001I hereby call to order this committee of the whole meeting for Monday, June 8th, 2026. The time is 8:01 a.m. Will the clerk please call the role? >> Annart >> here. >> Christine Niccastro >> here. >> Alison Pless >> here. >> Annie Daling. Katie Hilton >> here. >> Judy Baloon >> here. Aaron Stone >> here. >> Thank you. I seek a motion to approve the minutes of the May 11th, 2026 committee of the whole and executive session meetings. >> I move to approve the minutes of the May 11th, 2026 committee of the whole and executive session meetings. >> May I have a second? >> Second. >> The motion has been made and seconded. Board members, are there any comments, errors, or omissions to the minutes? Okay, seeing none, will the clerk please call the role?
002>> Ann Hart, >> yes. >> Kristen Castro, >> yes. >> Alison Paffis, >> yes. >> Aaron Stone, >> yes. >> Katie Hilton, >> yes. >> Judy Berlin, >> yes. >> Thank you. The motion carries. All right, we will jump right into our very full agenda this morning, starting with facility development committee. Mrs. Diccastro, you um I'll turn it over to Mr. Boltier who has um three updates for us for non-classroom space use um a donation agreement from the PTA PTO's and the five-year capital project summary. >> Okay. So, one of the things that were part of the strategic plan that we're ending for this current year was taking a look at each building and the kind of the non-traditional classroom space usage. One of the things that we had noticed was that at each of
003our buildings, um, you know, there's lots of regular traditional classrooms, but there's also lots of really good things happening in those other smaller spaces and and the shapes of those spaces is uh can be quite different and the volume of them across different buildings can be quite different. Um, and really we're trying to uh just share with everybody the types of work that goes on in those spaces, which is really valuable, but also that quite literally if you give us, you know, even 150 square feet somewhere, we'll figure out how to use it in a productive way. Um, I think it's something that our admin team as we walk around each of the buildings, it's something that we realized and it's not something that gets shared or talked about very often. All right. So, this
004first slide is really just a reference. Um, I just wanted everybody to have a reference point of how many of what we consider traditional classrooms like sizes are in each building. And of course, each each building, all those rooms now have air conditioning. All right. So, we have a wide variety of of these types of smaller spaces outside of, you know, our traditional kind of rectangular uh regular classroom. Um from this particular uh review I excluded like the front office area. Those are pretty similar across each building. Um the gyms, the auditoriums and the the kitchen cafeterias. All right. So we see you know a few few things like uh you know staff work and breakout rooms and and lounges. Um but we also have a lot of you know smaller rooms where there's small
005group work. Um it could be someone's office that also meets with a few kids occasionally. Um we have lots of variety of you know anywhere from one to two to you know maybe a little handful more of students receiving a variety of instruction in the student services area. There's a lot of rooms that aren't quite maybe they're half the size of a traditional classroom where they're doing a variety of different things and sometimes off you know something that maybe feels like half the size of a classroom. Then there's even some kind of other spaces where uh you know a staff member can take one or two students for more focused um instruction or learning. Um, and then of course the learning commons which in the 2010s they all had uh pretty significant renovations and flexibility
006was a was a key part of all those renovations. All right, so here's just the summary numbers. Um, you'll see that it does v the number of these types of spaces are different across each building. And when I look at these buildings, not only here, but I think about other places that I've been these kind of spaces sometimes are the result of um you know, take a high crust for example, there many decades ago, part of that was built and then there's been several additions each time. And sometimes when you're doing an addition, you add on, you know, a little space here and there. Instead of letting it go to waste, you turn it into one or two or three small meeting rooms. or in the case when we did the keep uh expansion at
007Ramona right there by the main ent main entrance on the west side of the building we added four small spaces one was a conference room and then three of them are small group instruction rooms all right so here's the types of this is a two slides types of services um lots of reading and math intervention and then a lot of uh services provided by our our specialists across the district. Um speech social work psych psychologist. Um we do see some small group instruction. Um I can think particularly at um Highest they have a number of smaller rooms where a variety of um music instruction is happening with the number of kids that would be typically seen as much smaller than a traditional class size. um student services uh does a lot of work in these
008these smaller spaces and probably one of the more unique ones is that over at highest they have the broadcast rehearsal and production space there's a lot of uh second language services and then in the learning commons we have the technology and library and media instruction and even in some of the cases and uh reaching out to the principles to identify what was going on. Some of those spaces are not necessarily um staff to student, but they could be student student le like student only groups where they're meeting to work on a project or things along those lines. Um but so just to summarize as I said uh kind of the big takeaways was we wanted to share that there are a lot of these spaces in an high crest case that they have the most
009um a lot of pretty significant things going on and as I said if if we have some space we'll use it you know looking at the floor plan maps as I go through here um and trying to work with the principles to identify all these different spaces is there really aren't spaces within our buildings that aren't being used. Like there's not there's a couple of schools that had um you know a room that you know maybe could have been someone's office that's used for storage like such as like music or other um equipment that's used frequently. But it's not like there's a lot of rooms that are just you know filled with stuff that we don't use. like most of these spaces are um used regularly and um students are receiving services. Happy to answer
010any questions that anyone has on this. I know it's not something that we've regularly talk about. Um thank you. It was interesting to see. I was just curious is are there any requests that you continually hear or you know consistently hear from staff members in terms of um if they had more space what they would use it for or the >> Oh, I I think if you put out a survey to our building staff, whether it's administrators or staff that are in the classroom with students, I think you would get lots of requests for additional space. I know one of the things so right at the time that I joined D39 we were jumping into the McKenzie and Ramona keep expansion projects and one of the things that um it kind of worked well but
011it was um also needed in both cases um through those construction projects several like smaller meeting spaces or office spaces were created. um the how and the why at each building was a little different, but that was a very common theme and I know that once those projects were done, um the people at each of those buildings were incredibly thankful. So, >> okay. But nothing that is keeps coming bubbling up as a real need at at this point. >> No, no, no. Great. All right. Great. No, it was interesting to see. Thank you. >> Any other questions? Okay. >> All right. So, the second item is we have a couple of that for this summer PTA PTO donate project donation agreements. The background is each time one of our PTAs or PTO's does a significant
012project at one of our schools, the board enters into a donation agreement. just formally acknowledges that this group has raised a significant amount of money and that when the project is done, they are in fact donating and now it becomes um D39's um property. So, the first one is over at Central. The PTO is entirely funding a um auditorium like stage lighting renovation project. They've been working towards um full expectation for that to be completed by the first day of school. And then the other project is at Harper, the main playground, um will get replaced this summer. And I believe when the Harper building staff had checked, I think the that playground while in pretty in many cases decent shape relative to its age, I think the age of it goes back to the early
0132000s. Um, so, uh, the the new, uh, the new equipment, everyone's pretty excited about it. one um additional step that needs to be uh done before they can do the project in July is and this is a fairly common thing with uh current playground equipment. Um the height of the structures that all the vendors are selling exceeds the village code for accessory structures. So the village code's 15 ft and kind of the umbrella or covering over the main part is around 20. So um the village has a process where we go meet with the zoning board and then the full village board to uh seek a variance um for an additional 5 and a half ft. Um when I interestingly enough the equipment that is being planned for installation at Harper is at least the
014piece that's um needing a variance is the exact same piece that was installed at McKenzie I think three years ago. Um so yeah so by the time the summer's over we should have uh you know two nice additions to uh two of our buildings um thanks to the PTA and PTO. So, we'll have the those agreements up for board approval next Monday night. Is there any questions from anyone? >> That was not really a question, but I just wanted to thank the PTA and PTO's. I know the kids will totally love well both of those projects. So, that's Thank you. >> I agree. And I mean I think over the past five years or so maybe a little bit more it's been McKenzie Central Ramona Harper we've had you know playground um updates and significant
015work at all of those schools right? >> Yeah. I mean, I think right before I arrived, Central did their kindergarten playground >> and then I know since I've been here, that was maybe two years ago, they did their main playground. McKenzie did theirs. I think about three maybe four years ago. Ramona has now done two different ones. They did their main playground first and then they did a not only a placement but an enhancement for kindergarten. um which can also be used by the um the early childhood students. So, and then now Harper is is getting a new one. So, yeah, there's been um some pretty just I'd say half dozen maybe six, seven years uh some pretty significant projects completed and funded by the by the PTAs in the community. >> Yeah. No, it's
016excellent to see and we don't see the behind the scenes, but I know it's a lot of work on behalf of those parents and teams um in order to fund raise to that level. So, we are very grateful. And then um it's basically a gift. So, they've raised the money, they present this gift to the district, and then any ongoing repairs or needs um fall upon the district at that point. Right. >> Correct. >> Great. Um, well, we're very fortunate. >> All right, let me share my screen. >> Okay. All right. So, the next item is take just reviewing our five-year capital project summary. So, first let me start with uh what's going on starting well really started Friday into Saturday. Um the junior high's window replacement project where all the windows and and a
017lot of um doorways I think it's all but six classrooms and I think all but one entryway uh door that are being replaced. Um so that's a significant project that's underway and through our uh regular meetings with the construction team. Um you know given the size of that project that's a lot of you know windows and frames and doors uh the the vendors that are doing that work already have the material. So unlike some of the projects that we've seen in the last half dozen years, um you know, worrying about when and will when will stuff arrive uh doesn't doesn't appear to uh be an issue this year. So as long as they can get their crews here and have um good weather should be able to remove the old and uh you know go
018full speed ahead on installing the new. All right, now to our five-year capital project summary. So on here, um, you know, different times that I've presented this, there's been a long list or there's been a list going out several years. So right now, um, given where we're at in our strategic planning and where we're at on the the capital side, the only project I have on here that still is to be worked on is the window replacement project. Um and through our strategic planning process plus the timing of our 10-year life safety survey which is slated to uh occur during calendar year 27 2027 and then hopefully that would be filed with uh with the state board in the later parts of 2027 calendar year. Hopefully, all of that work will help us to inform
019and start to have conversations about what projects should we prioritize for the next five to six, seven years. Um, and then we can start to populate, what might be out there. Um so a couple of reminders how we've funded projects in the past combination of um operating funds that are available each year if we have um surpluses and then periodic uh bond issuances. And so looking at our current debt structure, um we're a couple years out from our next available window, but given kind of the lead time that we have over this year and next year, um I think that actually kind of lines up pretty really well. So we do have some ability uh coming up to issue bonds should that be needed. Um the biggest thing for I think for D39 at this
020point is getting a grasp of and a good handle where we're at, what projects would we like to um accomplish and then having those conversations trying to prioritize which which goes first, second, third um and when when might those projects occur. So, um, just because you don't see anything here right now in those out years doesn't mean something won't occur as we have we get more pieces of information and we have those conversations. Um, happy to answer any questions related to this topic or kind of the process that we're likely to proceed with over the next I don't know year, year and a half. I I just have a quick question on the on the note where it talks about uh the debt service extension based capacity becoming available with tax year 2028. I always
021get confused with my tax years. So when is that actually available? Like what what are we talking about? >> All right. So tax year 2028 um that money is collected in 2029. So we like if we really felt like we needed to do something, we could probably issue in the later parts of calendar year 2028 into 2029. Um that's that would be my that would be my take on it at this point. >> Okay. Thank you. Other questions? It's hard. >> Thank you. Um so is it is it fair to say then um looking out over the next five years that you know barring any real immediate need um for you know significant capital expenditures that we're going to wait until we get the results of the 10-year >> um audit. Okay. Because there may
022be things that come out of that that will be very costly. Um >> yeah, there there could be. Um yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think we're at a at a point where having all that information to prioritize a a plan for that five to seven on the shorter, but you know, potentially out to 10 or 12 years, maybe even longer depending upon how we want to how long of a look we want to take at things. Um, yeah, I think if you look at where we're at right now and what once we hit August with the new school year and then the window project being done, if you take that as like a new starting point looking forward, yeah, we're in a little bit of a lull compared to say the previous 12 to 15
023years where there's been a series of initiatives, learning commons, um, you know, kindergarten expansions for kindergarten, um, air conditioning, we've done a couple window projects which are quite large, um, Um, I think it for those that have really paid attention to what D39 is doing, it'll probably feel like a little bit of a wall, but that's like that's okay. I mean, I think if you look at other school districts, sometimes districts don't do much of anything for many years in a row and then they all of a sudden they decide, let's do a very large like referendum campaign. we've taken a much different approach where we're, you know, funding things without having to go down that road um over a very long period of time. Um >> okay. And not I wasn't here for the
024last 10 year safety review. Um coming out of that you what do we receive? Is it you know must do nice to do you know within a year within five years? >> Yeah. So there that is a very uh uh prescribed process for the engineers and architects to go through and all their findings that that they'll come up with. Um there's really no dollar limit. So, um, as we get closer, we can we'll we'll show some examples of what, but like there might be an emergency light, exit light that's out or they might say that this door is closing too fast. Okay. Well, those things need to be addressed, but the cost to do that is could be under $100 or under 200 bucks. So, like there's really no limit to the things. If they
025see something, it goes on there regardless if it's 100 or it's 10 million. Um, and so you'll have literally every area of like safety and and potential code violations in that report. It'll be done by school. Um, and when they do each vio each item that they've identified, they there will be like an estimated dollar amount, but then they'll classify it A, B, and C categories. If it's A um then you're the intention is you need to complete that within a year. That's the most serious. B is five years and then C is recommended. Recommended the general thought is that you would complete it over your 10 years. Um, and you know, that's that's kind of the order of and once everything's, you know, submitted uh to ISBY, then it's that's our uh tenure life
026safety survey of record. >> Okay. I'll just add it's really nice timing um because this will give us kind of that whole look across the district and at this point in time having completed so many of our nice to have projects but also those projects that we have known for some time needed to get done. We're at a really good um place right now to be able to do this 10-year life safety study to identify those mustd do, those shouldd dos, and then to begin to conceptualize, okay, and and what else would further support some of the goals that we have as part of our our new strategic plan. So, there'll be lots of discussion, lots of opportunity for input. Um, but the first step really is to get this life safety study done so
027that we can evaluate the full picture of our buildings uh before we start kind of conceiving of some of those other things that that we know are important and we want to get done sooner or later. Um, but we can then start kind of mapping out that plan for our buildings over the next 10 years and more. >> Sorry, when was that going to be complete? Did you say late 2027 for the Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Typically, um, because of the extend extensive amount of onsite investigation, they like to do breaks, preferably summertime. Like I don't know like certainly uh the people that are involved in in going through each of our buildings certainly they could do some of that at like a spring break or or winter break but the reality is um the summertime
028is just provides the best and so once they go through then takes them a little bit and just going by when things were filed and kind of accepted by ISBY last time in 2017 that stuff happened in like the September nomber, October, November time frame. Um, so that's what happened 10 years ago. I don't see why it would need to be any different this time. >> When I first came on the board, one of the capital projects was the parking issue or the drop off and pickup issues in front of Bulma at Junior High. Is that still on the table anywhere or will that be discussed as just a new item? Because it's not on this list. Is it just on permanent hold until someone brings it up again? >> I don't know that it's
