001Okay. Hey, good evening everybody. I'd like to call the Zenbeton Township High School Board of Education meeting to order on Tuesday, April 19th. We'll call at 6:12 p.m. Um after we're done with our roll call, we will hand it over to uh fellow districts. We'll go to district one right after us and then we'll go to district 3. Um and uh roll call please. Mr. Bonedz here. Miss Champagne here. Mrs. Idleberg here. Mr. Foronberry here. Miss Steven here. Mr. Cook here. Mr. Nordstrom here. Thank you. And I think I'll wait uh for the others to start the meeting before we ask for the pledge if that's okay. Okay. Turn it over to district one. Call meeting to order. Roll call. Mr. Mr. Zura here. Mr. Ellison here. Mccarthy here. Mr. Hoffman here. Mr. D here.
002Are you calling to meeting to order? No call. Marcia White here. Nicole Butler. Andrea Ostri. Andy Luther here. Steven Lindsay Fusen. Kelly Roers here. And uh please uh join me in our pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Um, as far as our agenda for Zion or Zion High School, um, we have a section for communications from staff, guests, and district residents. Um, I believe we have all staff and students. Um, is there anybody who is intending to make a public statement? Okay, being none, I will uh move on from this section. Do the other districts have anything next on their agenda before we start? No. Okay, I'll turn it over
003to superintendent then or whoever is going to lead us off. Thank you so much. So, welcome to our joint board meeting. Here is our agenda for tonight. We're going to do a little activity in just a minute. Um, we have some table topic discussions for our boards to engage in and we're going to make you guys get up and move around. So, get ready to get up and move. Um, there's going to be some sharing out. Hopefully determine dates for next year to continue with joint board meetings between our four school boards. Develop some priority topics for next year. And then we do have an exit ticket for you to fill out today to give us feedback for moving forward. We already did that. So, if you remember, we have these legacy statements. I'm so
004glad that Jesse and his team put those up there. Um, we developed those this year. One, as one community, our students are provided the resources, holistic support, and inspiration to succeed academically and professionally. Two, create a sense of belonging for all students and our community knowledge to be successful. And three, our learning community will provide strong communication and transparency to foster community engagement, ensuring the emotional, social, and academic development of all of our students. And I think our focuses this year were on partnership, collective efficacy within the community, community engagement, and everything is on behalf of our students. So the first thing we're going to do, um, these are our focus, this is will be our focus tonight. get to know each other a little bit better, discuss and collaborate, review our learning collectively, determine
005dates for next year, complete an exit ticket, celebrate our partnership and our commitment to our learning community as a whole. So, I would love everyone to stand up that is on a board or helping to support our boards. We're going to try to form a little bit of a circle. I don't know if it's possible, but we're going to try. So, if you want to connect kind of around starting with me and going that way, that's what we're going to do. I know I'm totally blocking your camera. I'm so sorry. I'm not used to having to choreograph. So, we're going to do a little introduction activity. And what I had planned would take us a really long time. So, I'm going to change it up ever so slightly. So, what I want you to do
006is introduce yourself, say your name, how long you've been on the school board, and why working collaboratively with other boards is important to you as a board member. Okay. I'm Dr. Denise Wilcox. I'm the superintendent in Beach Park. This is officially my second year, third year because I was interim for one year. It is super important to me that we collectively work together because in the end they are all our kids. Doesn't matter whose district they go to, they're all our students. And that's extremely important to me because what we do at one school is just as important as what we do at another. I'm going to go this way. Kelly's going to love that. Uh I'm Kelly Robers. I have been on Beach Park District 3's board of 23. um and just got reelected
007on the April uh election. So, we're kind of excited about that. Um I just to to echo what Dr. Wilcox says, we all feed into the high school. Um we're all here in this beautiful little corner of the county. So, I think it's important to collaborate together, make sure that we're guiding these kids from start to finish, you know, through the whole education process here. Andy Luther, been on the board for about 24 years. Uh would agree with what's been said. Obviously, we're separate districts or separate communities, but we really are one. And uh whatever we can do to work together for our students, for our is is great. Frank Adams, I'm the director of business at Beach Park. I've been there for two years. Um and I think it's the sense of it all
008being one community and that all the children in that community are all of ours. Marsha White. I've been on the board for about 14 years and my feeling is that our children are our future. So, we need to work together on that future. Dane Hoffman, Winter Barber. Um, this is my third year. I think the collaboration is important that each community has a voice and it's not dictated centrally and out. Uh, Lisa McCarthy. I've been on Winter Harbor for 12 years. Um, and I think it's important, um, basically what everybody's saying, just that we're all working together, networking, u, being able to share information. Jeff McCartney, superintendent Winthrop Harbor. It's my seventh year with the district, 20th as a superintendent as a whole. Um, my whole entire career has been dedicated to kids. Uh, this
009is just on a bigger scale, and I think it's really important that we all work together. I'm Alberto Sigiraa. I have uh been on the district one for about two years now and uh as everyone was saying it's working together cuz uh we're with the department and all our kids will go to Z Ben eventually. So I think if we're all working together things could be accomplished. Uh Nick Dell been on the board for eight years now repeat but yeah it's makes sense and it's a good idea to have everybody move forward in one direction. My name is Gene Ellis and I've been on the Winter Car School Dr. Jesse Rodriguez, superintendent this 126. Um, basically it's our children, our future and the idea that together we will achieve more. Kathy Sherheim. I've been on
010the board four years. I think we all have the same goals and it we'll get there faster if we work together. I love that. Jerry Nordstrom um been on the board since December of 16 and I was on earlier in the 2000s. Um, and I think one of the things we've tried to do and hopefully extends to the uh all the districts is figure out what we can do to make sure our students want to be in school, that their families want to be involved, and that the community understands and supports what we do. Oh, it's uh brought in on the in the board uh in July of last year, I think, and then recently um elected for another two-year term um a couple weeks ago. So, um I I think what was cited so
011far ditto. I'm Patricia Stevens and uh I was on district 6 for four years and this is my second term for the high school. Uh I think it's great that we are cooperating together uh because all of us in the same community and I think that um you our children are our future and so that's what we need to work on keeping everybody um communicating and working together. My name is Pam Idleberg. I've officially been on the board one week. Um, welcome. Thank you. Uh, I I believe every child has the right to a sound, safe education, um, to be in a building where they're not insecure. Um, so I'm I believe collaboration between the boards, especially feeding into the high school, uh, is extremely important and that's why I ran for audience. Cool. Uh,
