and be successful is is a critical aspect and so um if what we'll do is we'll transition to um a representative of each of the five strand uh working groups uh to come up and to just give an overview of our objectives for each of those strands this year so we're going to start off with lucy donnan who is we'll talk about our systems sorry hello um so as dr kindly said i'm going to talk about the systems part and just for the purpose of this just to say what the systems means so it's to ensure a systemic and continuous development toward advancing equity within all policies processes procedures initiatives decision making and fiscal responsibilities so okay so um we have three main objectives under the
029systems strand and so the first one is to develop a district definition of diversity equity and inclusion using consistent language which includes clear purpose to empower every student every day and i'm going to go into some of the tasks and the measures as we go through but i just want to do the brief overview of the systems objectives so the second one is to conduct a review of all district handbooks for staff students and parents in order to identify language processes and procedures that are not supportive of equity or consistent with the district's definitions of diversity equity and inclusion and then the last objective is to review current practices related to the hiring processes in the district and significantly to identify and implement revised and improved practices that support a clearly defined system of hiring
030reflective of the district's commitment to the recruitment and retention of a diverse workforce and dedicated to ensuring equity and excellence throughout the district so within the first objective um we have some measures um those are going to be kind of like checkpoints as to um you know making sure what we're doing what we are allowed to do but um there are several tasks within each of these strands that we're going to go over so the first task for objective one is we're going to look at the definitions of diversity equity and inclusion so how we're going to do that is we're going to conduct research to gather those definitions of diversity equity and inclusion and other relevant equity language from an educational lens and that small group that we're going to convene is going to
031be from stakeholders and then we're going to determine non-negotiable concepts to be used in any district definitions of diversity equity and inclusion and that small group is then going to write a draft definition based on those non-negotiables then we're going to present that information to the superintendent's equity advisory committee who's going to review that draft of the definitions and then provide us feedback and then considerations for improvements or adjustments as needed and then so when we get that information back from c we're going to incorporate those changes and then upon completion of that we would present that final draft to the board for consideration and adoption and again as dr kindly mentioned this is aligned to the strategic plan hey lucy just for for pure uh purposes of brevity um i that was a great
032example of tasks um for the rest of the objectives just let's highlight the measures okay um that would be great appreciate it okay okay okay so for the second objective we're going to conduct a review of all district handbooks for staff students and parents in order to identify the language processes and procedures that are not supportive of equity or consistent with the district's definition of diversity equity and inclusion so the measures include working having a working group to issue a report that we're identifying all language processes and procedures within the district's employee student and parent handbook that are not supportive of equity or consistent with the district's definition of diversity equity and inclusion and within that report the working group will provide a priority to consider um what up how do we update each handbook
033to ensure that consistency with equity language and the district definitions of diversity equity and inclusion and then finally for objective three under the strand is to review current practices related to the hiring processes in the district identify and implement the revised and improved practices supporting a clearly defined system of hiring reflective of the district's commitment to the recruitment and retention of a diverse workforce and dedicated to ensuring equity and excellence in the district and how we would measure that is upon completion of the review and update documents articulating the hiring procedures of the district those will be adopted and distributed and the document shall contain specific goals objectives and language to denote how the district will ensure equity in its hiring processes and work to employ a highly qualified and diverse workforce that's reflective of
034the backgrounds and needs of our students and within that the district would at a minimum annual on an on a minimum of an annual basis conduct a comprehensive analysis of that employment data and to measure success in meeting those objectives and then working towards the improvement or implementation of any additional measures that are necessary to achieve the goal thank you lucy so while we're switching uh uh presenters and our teaching and learning presenter will will come up uh let me just comment um that uh if you look in in the actual plan document itself you'll see that that we have a number of tasks um that that are under each objective or excuse me each measure and so um that's really the nitty-gritty work um that's going to be done but um the measures are
035really those things that will be able to to kind of from the work of our tasks to be able to to come back and say and here's what we've been what we've been able to achieve and um so that'll be how as a board you'll really be able to hold us accountable um for the work that uh that we are doing so teaching and learning okay real quick quick question one of the items i noticed that you're going to be going through all of the handbooks and one of the things you didn't mention on equity was gender identity is that something you're going to be looking at and changing the handbooks to reflect pronouns and such yes and that would be a great way to get to get started with it absolutely so so as