029on permanent hold per se, but um it's definitely a desire that we have, I think. But um as we got into that project and seeing some of the requirements of doing the kind of redo that would provide I think the the kind of change we were looking for. Um that got really costly really quickly. Um, and so I think at least from my perspective, I think as we head into this next cycle, yes, I think it'll be a it'll be an item in the conversation. And this is where I think the conversation about how do we prioritize and where do we rank >> things falls? >> Yeah, I think it's not um on hold until somebody brings it up again. it will be incorporated and considered as part of the other projects that need to
030be considered along with right we know that air conditioning is another thing that um some of those spaces that aren't currently air conditioned we know that that's a desire of some people to consider and so certainly those those projects need to be placed on the list. we won't know in terms of prioritization the now next later planning for those projects um will be uh informed by the 10-year life safety study because if there's some really more immediate needs that u must be attended to we'll put that on the now list and then kind of plan out from there. So, um, so definitely still being considered, maybe not to the scope that it was originally conceptualized simply because the costs were so high for the full project. Um, we may want to scale that back a
031little bit and and really just focus on some of the front safety. Um, but there'll be conversations uh for sure as we as we hear the 10-year life safety study findings and then incorporate some of those projects as well as other projects that might um be nice to have or um desired by our community and the board. So definitely still out there that and air conditioning in those non-air spaces. Any other questions or comments? All right. Thank you. >> All right. Thank you. So, now we're moving on to school finance. Um, and we will be turning it back over to Mr. Boltire to discuss the district 39 and Wixie tenative budgets and annual resolutions and renewals. >> Okay. All right. So last month we went through our fiscal year 27 um D39 budget in more
032detail. Um today's more of just a reminder. This the the SL the page that I have up is just the summary of the operating funds um for next year just as a quick reference. Um so the steps for next Monday night related to this agenda item uh for the board um one of the steps is to approve a tenative budget at least 30 days prior to the time we vote that's taken care of between June and August more than enough time but then also set setting the public hearing date um for that budget which is a requirement as well. There's no questions. I can jump over to Wixie. >> All right. So, for Wixie, um I think we've talked about before, um as far as number of transactions, very small. Um let me So, uh
033for fiscal year 27, we'd be setting the budget at 250,000 for revenues and expenditures. Um there's really only a few different things going on there. Um it's kind of a in and out. There's no fund balance. We would have um uh Kristen's uh salary is part of is comes out of Wixie. Um we have some a little bit of uh evidence-based funding that comes from the state that's tied to Wixie. And then um because it's its own financial statements, it gets audited and we have a couple of disclosure requirements that requires uh publishing. So this overall the total 250 is uh a little bit higher than last year but um very similar in structure to what we've seen in in several prior years for this for this set of financial statements. Um are there any
034questions? >> Any questions? >> Okay. Great. >> All right. Then the last of the items. Uh so as we head into fiscal year 27, there are several things just kind of procedurally the board needs to tackle. Um approving the treasur's bond renewal, which is um a bond put on the D39 treasur. I hold the treasur's position for D39. That's something that's done annually. We also to fund our capital projects. We transfer money from operations and maintenance fund to the capital projects fund. There's a resolution for that. That budget set at 3.5 million for fiscal year 27. Then there's an interfund loan resolution that's at this point pretty precautionary, but I I kept it on here because I it's not out of the realm of possibility. um on and M fund spends a majority of its
035money early um because it's transferring money over to capital projects. Um we also potentially with what's going on in Cook County, you could see some delays there. Um and so this resolution just provides the opportunity to loan money on a temporary basis from the ED fund to the O andM fund should it need that during the school year. We've had this precautionary resolution passed um nearly every year in the in the past. Um and then the last one is because we don't have any meetings in the month of July to go from June yeah June 15th next Monday to I believe it's August 24th. Um that's a couple month period. the board approves a resolution authorizing the business office to continue to pay accounts payable invoices and essentially be good partners with all the vendors
036that we do business with over that period of time. Then the flip part of that is we will then provide a quite extensive list of checks written to the board at that August 24th um board meeting. And those are the resolutions for fiscal year 27. >> Thank you. Any questions on the resolutions? >> All right, then we will proceed with the agenda and move on to strategy. Miss Snow. >> Yes, we have three agenda items. I believe I'm turning this over to Dr. Kremcoli and Mrs. Jackson. >> Yes, thank you. Uh we have three very um extensive reports to share. So, uh, Kelly and I have agreed that we are going to try and, um, highlight some of the information from all of these, uh, reports in order to, um, share some of the celebrations
037as well as some of the opportunities for improvement. But we also want to acknowledge that there is so much information here that we're excited to share that if we're moving too quickly, please uh, stop us and ask some questions along the way. um because we have the spring assessment report. Um lots and lots of information to share and so much of this information helps us to review what's working well in our district in terms of our academic achievement and growth. Um and also to inform some of our planning for the next school year, our action planning for our strategic plan. So there's just a lot of information here. We're really excited to share this with you. And again, if we're moving too quickly, please let us know. I know the board has taken the time
038over the weekend to review this information. Um, and so hopefully if you have questions, you'll um, not hesitate to jump in. Then we have the social emotional learning assessment report. Um, that also will be a a pretty extensive report and also helps to inform some of our upcoming work. And then finally, the strategic plan overview um is a high level review of our draft anticipating a more formal presentation next week at the board of education meeting where we will seek approval of this plan. So with that, Kelly, I'll let you kick us off with the spring assessment report. >> All right. Uh so this report will uh share results from our spring administration of as web plus and NWA map. And so first we actually have Kristen Swanson will share uh results from the AS
039web plus assessments. So each year we use ASB loud. We use A as web plus to assess our kindergarten and first grade students in early literacy and early numeracy. These are one-on-one assessments and they take only a few minutes per child, but they provide us with valuable information that we can use then to identify students who may need enrichment or intervention. Um you can go ahead to the next one. So we assess our students three times a year in the fall, winter, and spring. And the graphs you see here are for the early literacy in the spring. And currently more than 80% of our students are meeting the benchmark of average or above. So those students are on track and considered at low risk academically. Uh when a student falls below the threshold, our building
040teams immediately step in to analyze their performance and they coordinate them the necessary interventions. and they also have those same discussions about students who are falling at the very top of our range for students. Next one. So, this is our KPI and we'll talk a little bit more about this at the board meeting as well, but I am really thrilled to announce that we've officially met our early literacy goals as we close out the strategic plan. This success is the direct result of a deliberate and concentrated focus on our foundational literacy skills. Over the last three years, we didn't just change what we taught. We changed how we supported our educators. We fiercely protected our daily instructional time and backed our teachers with intensive training and ongoing coaching from literacy specialists. Our instructional coaches have
041been vital to this journey, and they will continue to provide the essential hands-on support to both our veteran and incoming staff to sustain this momentum. As you can see, our students are 92% of our students met our our goal for early literacy. And that is just a fantastic um work. We've done such good job. Moving on, next one. Um here are the results of our early numerousy measures. So, similar to our early literacy, we assess all of our kindergarten and first grade students three times a year. And you can see here that we have over 80% of our students that are meeting or exceeding that that benchmark of average or above. So again, strong performance there. And then I'm equally proud to share that we've also met our early numerousy goal. So our goal was
042to have 85% of our students at or above average and here we're at 89% in the spring. The driving force behind this achievement was a really deep deep investment in teacher professional development that focused on mathematical reasoning. Our class classrooms feature highly intentional active routines including foundational inquiry, collaborative problem solving, and interactive math games. This robust approach has empowered our students and the results just really speak for themselves. Our students are doing such a great job at that K1 level. We're excited to see what they do as they move on. All right. Similar to Ames, we take the NWA MAP assessments or measures of academic pro progress three times a year in fall, winter, and spring. This morning, I'll share with you the results from our spring assessment in both math and reading. As a
043reminder, we shared this past fall that NWA conducted a norm study and implemented new norms this academic year. As historical longitudinal data is presented to the uh board of education, it's important to note that when comparing year-over-year, there's a slight difference due to this change in norms. Most students this year will typically have a higher percentile rank compared to previous years with the 2020 norms. uh for the same writ score. So in some of these slides, we'll p we'll be comparing percentiles and so that's where um the norms change will happen or be reflected. Um when we compare RIT over year-over-year, it's the same numbers. Um a couple of things before we dive in. Um it's important to remember that MAP is norm reference, not criterion reference. This means that we're comparing district 39 student
044scores to students across the country via percentile ranking rather than measuring mastery of grade level curriculum or standards. So for example, being in the 90th percentile means that a student has performed equal to or better than 90% of the students in their norm group um rather than meeting 90% of grade level standards. Uh the value of NWA lies in its ability to allow us to see how students progress and grow over time. generally over the course of a school year. And while it offers insights into readiness for material, it again does not ma measure mastery of that grade level material. We use other more sensitive measures um unit to unit or lesson to lesson for that. Um the next slides will feature writ scores. The writ score is based on a rash unit which is
045a measurement on a common equal interval scale used to estimate a student's academic achievement and track growth over time regardless of their grade level. So the scale that we use is the same for all grades. Um it's an equal interval scale meaning that a score increase of a certain amount represents the same amount of academic growth. So a change in 10 writ score or writ points from 210 to 220 is the same as 220 to 230 and so on. Uh the NWA map is an adaptive assessment meaning that the difficulty and complexity of questions changes as students answer questions correctly or incorrectly. And as was shared this fall, um it now incorporates the enhanced item selection algorithm or EISA, ESSA. Um and it starts students out then at a more targeted question for their grade
046level. So fifth grade students would get more targeted questions in reading and math at their grade level and then it would move according to their answers. So the next two slides are going to give an overview of the last five years of achievement in spring based on grade level mean RIT scores. The black bar on the right you see is the national mean writ and uh the orange bar that you see closest to that black bar is for this year. This is reading and this is math. Over the past five years, academic achievement in district 39 has consistently exceeded the national mean across all grade levels. This success is a celebration of the dedicated instruction taking place in our reading and math classrooms and the commitment of our staff to meet the needs of all
047of our students. Next, we have a few different charts. Um, the first chart is students who are performing above the 20th percent 25th, excuse me, percentile on NWA math. We wanted to share how students are performing at the lower and higher percentiles. So this slide shows the 25th. The next slide will show the 90th percentile um of students performing at or above uh that percentile. This you'll see the percentages of students um on the bottom of each row for one for reading, one for math in the blue. That's for this year. Um and uh the results the rest of the graph shows our scores for the previous years. Due to the new norms, you'll see many grade levels this year are the same or slightly higher than years past. And again, these numbers just reflect
048the the high quality classroom instruction and targeted intervention supporting our students in reading and math. Many of these are at 98th, 99th, 100 percentile. So we're really at the top there for the students at the 20th 25th percentile on NWA map. If you look at this graph and the following graphs vertically, those are comparing different groups of students. If you look diagonally, um that's the cohort of students. We'll show co cohorts later on as well. So the next chart um is the opposite end of the spectrum. This is the 90th percentile on NWA map. So um these are students who are performing at or above the 90th percentile. You can see that uh in reading we have more than 40% of students in almost every grade level performing at or above the 90th percentile. And
049in math um we have most of our grade levels with 30% or more of students. Having those high percentages of students performing above the 90th percentile just shows that our core instruction is incredibly incredibly strong and the daily curric curriculum is rigorous and deeply aligned with high academic standards and delivered effectively by our classroom teachers. Um this also shows us that our teachers are really taking the steps to enrich where needed for our students. >> Yes, I ask a quick question while we're on this slide. Mhm. Um because I'm not sure once we get to the end if I'll be able to remember which one it was. So, thank you. Um so, looking at the top chart there for reading some of those percent changes from 2025 to 2026, are we seeing a little bit
050of that that norm? >> Yes. >> Adjustment there. >> Some because these are percentile the 90th percentile has adjusted. So, we will see higher percentages of our students scoring in there. Yes. Thank you. >> Any other questions? >> All right. >> I'll just add on that slide. It is really important. We've spent a lot of time recently talking about our advanced learners and the growth and you'll see some of that data here. You'll see some of it as we continue to build out um for the upcoming year. um the the short cycle improvement efforts that we're going to really focus on in that um upper group of advanced learners and and how we're monitoring their growth. But um I just I want to acknowledge here the tremendous population of students who are performing at the
05190th percentile or above. And that allows within our general education classroom for teachers when they're doing grouping, which is part of the practice of all of our teachers, um, they are able to create those cohorts within their classroom of students who are at the 90th percentile or above. in that really um just allows us to meet the needs of a variety of learners within our general education classroom because there are like peers who can be grouped and enriched within their classrooms. That's not to say that there isn't still that need for additional enrichment. Um but it does tell us a little bit more about the populations we're serving within our general education classrooms which might look a little bit different from some other districts. um throughout the state. And as as Kelly mentioned, it it
052is further evidence that the the ongoing classroom instruction is so rigorous. The academic achievement of our students is is um rigorous in in their growth as well. So, there's work to be done as we continue to examine how our students are growing. And yet um there are these cohorts of students in every classroom that are performing above the 90th percentile um and can be uh served in that way. you. Um so going from the extremes then to our 50th percentile and again um we have high numbers over 80% at each grade level in reading and math performing at or above the 50th percentile on NWA math. Um so in a standard national distribution you'd expect about 50% of students to be above average and about 50% below. Um so when we have consistently have numbers
053that are this high and you can see over time even with that adjustment for the percentiles we consistently have these high numbers over time. Um it just means that our everyday standard classroom instruction is highly rigorous and that the floor has been raised for everybody. So we have students that are really doing well across the board and it's just a huge celebration for us. So this slide um and the next one will show similar information to that 50th percentile chart that I just showed you, but now it's in graph form and it highlights the cohort trends over time. Um for students, this is for reading um for students who are at or above the 50th percentile. Um you'll notice second graders only have one bar because they take uh math beginning in second grade. Um
054but as we get up to eighth grade, you'll see that they have the past five years. Um current fifth graders, for example, 88% are performing above the 50th percentile in reading. There were 87% last year, 83% the previous year, and so on. Again, this does take into account the new norms. And then this chart is for math So, as we continue to look at the RIT scores in different ways, the following graphs will now show grade level performance year-over-year, not cohort performance. Keep in mind, these are different groups of students, and these are just showing RIT scores, not percentiles. So, these RIT scores have not changed with the new norms. Um, the graphs show average spring writ scores in reading and math for second graders over the past five years. And uh we are looking
055really for any significant increases or decreases over time. There's not exactly um there's not exact guidance for significant changes, but we would look at like a fivepoint swing as something we'd want to investigate further. You can see um and you'll see across the board that things are fairly consistent. This slide shows second grade reading broken into three subcategories: literary text, informational text, and vocabulary. Here again, we're fairly consistent. There are some fluctuations um and and you'll see those, but um nothing that's particularly inconsistent over time. We are really excited for the implementation of our new ELA curriculum and um we know that that will bring additional rigor to our classroom. So um that that will be exciting to see how these adjust um with the years to come. This is second grade math. Um this