012I'm Blake Forenberry. I've been on the board for one week. Um, welcome as well. Thank you. Um, basically I think it's important for us to all get together so we can share resources, share learnings. we're all part of the same community and it's more efficient if we all work together towards the end goal from from K to 12 or actually technically from like preK to 12 in a lot of cases. So I think it's good to align our our curriculums as best as we can and our resources as best we can. So yeah, that's it. Christopher Bonitez, I've been on the board for four years and um I actually agree with everyone they've said. So March Taylor, I've been on the D6 board for 30 years. Um, how many years? Three. I think she wins
013the award. Um, and just better together. Our three communities have, you know, have not always worked so closely together, but in these trying times, I think it's really important for resources and for collaboration. My name is Na. I've been on the board for a year or so. I like the idea of all of us coming together. I think just go for it. I think it's a great everyone. Dr. George Lawson, superintendent, District 6. Um, simply put, four separate districts, one school community, strongly together. Awesome. Thank you. You guys can all have a seat. Thank you so much. I just want to take a minute and thank all of our boards for being here tonight, participating in these throughout this school year because this is something that's very near and dear to my heart is ensuring
014that we create this connected community on behalf of our kids. So with that, I'm going to hand it over to Dr. Uh thank you. Thank you Denise. Um so the next uh part of the uh uh is a guided discussion but before we do that um just um uh some housekeeping vocabulary. So um a couple years ago we started the idea the process of uh uh of referring to one another and at the high school level uh you are our foundation you're not our feeders you are our foundation so here today we have a couple students and they Mr. Angelos has students from all districts today beach park is represented big time yes so So, so when I when you see them, if you can stand up, this is our foundation. This I mean you
015created excellent students and and they came to us. So um so we changed and and we trying to make it more additive that um it is a K12 enterprise from kindergarten all the way to high school and our focus is that they graduate and it starts with you and then we take over at the high school level and that's what we're pushing so that they go to college they go to the military or they go and become employed. We call it 721 but again uh uh thank you Beach Park. Thank you Win Winter Harbor. Thank you s 6 for sending us a foundation and the best students anywhere. So on behalf of Mr. Angelo, our board, thank you again and you might see students. So foundational schools and a high school all working together and
016that's the idea. And before we do that and before we go into the activity um we are going to show you an example of what this foundation is all about. So you will see in a video um why it's important that you are considered that you are our foundation. Uh this is a video put together by the four different school districts under the leadership of Mr. Angelos and the hard work of our students. So I was told that some clips like 10 seconds took hours you know. So when it was time to record me, it took forever to get that going, you know, maybe days. I mean, they probably decided we don't need him in this video. So, and then they were told by the teacher, no, we got to give him two seconds. But
017um but again, I mean, uh um it shows the excellent work uh uh of our high school and what our students are capable of doing uh when we believe in them. It's not an achievement gap, it's an opportunity gap. We're dealing with an opportunity gap in our communities and these opportunities that Mr. Angelo and our teachers and our district provide to our students at a different school district you know are really key in making us successful. So again um you will see in the video you know the hard work of all school districts a collection of uh uh um different you know uh you know artifacts some uh administrators speaking teachers students um but most importantly the uh return on the investment that we have when it comes to our career and technical programs and
018the hard work of our teachers with our students as this was produced here in in uh I was going to say went to Harvard in um in Scion uh Venton District 126. Got to go back Katie. [Music] Day 721 represents the start of life after high school. The challenges and opportunities that await our students. The ZB community schools are committed to ensuring every student is prepared for success on this critical day and beyond. A school year is 180 school days. You multiply that by four, you get 720. For every student that comes in as a freshman, we are thinking about what's happening on day 721. It all comes down to what kind of community do you want? And then you have to, you know, work your schools around those goals and that vision of what
019do you want your future communities to look like? Because those future communities are in your schools right now. We uh maintain high, you know, expectations for our kids and we want them to succeed. I get excited about that because it's not just about teaching and learning. It's about, you know, building character, uh giving kids the skills necessary to be successful. Every single student here can do amazing things and we just have to harness that at a young age and all have the same vision. So, we're all moving in the same direction. Teachers from high school district, teachers from Beach Park and teachers from Winthrop Harbor. So we've come together to really focus on um building the capacity of our teachers through those collaborative efforts. And so we see that really being a huge success. And
020I think that has the largest impact is creating a learning community across four school districts, ensuring that we're all working together collaboratively to give kids exactly what they need to find success on day 721. Let's explore how each ZB district is empowering students with unique teaching and hands-on programs. Teaching them how to set a routine, how to follow it is something that I think is very important and gives them skills later when they enter the workforce. Although it seems like small skills, those are huge bricks in their foundation. If they know that, then we can pick up the ball with pre-alggebra and pre- geometry. And if we get that ball rolling, then those students are fully prepared for high school. Um, I am teaching them how to fill out job applications, create resumeumés. Um, we
021explore the 16 career clusters and all of the careers that are under those clusters. Um, our college and career counselors, work with our school counselors, uh, in a lot of ways in order to prepare kids for the process of going through high school, whether that be understanding, you know, the basics of finance and economy, uh, some of our history. If a student is two or three grades behind, we're not going to lower the expectations for that student. We are going to coach that student up to where they can meet those expectations. Hear from the students themselves as they share their dreams for the future and how ZV schools are helping them achieve those goals. I would say our dual credit classes prepares for the rigor of college. The professors really expect more from us in
022a shorter amount of time. in math. She's starting to teach us eighth grade work before we get to high school because when we get to eighth grade, they're going to teach us that stuff. Earlier this year, we were able to attend the Lake County Fairgrounds where we were able to learn about different career um pathways that we could take in high school and after. We have sport activities that could help you with uh your athleticism and your well-being. There's a teacher, she's my eighth period teacher, her name is Miss Pipes. uh she like just teaches us about like careers and stuff about like life. I feel that yearbook club helps because it helps us with leadership roles and working with other people which will be good for us in our careers. I really like beers
023because it helps us get involved in our school and it allows me to see what my peers are concerned with and change our school from the inside. We did like this research about more about the career you want to do. will be like you wrote down on like a big piece of paper and how much like the salary and things are. Growing up, I really loved music. So, I want to go to college and study music production. We do things like videography, photography, graphic design, a lot of things like that. And I think that it prepares us for a lot of things that we could do in the real world. The ZB community takes immense pride in its schools. It's a place where students are nurtured, supported, and encouraged to be their best. We have