036we look at the handbooks it really makes sure that we are um as we said removing barriers and so um looking at all of those types of issues particularly around gender identity and ensuring that we do have language that is going to be um non-exclusive um and uh you know but but it's also a little bit deeper than that it's also you know as you're looking at your handbooks you also start to dig into your student discipline policies and to your dress codes and things of that nature and and so you know handbook is where all of that kind of comes together but it has a lot of branches and by the way will also have some impact on policy um so i imagine that there will be things that we will you know be
037engaging the policy committee on um and particularly um you know what you what you noted so yeah okay awesome thank you sure once you introduce yourself okay uh hi i'm lauren sulkowski i'm a second grade bilingual spanish teacher at field and i'm going to be talking about the teaching and learning strand today so the overarching goal of this strand of the dell group is to intentionally embed equity-driven pedagogy and practices in our curriculum and resources as well as in our day-to-day instruction and academic programming so in order to progress towards that goal our strand group created three objectives that we'll begin to work on over the course of this academic year these are three objectives i will go into them more in detail on the following slides so our first objective is to develop capacity
038on the newly adopted illinois culturally responsive teaching and leading standards without going into too much depth these standards were approved by isbee in earlier this year and they apply a culturally responsive approach to teaching and learning and teacher preparation programs at this point in time they are still in draft form but will take full effect in so in order to prepare for the implementation of these equity driven standards as a committee will work towards these four measures over the course of this school year so to begin our first measure is that our culturally teaching that our teaching and learning strand will lead a book study with administrators on two books culturally responsive teaching and the brain and culturally sustaining pedagogy it allows those books will act as a launching point for us to have discussions
039around what culturally sustaining pedagogy is then as our second measure we will familiarize ourselves with the culturally responsive teaching and leading standards that were approved by isb earlier and we will develop collective commitments that support these standards and are in direct alignment with the strategic plan mission values of our dish of our district here and our third measure involves developing tools for educators that include performance indicators for each area of focus and the culturally responsive sustaining teaching standards to know how well we as teachers are meeting each standard then our fourth measure involves using a district-wide curriculum council to develop a timeline and cycle for reviewing critical components of district programs and curriculum to ensure that our tech selections reflect students classroom community and family culture moving into our second objective this is to ensure
040equitable university universal access to all programs in our district so our first two measures include reviewing all services available to students across the district and creating a method to collect and communicate the programming available to stakeholders including to you our school board ciac administration staff parents and students this will be revisited yearly and then our third measure involves using this information gathered to provide guidance or make recommendations for programming or for staffing and be able to make adjustments based on the needs of the students reflected in the data collected and our third and final measure is to identify and rectify inequities in instructional support within existing programs so our two measures here include looking at available data like map or other common assessments and using that information to determine if the needs of our students
041are being matched with the correct resources and our staffing and utilizing the information to support the curriculum council recommendations so our hope is that through these three objectives and our many measures we hope to advance equity among all students in our curriculum programming and instruction thank you thanks very much good evening my name is fran evans music teacher at whitman elementary k-5 today i'm going to talk about student voice climate and culture to consistently seek students feedback and experiences and organizational culture and climate let me go right to here we have two objectives objective one to collect with consistency in analyze school discipline attendance student perception and sel social emotional learning data in a uniform way and desegregate data by special populations to determine where needs are greatest our first measure school discipline data that
042is collected using framework in powerschool three times a year at each trimester and shared with all staff at each building our second measure are results from students five essentials objective two form student advisory committees at each building with the purpose of ensuring that each student's voice is represented measure one collect data from each school about student advisory committee frequency makeup etc to ensure equitable representation measure two feedback from the members of each student advisory committee in student focus groups measure three results of panorama and five essentials thank you thank you all right thanks i'm gonna be i'm carolyn droll i'm the director of math and pe i'm gonna be sharing um the work of our professional learning group um so like the other groups we identified three objectives and we really focused on this idea