056is actually the math slide broken down into the subcategories of operations and algebraic thinking, numbers and operations, measurement and data and geometry. So we look in at these we do keep in mind um the enhanced item selection algorithm. So this is different from the norming but this is something that we have added this year or that map has added this year. Um and that is the one that targets them directly at a grade level. So we see some jumps for example from the 2011 to the 213 in geometry um which could be a reflection of getting more targeted questions at their grade level and then um adjusting based on that. So, uh, that that is something that we we will dig into further, but um it's nice to see that jump there with that. >>
057Oh, sorry. Yep. Go ahead. >> Does that mean you're saying so like the first question that they get is more grade level and then depending on how they answer it increases. But >> yeah, where previously students might get it, it would be based on like how they did previously. So, and this is second grade, so it it's still taking time to figure out where they are, but um because it's more targeted to their grade level and not maybe of a fourth >> fourth grade level question, then they're able to get it correct >> more often. Yes. And then it'll build them up. So, >> and that's new this year. >> That's been implemented this year. Yes. >> And is that true through every grade? >> Yes. >> Okay. >> Yep. So, as I move through
058the next slides, I'm going to go through the next ones more quickly because they follow the same pattern. So, it'll be reading and math um over time. Um and then it's broken down by the reading subcategories and the math subcategories for each grade level. So, this is third grade, reading, math. And there again, you see some of those jumps. >> Geometry was having a year. It's it's a kind of a pattern that we see and it it could also be a reflection of the more in-depth instruction that we're doing. Uh especially with number corner where we do a lot of patterns and shapes. Um it could play a part in that as well. This is fourth grade reading and math. Reading broken down by subcategory. Math by subcategory. Fifth grade reading and math. Reading very
059consistent. Math. Sixth grade reading and math. Sixth grade reading. Sixth grade math. Seventh grade reading and math. Seventh grade reading. Seventh grade math. and eighth grade reading and math. Eighth grade reading, eighth grade math. Can I just ask one more question about the test? Sorry. Um, so this is presumably sort of like the same test. So you could be a fifth grader taking this test and be reaching eighth grade questions. Is that true? Okay. What if you're an eighth grader? Is there room? Are you can you go up? Can you be taking? >> You can, but the level of stretch is a little bit less. So, you tend, you know, when we see scores in the 250s, 260s, 270s, and these are the the mean scores, right? So, this is an average of of what
060all the students do, then their growth potential is is less as they get older. Um because it does it is through eighth grade. >> Um Kelly, a quick question. Well, first of all, these math scores are excellent to see um across the board and um and then I was just looking at the reading and so would it be safe to assume um that looking at the Ames Web early literacy scores and what we're seeing there that hopefully and you know it's likely that we'll see some increases in reading in the years ahead. Yes, I I believe so. And that coupled with our new ELA curriculum, which really focuses a lot on building on those foundational um literacy skills and then taking students further. Um I I believe that those two will work together to help
061enhance the reading. >> Yeah, great to see. >> I'll add to that, too. um in that as we have done some professional development around math, we've really strengthened again not only the resources we're using, but how we're teaching um math in our district. And the same will be true over these next couple of years as we um begin to implement these new resources. is there'll be a lot of coaching and and support professional learning for how to use them and the way in which we're teaching reading and language arts especially at those upper grade levels fifth through 8th grade where um there'll be some alignment and some opportunities for collaboration. So um a lot of what you'll hear in just a bit on our strategic plan um some of those aims are really supported by
062some of the foundational work that we've done over the last couple of years. So, we're excited to uh support our teachers and our students over these next couple of years, too. >> We actually have eighth grade teachers here today doing ELA work. So, >> yeah. I mean, it's >> Yeah. No rest. Um Yeah. I mean, the increases are great to see and just um you know, obviously you just don't hand over new curriculum and make a um you know, a quick change like that. I know it's been lots of research, lots of training. the implementation and the learning throughout everything that goes into it. Um it's um you know a big big um accomplishment for everyone involved. So thank you. >> Yeah. And I think especially with math at the higher grade levels, of course,
063we have bridges at K4, but um our fifth through 8th grade math teachers have been doing a ton of work with uh building thinking classrooms and really focusing and it's actually not really well measured by math because it is a multiple choice type of test, but they've been doing a lot more discourse, a lot more problem solving in the classroom and focusing on um how to explain your thinking using different strategies. Um, so those are things that students hopefully are internalizing as well as they approach a more multiple choice type of test and are problem solving that way as well. >> Right. >> Great. Thanks. >> So now when we look previously, I talked about the cohort views. Um, we take a look at how a group is doing over time in reading and math.
064So we're first going to look at the reading progressions um for the cohorts. uh and and we really want to see how they are um performing with respect to themselves and also how does that line up with the national average and generally we follow um the same sort of slope as the as the national average but just at a higher level. So this is second grade. There's only two points because they've only taken um the map this year. This is third grade in reading. Fourth grade in reading, fifth grade in reading, sixth grade reading, seventh grade reading and eighth grade reading. Um and then we will move to the cohort view in math. Um, something that I think you'll find interesting as we look through the map or the map math is what I just
065mentioned is we tend to follow the national mean slope over time but this year we have several groups that are actually progressing at a higher rate than um the national mean which is um also exciting to see. So this is third grade that would be an example of that where um you can see that the district 39 graph is a lot more steep. Fifth grade, sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade. So after looking at the cohorts over time, then we're going to move to student growth. So you kind of see seen a picture of that um as we look at the cohorts. But um we want to move to this uh because really this is where the value of map lies is in looking at growth over time and um we want to take a
066deep dive into how our students have progressed over the course of the school year because then that helps us to influence where we may need to make make adjustments and um support students more. Again, as a reminder, uh we look at fall to spring for MAP growth and a student receives a growth projection after the fall test administration. These growth projections are based on several factors including the grade level that they're at, their starting RIT score, the subject matter, and also it's based on how thousands of similar students based who take MAP across the country grew. So that's how they set those growth projections. It's not necessarily individualized per student. It's more based on that um mean across that grade level. Um they're not growth targets. Sometimes people will refer to them as growth targets.
067It's not individualized in that way, but it's rather an estimate of what reasonable growth might be for a particular student. NWA also is statistically designed to meet 50 to have 50% of students meet their growth projections and 50% to not meet. Um when when we look at these and and generally historically uh 50% to 60% of students nationwide meet or exceed their growth projection. Um when a school district has 60% or more of its students meeting or exceeding their individual growth projections on NW E map D NWA map say that 10 times. Um it indicates an exceptionally high performing and highly effective system. Um that just shows us that our teachers are actively using data throughout the year adjusting their lesson plans targeting specific student needs. Um, and teachers are also collaborating with specialists, coaches,
068and administrators to collaborate for effective instruction. So, these next slides will show graphs for the past five years of the percent of students meeting their expected growth in reading and math at each grade. So, this is second grade and this is uh the orange bar is for the spring of 2026. So, 65% of students in reading and 75% of students in math. This is third grade. >> 65% in reading, 75% in or sorry 81% in math, 70% in reading. I was on my wrong page. Um, this is fourth grade. 63% in reading, 65% in math. Fifth grade, 62% reading, 77% math. Sixth grade, 70% in reading, 76% in math. Seventh grade, 65% reading, 72% math. And eighth grade, 44% reading and 66% math. So a brief summary of this um we we looked at our
069achievement first. Our district 39 student achievement is um really comparable to our previous years and we continue to outperform the national average. Um and in growth um we have almost all of our grade levels in that 62 to 70% uh range of students meeting their uh expected growth. and grade eight is slightly lower than that 50% target at 44% but over time it has uh continued to improve. Um in math uh we have all of our grades in that 65 to 81% range. So really higher than that national um kind of benchmark of 50%. So now we've looked at achievement and growth in isolation and now we want to look at them together. The next slides will show students at each grade level in each of four categories. So the percent of students in each
070of four categories uh high achievement and high growth, low achievement, high growth, high achievement and low growth, and low achievement and low growth. As we look at this slides, as at these slides, we're looking for the numbers of students in both the high growth categories to increase over time. because we are looking to target that growth. We want to see students um meeting their growth expectations on MAP but also continuing to experience high levels of growth as we target our instruction. So this is second grade. Um we're looking again at that blue bar that 58% for 2026 and the green bar 7%. And then we'd want to dig into who are those students who are experiencing low growth and how can might we target them at a at a better rate to um foster more
071growth for them. This is third grade. Again, these are reading, fourth grade, fifth grade, sixth grade reading, seventh grade reading, eighth grade reading. So again when we talked at the the last uh group of slides we talked about that 44%. Um but you can see that that is increasing with time and what we are particularly interested in here is that the whoops I'm sorry the low achievement low growth is is decreasing with time. We really want to target that 42% to see where we can help them to grow. >> Sorry Kelly high achievement how is that defined? Um those are students who are meeting um their growth achievements um at a higher rate than expected. Yeah. Exceeding. >> I'm confused with what that yellow band is meant to show. >> That's showing students Oh, I'm
072sorry. High achievement is a high RIT score. Sorry. Or defined by what though? >> Um basically the the cortiles of like the 75th and above. >> 75th and above. Okay. So the the yellow section are high achieving students that are not reaching their targets. Is that or they're >> Yeah. Yeah. They're not achieving their um expected growth. Yes. So then as we go into math achievement status and growth, um these are the same slides but for math. Um, I think it's it's great to see again over time these have the blue and the green are getting bigger for almost every grade level. Fifth grade. Sixth grade. seventh grade and eighth grade. So, finally, I'm going to give us a preview of our KPI goals. We'll go over this um at the board meeting next week
073with our um end of the year strategic plan report, but um it is very exciting to us um to report out on our KPI goals. Um this is first our aggregated spring achievement data by year. Um and for NWA MAP achievement we have met our achievement goals in both ELA and MAT. So you can see there on the bottom our KPI we have less um 4% or less in low we have 2%. And we have 50% or more in high and currently we have 51% of students in that high average category or above. And then in math achievement we have 4% or less in low which is we have 1% actually currently and uh the goal is 55% or more in the high categories and we have 66%. Um so this is just a reflection
074that teachers have spent many hours learning through professional development and training about highly engaging instructional practices and they've put those into practice in the classroom. Additionally, assessment frameworks have been increasingly unified across grade levels. Um, and so by leveraging high quality instructional resources, prioritizing that student engagement, we've created a more responsive learning environment, um, that really helps to enrich or target intervention where needed. As we move to the growth data, um, you'll see here also we've reached a historic milestone. for the first time we've met all achievement or all growth goals across both ELA and math in um both the high and the low growth cohorts. So that's really exciting. Um so you can see uh for reading our goal is 50% or less in that low category. We have 9% currently. Um and the
075goal is 25% or more in the high growth category and we have 26%. Um in math uh the goal is 15% or less in low. We currently have 8%. And the goal is 30% or more in high and the um current is 36%. >> Could you go back one slide? I just want to mention something to the board on really both of these slides. Um our these are our key performance indicators for our five-year strategic plan. And one of the things we've been learning as we have continued to um plan for our upcoming strategic plan is that um these are those kind of like long range accountability measures um which have been really helpful for us to track over time um but less helpful for teachers on a day-to-day basis as they're planning and um
076making adjustments in their work with students. And so one of the things you'll hear us talking about not only as we present our strategic plan, but as we um start to look forward to our next um action steps for next year and beyond. We're really focusing on short cycle improvement efforts in monitoring the growth of students on a on a shorter cycle. So um really evaluating if what we're doing is working. So, this has been kind of a five-year trajectory, and we're so proud to be able to report that um our accountability measures are really helping us um and affirming the work that we've been doing over time. We now want to turn our attention to that those short cycles. So, as we start to build out our scorecard, which will happen over the summer
077and as we look into next year, um the scorecard will continue to include these key performance indicators as kind of that that umbrella accountability measure, but we're going to start to dig in a little bit more to the growth of each student and across small cohort cohorts of students. We're really excited about that work. um and we'll continue to learn as we as we go in that regard. So, um these key performance indicators will continue to be important in that long range planning, but we're really starting to look at little what we're calling little data that that data that's informing every day or every week or every quarter over quarter is what we're doing working for our students. So look for that as we start to talk not only about our strategic plan but as
078we plan for our um action steps looking into next year >> and that little data obviously is not going to be able to come from MAP since they're not >> That's right. Exactly. Exactly. So more of the common assessments, more of the goal setting with our students. Um so many of our newer curricular resources will help to inform some of that. And we're looking at some of our assessments as well to see where we can um really be able to evaluate quarter over quarter what's happening for our students in um in again in more of those short cycle um efforts especially as we now start to look at some of those cohorts. So, we know that um we've heard from um our community that uh really looking at our advanced learners, our our high high
079achieving students, making sure that they're growing quarter over quarter is something we really want to dig into along with some of our students who maybe haven't seen the kind of growth. So, um here we're we're looking at that that five and four 2% of students who are in the the lower achievement and lower growth. Really digging in on those cohorts of students. we know what do what we're doing for most students is working and working well. So now we get the opportunity to really dig in on our very advanced students as well as our students who maybe aren't growing as much as we'd like and um and do some short cycle improvement efforts there. Um I was related to that I was going to ask a question about I don't know if you know year-over-year
080if the sort of the same kids are in the same buckets like are the high growers always high growers or do they change or >> depends on the student. It it does fluctuate um I >> I we haven't dug in at that level but this this what um Dr. Miss Koli is talking about will allow us to really kind of break down those different groups, those different cohorts and and see is this a student who over time is continuing to not meet their growth expectation and in what areas is that so then we can help to intervene to to support them as needed. So, >> okay. Thank you, >> Judy. something that um Allison said um NWA does MAP does have a very it has a lot of features that can actually help teachers differentiate
081within their classroom. >> Yes, >> a teacher can literally push a button and learn that these eight children know this skill and these five children still need it. So if we aren't using those as we increase our our training and differentiation that might be something that would help look at that that very those smaller cohorts that you're talking about the very individual within a classroom or within a grade level or within a school rather than systemwide. they do have an awful lot of tools that are available to teachers >> and I would yeah I'm sorry um I would just say our teachers many of our teachers do use those features um at a at a classroom level I think what Dr. Krocoli is is is talking about is that we would we would want them
082to continue to use those in conjunction with their classroom >> data. So we want to we want to really triangulate the data a little bit more effectively. It's cool. Thanks. Um, so I think that this really brings us to the the end of our um our presentation and so if there's any questions I'm any further questions I'm happy to >> board members any additional questions or comments? >> Yeah. No, it's so much information and so clearly presented and so many accomplishments and things to be proud of, but while at the same time looking for opportunities. It's it's all was very clear. Thank you. I really appreciate the RIT score comparison stuff, too, just because of the the reorming really yuse data or something. It makes it harder to look at over time. So, thank you.