024amazing staff members, amazing faculty, uh, working with amazing and extraordinary students. We are supporting students in the junior high to set them up for success in high school. We just don't let them fly and never see them again. We hope to build that relationship. The less we know, the harder it is to actually help others. So I think the more that we understand what's happening in classrooms and what's happening with teachers, I think it's just going to build a stronger community all around. You have people in this building, in this whole district, in this whole community actually that really care about the young people of this community. Knowing what our students embody, the principles they embody, the values they embody, and being a platform for them to form those and take them out into the
025world is without question the number one most powerful thing an educator can do. Every school in the ZB community plays an important part in our students journey to day 721. We love our students more than anything and our priority is and will always be their futures. [Music] Thank you students. Thank you Mr. Angelos uh for the hard work. It's appreciated. Um I am no surprise of what you created so you don't surprise me anymore because I know I already know your excellent. I already know what you can produce. So, uh, but I am very proud that you did this and that you put this together. And I asked, um, uh, Katie to, uh, schedule a, uh, launch, um, between all the students, you and the administration, uh, as appreciation. So, so, you know, where we
026can talk a little bit more. But again, this is the foundation and I thank you uh, foundational schools for um, for producing producing the uh, you know, the best students anywhere. We have no excuses. We're investing in the right places. Uh we can see that our students are going uh uh all over the nation bringing awards. Um we can see the productions that we put together here in our district and that is again nothing but the result of a K to2 hard work discipline work from all boards of education administrators um and also our students. So very very proud and um we do have a couple uh taper topics that we want to discuss but uh as you saw in the video this idea of 721 the students are with us for 720 days that
027after they graduate it's very simple it's very simple and it's very militant. Yes it is. They better have a plan postsecondary plans go to work go to college or uh go to the military. you're going to do something and we want to make sure that in these four years we prepare you for college career, it's not only college, it's also careers and it's also most importantly life. So that is the focus of the high school and that is what we're working on with the elementary schools uh um K8 uh as foundational schools to make sure that we have this the the the learner profile identified early on and then once they come to high school we can accelerate the process with postsecary plans. So, but with that we have uh you know we do have
028some challenges you know and we also have great opportunities you know because as board superintendents we work in a in a state where things change rapidly um and and we and we must adapt to that. So we do have a four topics that we want to discuss that we want our boards to discuss and they are future focused learning, share accountability, community partnerships and college and career readiness. So what what took place is that we have identified collectively that those four areas are important. So collectively as superintendent um I mentioned that those areas are important for 126. Julios indicated the same about uh district 6, Denise in district three and Jeff in district one that those four areas are are are things that we are concerned about in addition to funding. So in addition to
029funding, we're very concerned about those topics, but we like the boards to have a uh some interactions on this and some discussion and and instead of doing it by board, we're going to mix it up a little. So So this is how we do that. So if you can count one to four and we start with Jerry here. One, two, three, four, two, three, four. Okay. Two, three, four. Oh, sorry. One. I'll do two. Two. Four. One. Two. Oh, sorry. I I I I I for a minute I thought Jeff was a a board member. So, it's two. Sorry about that. So, um once here Actually five number want. Okay. So three here, one here, two and four. I already forgot. You want me? Oh, thank you. No, but I'm just Perfect. This is talking
030about sharing accountability. All right. So, let's take a walk. So, now in in 33 seconds, you have to identify a facilitator, not spokesperson in your table. Identify the facilitator noteaker and spokesperson all No one's making it. Okay. So, you're taking notes here. So, this is the purpose of it. Everything everything is here that you need but so everything is here that you need but in addition in addition you have these not cards put together by Denise you have a a descriptions about what every table has you might not need it but for those of you who need more research and more information it's available but everything you need will be I think some stuff got on this cuz the sheet that we have doesn't go with the cards that we have. Yeah. Don't worry about
031the cards. These don't worry about these. Okay. Don't worry about they're there for supplemental materials. So everything you need is here. You don't need the cards. Oh, we don't need everything you need is in this piece of paper. So the cards are actually here. You see the corners? Okay. All right. So, so everything you need is in this piece of paper. Everything else is supplemental materials. Noteaker, spokesperson, and what was the other one? Facilitator. Facilitator. So, in your group facilitator, you're going to talk about in this case community partnerships and why that is important utilizing those four guiding questions. So, use these questions to facilitate the discussion. And if you if you want to know what community partnerships is, what is the operating definition? It is provided to you here. Let's go this way. So
032the operating definition of community partnerships is provided. So you can talk about everything whatever you want your ideas and your thoughts. Um so we will have about 10 minutes to do this and then we will share uh allow the rest of the group. That sounds clear. Sounds clear. Okay. So, what I'm going to convers 16 of course. How many of them? I can read this if you want. Oh, district. is having a little difficulty connecting the purpose of I don't understand how the shared accountability like students and parents and teachers facilitator is We don't need anything. just [Music] Everyone Maybe right on as a topic. So the players are us. Well, for what we're doing today, you I'm just I think what I was looking Yeah. talking about through just answering two out of the
033four questions what do you think are improvement and also goes out give me free So that's how we [Music] culture something. took over a little more collaboration. director having a big bullet point or whatever you They talk like, "Hey, we're going to have to switch over." I know. at the same time. What about professional development for like what we did? Yeah, sure. Yeah, sure. I think I think that'd be good just for for staff at other schools to see I don't want to say lacking but do you see something another district might be doing that works better I mean Junior does this already And they did the whole machine to the clock. It looks like everybody is still working. So we're going to add three more minutes to the clock. You think that's good for
034that one? Do you see how it Yeah. [Music] You can even do situations. [Music] As long as we have an agreed at points. Those numbers agreed upon the [Music] This is why you need to learn things. You got to get doctor. That's how that happens. I did. I had two minutes left. Probably the last woodworking I've ever done in my life. I didn't see him saying he was a question. So the other two areas over here didn't understand how How long it takes to get the results? Is it the year? Is it a year over by the time we get this electronic testing? Where is that? Right. There's a lot of stuff I wish we take I don't understand my very careful open so we can expand our feet. Oh, sure. We got the You're