043of a continuum when we thought about it so we kind of build from this idea with objective one of focusing on kind of that foundational level for all moving into objective two where we are digging a bit deeper and differentiating the professional learning and then objective three is stepping back and evaluating all of our professional learning across the district through that equity lens so diving a little bit more into objective one when we thought about foundations we thought about it in in two levels one is the foundations needed for our school leadership um and uh and tied to this are a lot as dr kylie referenced there's a lot of action steps so i want to give a little bit of insight into that because it makes the measures a little more meaningful so with
044regard to our school leaders our group had a lot of conversation that we feel that they need a lot of the experiences that our group had over the course of the year a lot of those experiences with regard to the dialogues we were able to engage in the the videos and the articles that we had opportunities to be exposed to so so one level is providing that foundation for our school leaders and then a second level is district-wide foundational opportunity so um so the goal is that we would create a consistent foundational professional learning experience for the entire district and we would measure those those pieces by tracking attendance so attendance and participation as well as eliciting feedback through evaluations and these are aligned to our many of our danielson domains but in particular on
045the professional responsibility domain as well as many elements of our strategic plan should i go too far so moving into our second objective this one again is that digging deeper so this is where we're looking at more differentiated professional experiences one of the things that we talked about over the course of the year we learned about the different levels of understanding of equity practices and we learned about these three levels that um that are people engage with understanding versus moving into a navigating versus transformative and we know our staff are going to be coming in all different places and so we want to make sure that we're considering that and providing opportunities that are going to continue to move people along that continuum so when our group discussed this we thought about this in a
046couple of layers um the first layer being that we felt there needs to be a building based team an equity team at each site that's helping to design those meaningful experiences that align to the building systems and structures and then secondly we want to make sure that there's cross-district opportunities because there's a diversity that we can experience when we bring together teachers and other staff members from across the district where they're servicing different schools and different student populations um so and then the last piece and i know i've been thinking a lot about this as i've been hearing everyone present is the interconnectedness of all of these strands a lot of these things you know while we had different groups that created actions within our teams they're all connected and we have to make sure
047that these all align so another piece that our team talked about in particular with regard to this objective is how we can collaborate and especially we thought about the family and community as agency strand to make sure that we're incorporating community stakeholders voices within the ongoing professional development and so the measure that we would use for this objective would be staff survey that we felt should be again designed in collaboration with the other strand groups to help assess that movement across that continuum that i talked about before and the alignment is consistent with what we heard in objective one with the danielson domains and the strategic plan and then our last objective which as i said is kind of stepping back and looking around at all of our professional learning experiences across the district we're
048still going to have professional learning in math and in social studies and in language arts but we need to step back and kind of view it through the lens of equity and cultural responsiveness so the action that we tied with this objective is developing a professional development template that we would train our professional development providers on using so that as they're planning professional development experiences they're um thinking through thinking it through an equity lens and so the measures that we would use here would be assessments built into to the professional development experiences both a self-assessment from the providers as well as from the participants to get a sense of the presence of those equity goals that we have in the professional development experience and then um on a broader level less frequent but perhaps like
049mid-year and end of year reflection from professional development providers on that template itself so that we can continue to revise that and use it to help guide our that that integration of the equity and again as you'll see the similar alignment with the danielson and strategic plan domains hello my name is um bianca smith and i am an el teacher at twain and hello i'm naomi rubin i'm one of the social workers at twain since we're doing family and community we thought we'd do it together so it makes sense right so um we were really honored to be a part of this particular strand because it's something that is near and dear to both of our hearts especially at twain um so we had a lot of tough but enlightening conversations during our times and
050we really feel that we came out with steps that would help the community as a whole not just particular schools so um to start with oh there we go to partner with families and the community for authentic keyword opportunities to serve the students the school and the district and for objective one here we go evaluate opportunities for families to engage with and receive information for from the district and during all the conversations what we really notice is that we need to collect data what is happening who's showing up who's coming what are you doing before we even start anything so the membership of the current groups including demographics the process of recruitment of new and additional members and also focused on the diversity within the district the second measure would be the attendance at the