083All right, I am going to move on now to our um SEAL report. Um so another report for us. Um just a second. Let me just get to that one on my screen. Another report to just um highlight some of our progress over time. And um and sorry I have lots of presentations up today. Um and uh and and and really look at the work that's been done over the course of the last five years. Um and so here you go. No, that's not it. me for ticking. There we go. There. All right. Um so, um just as a reminder, we use two assessment tools. We have our u strength-based assessments of insights, which is um early, it's broken up into two grade levels, um early elementary and late elementary. Um and then we use
084the panorama mindsets, essentials, skills, and habits, which is fifth through 8th grade. Um these are used to help look at trends um and provide information to teachers for instructional purposes. Again, similar to when we were just talking about map, these are highlevel looks at um students. We we can get the information at an individualized level. Um but they are limited in really what they're telling us at the individualized level. So I'll talk about that a little bit at the end. Um but first um let's just look at insights. This is um students take this narrated assessment um in grades kindergarten through fourth grade. Um they're given uh essentially a situations to which they have to respond. Um some tasks will challenge self-control. others have them identify emotions um or respond to what the the child
085should do next in um a situation with problem solving. Um the early elementary measures social emotional competency development in four areas: emotion recognition, social perspective taking, social problem solving, and self-control. And the late elementary measures development in understanding others, social problem solving, self-control, and self-awareness. Um when we see results they're divided into four performance levels above average, average, below average, and well below average. So this these are a sidebyside comparison of fall to spring. Um and these it shows insights from the start of the year um in the time one and then insights in the second um administration of that assessment. um we take it generally in October and in May. Um so you can see here um the springs 95.4% of students in the overall category um for time two demonstrated average or above
086average strengths um that we put together the two green areas in order to get that percentage. Um the four other columns break down the individual competency areas. We really target uh emotion and social perspective taking at the kindergarten through third grade level. Um this fall we had 96% of students in the average or above average on um social perspective taking and this spring we had 95.1%. Um we are looking to increase but those are very um those are very on par. It's it's very close to uh maintaining. And this fall there were 87.1% of students in the average and above average categories for emotion recognition. This spring was 90.8. So we did increase there. So just like I said, we didn't meet the the increasing. When you're at a 96.1% to start the year, it's
087very difficult to increase over time. Um but uh we are we kind of look at that as as on par with the the beginning of the year. Um it is uh we do focus a lot with our social emotional curriculum on emotion recognition, understanding the emotions of others. Um so that increase in that area is is nice to see. Um and then the LE uh again this is late elementary and similarly we focus on two areas. social problem solving and understanding others. You'll see that in social problem solving we went from 91.8% 8% to 88% in those green categories and in understanding others we maintained with um 97.7% and 97.1% again that's basically maintaining um we while we didn't meet the increase over time on understanding others um we do look at that as on
088par um the social problem solving uh going down slightly and increasing in that um slightly below average category. Um, that would be something that we might dig into or look at as we go into next year. Are there specific lessons we can target with that? We also know that this is the end of the year. Um, and so there may be more conflicts coming up and more struggles with social problem solving, especially with our fourth graders who are the students that take this. Um, as we move on, we look at the mesh. Um it's a survey given to fifth through eighth graders and there are two components um social emotional competencies and then also the student supports and environment. So this is the fall report. You saw this in the fall. Um we really are
089t looking at the social awareness here and the emotion regulation here. Um we do historically very well in the social emotional competencies from fall to spring. Um while we may increase or decrease slightly over the course of the year, we do really still uh maintain that 99th percentile when compared with other um middle schools across the country. And um we the the percentiles of or the percent favorable responses is generally high for our students um showing really that they are um pretty strong in their social emotional competencies. ES especially these four areas here. This is uh 6th through 8th grade. You can see 99th 90th percentile. Again, social awareness and emotional regulation are our target areas. And um we've seen some nice increases over the course of the year with those social emotional competencies for
090sixth through 8th graders. Um I think we have spent a lot of time especially at sixth through 8th grade with um isolating time for specific instruction in social emotional learning. Um through the the the extension of the home room period in the daily 25m minute home room through setting up a scope and sequence for um fifth through 8th grade teachers to um do instruction in social emotional learning. Um and so we uh these these increases help us to see that um that's trending the right way with time. Um as we look at the student supports and environment, this is fifth grade from the fall. You can see again in sense of belonging and valuing of school, we are very high as compared to other middle schools nationwide. Um we have decent percent favorable uh percentages
091there. Um we have however seen some slight decreases in areas um the largest being in school climate. So dug in a little bit there at to some of the specific questions to see where those decreases happened. Um looking at valuing of school um the question about how useful do you think school will be to you in your future? Remember they're taking this in the spring. Um was down seven points. And then um the question about how interesting do you find the things that you learn was down fifth five points which thinking about fifth graders they're coming into highest super jazzed and um by the end of the year they might be a little bit more middle schooly in their thinking. Um and then sense of belonging was one area too that we really wanted to
092dig in to. Um how much support do the adults at your school give you was down 11 points. And I'll talk about this a little bit when we get to um some slides further on um when we talk about um CSCI, but that was one area that um we want to take a look at. And then how well do people understand the kind of person you are was down five points. Um school climate, we saw our largest decrease. Um we do measure school climate really more thoroughly with the CSCI. Um, and so these really, um, I think there were some similar patterns with what we found with RCSCI. So, question about how well do students follow the rules of your school was down 14 points. If you'll recall, we talked a little bit about um,
093student reactions to school rules um, when we presented the CSCI information in uh, last month. And then, how often do your teachers seem excited to be teaching your classes? Um, that went down 15 points. So, I think that that's again that's just a reflection of probably the time of the year. >> So, Kelly, sorry, these are not year-over-year. They're fall to spring. >> These are fall to spring. Yeah, just making sure. >> Fall to spring. >> I do have a slide that'll show year over year a different story >> progress. Yes. >> Um Kelly, just another quick question. Um, with fifth grade, sometimes I wonder in looking at this data and comparing it to national because you think like, well, don't most kids, we're comparing it to national trends and if we're seeing a decrease,
094why aren't we seeing that decrease nationally? Um, >> but in fifth grade, it seems like a lot of districts are K through five. >> Yeah. >> So, our fifth graders are in >> they're kind of in that weird area of middle school. >> Yeah. Yep. which you know you would you would expect it to be a little bit different if you're fifth and sixth versus you know fifth graders at the you know the oldest in the school and the excite I don't know it's just a a little >> it's an elementary mindset when they're in elementary school rather than a middle school mindset where they have >> right okay >> probably some peers who might be a little more jaded >> yep I think it's also important to note and Kelly had it on some
095of the pre previous slides um that blue box on the right hand side compares our performance to national uh nationally. So, we wouldn't expect middle school students to be saying they love school all the time necessarily. And when you compare nationally, that would be true nationally, but our scores are still falling at that 99th percentile um compared to the na what we expect nationally. So, those are some noteworthy um just right kids will respond truthfully to these questions. Um and yet um our students uh experiences are are are pretty positive when you compare them nationally. >> Yeah. Question. >> Oh, I was just wondering um is this assessment do you find in other districts nationally is it given twice or is it given once? >> Um it varies but I most of them do give
096a fall and a spring. Sometimes they'll even give a midyear. >> Okay. Um the the percentiles though do not account for the time of the year. Okay. Yeah. Um so then we move to mesh for this is our fall report from the sixth through eighth graders. Um and again we're targeting sense of belonging and valuing of school to increase. Um and you'll see here, yay. Um our sense of belonging did experience an increase this year. Um some areas that uh fostered that increase was uh how much respect do students at your school show you? How well do people understand the kind of person you are and how much support do adults give you? So whereas those were some of the decreases that we saw with fifth grade, some of our increases um were mirrored at
097at sixth through eighth grade. So, um I that's just a real celebration. You guys know how often we've talked about this and I think it's a real uh celebration of the work that's been done at again all of our grade levels um fifth through 8th grade with in incorporating SEAL on a regular basis into instruction and really um prioritizing that with our students um not only um with that home room time but throughout their school day. Um, our teachers have done a ton of training too with the castle standards with um really understanding what the different um competencies are and it's been great to see that growth over time. I think if you had asked five years ago um if our teachers know all of the the uh castle competencies, I don't know that that
098we would have 100% there and I think we're pretty darn close to it now. So, um that's exciting. Um, we did see a decrease here also in school climate. Um, again, many of the same question areas. Uh, how often do teachers seem to be excited to be teaching? How fair are the rules? Um, and how positive or negative is the school? Is the mood in your building? Those were all decreases. Um, so our goal again is to increase fifth grade students for sense of belonging. we did not meet that. But I will show you the year-over-year and you'll see that it does trend upward over the past five years. Um, and also in valuing of school. Um, and then the increase on sense of belonging there, we did meet that one. Um, and then we
099only decreased by one point there for valuing of school. Again, here's this uh historical data. So we have recently adopted that the Wayfinder curriculum fifth through 8th grade and that has led to a lot more uh prioritization of of SEAL in the classroom. And so as we look at this we see um over time uh that sense of belonging. I think by the spring we we do um stay in that 70s area for fifth grade. I think for sixth grade, sixth through 8th grade, you see 2021, we started at 54, we ended at 54 positive and then by 25 26, we are at 69 and 72. So even if we had decreased like we did last year, we're still higher than five years ago before we started all of these efforts. on valuing of school.
100It's a similar story where we have have really um with time um increased or maintained that level of uh percentage favorable um over over time. So um even in spite of the decreases, I think we're still doing good work there at um supporting our kids in how they they value school and and the importance they place on it. I mentioned CSCI. We did present this the overall results last month um for CSCI but I want to highlight the these are measured on the R KPIs and I will present this um more fully at the the end of the year report at the board meeting but a couple of areas that we just want to look at. um we have done a crosswalk between CSCI and the mesh survey and there are a lot of the
101same questions that are asked and we scored differently on both. So taking a look at that you'll see rules and norms is an area that we have maintained positivity um sense of physical security we've maintained sense of social emotional security we've really maintained over time a 3.5 on the CSCI is positive so if we're above that 3.5 mark we want to we want to stay there um a couple of the areas that stand out from this most recent um administration of the CSCI are online safety and peer relationship ships where those have stayed consistent or grown with time. So, those are some areas that we've really seen some positivity. Um, a couple of the areas that have decreased over the past three years are that respect for diversity and school connectedness. So, again, those are
102areas that we want to take a look at. Um, there while they're still positive, um, you know, we still want to continue to target those areas over time. Um I mentioned uh our SEAL committee work. This committee has been really strong for five years and throughout the course of this strategic plan and at helping to uh support our staff in how they have prioritized um SEAL at a a universal um tier one level. And so we've we've really done a hard work with implementing that SEAL curriculum um developing scope and sequences um integration of those DEI themes as well as upstander lessons at each grade level. Um teachers really have a clear path with how they're implementing this and we've also made allocations in the schedule and I think that this is reflected in the
103high scores that our students um have on these measures. Um, we've worked to create better homeschool communication. I think that continues as we um improve our our websites, we improve our curriculum night resources for families. Um, we're finalizing the work on a reporting tool and um developing a plan to how to use that for kindergarten through fourth grade to communicate progress to families over time. And this year a lot of our work was in that crosswalk between insights mesh CSCI and some other tools that are out there for measuring SEAL um assessment or SEAL competency. And really what we found over time is that um these these the insights and the mesh are are good at giving us really highlevel data but it's not sensitive enough to show us um which students need intervention, which
104students need support. Um and our MTSS work has gone handinhand with this work at really highlighting the need for a screening tool rather than an overall assessment. And so our committee looked at that and while we value our um the the information that's been given from uh the the insights and the the um mesh assessment, we really feel that there are some better tools out there to help us measure some of these items. Um and so we are looking to as we move into this next phase utilize that progress reporting tool at K4 which will be student self assessment and teacher assessment um really looking at what are the objectives of our curriculum. So it's more of a curriculum based assessment. Um along with at 58 um there within Wayfinder there is a formative and
105a three times a year assessment tool that is a lot more efficient and asks the same questions as um our uh mesh assessment really um in essence the same questions about belonging about um how do they feel at school um that we think would be a better tool for teachers to use because it directly relates to the curriculum as well as um for us to gain other information over the course of time that is in these same areas. Um and then we um are hoping to use Sabers is a screening tool through FastBridge um which is um similar to our AS web plus assessment that we use um but transitioning to um hopefully using FastBridge in the spring. we would then be able to utilize sabers as a screener to identify those uh intervention needs.