035right. But it needs to be relevant because you can't finish the last sentence. Spokesperson, get ready to present. library. All right. So, we start with um table starts table. Yeah, that's the only table that gave time. [Music] So, we chose two questions. First question we want to start out with is the one um there shared accountability. Okay, can we shift that over? Perfect. We'll go lower left with the star. No, there we go. There. How can we better share uh responsibility for student learning? Um one of the things we felt is important that as separate districts, we should have more communication and collaboration around the curriculums with each other. Um as we, you know, as your kids go up to a level, we'd like them all to have well they're all starting at the same
036spot, they should end kind of similar in the same spot. Regardless what town they come from, what district they come from, we should have at least a baseline of where they should be going and that communication could be improved. Um, and we think that I guess they have professional development things between the county. We felt that rather than the countywide and kind of be washed out, we should have that between the four districts. We can still attend the county for professional development for our staff and the schools, but at least with the four districts working together, we can have a more collaborative voice to walk in being little individuals and silent voices, we'd be a louder voice to be heard throughout the county. So, that's what we had for the star question. Next one was
037the email question. How can we hold each other accountable for improving student outcomes and professional practices? Again, that plays off to the professional development for our staff. Um, I think that's important that moves forward them to better benefit our students going forward. Um, one of the big things we did discuss as well as curriculum sharing for the for the responsibility of student learning. Um, we moved over into the four districts getting together and sharing their metrics and their numbers that come out of them. Um, either you know the social emotional, the academic and the shared baseline. It's really important that if we're going to discuss these numbers and metric with each other that we develop a baseline between each other like a means a one means one. So when we have the outcomes we present
038it's all on the same scale and all understood between everyone what the what the um what's the word I'm looking for what the assignment was. So we're all doing apples to apples instead of apples to oranges. So that's what we had for our team. Thank you. uh something very powerful from that um was that when developing these metrics um they must be personalized because not all schools are created equal. So that was something very powerful that yes that assessment is important those metrics are important but the benchmark has to be based on that particular school and their needs. So that's a I got that when I went by I was looking for those things you see. So um second table um blink. Oh okay I guess sweet. Um so we had college and career readiness.
039I think we chose these two right the star the two corners. So how can we improve collaboration between our districts and stakeholders to better support college and career readiness. Um and and we really like kind of all blended together in the discussion because they're they're kind of getting at the same thing. Um, so what we came up with was like communitywide um, what do you want to be when you grow up event for like prek to four. So for younger kids, right? And that might be entail dressing up as what you want to be learning a bit about a about a vocation or whatever, whatever you want to be. Right? Um, just to get them starting to think about where they want to end by 12. Right now they're not going to know. That's fine.
040but just engaging that part of their brain. And then um beyond that from 5 to 12, we were looking at bringing in community members to do discussions, expose of careers, having maybe a community career night where we have like literally an expo where people go kids can go from booth to booth to learn about different careers, things they may be interested. And with that kind of maybe having community members speak to how what they've learned would attach to that career, right? Like there a lot of the things that we learn in high school or in elementary school are foundational to your career. You may not realize it, but there's a lot of critical thinking skills, a lot of learnings that you carry on and you know it is become automatic, right? So, kind of really
041getting them to just think about that because if if you're just riding through to 12th grade, not thinking about what you want to do, that that's probably not optimal. Um, and using our community resources to do so because we have a lot of professionals in the community that can help with this. Um, and then how can we better engage parents and community members in supporting student success and college and career readiness. Um, kind of the same thing, right? Like getting them involved in this too because we have a lot of educated parents and in all different fields, right? We have we have career and technical people that have children that go to our districts. We have um probably have doctors in in somewhere in that can come and talk. We have people who work in
042sales fields. They can talk about their I mean there's all sorts of different locations that people can do and it's not just college, right? Um but just bringing them in engaging those parents and community members to talk about their careers and get these kids ready for day seven 21. I suppose speaking to high school, but I don't know what's what's 13 times of 180. I have no clue off the top of my head, but that's a lot more. So I think that's where we're at, right? Yeah. Oh yeah, internship. Yeah, we can talk about that. Like little mini internships, whether that's like they shadow an employee for a day, right? And then that could eventually evolve into okay, now we have somebody who's actually working uh in a field in a support capacity and making
043money off of it in addition to like getting high school credit or something along those lines for it. So yeah, postsecary plans starting in elementary and and this is what comes to mind now. you activated my background, my my experience in elementary. I remember in K5 there was a unit about careers and the zookeeper and I want to be a police officer and a teacher and you're so excited. You're in kindergarten and you want to be all you know you want to do all of that but then we forget about it after second, third, fourth fifth and then we pick it up again in high school. So may maybe that's happening. That's a discussion for us as superintendent. But um um so starting with those second post those secondary plans when they're little and spitting
044that in their own head and then keeping with that all the way to 12th grade because we're doing it now at the high school level in ninth grade. But um that's an interesting talk because we I think you still do that. Do you do that in Illinois in ele K5? We do a bunch of stuff at our middle school 68 and our APs bring in people on a weekly basis or on a monthly basis to speak about careers. Good. So that idea of postsecary plans I mean from kindergarten to 12th grade is a good discussion for us. Um and then um there was something interesting in this story about the the fact that many students cannot read this anymore and everything is zero and and making sure that we provide a holistic approach and that
045our students are are are are viewed differently and although technology and all those things you know times do change are important uh that there's a place also for that type of learning so that came from this table um Mr. Nostrom in your table. Awesome. Hello. I'm Alberto Sakira. I am the spokesman of our table. Um, we had some good discussions here. Uh, we are talking about the future focus of learning. Um, and uh, one of the first ones that we decided to touch on was how can we make learning more personalized and student driven. And so as we were talking uh kind of similar to what a lot of the tables were talking about as far as uh finding out or getting some ideas to the students, finding out some goals and something that they