051event in the meetings because we want to make sure that the effort that we are putting in is um is coming the our labors is the fruit of our labor i guess you would say sorry if i um bought you that one but we want to just make sure that the work that we are putting in is um the the families are are benefiting from it and then the last one is the home language of community and resources to translate into interpret information we want to make sure that all of our families are able to get the information in a language that they will be able to understand and then feel like they are part of the community and so for our second objective we looked at reviewing um our second objective is it reviewing
052district programs and community supports that already exist within our district and are connected to our families so for example we know that we have really great preschool engagement and be packed through grants we have our family learning program a lot of virtual supports we do a lot of home visits and um we have a lot of community partnerships as well um so looking at what we're doing well already and how we can can expand on that um one of the measures that we that we want to look at is again talking about that attendance at these events and participation ensuring that people are coming and benefiting from these programs and then looking at um our second measure would be number looking at the number of students that participate in a program offered by a community
053agency and then our third measure would be providing a survey and looking at a family survey results that determine strengths and areas for improvement around family and school relationships in order to increase our community our school community partnerships and relationships and then our third objective would be to own another page would be to look at and inventory the funds and funding sources and financial supports available to students and or used for family and community engagement and partnerships so we want to look at our first measure would be looking at contributions to the school from our ptos or outside organizations so for example things that might items that might be donated uh pto funds that have been raised as well as expenses per student or staff and we know that we have some really great ptos
054and we're doing some really great great things for our students and we just want to ensure that we're supporting and providing for all our students to ensure they're all getting what they need as well as our second measure would be to look at grant funds that are received by the district for programs um to eligible families ensuring that again everyone gets what they need so those were the things that we were looking at thank you thanks everybody so um so as you can see and again this is the the high level overview of of the work um that we are going to be engaging in this year and um i think one of the things that we um know and i think we're ready for is that the work will create the work right and
055so as there's a lot of you here sell a lot of review and and uh survey and look at and and so we're really in that data gathering and really looking at what is and to determine where we need to go um so again like we said with the handbooks you know just start to take a look at what roadblocks are within our discipline codes there's been a lot of conversation about dress codes and how dress codes which largely were established in a i think you could say an era that is no longer with us um you know can be a barrier uh for for many students um and so really looking and having some good conversations about what we need to do to to to um uh you know be fair and to to
056be um uh open and inclusive um for all of our students to be able to um not be how i express myself as a barrier to my ability to come in and learn so um you know those are the types of real you know activities that we will con you know be engaging in and continue to do work uh and as i said this is just this year's plan uh year two plan will come from what we what we find and what we do in year one i don't it'll be a cascading kind of of process over the next uh many years so um so what questions um does the board have that we can answer for you and questions bill in final preparation for the meeting tonight and going over not just the documents
057you provided us but i received an email from advanced illinois which gave a link to a report from the heck and joe report and it highlighted why this work is so important to everyone the report itself was titled racial gaps in college degrees are widening just when states need them to narrow and let me scroll down here to the important part it's a problem with implications beyond equity and fairness several states are recognizing that unless they can propel more people through college who are less likely to go and finish they cannot meet their goals for increasing the proportion of their populations with degrees and most importantly or be able to fill the jobs requiring college education what we do is the start of that it's the start of getting them there and it's why it's
058important to everyone what we're doing this isn't just raising up those who may have barriers in front of them it's important to each and every one of us at all ends of this community and that was a really good report to read i did have one question which i think you implied the answer you talk about this being an annual event and cascading from one to the other i presume that we're intending to meet these targets these objectives this year that's the accountability standard we should hold you too within reason this is an aggressive this is an aggressive plan there's a lot here and you know as we often know the things that that when you get into the work can take longer um so what i would say is that that this is going