106And that's something that's used in many districts. But it's really um students take that and then teachers also can have a screening tool. It's very efficient um just a couple of minutes and it it will highlight better behavioral needs, social emotional needs and um areas that kids need interventions. It will give our MTSS teams better data to use um to develop plans to support kids on those low ends. And then we also have a state mandate and and Kristen feel free to jump in um for uh the 2728 year to in to uh implement a mental health screening. We've done some looking. Um none of the tools that we're currently using offer that mental health screening. So, we will continue to look at those tools in the next year. >> The Illinois State Board of
107Education is supposed to be developing a free version. So, we're waiting to see what that might look like as well. We want to make sure that it's psychometrically sound given that we're talking about mental health screenings, but we are hopeful that perhaps that would be an easy way to incorporate that. And that'll be used for third through 8th grade, I believe. So um I think we want to move away from these again as we just previously talked with um about MAP like these are very large big data and we want to be more sensitive to the needs of our kids on a regular basis and so some of these tools because of their efficiency and what they're targeting will allow us to do that while still keeping track via CSCI and some of these curriculum
108based measures on the larger picture. And would that screening be for all the every kid or for >> mental health screening? >> Yeah. >> Yes. >> Okay. >> Well, they said all students, but then when we went to a training or a information about it from somebody from Isby, they did say, "Yeah, we actually do know that kindergarten, first and second graders probably won't be able to self-report on that." So, a little bit to be determined. I think the legislature made the recommendation and now the educators need to figure out how to make it work. And Kelly is the have we used the Sabers tool before or this will be the first time for us? >> This would be the first time. Yes. >> But it is highly researched and um we have actually have
109a lot of people in who have come in from other districts who have used it in the past that um have found really um valuable use of it at at screening for um student needs. I had a sort of a related question to that before we got to the screening thing and that it was based on sort of trying to identify the competencies area as opposed to the supports. Do you feel like the assessments that they take really can capture those competencies? I mean it's like is not really like a multiple choice question that you take written. It's like more >> real lifey. So I don't know like that's exactly the discussions that we've been having at our seal um committee level is are these the questions really that we're looking for and is this
110really a sensitive enough measure for us to to really see yeah >> that they're developing I think in the classroom and in discussions focus groups those sorts of things are where we're pulling out right >> the information that we really want. Um I think also you know we see especially at fifth through eighth grade levels the higher participation of students in these clubs in extracurriculars and really >> um engaging with their school. Um certainly on CSCI we look at school connectedness and there there are questions about sense of belonging within that. Um but I think our students are showing us that they feel like they are connected. they feel like they belong. And I think on the, you know, the multiple choice assessment when it comes to the competency development, a lot of our students
111will always know the right answer. It's the application of that. And so when we see that in our school buildings on an anecdotal level, that's where we know that we're really truly making a difference. And I think again with those the discussions that they're having in class with SEAL uh lessons, the things that the teachers are seeing um class to class to class throughout the day, those are where um the rubber hits the road, right? Well, so I and I I can understand that that's much harder to capture in any Yeah. maybe helpful broad way. But yeah, honestly, I've looked at that cake question like a hundred times on that cartoon and I'm like, wait, what should she say? Sure. Did she take the cake before? Anyway, yeah. Okay. Well, thank you. >> Yes. >>
112Any other questions, comments? >> Okay. Thank you so much. >> All right. So, we are really excited to be um able to share with the board and our community the first draft of our strategic plan. Um we have done so much work and heard so much from our community as well as really evaluated uh the data that we have available to us to set the stage for our next five years. Uh so as we are looking at this we start always with the foundation of what our last strategic plan called us to do. um that plan was developed. The board will remember kind of as we were coming out of COVID, we did um a very broad and pretty intensive community engagement uh listening session then as well. And that helped to inform our mission,
113our vision, and our priorities over these last five years. So, if you go forward, Kelly, uh this has been our strategic plan and it's really guided our work over the last five years. everything that we have attended to um has has somehow connected back to these goals in these strategic priorities. Um so you see on the left our portrait of a D39 scholar, our vision and our mission is there and that has remained the same as we've continued to listen to our community throughout these listening sessions and our planning efforts. Um all of that has remained the same. On the right, you see our goals and our strategies. And we've said throughout that it's likely our goals will remain the same. Those are evergreen goals, right? Student achievement and growth, a supportive community, professional community,
114family partnerships, and stewardship of resources are always going to be areas of focus for us and they have continued as we've listened to our community throughout this listening session. Um, but you'll see some nuanced changes when I get to um that portion of uh presenting our one pager for these next five years. The other thing that's changed is the description of what we're trying to accomplish within each of those areas. Again, as we've analyzed our data and as we've looked at where we've grown and what opportunities exist in these next five years, um there's been some adjustments there. And of course, within our strategies, there's been some adjustments as well. So, as we look back at over the last five years and and we've done this as we've um worked through our listening sessions, um
115each goal area we've really um seen some pretty significant growth and and we have some areas of celebration. So, I'll just name a few. Um in goal one, student achievement and growth. So much of what Kelly just uh was presenting uh is representative of so much of the work that our teachers, students, uh administrators, and parents as well have have put into this area. Um so there's been some programmatic changes in terms of full day kindergarten for all our MTSS teams at each school which really take the time to look at and analyze the growth of each and every students. Um Allison, I think getting at your question, uh while we look at the big accountability measures and the overarching uh growth of our students, our our teams at each school are looking at what
116each student is doing um quarter over quarter and and really year-over-year. Um and so as we look ahead, we're looking to to refine that even further. We've had new curricula across almost every content area and then some instructional support adjustments and some programmatic changes there. Really proud of the work that our schools have done in that regard. On the right side in our second goal area, our supportive community is really focused on what happens for our students and their experiences within our schools. Um, and we've really focused here on social emotional learning. We focused on implementing those monthly themes that support belonging and inclusion. We've redesigned our student clubs and activities and most noteworthy at the fifth through 8th grade level where we're supporting that sense of belonging and connection for all students within our
117schools. Um we've done some scheduling adjustments and we've really looked at in listened to our students about their experiences and where they want to um see continued improvement or or have needs that we could help to address. In the next slide on the left hand side, you'll see our professional community. And that's really focusing in on our teachers and staff, our administrators, and what their experiences have been, where we can continue to develop them professionally, and where we can engage them, giving them voice, choice, and agency in um in refining what's happening within our district and where we can continue to improve. On the right hand side, you'll see our family partnerships and some of the things that we focused on there. communication, parent education, and really improving the transitions from elementary school to middle
118school, from middle school to the junior high and beyond. We've also focused there, excuse me, on the guidelines for technology use, and we know that that's a continued area that our parents are telling us they want us to continue to focus on. And then more recently looking at artificial intelligence and creating some guidance there for how that's used within our schools. Um our fifth goal focuses on stewardship of resources and this uh area has focused on our facilities. We've done a ton of work over five years. It is um quite impressive and and some might say um mind-blowing really to think about what's been accomplished over five years without a referendum looking at installing air conditioning within our schools, improving um our facilities. And as we talk about our next 10-year life safety plan, so
119much of what has been accomplished over the last several years has really addressed um much of what we think otherwise would have come up on that 10-year life safety plan. So, it gives us the opportunity um now to learn from what's been accomplished and then to plan ahead um for upcoming um projects. We've looked at our staffing patterns, our class sizes. uh we've continued to see some some minor adjustments in those areas and um we're excited to continue to work in those regards. Um, we have strengthened our school safety and security across all of our campuses and that's been a really critical issue. And again, looking here at the accomplishments we've made without going out to the community to ask for more money is is really uh quite impressive while we've continued to maintain our
120highest Illinois financial ratings. Um, so some really really good work. Um, all thanks to uh the hard work of of our teams across our district, but also to the board's leadership and your vision in helping to guide the work that we've been able to accomplish. Our uh on the right hand side here, you see our strategic plan dashboard that wasn't in place five years ago and now has continued to be um updated on on really um at least a a semianual couple times a year. Um and we're excited to look ahead maintaining these uh areas as as some of those high level accountability measures for us but now digging in even further as we look at this next year five next five-year plan to create a score scorecard that we'll be able to analyze on
121more of a quarter overquarter short cycle improvement effort. So we've seen some really great gains here. We haven't even yet incorporated some of the growth that we that Kelly was just sharing into some of these graphs that you see on the bottom. We're excited to see where that uh growth continues to go. So, as we look forward uh mapping out the process of our strategic planning effort this time around, uh the board will recall we started back in October and now we're at this May June time where we are presenting to the board um our strategic plan. Um, and again, I want everyone to keep in mind that these are the big aims over these next five years. From there, we dig in and we really analyze what the data are telling us on the
122short cycle improvements. We're starting to then identify over this summer and as we move into the the fall time, what those short cycle improvement action steps will be and how we will measure and monitor the impact of those efforts. Um so right now you're seeing the big picture and what we'll be asking the board to approve um at the board meeting are those big picture items those those strategic aims and then from there annually we'll be presenting what we're learning and how we're improving in each of those commitment areas. So Kelly as you move forward you'll see um we really focused on a lot of feedback. We know that there was a lot of interest in engaging in this process and we're so grateful for so many. We had some really targeted focus groups um
123aiming to engage the voices of those who work closest in our district, our teachers, our administrators, and our staff as well as those who serve on various committees. The CRC, our district strategic advisory team had a special invitation to participate in focus groups. um our ed foundation members, members from the village, members from our community groups who really engage intensely with our district had the opportunity to be especially invited to participate. But we didn't want to just stop there. We wanted to expand the invitations to anyone who was interested in having their voice be heard and participating in these groups. And so we had over 450 individuals participate in focus groups, give approximately 45 minutes to an hour of their time, sometimes more, to really engage deeply in a conversation about what's working, what's not
124working, and what do we want to see continue to improve in our district. Um, from there, we identified the themes for um what could be improved upon as we continue to move forward. And there's some descriptions that have helped us to really understand these these big picture items. Um, but we took these themes that were advanced from the focus groups and we said we wanted to hear even more from our community. So, we went out with a survey using these themes because we need to prioritize what are we most interested in focusing in on early on with over these next five years and what um should continue to be a focus but maybe not the most important first priority for us to really engage in. And that's what our online survey helped us to know
125more about. And so we went out to an online survey. Um here we had 555 respondents um to our online survey. And this these are adults only. So we we did not um administer the survey to students. It was parents, it was community members um and it was teachers, staff and administrators who responded to this survey. Um the board has had the opportunity to review this survey in depth. Um here I this slide uh just again um emphasizes that we had representation from across the district wanting to make sure that we're hearing voices from each corner of our community. The next slide highlights um the representation not only from our parents and guardians but from community members and broadly from each community or each staff and teacher group within our district responding to this survey.