046want to accomplish maybe one of their strong suits. I know there's people that like social studies, there's people who like math and certain different subjects and we feel like we just need to find their strong suits, but we know there's also a lot of data out there that we know of where certain kids are at as far as their education level. So, um it would be nice to just, you know, I think the first week of school we've discussed it would be fun to um like ask the students what is it that you like? What is it that you want to learn specifically to make it more personalized for them? And as the process goes, we'll find out. And we don't like the word weakness, but we'll know that maybe something that uh wherever there's
047lacking, we could the teacher will know how we can help that student specifically. Um and uh I think that's what we got for that as far as that first question we wanted to get answered. And um the second one was how can we support teachers in developing skills they need effectively to teach uh a future focused classroom. And so with I was getting uh the information from the students on what they um really what they want to do as far as what they want to study, what they really want to focus on. Um I feel like once we get that then we can have maybe a discussion of who can speak to the teachers of like hey this is what these students or this is what um this is what we really want to talk
048about as far as uh the teachers uh once we get the ideas for uh from the students. then the superintendent or whoever uh would like to talk to the teachers as far as how we could um help and give the right resources to the teachers to help the students ultimately. So, um, but yeah, we we think that there's just a there's a there's a lot out there and we know that teachers need help as far as like I mean there's if there's a classroom of 20 kids, one teacher can't all necessarily be focused on all 20 students all at one time. So, um, but it would be nice to, uh, specifically find out what the student needs and then have that one-on-one dialogue with the student as far as the teacher goes. and uh help
049them um you know and yeah just help them and get them prepped up for the high school level so far as so yeah so the idea of personalized student driven I mean looking at that the student interest and what he or she you know uh interest is and then tailoring instruction and curriculum based on needs right and then you know we know that there's also things that our students might need help in. And so, you know, as they're doing through testings, which they do anyways, we know there's data out there. So I just feel we feel as a group that you know once we know that we can help them much better and if they need extra you know uh help maybe one- on-one time with that student to help them because let's just face
050it um you know there's there's students out there and I believe I was one when I was growing up I just needed just a little bit extra from that teacher and it helped me. So yeah. So interventions for our students and we we have pushed and we have discussed as superintendents and and and this district the idea of interventions are important but also enrichment and also acceleration. So we do have a lot of students that need to be pushed uh uh uh harder because they are they're bored in class they are they just know the material. So so acceleration is important but also those students that are not uh catching up. I was one of those two. We need we need a little more right that Yeah. Right. Thank you. Thank you much. Uh and
051uh table. Sure. Uh community partnerships. We only got to one question and that was how do we ensure that all members of the community are included in the conversation and that's hard. I I think we've all tried. Um, I pointed out that people show up here when they want to complain about taxes, but they aren't interested in much else. Um, my colleagues suggested besides social media, we have to have a good social media presence, you know, and we that's something we need to work on constantly and I think ours has improved, but maybe we need to consider mailers too to some of the older residents who don't have children and grandchildren in school, maybe don't want to get on social media. Um, so that that was one thing. Maybe go back to limited mailing. I
052know mailing is expensive, so we might want to target uh seniors that way. Uh, we do celebrations here. And I think that getting these these students in early in a meeting and celebrating their successes is another good way to start bringing parents and teachers in. and we agreed that parent teacher conferences are vital if we're going to get the parents hooked onto the school and and engaged. We need an engaged parent to keep the students engaged. And so I think we really have to focus on parents and how can we how can we get them to understand how important it is that they care about their students future. What else? Um, oh, good comment from Pam was using Next Door as well as Facebook, but turning off comments so that we don't have all the
053negativity from certain trolls when we're posting something good. And I would really, really, really like to see the community come out to the PAC and see some of her performances. This play last week was outstanding. So is our band. So is our choir. And the whole community should know that. So it's I I'd really like them to see how much our kids have to offer. Yeah. So so so you know with the idea of a community partnership is one observation um you know compared to other districts in Illinois and Wisconsin about you um even at the high school level. So I am doing the high school. Every time that you have an activity where students are performing or students are involved, you probably have the best participation. Our parents in this community, they like to
054come and see their students perform. In other places, you are at the high school level and they send you and they go home. Our parents do come and they stay, you know, from a place to uh those, you know, that plane was full last week. So um so the more activities that we do where we invite parents and the students are performing because when you do an activity such as you know a title one meeting uh to talk about title one and funding and reading the interest level from parents is not as high but every time it's fine arts every time it's a athletics you do have a participation level that is higher than other districts that I have that I've been on. So we got to capitalize on that because there's an interest but
055the interest is when my when my child is performing. So I'm coming out and I'm bringing grandma and I'm bringing you know uncles and aunties I mean I'm bringing people with me but when the activity is about um the state of education by the superintendent very little interest be honest with you I mean whereas in other communities you have a lot of people come out you know but but our so our strength is in is in a um honestly in um um elevating our student and when we elevate our student from elementary to high school, our parents and our community is more interested. That way we are elevating ourselves. You see that there's there's something unique about our community um that I see and and and every time we have events as I said before
056they do come out and I'm sure elementary schools might see that as well. But I know the high school level is very unique because at the high school level many parents they go back they bring the student they go back here they stay you know some go back and they they leave the kids here but um many of them do stay so we get better participation when the when the students are being recognized elevated uh you know performing that interest is there you know games so so we got to do more of that we we figured it out and we're pushing that more and more and promoting that more and more you to uh the social media. So, thank you much. And uh our next section is with um uh Mr. Dr. McCarti. I think