059to be are there going to be unfinished things that come out of this year's plan to get rolled over into the next year plan yes um so what i would what i would say is that the accountability piece is not about checking this one off checking this one off checking this one off it's about making sure that we are making the you know the moves and making the decisions and changing the policies and updating the procedures and doing all of those different things that are going to lead us to the ultimate uh end point if it is an endpoint of being an equitable place for kids to come in and learn so it will be an ongoing um you know process and an ongoing um review of accountability for lack of a better way to
060describe it um and so but you know we're human beings we need to be able to structure things in at different points in time otherwise we would just be not be able to conceive what we're doing so i used accountability because you used that earlier and talking about the plan so absolutely thank you um historically district 21 well let me just back up a step mike when we talked earlier today about this uh you talked about doing a distilled version of this for non-educators uh that we will have for parents because obviously there's an awful lot here that not everybody's gonna want to get through yes um so not unlike our strategic plan where it's one page front and back you know we will endeavor to to distill this down to a one-pager um that
061people can reference yes and i think as both you and phil alluded to earlier there's more than a lot of noise out there on curriculum issues today and um i think and we talked about this too what does this mean and what does this program not mean are the kind of things that i think we need to identify because we we know we're going to hear from an awful lot of people who will automatically not understand what we're doing so i think the first thing that we need to do is to again to circle back and focus on what this is and what this is not what this is is within our system it's not within a program it's not within a certain part of a history class that we teach um it is within
062our system where are there barriers to a student's ability to engage to attend to become an agent of their own learning and growth and how do we remove those barriers right and again that is for a student who is who is coming in and as a beginning english language learner and that is for a student that is currently in a fifth grade math class that they are already mastering those standards and they should be taking math in a higher level right um it is both ends of of the continuum and everywhere in between so so that's the first thing and so when you talk about what does this mean for curriculum well what this means for curriculum um and again remember that curriculum and content are different things we have state standards and so the
063state standards that we have are our guides for the type of learning and instruction that our students engage in those standards are the basis on which we make curricular decisions to help support students to get to those standards how we are able to craft the content so that students can be successful within the curriculum and meeting those standards is a very important series of conversations of work of looking at um particularly when we're starting to talk about learning to read or or really any you know skill area that you're developing um what is the best way that we can support kids in being able to connect and to attend and to master those skills so if we're trying to uh teach a kid how to read and the material that they have access to read
064means nothing to them it it has no connection to what they know uh their experience um what they've uh have have um come to to to value and to to understand you've got to block you can't even so so if we're going to try and and teach a kid how to read and we can't make a connection to where that kid is coming from and that kid's experience that is going to negatively impact that child's ability to read and so when we start to talk about the culturally responsive teaching and leading standards unfortunately and let's just name the elephant in the room you know people see that and go we're going to make my kid feel bad about where they come from no what it means is that as educators we need to recognize that
065we have 25 26 27 whatever the the the number might be kids sitting in front of us that are all coming from different places that are all have different backgrounds that have different familial experiences that are coming from different you know i mean they're different and how do i as a teacher ensure that i understand how to get a picture of where those kids are at where those kids are coming from and then bring in the learning that is going to engage them and that's what we're talking about here and so you know so i'll i'll just to kind of of put a fine point on it there is a wonderful children's book that's called everybody cooks rice every culture on the planet has its own way of preparing rice it is a culturally unifying
066food how powerful for a kid to be able to not only see oh my my my abuela makes this kind of rice my grandma makes this kind of rice oh it's rice that's what we're talking about absolutely i'm going off on a rancher no mike that's what mike that's that's what i wanted to hear is what you said earlier and one other thing our district has in a way done that for many years haven't we always preached diversified learning in the classroom where the teacher's goal was to teach to each child so it's really a vast expansion of something i've heard at this board for many many years and taking it all to a new level and i'm very excited about it and i want to thank staff for bringing it to us in this