126Uh the board has been presented previously with these survey results. Um but here I just want to identify this survey helped us to identify what um what are the now, next and later goal areas. So as we start to develop um the priorities for our strategic action steps over this first and second year, this information will help to um help to inform our work here. So sorry, Kelly, go back once more. Um, so just to give those who maybe are looking at this for the first time, you see on the right hand side those charts and it's it's a little maybe deceiving, but as you look at those charts, we can see where people were um identifying the highest priority. The higher priorities were actually lower on the chart. So as you look at advanced
127learning and differentiation, we had a broad number of individual respondents to this survey identifying those as some of the higher priorities for us to work on right away. Um and so those are some that's an area of focus for ours you'll see as we move forward. Technology integration and use uh by contrast when you look at that heat map heat map so to speak um there was quite a variation. some people saying that's a really high priority for us to focus on and others saying that isn't immediately the highest priority for us to focus on. And so we have to really decipher what what we're hearing from the community um both our staff and teachers as well as the community at large. Um the next one streamline communication again just for comparison's sake um that
128was a lower priority. Not saying that it's not important for us um but but in terms of improvement efforts that's not an area that we really need to focus a lot of attention on in improving over these first couple of years of our plan. So again, we looked at this broadly not only from um the overall perspective, but as we dig into these results, we can see the differences between what our parents and community members are telling us versus what our instructional staff is telling us and and our support staff is telling us. So, all survey respondents um we aggregated all of those results and again we can we can pull those out to learn more about who is needing what from our planning efforts. But as we look here, you can really start to
129understand um what is driving our planning efforts. Um so we asked what is working well? Again, remember our online survey had three questions. One is what was working well? Um what have we missed? and then um that prioritization of those themed areas. So from all survey respondents, what was working well? We know our high quality teaching staff um was mentioned time and time again, and we're so proud of the work that they're doing and of their improvements over over time over this last five-year um cycle. We've really invested in professional development in in the agency and the um the collaborative work of our teaching staff and we're so glad that that is celebrated here. Um all the way down the line you see so many compliments toward the work that's happening in our schools. That
130positive school culture and climate, that sense of community is really strongly valued throughout all of our stakeholder groups. Special education and intervention supports. This is an area that five years ago was named as as an opportunity for improvement and strengthening. And time and time again in this feedback loop, we've heard that that is an area of strength and and a place to celebrate. And so I want to just really commend our special education teachers, staff, and administrators who have um really focused in and were celebrated time and again in this survey. Um strong family and community uh school commu communications was celebrated. active PTA and parent involvement. Our curriculum updates was named time and again, not only from our teachers and staff who know about those, but from our parents as well, which I thought
131was really, really neat. Um, our supportive administration and leadership. I'll just call this out because I think that um we have seen leadership grow over time and especially in the last two or three years, we've really seen some improvements in these areas and so uh really proud of our leadership team in in the work that they're doing. Um, our robust specials and extracurriculars is named as something that's working really well. Social emotional learning, we know we've focused on that over the last five years. And then staff collaboration and team structures, which has improved and really been we've been intentional about how we've designed that over five years and yet we know that that's an area that we want to continue to strengthen over these next five years. Can >> I ask a quick question? >>
132Yeah. >> Can you please remind me this was an open-ended survey, right? >> Completely open-ended. Yes. And so again um it gave people the opportunity to tell us what's working well again in a similar format to our focus groups which was really discussionoriented and people could share whatever they wanted. It was so interesting to see the themes come out in those those um those ideas that were named time and again from our parents, from our community members, from our teachers and our staff. Um the consistency there was was really a point of celebration. But yes, both of these two questions were open-ended. The forced choice was in the prioritization because again, we know we can't do everything all at once. And so, we do need to prioritize where do we want to invest our resources
133early on over these next five years. And where are we doing well and we want to just continue to see that grow. So, there isn't an area that's falling off of the radar so to speak. Um, but there is a again that now next later planning to our efforts. So when we think about some of the areas that we might have missed in those themes where we were asking our our respondents to prioritize, we also gave them the chance to either highlight more in area or um tell us about something that they think we might have missed. And these are some areas that uh came out in terms of areas that might have missed that we might have missed. Reducing technology and screen time. we heard time and again, especially from our parents. Now, our
134teachers and our staff didn't name that quite as frequently, and I think that's because they're seeing already what's happening in our schools in that regard, but it hasn't yet trickled out to our parents and our community. And so, there's there's a variety of things at play. When we dig in, we can see the differences among our community groups. um expanding advanced learning and enrichment opportunities. We've heard that as we look at um some of the data that Kelly was just presenting. Um we know that those are some areas in terms of short cycle improvements in programmatic changes and improvements. We really want to dig in over these next five years. Um consistent behavioral management we saw across stakeholder groups as an area of focus addressing teacher workload and burnout. Um, we know that just really
135across the nation right now that's an area of concern. We heard from our CRC about that. Um, and we're hearing thankfully not only from our teachers and staff who are recognizing that, but our parents and our community members are also recognizing that as an area of continued need. Looking at class sizes, refining MTSS as well as our spe special education frameworks continues to be areas of um effort and um focus. standardizing homework and academic expectations. We thought that was an interesting area that uh people wanted to specifically name for us to look at. Enhancing our executive functioning, streamlining communication platforms specifically, and then ongoing facility upgrades and logistics. Um, so all of those areas are things that you'll see not only folded into the big picture strategic plan, but as we look at our action
136step planning and um, the way we're measuring and monitoring our success, you'll see these ideas come back into play there. Um, these are the ranked items by all groups. Again, I want to name that when we look at our instructional staff and we look at what our our families are saying, there's some different prioritization, but overall, these are the areas that um have the earliest need and then um the next needs of focus and then later on down the road. So, the earliest needs we're really going to be focusing on when we're action planning those advanced learning and differentiation opportunities, the social, emotional, behavioral, and mental health needs of our students, executive functioning skills, and teachers and staff care and excellence. And and I think um our community did such a nice job of identifying
137those four priority areas for us. Um I think across the board, everyone can agree that those are some some really key areas to focus in on. We know that the next steps aren't being put on the shelf, but they are areas that we're continuing to focus on too. Technology integration and use um will continue to be an area of focus of ours. And again, this fell in that next category because our teachers and our staff are starting to see that work um really take hold within our schools. And I think our parents were valuing that as a higher priority um earlier on. And so we need to continue to to focus there. But lots um lots of work to be done in each of these areas. And I think again it's important to note that
138even the green initiatives which are further down on the prioritization that doesn't mean it's not being done. It means that it's already part of the work we're doing and so people aren't identifying that as one of the earliest improvement needs of ours. Yes, Allison. >> Sorry to interrupt, but please I will forget otherwise. So when you're when you're choosing earliest need and so forth um and you're looking at the responses from the page before is it is there widespread support for each of those I like from each of the sort of constituents like parents and teachers and community members otherwise >> there is although there's some differences as well so um across the board streamline communication and green initiatives fell to the lower side of the improvement ment um prioritization >> when we look at
139the now at the earliest needs there's some variation there. So um our teacher and staff care and excellence for for our teacher respondents that was a a really high priority for a number of different uh reasons. Advanced learning and differentiation was a really high priority for many of our parent groups. And so, um, you can't get into the earliest need if if everyone's not identifying that as a priority, but there is some variation there that we're really, um, attending to as we look at what those next steps might be. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Can I ask a question too, please? >> Yeah. Um so obviously the technology has been a hot topic for quite some time now and I see that as next in terms of evaluating and refining the role and balance but
140to your point about the teacher seeing the difference that we've made in terms of um the guidelines of against like passive use and things like that having a trickle down effect that hasn't necessarily made it out to the parents. Could the earliest need in terms of finding better ways to communicate that fall into I mean >> absolutely absolutely that's exactly where um some of that open-ended response and what we heard through our focus groups really helps us to refine the work that lays ahead for us. So as we look at our one pager you'll see um some of our commitments. Those commitments are the big aims the the strategic commitments of our district. And then as we start to define what are the the the action steps that we'll take on each year, that will
141really be informed by by those open-ended responses as well as what the data are telling us. >> Okay. Okay. So that got loud all of a sudden. Sorry about that. Um when we look at what's working well um we have disagregated this by each of these groups. Um these are some of the big ideas that popped up. And so again um to your point uh Kristen and and Allison as we look at what each of these different groups are telling us, we're identifying the needs across those groups. And so as we begin to identify those action steps as well as the ways in which we're measuring our impact, these are the areas that we'll really be focusing on. And the same thing with what did we miss. So we heard from our parents and community
142members that over reliance on technology and screens is is a key area that they wanted to again highlight for us in that open-ended response. whereas our instructional staff are telling us student behavior management and consequences, teacher workload, burnout and planning time. Those are some priorities for them. So, we have to attend to both of those as we're developing our plans. Uh we also heard from our students. Again, they did not respond to the survey, but they gave us some really valuable information, much of which aligned with what we were hearing from our adult stakeholders. But then there's some other areas where we're hearing from our students about logistical things that are like uh what we're calling the just do items, right? So, um Pat Greco, our our consultant, uh keeps using the example of bike
143racks. Um just like that's that's not a strategic priority. That's like a Yeah, we we should just be able to get that done. Um we want to encourage our kids to ride their bikes to school. We want it to be safe and welcoming for them when they arrive and leave school. And so like some of these things that we hear from kids are the just do it. The good news is they're not um systemic issues that are difficult to resolve. Much of what our kids are telling us are like the logistical improve the lunch line, right? Like make sure that we can walk and navigate the halls safely and and efficiently and within that very small time frame that they're given to to pass. So, um, our student focus groups across all four K all
144of our four K4 schools, um, identified some themes of what we do well. Again, our students, it was so fun to hear from them and to hear them name time and again that they just love and adore their teachers. They think their teachers are doing a great job and they they really wanted to celebrate them. um they feel like we have uh positive school culture um exceptional support and inclusion for all learners. Our our students are able to name this at the youngest ages within our district that they are seeing all students being included and supported in their learning across um all different types of learners. That's our our learners who maybe need some more support and those who are advanced learners and looking to grow even more. So, this just kind of gives us
145an idea of what our focus groups at the elementary level told us. And then, um, what we can improve on. Again, these are some of these are those just do it things. Recess logistics, climate comfort, cold weather access. Our youngest learners were telling us, "Don't make us go outside when it's so cold." Even though sometimes our parents are like, "Get them out." And we know our teachers are saying, "The kids just need to get their energy out." Um, kids are sometimes telling us, uh, we're cold. Um, they they want to see a variety of things expanded and and some things attended to like lunchroom operations and scheduling time and menu variety even uh came up as we were listening to our students. >> I love how like seriously they took it, you know, >> they
146took it so seriously. >> It's like my favorite part of the whole thing. They they have great ideas. It >> such great ideas. Some of them came to our focus groups with like little notes and you could tell they had thought in advance about what they wanted to share. They felt like this was a really important opportunity. They were chosen on behalf of their student body to speak with their principal, their assistant principal, and the superintendent of schools about what's working well and and where we could improve. So, it was really really fun. And what we've learned through all of this is that we need to engage our students even more. >> Great ideas. great great ideas and so much of of their ideas are things that we can incorporate that we're already working on
147but their nuance perspective helps us to understand how we can improve that experience for them and and they're our priority so that that's important work for us >> school connectedness right there >> I mean it it very much is it very very much is yes >> I I can't really speak for the board but I would love to get reports back on what we actually did under that just do it category as you do things just hearing the changes that took place because of it. >> Yeah, I think if I'm not mistaken, the board might have just received um maybe last week or the week before the list of our we've already started analyzing these bike racks because because we heard it so many times and and Pat Greco just kept saying that's a just
148do it. >> Just do it. and and um our logistical uh king Tony Damonte loves to jump in when there's a just do it task to accomplish and he jumped right in. Tony, >> the answer is 15. 15 gets us where we need to be. There is an answer. >> So, um thank you Judy. We will continue to update the board as as we continue to address some of those just do it uh needs of our students. I think the Hart family is going to be saving some money because my kids blame their um bike issues on the racks. They say that they're jamming them in there and it's too tight and then it gets twisted and >> they're not wrong. >> We, you know, have been supporting the Wilmet bike shop. So, we look
149forward to that just do it plan. >> Excellent. Excellent. our middle and junior high school students uh told us much of the same and again um with their more advanced um articulation of needs. We we learned quite a bit from them as well. Uh we learned a lot about those successful transitions between schools at the last goround of our strategic planning effort. that was a pain point mentioned by our students but also by our families a lot and um so we focused in on that and it's so nice to hear that our students are celebrating that as an area that's that they think goes really really well. They have a lot of pride in their schools and and um they feel like that transition has been smooth and they're excited when it's happening for them.
150Um they again celebrated our teachers. they celebrated that authentic inclusivity and proactive safety that we have happening within our school. So again, just a variety of areas that we're doing really really well and um some other areas that we could improve upon. Again, many of these are um some of the just do it logistical things and then there's some other areas that might take us a little more time to focus in on that assessment fatigue. Uh number seven and testing overload. um we're so focused on data and and we know that so many of our parents are as well and yet our students are saying we could we could take a break from some of that. And so that's some of that nuance balance need that we have to um understand that various stakeholders are
151calling upon us to do different tasks all at once and so we have to balance that. Um so again a variety of areas that they are asking us to focus in on. So, as we look ahead, um, we also asked about transitions between schools. So, this information is again shared with the board and our community so that you know some of the areas we'll continue to look at. And then we're here at our strategic plan. And again, as we as we move on to the next slide, I want you to keep in mind that um, our vision, our mission, our core values, and our portrait of a D39 scholar have remained the same. Those really haven't changed. um we're hearing the same priorities, the same commitments from our community at large. Um what has shifted
152is our goal areas, the language describing those because we really want to be very clear about what we're trying to accomplish in those areas and then the strategic commitments, the descriptions of how we're going to accomplish this. So, um, on the right hand side, you'll see that we, um, tried to call out even more clearly what we mean in each of these goal areas because that's what we were hearing from our community, from our students, from our teachers and staff, and from our parents. Strategic learning and growth. Um, before we named achievement and now we're really focused on learning every day and on the growth of our students. We know that so many of our students are achieving at a really high level. We want them learning and growing every single day. um the student
153experience and community, that sense of belonging um within our schools is really really important and that's something we want to continue to cultivate and support um along with their social, emotional, behavioral and mental health aspects that we see um at play within our schools. Professional experience and community. Again, um we're we're focused in on our professional community, but we also want them to have that positive and supportive experience. And so we named that as part of our commitments here. Our family experience and partnership. Again, recognizing that our families are an important part of our community and we want them to have that experience of connection and those opportunities to really engage deeply with our schools. And then stewardship of resources. Um you'll see there we focus not only on the financial resources but on the
154use of our time and talent within our district. and and those are some key commitments that came out of this planning effort, but slightly different from the last time we went through here. Um, I have talked for a lot, an extended amount of time. I'm going to turn it over to Kelly Jackson who's going to talk about our our our strategic commitments, the areas in which we'll focus. Again, we know that there is a lot of data out there that has helped to inform these commitments and we know that moving forward the work ahead is for us to define the action steps in the ways in which we'll measure and monitor our growth. So know that these are the big aims under which those annual strategic plans or strategic action steps will be defined. Kelly.
155>> So, our first priority area is student learning and growth. And this is really about ensuring a differentiated education, providing rigorous academic foundation, opportunities for advanced learning, and ensuring that all students are appropriately challenged. And so, our commitments um you'll see we want students to feel valued as learners and personally challenged uh and supported as they make growth. We want students to identify and reflect on their strengths and areas of growth with accesses access access to targeted learning and support. So really um what what goals do they have personally and how can they keep track of their own growth towards those goals. Um we want staff to be able to use evidence of learning to align their instruction, inform their differentiation and balance appropriate curricular and technology resources to meet student needs. And finally, um,
156we are committed to having students confidently engaged in challenging tasks that push them beyond their current abilities. So looking at that productive struggle, helping students persist through some of that discomfort and mistakes so they can overcome and um, academic and social emotional challenges. So really that um resilience factor that we know is really important not only in our elementary education but beyond uh district 39 and into adulthood. These uh strategic commitments were really informed by so much of what we heard not only from our students but from our teachers and staff and from our families. Knowing that every student wants to feel challenged within their learning environment and wants to be growing. We know that our parents want to see that as well. And so this commitment is slightly different from um our last plan
157in that we were looking for our teachers to differentiate. Now we're really focusing in on making sure every learner feels personally challenged and is making growth. And so as we start to develop our action steps around this, um you'll see this is really what we're going to be measuring and monitoring. Do our students feel challenged within their learning environment and are they making growth? um do they have the opportunity for that productive struggle every day within their classroom and how are they finding their way through it even if there's a bit of uh temporary discomfort or mistakes made along the way. We don't want any student just breezing through and yet we also want students to feel confident as they approach those challenges. So not overwhelmed but also not o underwhelmed in and how are
158we going to measure and monitor that success for our students. Um our next priority is student experience and community. So cultivating that supportive inclusive and positive learning environment that advances student social, emotional, behavioral and mental health. Um we often refer to it as SEBM. Um just as an acronym, another acronym to add to your toolbox. Um, our four commitments here are students feeling valued as individuals with a sense of belonging and connection to their school environment. So that stu that school connection is really showing up in this um having students take ownership again of their learning while developing advanced executive functioning skills. And some examples of executive functioning skills are goal setting, organization, conflict resolution, self-management, and leadership. um having staff feel informed about the academic, social, emotional, and behavioral strengths and needs um as
159well as supports for their students. And then finally, um school rules and expectations for behavior and technology use are understood, enforced, and consistently prioritized to support safety and learning. And this came directly from not only the student focus groups but some of the data that we've collected over time um with respect to student perspective with the school rules and expectations and how do they understand them but then also how do they see them as being consistently and fairly enforced um across the board and and that those those rules do support their own safety and learning. Um I think that the the work that we've done especially with respect to SEAL has given a lot of feedback into these four commitments and we want to continue that work um as we move into our next plan.