057you just took mine. Did I? Oh, and I didn't did I to share. But if we learn um I think that you know one of the reasons that we wanted to really kind of do breakouts in the tables and and have discussions uh a little bit more in depth is to get all board members uh acquainted more personally uh with each other especially new board members that are coming in but also to capitalize on what we want to do in the future. Uh we talked administratively with superintendents here and you know it's one thing for us to come in and give you a presentation and give you data but it's another for you as super as board members to say this is what we want to learn. So this is kind of our goal right
058now is to say you know what do we want or what do you want us to do for you to help you become better board members in each district. So, we've done a lot of sharing today. Uh, you've started in on the activities and I think that's kind of where we're leading into. So any thoughts if you want to just stay at your tables and then maybe discuss that as the next question or you want to just raise your hand or it could be what we've learned from this year working together jointly in joint board meetings and things we've done collectively together. What have you learned? Well, let me let me give you let's go five minutes at your tables. Uh come up with maybe either some thoughts about what you've learned or where you
059want to go and then we'll take that next step. So, five minutes on the clock. I think it was What's on your mind about education? Some of the best work here, right? [Music] for years. Yeah, it just shows that we all get to know them, right? And we get to Right. Not just are the facilities that we've all I'd like to see different whether it's a change in this evening is everyone just seems like there's a lot of topics a lot a lot of ideas it's got to be chunked different so we focus on this listen like parent participation where do the parents recognition. It's very difficult with our scale. But we need to say that different what every district does that others might not be doing. They're showing success. Whether it's the words that
060they mean, whether it's just a larger award ceremony for parents get invited, whether it's the games or it's the um like one of the cool things that I noticed about the Shrek play is we had a kid from our play because he's involved in some of the high school classes, he's actually able to participate. I'll tell you what, there was a group of parents there just because he was there. like parents that normally don't have kids in high school wouldn't even go to school. One kid is in. So I'm not maybe a collaboration on they invite some kids from schools to have parents but not not to focus on you know parents but like maybe one meeting focused on social media and you tell the month or the quarter in we're going to focus on
061social Everyone do something. Find your measures. You learn your pros, your cons, like what you get from it. Whether that's this meeting that's more focused. I think that's a great thing to share. Yeah, that's a great talent today. The point behind this was that you guys process an extra step. Now it's measure progress. What did you what did you guys cover last week? We should so much about social media presence and different whether it's district. We didn't get any one maybe a kid from the college expert name or whatever it is a huge thing. Oh, we got Lamb. It's just a moderator that builds when someone comments they cancel it out. All right, let's come back together. Okay. Uh so the topic was uh what you've learned over the course of uh our joint board
062meetings or what you would like to learn and we'll start at this table and we'll go opposite this time. So uh who would like to speak? Anyone? So we kind of you know discussed that you know what we learned as far as like having these meetings together which you know are beneficial and it's you know trying to figure out you know how many do you need you know how do you lead them how do we get it to go forward um you know because there is board turnover and there's always going to be board turnover we want it to be something more of not every meeting be the same you know now that we've done this but the next one should a moving forward thing, not necessarily a more ice breakers and you know learning
063about each other like okay now let's put our heads down and try to figure some stuff out together and any topics that came out with that discussion or just looking to move forward in general. Um I think communication was definitely one um we're all separate districts so wise and you said you guys have kind of ways of communicating amongst each other and stuff like that. You know, outside of knowing what each district does, you know, it be nice and so these kinds of meetings trying to figure out well this is a process that we go through this process you go through. So when we talk about scope and sequence, you know, within the course of a school district, uh if we if we were one district, we would try to do scope and sequence curricular
064wise uh all the way from kindergarten to uh 12th grade. Okay. So what we could do uh administratively is also take that one step further in communication and say how do you guys communicate to the high school how do you communicate communicate at the other levels and is there a commonality so that we don't have you know parents and everybody that goes to win harbor and the communication is done one way and then they come to the high school and it's done a a different way and they're not used to it. So having that scope in sequence would be uh a wonderful way to to really kind of bridge that gap as well. So excellent. Excellent. This group, I'll be the one talking. Um, and chime in, but from my perspective, even though so we're
065four districts and we talk about we're one school community, but I think each we have to recognize that each district does have its own characteristics of its uh population, of its students. And you know, as we've gotten together more though, I think one thing that's hit me is that I think we all struggle to to different degrees to try and connect with not just the parents or not just the community, but also the parents. So, I think one thing that I've learned is I think we need to figure out how to help one another do that. Um, you know, it was talked about, you know, social media is one way. You know, I I said many years ago, for whatever people thought of the local newspaper, there was a way to have a message get
066out to thousands of people. And um right now, the only way to get that message out is to write your own stuff. Um and I think sometimes that's not necessarily perceived as objective. So figuring out how maybe we can help one another get messages out whether it's about what we're doing at budget time, what we're doing with curriculum, you know, talk about the fact that we are collaborating and what we've hopefully seen now that we've been doing this for a couple years. You know, what have we seen as some successes or at least some um changes in the way we work together that we can try and talk to the community? But how can we support one another in getting that message out, getting the community to understand, getting our parents to be more engaged?
067Um whether you know beyond the sporting event or the, you know, performing arts type community attention when we're doing stuff that probably is more at the core of how successful their students are going to be. Excellent. So, we are two for two with communication. Do we have a third? Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. Um, one of the things we discussed at the table is that when we have these meetings, there seems to be a lot a lot a lot of topics, a lot of discussion. It has to be chunked up into pieces. Um, we listen to you guys talk about what you decide about or we're not looking at, you know, the whole picture. So, one of the things I I think that would be beneficial is if we just pick one topic at the end
068of every meeting we have like this, we pick a new topic. Um, and we'll go with the social media. run with that so we can have your communication. So let's say we all decide, hey, what are we doing to communicate more with our parents to get more involvement and focus on that for the next meeting we're going to have. Try some things. Take some metrics, see what you get. Start with your baseline. See if you get results. Let's say we decide to, you know, we'll go with like cutting off the comments on on the post we put on social media. Does that turn something bad? Hey, we learned that they really get mad when you don't allow them to talk. Do you allow them to just freeoot anything? I got to deal with the trolls.