067detail we will be getting we will be uh responding to the request for the approval of this in just a few minutes down the road okay if we can move on to our second report summer learning yes so just very quickly um you know as we are now entering the school year i just wanted to give a very quick summary of the various things we had going on in the district over the summer um the first one if you recall um back in i think it was may um noted that uh we had the opportunity this summer to purchase a subscription for every student in the district to a system that was called my on um which through their chromebooks they had the opportunity almost like a netflix for reading um to to access multiple
068different um you know books and different levels and different um and then uh correspondingly uh there was a math uh practice uh portion of that program which i don't remember what that was called do you remember beatrice freckle thank you yes um and so just uh but just with my on um we had over the course of the summer uh 2423 different books um that were accessed by students um we had 22 000 uh 452 minutes of reading that occurred over the course of the summer and uh of those freckle section sessions with those math sessions we had 5 628 different math sessions um that were done um and so you know right now what we're looking at is um you know from usage experience uh from parents experience is this something that we want
069to continue uh because it's you know it's not always gonna be a dollar right um so um is this something that we want to continue having access for all of our students um over the course of of the year so we're looking at uh really diving in a little bit more deeply uh and making sure that this is a system that people really um found some value to uh and that you know would be something that we would potentially continue on um separately we did make available uh a an online summer tutoring uh kind of instructional program through pearson where certified teachers were employed by pearson to provide some some online uh learning for students and we did have 260 students that took advantage of of those math and reading courses that were available as
070far as our in-person summer programming we did have our annual sala which is our our summer programming for our english language uh learning students we had 324 of the of those students attend uh this summer uh we did do another summer boot camp um we had uh in our k2 um boot camp we had 86 uh students in person we had seven students join us remotely and um again due to staffing we needed to to kind of target the transitional level so we had a sixth grade boot camp where we had 35 students in person and eight students um attending remotely uh our instrumental music program came back um and we had 150 students participate in that we they were here yeah it was really great it was nice to have them back it was
071nice to hear you know the horns and the the you know everything um you know over at over at london uh and then from the staff our staff um were engaged in a lot of work uh our teaching staff were engaged with a lot of work over the summer we had 18 staff members that joined up our bilingual esl cohort that is through national lewis um is that national lewis right yes yeah thank you um and uh there that's coursework that's leading those 18 teachers to uh getting their esl endorsement on their license um which will then allow them um you know the ability to serve um better serve our english language learning students in their classrooms and we'll continue those cohorts um as as time goes on we would really are we'd really love
072to get as many of our teaching staff with esl endorsements as possible since you know well over half of our of our our student population our our second language learning uh and then in terms of other summer pd um we uh are heavily investing in in bringing in our fontes and pinell benchmark assessment system which is a very supportive system for teachers to to um really gauge literacy growth and and give some some good diagnostic information about how to support a child and in their um literacy and we 175 of our teachers uh participate in that summer pd so a very busy uh summer and a lot of good solid activity going on we had our our annual special education esy programming as well um you know small but mighty uh and uh that was
073um you know recently that was well okay so how many did we end up having in just over 200 okay so not so small but those are our special education students um that's their extended school year program that's right um so a lot a lot of good things happening um in terms of learning over the summer so just wanted to provide that that real quick um overview uh which leads us into our next uh and a very brief overview of where we stand right now with student enrollment and our class size distribution of numbers so bob is will take us through just very quickly where we stand good evening everyone we've got a couple different positions that are still open uh we have some ta positions across the district and a couple of psychologist positions
074that are that are open that we're kind of working through right now but right now i think we're looking at uh some really nice class sizes we've shared those class sizes with you it's a big thanks over the summer we had just short of 100 people that were hired this this spring and summer so we have a lot of thanks to the the principals the assistant principals the directors and coordinators for running through all those the hiring processes and a big thanks to our cabinets for supporting them throughout this process so one of the things i just want to highlight is is in terms of of hot spots uh hotspots in terms of enrollment we are seeing numbers um particularly our first grade numbers higher at frost than what we had anticipated so i authorized
075a third section of first grade to be opened up there and then our fifth grade at longfellow was quite big and so we did open up a third section of fifth grade over at longfellow so um and what was what was nice is that mrs friedman was was in the process of hiring and so she was able to to find um a candidate um for that fifth grade position i believe it's already in place and already is already in place and the the teacher was there the first day of school yeah so that was what was very good uh i also want to note um that we are down to five blended sections um whereas in prior years we would average anywhere between 25 and 30 blended sections blended meaning multi-grade level so we are