160And you see across both of these uh first two goal areas that technology has kind of popped out as an as something that we want to continue to work on balancing that with appropriate curricular resources. Um, so again, that that's an area of of identified need and prioritization across our community. Um, Kelly, I just wanted to again before I forget, going going back to the learn student learning and growth. Um, you know, one thing that I thought was great to see was the access to targeting learning and support. I think um you know going through some of the materials the you know the focus groups and the survey responses that an important piece of this going forward is just the awareness of what is available. Also people not feeling like their children or the students
161might be challenged when there are some opportunities um to address that already readily available. So just making sure that um that's a piece of it going forward. >> Yes, definitely. >> All right, moving on to our third priority area is professional experience and community. Um and fostering that professional community support that supports employee care and excellence. Um that was something that came up throughout the survey feedback for both our instructional staff and our support staff. um and helping our staff feel valued, valued, supported, respected, and integrated into our school community. So, our commitments here are that sta staff feel valued and recognized for their contributions to the success of our students in the school community, that our staff engage in supportive onboarding, differentiated professional development, and structured collaboration focused on their roles and responsibilities. And
162I think um you know over the past five years we've looked at this diff differentiated professional development and some elements of onboarding but that has come through even more clearly through this feedback that we've gathered and the need for um a a more robust onboarding program as well as the structured collaboration focused on their roles um for all levels of our organization not just our instructional staff. Um, we want our staff to feel supported in navigating uh and problem solving difficult interactions with students, parents, and their colleagues. And we want our staff to demonstrate growth in their roles and have increased opportunities to lead. Our fourth priority area is family experience and partnership and strengthening our partnerships by connecting, collaborating, and communicating with our families and the community uh to advance teaching and learning. Um,
163and again, we're committed to feeling our we're committed to families feeling that their child is feeling valued and in that families are feeling informed about how their child is supported and challenged and growing. Uh, that families feel welcomed and connected with opportunities to partner and volunteer. That families can easily access timely information about student learning and school activities. So, that's that communication. um is it only at report card time or is it throughout the the school year? And then families feel confident in using information about their child's progress to support their child's learning and growth at home. Finally, uh our our fifth uh priority area is stewardship of resources and ensuring the effective use of time, talent, and financial resources to sustain practices that promote growth. And that's really a difference from our prior plan
164that focus on on using our time, talent, and financial resources to influence student growth. We all work together and all of these priorities are interrelated. So um you'll see that commitment in the first um point there. Uh and then secondly, we are committed to financial resources that are aligned to maintain, enhance, and support instructional and operational needs. We're committed to long and short-term plans that address routine safety requirements, capital improvements, and maintenance needs. And finally, we're committed to investments in instructional technology, nutritional options, and updated furniture to support student learning and safety. So, uh, the next steps then are, um, to present. Pat Greco will be with us at the board of education meeting to present um this overview and the final draft plan and answer any questions the board or community might have of
165her at that time. And then we start to develop from our strategic aims and the strategic commitments our key measures and goals that scorecard and then those improvement cycles of the action steps. So there is a lot of work to be done. This is the big picture over the next five years what our commitments are. these are the commitments of what we will focus on in work toward. Um but from there we really need to define our scorecard, those measures and the goals that uh will be on our scorecard and then the improvement cycles. Um so we're really excited about the work. We're excited about where we are now and about um the work that lies ahead. But we know there's a lot more to do. So this is our uh strategic plan as we
166are presenting it to the board. We are happy to receive any feedback, suggestions, improvements before we get to next week's um um effort to have it adopted. But again, know that um the real work is only just beginning. This is this is the big picture and and there's a lot more work to do. So, I'm excited to answer any questions or address comments. Yes, Judy. Question about the process. Um when I first saw this, I was like, "Oh, I can't vote on this. this is big picture big picture without the details of how it would be incorporated. So I was really glad to hear your comments on next steps because this by itself really doesn't give us meat. It could be it could go off in a lot of different directions, right? It could go
167off in a direction of mediocrity. It could go off in a direction of great excellence. Um, will the board actually see and vote on action steps after this or is this like the the sum of what we're committing to? >> Yes. Um, so annually, um, the board has the opportunity to receive and vote on those action steps. Um, those tend to be presented, I think, in September, um, for the board's review and then for approval. And that then is what we report out on to the board at every single committee of the whole meeting and at the board of education meetings from really August but September all the way through June. >> So that includes like this September we'll see the first set of action steps. Okay. >> Yep. Absolutely. So this these are the
168big commitments from which we develop those action steps in each of the goal areas and new moving forward will be developing that scorecard which will give us those quarter overquarter measurements of the impact. Um whereas before we had the big dashboard which was kind of the umbrella of accountability measures but not necessarily those those little data pieces that would tell us if what we're doing is having an impact. >> Okay. And could we go back to the first slide with the the first of the goal areas? >> Goal one. Almost read it. Okay. So, goal is amazing. How could anybody disagree with that? Um, I do have a question or a concern about the number one. um just the wordsmith person in me. Students feel valued as learners, personally challenged and supported in making growth.
169Yes, students should feel valued as learners. But the personally challenged and the supported in making growth is not just something we want them to feel. It's something we want them to get. It's something we want them to be. And I it reads to me as if we're going to kind of assess whether they feel supported in making growth. And I'm not sure that's the same as making growth, which is what we want them to do, right? It >> it is both. You are correct. We want them not only to feel that way, but also to be supported in making growth. Um and so there's a couple of different ways that we can measure that, right? What we have heard um with some consistency from our parents this go around is that they don't always feel
170like their child is known or they they say that their child doesn't feel like they are challenged and like they are making growth. And so while we see in our data that students are growing, the students aren't always feeling that way or they're not always reporting to their families that they're feeling that way. So it is both. We want them to be making growth and we want them to know that they're making growth and be able to site here's the areas where I have grown. Here is how I have been personally challenged as a learner and I've overcome that. >> Tell me more, Judy. >> Well, I'm thinking you can see me thinking. Uh-huh. >> I'm just not sure that um I'm not sure that we want to spend five years evaluating whether students feel
171personally challenged and supported. We want to make sure that again that they are. And I don't think this quite says that yet. And maybe if it said students feel valued as learners, are personally challenged, and are supported in making growth, that might clarify it a little, give it a little bit of a different direction. >> Yeah, absolutely. the the the the thing that we've grappled with a little bit is that our data are telling us that they're making growth now, right? The the data that Kelly just reviewed shows us that the incredible amount of growth that our students are making and yet we're hearing from our families that their children aren't feeling challenged. We're hearing from our families that they feel like their children aren't growing and yet they are. And so it it is
172it is it really is both. But I hear the concern that we're not just about how they feel, but at the same time, we do need to attend to that because right now they're growing and they don't always feel like they're growing and that's not okay, too. So, so it is kind of both. Um, >> I'm I'm open to other >> other bits of feedback or thoughts there because we really grappled with this a lot. >> There there is a a band of students and it was a pretty goodized band when I asked what is that yellow for? there's a pretty goodsized band of high achieving students that aren't actually making their targeted growth. So when we talk about differentiating >> be clear though Judy but that's that's in MAP and that is against that
17350% t 50% is supposed to hit that target and 50% statistically is not supposed to hit the target. That doesn't mean that they're not growing. It means that they haven't hit that statistical target of 50% is and 50% isn't. We actually are outperforming that 50% right because there's more um that are hitting the growth target than aren't. Um no, I I understand that. What I'm saying is there is a when I think of the rigorous the advanced learners. Yes. >> Right. We have a um I'm not thinking of the I mean I should be thinking of but I'm not focused on the less than 1% of the kids who qualified for a single subject acceleration or the one or three or 5% of the kids depending on your definition who might qualify for a gifted
174program. I'm really thinking about the 20 or 30% of our kids at least that would qualify as high functioning learners. high functioning achieve high high achieving learners and we're in a very high achieving township. In fact, we are contiguous to two other very high achieving high schools and I think we one of the things that we have an obligation to do with five years to do it is just make sure that we are targeting those high functioning high achieving excuse me high achieving students in the best way we can. And if we don't look we won't know. We might look and go, "Yep, what we're doing is actually the best." But if we don't look at what all of the other um districts with also with similar makeup are doing for their high achieving students,
175we won't know if we're doing the best we can. We won't know if that band of orange couldn't be a whole lot smaller. We just won't know. Does that make sense? And I'm not sure that's in here even though it says that we want to ensure a rigorous academic foundation. It's it might depend on how you identify advanced learners, but I think an awful lot of our district I think the parents who are concerned would probably fall into that band. That was Am I wrong? >> I think we I actually think we agree, but maybe we can do a better job of articulating that. But I I actually think we agree. But I'm again I'm open to feedback from other board members as well. >> I just have a procedural question. You had asked for
176feedback. Do you want it all now or are you wanting us to like email you with things between now and the board meeting next week? >> Both would be great, but I I I think it's it's a productive discussion to be had now if if there's an opportunity for that or if you have thoughts um now to share. And in this regard, I I I hear you, Judy, and I think that this is an area that our team will want to look back at to make sure that um it's not misunderstood our commitment to our advanced learners into making sure that they are growing and that we're measuring, monitoring, and communicating that because that is really where we have had some in-depth discussions around how can we best articulate this so that we are looking
177at that and we are seeing that our students, all students students across all bands are growing. >> I agree. I I think that what I heard Carrie and her team discuss or present today is consistent with what you're saying and maybe there's just some language here that would completely address it. Um because I I did hear the same. So Judy, what was the language you thought? Students feel valued as learners and >> are personally challenged and supported and are supported in making growth. I would add two more verbs maybe. And I don't even know if that does the trick, but I just wanted >> I think it does actually, but >> okay. >> And we don't need to decide now. We can all spend a little time looking at that line um over the course
178of this week. and and um the commitment the fourth commitment also addresses that um in a really targeted way that students confidently engage in challenging tasks that push them beyond their current abilities. So it's it really is targeted in both of those areas, but I don't think I mean I think the suggestion of adding a couple of verbs there makes a lot of really good sense too, Judy. So thank you. >> Well, I just know five years from now someone will look at it and not necessarily have this conversation in their minds. Well, and the commitment is not to look back at it five years from now. It is to look at it not only annually, but on those short cycle improvement efforts to see if what we're doing is making a difference. So, while
179the big picture is really important and your approval of that is is critically important to us, what will be equally, if not more important is our review on those short cycle improvements. So, if you're not seeing what you want to see as a board member in those short cycle goal areas, we need to make adjustments and we can make adjustments. We certainly most definitely don't want to wait five years and then look back and say, gosh, we should have had a a a different verb there and we would have been able to accomplish that because that is not we're really aiming at that short cycle um quarter over quarter. where are we seeing improvement and where are we not and how can we change what we're doing to know that um what we're aiming for
180is actually happening that the impact that we want to have is is being achieved. So, excellent, excellent points, Judy. Thank you so much. >> Any other board members? Allison, >> um I agree with you, Judy. I I think that the language could be fixed a little bit. So, I think that looks I think that's right. But one one excuse comment that I have bless you. um is um and I've thought this before with the other strategic plan is that the one pager is just so complicated and full of information that it's really hard to like wrap your mind around all of it. I know we want it all there somehow, but every time I look at that thing, I'm like constantly like trying to make it bigger so that I can see it. Um but
181I don't really know if that's fixable. So, I don't know. I just it's just so much there. I don't know if we could Yes. I don't know what we can do. I love I Yes, I love that thought. And I agree with you. Um the imagery has been so useful and yet um in the last year's or the last uh cycle of a one-pager, we had all of the commitments, the strategies in those blue boxes and it got so small that we couldn't read it at all. Um so it is important because this gets displayed across our district in a variety of ways. And yet here you'll see we didn't put the strategic commitments on there because it just got so small it was hard to read. Um but there might be some other areas.