069you have a social media um expert where you talk to like CLC and pull one of these kids coming out of the social media and communications aspect and pay them a part-time stipen or something like that to spend a couple hours just to go through and make sure things don't line. But the the point of it is that we have the the one topic that we all agree we're all going to work towards and then we come back and we share what we've learned. there might be something uh six does that none of us thought about. Oh, that's brilliant. And we have numbers to show it worked really great with our parents and outside of the parents. So, um yeah, just more focused and a community to move forward and then share the results from
070what we actually tried between the meetings. Excellent. Excellent. I really kind of feel the the uh energy as moving forward uh having you all work together tonight and wanting to take that next step. Final group. I guess I'm talking um So, I think we were I mean, I'm pretty new to this, so I haven't had any past learnings. Uh, but what I found beneficial in these types of meetings is just your ability to like communicate one-on-one, right? And these these moments where you get to share learnings with each other or just kind of probe and ask what sorts of issues are. So, I guess it's still is communication, right? It's it's it's district to district communication. understand what's going on in six, understand what's going on in three, what's going on in one, what's going
071on in one 126 because a lot of these issues may be shared. If not, we we may have, as Dane said, like there may be a solution that we we've already kind of figured out like, oh yeah, we did this, it was great. We got frontal involvement through this program or whatever. Um, and I think that was really it, just keeping the lines of communication open. And I do think that personally, this is just me, this isn't my group. I think there's value in having very focused topics like this time we're going to talk about curriculum K12, whatever, right? Like that's this so we can do our research ahead of time, right? So I know, okay, cool. Let me let me read up a little bit, right? Let me do some Google searches on some
072some studies so I know what I'm talking about so I don't look like an idiot, right? So So what did we learn tonight? that we're all having the same issue of communication. Yep. Right. Real time. There we go. I think this really kind of moves into the next step. And uh Dr. uh Dr. Lawson uh I'll bring you up to uh to kind of take that next step with this group and uh draw our focus in because I think it's pretty clear on where this group wants to go next time we meet. Perfect. Good evening all and thank you for the amazing feedback. Um so heard a few things. Um one was how often should we meet? When should we meet? Um and be prepared when we meet and be prepared when we meet. So
073last year this school year uh we started in October with uh a meeting October 29th, last Tuesday of the month. In December, December 10th, we had the state of the learning community uh meeting here at the high school as well. and today, April 29th. So, two joint board meetings, one state of the learning community meeting. Is that too much? Is it not enough? What are your thoughts moving forward? One meeting, two meetings, another meeting every month. They work better when you put them on the clock. Put them on the clock. Ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra rather than than pinpointing how many meetings maybe we should focus on if we're going to do
074a pointed targeted discussion like let's say med social media is going to be the topic of next month or like how long do we need to try what we need to try to develop those discussion points to come in with real results that we can discuss is it quarterly is it bianually if that's twice a year so so that's the discussion you did thank Thank you. That's a great point. I should have reversed the slides. My next slide speaks to priorities. Thank you for stealing my thy number of meetings. Two though right now we have two on the calendar. One October April. Too much not enough. Just thoughts around our current two and the state of the learning community meeting that we have. Maybe we should look at our priorities and see. Okay. So we
075agreed to take a look at the priorities. Yes. And then come back to calendar scheduling. Beautiful. Why? Because trying to manage my own calendar as one person, it's tough. And when I thought about trying to bring the calendars of all of you in this room together, I wanted to pass out. All right. So priority areas 25 26. Heard a few things. Um we have some of the same challenges. Uh communication is an issue. It's a lot. Uh being focused benefits us um tremendously. Based on what you discussed today and what you may have not discussed um what are your thoughts on priority areas? I heard communication bubble up few different tables. So seems like communication may have risen to the top as a [Music] priority to discuss. anything additional? Well, the problem with communication is
076a big topic. I think to go into communication, you need to focus on certain areas of communication. So, if you're going to pick that, we can't just say, so we haven't picked anything. I mean, but communication was something that that that rose to the top here. Now we can dig a little deeper and do some some drilling down to figure out what particular area of communication do we need to focus on. Is it um sending message to messages to external partners to parents? Is it communicating with staff students? So we can we can start to drill down but just based on what has been discussed across tables um seems like general idea of communication has has risen to the surface. I think one of the things that I heard people kind of articulate pertaining to
077communication is the need to really have a communication plan that we all kind of follow and not knowing what you know like in one district it may be they communicate through Facebook that's really how they do it I'm just making an example but then another district really communicates through text messages and phone calls that's how they communicate everything and really creating more of a universal kind of all of us are going to do this because I think I heard someone say like some districts do this and it isn't consistent and so because there are four foundational you know three foundational districts that feed up to design Benton Township High School is parents get used to one way and then they go to the high school and it's something else so potentially creating kind of a
078universal communication ation plan for general things might be something that the boards could jointly help develop. Okay. Don't lose track of the community. You know, too much is focused on the parents, but the community at large needs to know what's going on. We're asking them to support us with their find with their tax dollars. They need to know what's going on so they can buy in and feel part of it. And I definitely feel like that was one of the topics that was brought up of, you know, we have I think to the point we have people show up at board meetings when it come has to do with money, taxes, and levies, all of those things. And how are we communicating that collectively so that we're sending the same message and the communities are
079hearing the same things. So like a communication plan that we collectively utilize when it comes to big topic things like that. Well, we we need to hear from the communities. That that's I think very important, right? Like they need to tell us what what we need to do, right? That's not it doesn't doesn't go that we don't necessarily tell them. They need to tell us what they want because we don't know, right? You can go on Facebook. I'm not the reality. You're showing your green. I don't understand. Like I get it, right? I get it. You're not going to always want what you're getting. I 100%. I see what is on Facebook pages. I see it all. It's a mess, right? But like realistically, like that's kind of what we're here for, right? Like I
080maybe I'm being green. I'm being an idealist here, but like we all were, right? For for sure. But like it's frustrating when you when you're at a meeting and like there's like two people there. It's the same two people every week and they say the same things. Me being one of them, right? Up until a week ago. So just some feedback from the community in a constructive way, right? just tell us where we should focus sometimes because we don't. So that could be the start of your communication plan though is surveying our communities to say what do you want? Right. I guess that's been part of the challenge. We've done a couple of different things whether it's through our strategic plan or facilities master plan different opportunities where we blast information out for the community