076now down to five on the way down to as few as possible so and four of those five are second language learner classrooms yes yeah okay thanks bob uh and final thing that i have here is just uh and you have it at your desk we provided you with the 10-year long-range facilities plan uh this is not an action item or a discussion item for tonight it's purely informational uh we will bring it back um in september um for your consideration michael i just want to know if you get an extra bonus typing for the number of pages you produce for us no and that concludes our reports okay thank you we now move into the public comment section uh where the board will receive public comment for up to three minutes such comments should
077not include discussion of personnel matters it should be brought directly to the attention of the appropriate school official leticia do we have anybody who's filled out any cards and with us tonight no mike do we have anybody online no we don't how are you still looking at part of this as well i am nobody on social media okay well so much for our public comment section i think that that states pretty uh strongly that people are agreeing with what this district is is doing proposing and acting on and to my colleagues i i thank you and to dr connolly and your staff thank you very much because that's what's driving the lack of communication i think now we're moving to consent agenda before we entertain a motion uh i did have a chance to review
078the financials as usual i had just a couple quick questions that were easily dispatched we've got one freedom of information that was a commercial it's pretty standard and routine stuff we have no conference and travel expense approval requests tonight and [Music] that's it did anybody have anything that they needed to be pulled from the consent agenda see none the chair want to attain a motion i'll make the motion thank you arla did i hear a second thank you stacy yes bill i i vote yes stacey owen yes debbie yes phil arlen i stacy yes motion carries so before we move on to new business uh you just uh hired the the new interim assistant principal of london middle school and so i'm going to turn it over to anastasia netzel to introduce him yep come
079on up adam come on up just a little if that's okay um i just wanted to thank the board we're really excited to have mr adam greenberg join our london team adam has not only taught at london middle school but also at holmes middle school as well as twain elementary um and he's just jumped in and really added um some great energy and enthusiasm and creativity to our london team so thank you so much congratulations adam welcome anastasia good to see that you're back with us this year too as well all right she has a really cute picture of her baby absolutely okay um next is new business item and we have uh the 2021-2022 equity action plan on the agenda for consideration just a quick question and i'm not opposed to voting wouldn't we
080ordinarily vote next month on something that we see this month uh on our procedures no not necessarily no i mean it depends on what it is i mean i'm not opposed to it right yeah no i mean we the this the board has taken up um multiple things that they've seen on the same evening i mean um i mean this is a subject that we we have done a lot of conversation around um and so i would you know recommend that that the board act on it this evening because we would like to be able to start the work and i'm not opposed to acting on this one i just was bringing up for future reference if the board would like us to to move in that direction we can certainly bring it a month
081in advance but there are multiple things that that you have approved after having only one formal presentation on is that including the strategic plan does any board member have um a problem with acting the only thing that we've ever specifically put forward a month in advance our policy where we have a first reading and a second reading and your budget okay you know which is quite strategic right right you know anything else we you know we've had sometimes we've discussed something over a period of meetings but we've had many other things that have been presented to us and we voted on yeah bill's absolutely right policies is that format that we've used for many many years where it's introduced and then the following month we act on it okay if there's not a um a
082pro an objection a chair will entertain a motion to approval so moved second thank you any other comments jessica all right i vote yes stacy yes debbie yes phil i arlen i stacy yes motion carries okay uh next item our next meeting is thursday september 23rd the chair will now entertain a motion to go into closed session be resolved i'll just take this one folks the board of education approves the recess the ccsd 21 august 19th 2021 regular board meeting and convene in closed session to discuss 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 are specific volunteers of the public body or legal counsel for the public body including hearing testimony on a complaint lodged against an employee
083a specific individual who serves as an independent contractor in a park recreational educational setting or a volunteer of the public body against legal counsel for the public body to determine its validity and to discuss litigation when an action against affecting war on behalf of the particular public body has been filed and is pending before court our administrative tribunal or when the public body finds that an action is probable or imminent in which case the basis for the findings shall be recorded and entered into the minutes of the closed meeting and i need oxygen i couldn't quite hear that could you repeat that please what was that bill he said good job oh may i have a second so we can proceed second thank you let's yes stacy allen yes debbie yes phil yes arlen i
084stacy yes bill hi yes motion carries thank you we are now in the closed session and i would invite those in the audience to leave at your earliest