182Again thinking about what are we most focused on right now looks a little different than what have we been focused on. Right? So when we think about our vision maybe that could be articulated in a different way so that the strategic plan is really >> focused on what our commitments are now rather than that kind of big picture. So, it's really good feedback and I think we need to look at that more closely. >> Yeah. I just feel like sometimes mission and vision are sort of bigger and separate >> from a strategic plan. Um, so maybe they don't need to be there or and maybe not even core values, >> but I mean I know that that's the foundation of everything that we do. So, I'd like to have it somewhere, but it surely makes
183the figuring out what the strategic plan is pretty hard to find on the page. Yeah, absolutely. >> Portrait of a scholar and the da da and then you finally kind of get get to it. >> Yeah, I think I think you're right. And that's really really good feedback. >> It just might help everybody focus on what we're focusing on. I don't know. >> Yes, >> Kristen, you had your hand up. >> I did. I just wanted to make a comment that this is really great work and we appreciate everything that you guys have done and Pat Greco's team did a great job and I spent a lot of time yesterday going through all the in-depth survey results and I really see them reflected in here in the nuance and the changes from last year. So
184I just wanted to say that that was really great and I also appreciate all the opportunities that the community and the kids have to give really specific feedback and the just do its and we can just see it making a difference already. So, I'm really excited for September when we get to come back and see all those really actionoriented statements, but I think this is really good and appreciate I I see how it's all been incorporated. So, appreciate that. >> And thank you. >> Um, back to the student learning and growth slide. Um, so there there was just one that I was going to continue to think about because I felt like maybe I just wasn't kind of reading it or interpreting it the way that I should. And that was in number four um
185where it says persisting through temporary discomfort and mistakes as they overcome academic and social emotional challenges. So what I was trying to think about here is sometimes they don't realize it's an academic challenge. Like there's the the kids that are high achieving and they're not necessarily challenged, but we want to continue to push them. You know what I'm like? So, and social emotional, we want to to continue to see growth among the kids, but it might not even be an area where they're necessarily experiencing challenge in the moment. So, I just wasn't sure if that piece of it was needed. Um, so I'll, you know, I again was just going to continue to think about that one because maybe I'm just reading it wrong. Um, does that make sense to you? It's interesting you call
186um this fourth strategic commitment out because we received some really useful feedback from our district strategic advisory team on this particular item as well. Um, we had the the verbiage productive struggle in here and some of our families, our community members didn't feel like they had a good understanding of what that phrase meant and so we rephrased it before presenting it today and it seems maybe we could have rephrased it just a little bit more. Um, the the goal here is to recognize that we want our students to feel a sense of confidence as they're approaching challenging tasks. Those might be challenges academically. They might be challenging challenges in that kind of like social emotional world, but we want our students to feel confidence as they approach those challenges. And and I think um um
187too often we as adults try to buffer cushion our our children from experiencing that challenge. And what we convey to our children is a lack of confidence in their ability to approach that challenge and overcome it. And so it's it's kind of really coming at it from both directions. We want our students to confidently engage and we want our adults to feel comfortable allowing students to confidently engage in tasks that are challenging for them. Um, we don't uh want always for our our students to feel comfortable all the time. And that's not to say we want to put our kids in uncomfortable situations. But it is to say we want them to know that we have confidence in them to enter a situation that is new, novel, and challenging. and to know that we ha
188have confidence in their ability to overcome that, to find their way through it, to use their tools and their skills um and their resources to persist through that temporary discomfort to accomplish something bigger or grander than what they thought might be possible. Um that takes some adult learning for our parents and for our teachers and it takes some kid learning. And so maybe we can reword this a little bit so that it it better reflects that. But that ultimately is what we're trying to say here is that we need to help our parents to understand that kids can be challenged and be uncomfortable >> and there's some value in that. And we need our our teachers and staff and kids to feel that way as well and to be able to approach that with some
189a sense of confidence because they do have the skills and the resources and the talent to be able to overcome that. >> That's really helpful. Thank you. Can I add when Kelly presented that she you specifically mentioned the word resilience which really resonated with me and I think that's something that a lot of our kids are lacking in general >> um these days and I think maybe incorporating that somehow. >> Excellent. Thank you. After Ann made her comment, I literally wrote down Car's response to her comment. And I'm wondering if if it actually captures better without all that word smithing, but I I wrote down um students exhibit resilience and confidently engage in challenging tasks that push them beyond their current abilities. Period. That kind of covers it. And it's almost exactly what she said
190and what you said. >> Thank you, Judy. That's great. That's fantastic. Thank you. >> Okay. And then I just wanted to say that um I don't really know where to begin. There is so much work that was um completed and shared out and all of the results and um just looking at what we've accomplished this year in the last year of our strategic plan and everything that went into that and the um just level of detail and transparency and level of work. And then layered on top of that, working on a new five-year strateic plan and all of the work that's been going on. um behind the scenes with that um is really impressive and exciting to see how much we've accomplished in the past 5 years with this plan and what um we have
191the opportunity to accomplish going forward. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And I just also really appreciate um the widespread involvement in the plan that will be presented. I mean all of those focus groups and the survey to you know validate or you know refine um from a different um audience to some extent is excellent and I agree with what Kristen said that it was very clear to see the themes popping up and they have played out in this plan. So thanks >> Alison. I would just echo what Ann said and Kristen and everyone else just appreciate all the hard work. Um I kind of feel a little sad that the old strategic plan is over. I really kind of do like we should have like a party or something. Um yeah, let's have
192a party. Um but then you know seeing the new one and it's so exciting. So that did make me feel better. But um I do feel like it's kind of like the end of a of a moment and the start of a new and that's exciting. So anyway, thanks for all the hard work. >> Anyone else? >> Okay. Um, then we will move on to public comment. This is an opportunity for the public to address the board on any topic. Are there any audience members that would like to speak at this time? All right. Seeing none, we will continue with our agenda. Is there any old business? Mrs. Jackson, did you want to provide? >> Yes, I am going to share a brief update on our single subject acceleration process. Um, as you remember in
193February, we presented an overview of our improved process um just for uh increased transparency for the community and for our staff um and families uh about our acceleration process. So, I'm going to give just an update on on that and some adjustments that were made throughout the process as well as um an a a brief look at our outcomes from this process this year. So, as previously shared, the accelerated placement act defines acceleration as instruction focused on standards and skills typically caught taught at a higher grade level. So, in essence, it's skipping a grade. Um there are different ways for accelerated placement to happen. Either early entrance to kindergarten or first grade, single subject acceleration, which um really focuses on reading and math, or whole grade acceleration where a student is moved from second grade
194to third grade for the next year or whatever. Um it requires four elements. Uh it's not limited to students identified as gifted or talented. It it requires a fair and equitable decision-making process involving multiple people. Um it includes an assessment process including multiple valid reliable indicators and finally procedures for notification of the decision regarding child's a child's participation in accelerated placement. Um so this fall we reviewed our process. We gathered a a representative group of administrators, coordinators, math support teachers, instructional coaches um and we reflected on recent data, some past trends. We discussed our past practice and how it aligned with the accelerated placement act and then um developed some uh plans for improving that practice. Um we re presented that to the board in February and also shared with the community at that point.
195Um so this was uh this is actually an adjusted timeline but um our the timeline included direct notification of families um for candidates for acceleration. Um and then families were provided the option to apply. Um it included uh triangulation of data. So gathering of assessments after those applications were due. um and uh looking at MAP achievement, I AR achievement, cognitive ability test or the KAT and then some conceptual understanding from curriculum based measures and then recently um families were notified of their final acceleration eligibility results. Um so the criteria for single subject acceleration um you'll see families again received notification um based on students meeting the 99th percentile of the next grade threshold for MAP um and students were invited to apply for additional assessments. Um we also adjusted um during that period um made
196the choice to adjust uh to allow for a review of student candidacy. Um so other parents uh submitted an application to review their child's candidacy even though they were not um they did not receive that uh notification in February. Um and really that was based on the opportunity to include spring map data in that um the the requirement um for the criteria for single subject acceleration included two of the last three NWA MAP tests uh for the current year place students in the 99th percentile and we were looking at spring of the previous year for that February notification. Um but these requests for review, we wanted to allow for the spring map that took place in May. So that was it's really two of the four um in essence. Um we also took uh we
197then uh did some additional assessment for students who were invited as well as those who requested review. So we looked at Kogat again that's a cognitive abilities test. Um we looked at curriculum based measures. So um for K4 K5 actually we looked at um the uh comprehensive assessment for bridges um and then uh at 68 it was um in math it was a a comprehensive endofear assessment um and then um in ELA we looked at curriculum based measures from our new curriculum. So um from collaborative classroom for kindergarten through fifth grade and um from sixth grade up we looked at uh the curriculum based measure in both reading and writing at at all of those levels um from common lit. If students had taken I we used the AR from the previous year. Remember this
198is all being done this spring. I results are not out yet for the current year. So, we have to go with the previous year. And again, that spring map was considered. Um, all students have been notified at this point and they had to meet all four criteria to be eligible. A little bit about those adjustments. Um, it included the inclusion of students within one RIP point of the criteria. Um, we looked at that notification. and we said, well, there are some students here on this list who are like really just shy one point of that writ. So, we did include them in that notification. Um, on any of the NWA MAP assessments, we also built a watch list of students who met criteria for one out of the like previous spring, the fall, and the
199winter. And that watch lists to even if they didn't request for review, we had a watch list for that next spring assessment. And then we we did identify a few students off of that watch list who did meet on the the spring map. Um we did clarify throughout the process our criteria being all-incclusive. So all four criteria were important elements um via universal assessment. We did not um only stick with initial and secondary. Um it was it was just for notification procedures that we used the map. However, we are looking at that comprehensive look at at all four criteria. Um and then we did include that uh opportunity for families to request for review. So I want to just give a highlevel um overview of the outcomes from 25 uh 26 from this school year.
200um from second to seventh grade. So um a little bit of a difference from for K1, and I'll talk about that in a second, but second to seventh grade, we had 78 students participate in our assessment. Um and 28 of those were identified through that um initial identification that went out in February. And then we had 50 additional requests for review. Um, of those, um, we had less than 10 students, uh, found eligible for acceleration, um, and none from our, uh, request from review were found eligible. Um, we did have students from the watch list then that were, uh, eligible in kindergarten through first grade that those came up as a request. In the past, we have always done that as a request for um review. And so the kindergarten through uh first grade students
201um we didn't follow the same exact process as we did for 2 through 7th grade. Um we did have 10 requests for kindergarten through first grade. Of those um we were not we did not find any students eligible in kindergarten and first grade for um accelerated placement. Um, we will be looking at the kindergarten and first grade process to align it better with the second through seventh grade process as we enter into this next school year and we'll have information on that in the fall. So, we've learned some good uh lessons this year. Um first uh the triangulation of the data is crucial and so um we know that uh just having a curriculum based measure in and of itself or just having map criteria it is not fully exhaustive. We really have to look
202at all of our criteria to get a better picture of the student. Um and really we found that those curriculum based measures were very um rigorous. Um that also shows us that the curriculum that we're using is is really rigorous and what it's expecting at the end of the year for students. Um when we looked at those uh you'll see that bullet point that says request experienced the following changed in achievement scores when compared to identified students. So thinking about the students that we said okay well you um in February we reached out to those families and said your child could be a candidate for acceleration. Um then when we got the the requests in it did um we did see a difference in how those students performed on the curriculum based measures as opposed
203to the students who we had uh reached out to initially. Um the AR criteria could be more rigorous. So gathering input around IR what it's measuring and also using that the year before measure. Um just thinking about that. Um we've dug in a little bit more to see if that the number it was 790 was our cut point but um looking at what other schools are using and then digging into I a little bit more we may adjust that um to reflect the need to be more rigorous. um we need to continue to develop instructional strategies to meet the needs of high readiness learners and we've talked a lot about that today but that is certainly a recognition and I think when we looked at the students who were on that request list as well
204as the students who were uh part of that group that we reached out to in February um we recognized that while these students were not necessarily candidates for accelerated placement they are high level learners and we know we have a responsibility to meet their needs in the classroom room. We've done a lot of uh training for our teachers with respect to differentiation um this year especially in math and that will continue in math and also in ELA as we adopt our new curriculum. But we have summer projects underway to um to really tackle that and and curate resources and support those high readiness learners in the classroom and as well with our specialists who we have in our buildings. um so that we can continue to um continue to meet their needs and help them
205to grow. Um and and like uh we just talked about with our strategic plan, I think that's going to be an area probably that shows up on our scorecard um and that we're measuring, you know, quarter over quarter at the very least, if not more, um over time. And I think the biggest lesson we learned is that acceleration is very complex and requires some give and take and um you know continued work to be done on our process. As I mentioned, we will um give another update in the fall if there are changes and adjustments to be made. Um we'll certainly gather our committee together um our teachers, administrators, and coordinators. I I just want to thank the like literally hundreds of hours that went into all of the assessments when we giving curriculum based
206measures, Kogat and um all of our our other benchmark assessments to these students. It it took a lot of time and a lot of coordination and this team was nothing short of amazing. So So big thanks to them, >> Alison Um, do you have any likel concerns for these kids that are moving up to higher grades or or whatever? Sorry, I'm not using the right words, but >> yeah, I think that the transition certainly um we have some students who will be going like taking their classes because they've skipped um fourth grade for example. So, they would be at highest taking a class. So, we want to be really mindful of how we're scheduling them, what time of day that is, and how we are allowing them to participate in some of those transition activities
207so they get a feel for the school. Um, we certainly will make it known to the teachers um to pay special mind to that as well so we can offer some of those social emotional supports to the students. I think when we talk about kindergarten and first grade, um this is an area where, you know, we along with a lot of people um across across the country when it comes to acceleration, we're very weary to recommend acceleration. It is such a huge developmental level that even though a child may be, you know, reading and writing at a very high level. Um, some of those social emotional lessons that come with being in first kindergarten and first grade are really, really important. And we can address those needs in the classroom academically, but I think the
208value that you get from being with same age peers is really, really important to consider in that process. >> Thank you. Just a little question based on what you just said. Did the state law actually require single subject acceleration or did it require that we provide a curriculum appropriate for their learning or something along that line? Now, did it require the process that we put in place? >> It it requires a process to determine that. Um and so in it it does call out single subject acceleration. Um, and you know, different school districts may do that in different ways. It could be a pull out group or something like that, but most school districts um they they choose to move that student up so they have peers to be with in a classroom. Um, it
209we know that a lot of our learning is experiential in the classroom. And so when you're doing one-on-one types of pullout groups, um, it's a lot more difficult to get that discourse going with an with an adult who you're working And Kelly, just did you say there were 10 kids that qualified? 10. >> Fewer than 10 that qualified. Okay. Um well, thank you. I appreciate that. This has been an evolving process um and that you guys have been just looking to um learn and improve upon it. And I also appreciate the level of work and it's kind of an example of how much time and effort in our district can go into you know a smaller audience but because it is important to keep them learning and growing and challenged. So thank you there any
210other old business requires attention? I think so. No. Okay. Any new business? All right. Great. Then we will adjourn to executive session. May I have a motion to adjourn to executive session to discuss to discuss special education and individual student matters, specific personnel and collective negotiations. >> I move to adjourn to executive session to discuss individual students in special education and individual students specific personnel and collective negotiations. >> Thank you. May I have a second? Second. >> Thank you. Um, may motion having been made and seconded, will the clerk please call the role? >> Allison Pathless, >> yes. >> Uh, Katie Hilton, >> yes. >> Judy Berlin, >> yes. >> Annne Hart, >> yes. >> Kristen Castro, >> yes. >> Erin Stone, >> yes.