081to contribute. Come to a meeting, fill out a survey online. You know, you don't even have to come somewhere. You could just type something on a computer or do something through your phone. And um I guess the challenge is at least for me the challenge has been when there's whether it's positive or negative feedback over the last you know years is that feedback coming from one out of every hundred people who holds that opinion or is that really 75 out of a 100red people but there's only the one person who's actually making a point of letting you know. Um, so you don't know if it's one squeaky wheel who you're trying to appease or if it's really a communitywide thing, but everybody's busy and for or for whatever reason not interested enough to share, come
082out, communicate to you. So try and figure out get that pulse so that when any any of us are doing something whether it's spending money, changing curriculum, investing in things, whatever it happens to be that you know that you're actually hitting on the thing that if you could force everybody to give you their feedback out of you know the team tens of thousands of people within our four boundaries. Um what's that going to look like? Are we going to think we're in the right direction or not? So, sorry to your point difference, right? Do we want this group to focus on what this group is communicating collectively versus 61263, right? So this group may should want to just say we're going to consistently on couple years tell about the state of education some things and
083then maybe something a snippet from each what we're working on today together to communicate to the bid about the collective effort that we're doing together. So we decide on a communication what are we going to do collectively because we're going to meet and we're going to talk about we're going to report on X Y and Z and how are we going to communicate that and what venue we're going to use. If the parents are coming to a performing arts thing because our bands come together from that might be an avenue where we tell them a five minute snippet about something that we have because we don't have a paper. the collective districts are working on this and you give them the down and dirty right there. One, two, three, four, and then you go on
084with the musical, even if it's a one pager or something where they got the highlights of what we're working on together. So, I want to I want to go back to a very sient point that we made. There's a communication problem and we haven't really identified yet what the communication problem is because the topic of communication is so big. And so I heard there's a plan. We need a plan to identify the problem of of communication. All right. So the priority then is the communication plan maybe and not just communication. Is that what I'm hearing or did I not hear that? Does everybody agree? How about the films? Communication or Mr. Mr. because we could take a whole year on communication of just different steps. Well, even if we take the larger top communication and
085we do put it into subtopics on social media communication, communication to parents about school driven, you know, state of the school, um, and hit those where as we go back as our districts and do stuff, we stay focused on that major topic, but also hit those we have something to talk about for each one of those bullet points underneath can identify whether social media, mailers, the communication tool that you use to talk to parents. Y communicating with our seniors and that's key. How do we get that make that communication happen as well? So that's another problem and important is also communication between us you know board superintendent communication boardtoboard communication how we communicate. So this idea that if one board member knows everybody every board member knows. If one superintendent knows the other superintendent know.
086So right now currently if there's something you know you know from closing schools to opening schools to ideas if one superintendent knows everybody knows right now and in the last year it's been like that but but in that communication plan we also include ourselves you know this is internal there's internal communication and external we are internal we're one team so um if one board knows what do we do so that other boards know. So that so that's a that's so with communication we can develop a plan like that where we can promote internal and external communication but internal is us so all right priority two what are we thinking beyond communication collaboration is important how do you communicate when you can't work together or collectively so you got to work collectively so you got to
087collaborate That's Dr. Rodriguez's suggestion slrecommendation. Just attitude. I'm looking to hear from our boards. You've talked about quite a bit. I guess I still feel like communication is so big that it's like a priority one too because there's so many different parts of it that we don't we don't we can't eat the elephant, right? So collectively again even if you stay with in your boards what community how you're going to communicate when we come together to send a message to the community it should be the collective effort of this collective meeting right because we can't develop a communication plan for each day because everything every school every every district every school in the district is different Right. But what when we're talking about community and I think if we start with just letting people know
088that we are all working together collaboratively on these efforts that's already a huge communication that's already huge. They don't know that sometime you know the social media is telling our story. We're not telling our story. Social media is telling our telling the story. It's not accurate but you know they're talking. So district 126 and one three 126 said did this on the meeting on tech to better work together just if they knew that we were all coming together words and not working in silos on educational issues huge communication risk I I just have something if if we prepared something to to your thought there and put it out to each one of us and each one of us forwarded it out to everyone that we're connected with. There has to be just an overpowering number
089of people that are getting the information passed to them whether they want it or not. Um if if there was some kind of a social media either a a picture or just one photograph that comes out that says that we are working together and then puts all the district or the districts and the boards together like lists and it just comes out to all of us and then we in turn send it out to everybody that we know and just kind of flood social media with hey we're doing something and we want you to know about it and I don't know whether that's something that you actually get comments back on you just want it to be an FYI is all of these boards words are working together and we want you to know about
090it and how do we get second in in my thought would be how do you get the parents I I know the community is going to respond to taxes and levies and all that kind of thing but really where where we're all involved is with each child's life that's in each one of our districts and how do you get parents to communicate back to you because some parents don't care. Some parents are non-existent and grandma or auntie or some other family member is actually raising this child and it's required that kids go to school. So, of course, they're going to send kids, but they're going to be uninvolved. Somehow we have to get that responsible parent or person into a discussion before their kids in the super principal's office or they're in trouble or or
091god forbid at a county level they're in worse trouble. So I think what we are talking about we're back to uh Dr. Wilcox's idea of a communication plan. Um, and it seems like that we all do, I'm certain that we all do things differently from one district to another as it relates to communication. Um, so maybe the the core of a plan then we share that plan across districts um to to galvanize one another's individual plan um to build a stronger communication plan across all four districts. Jeremy, you had your hand up. Yeah, I guess separate as far as maybe a separate idea and we've talked about some of this a little bit. It's probably more a question for the superintendants or unfortunately Dr. Genji stepped out. She was in here for a bit is
092I think one of the things when we started coming together as a as a group was to say what are we doing to make sure that each of our districts is making sure that kids from kindergarten all the way through till day 721 that we're all doing what we can to make sure that they're in a position to be successful. And do those that aren't board members think that enough is being done or that we need to do more to support what you're doing on curriculum alignment? You know, that's been a conversation since I came on the board and then there was a conversation back in the early 2000s of, you know, in the elementary district and and how we're feeding feeding our students up to the high school. Um, is that an area that
093we need to work on or is that reasonably well. Maybe one district is doing a better job at aligning than others, but is that something that we need to talk about or that we could hear from you about administrators and curriculum directors about maybe what opportunities there are for us to do something different to support you as board members. So, I think that's great insight. Um, and one of the things that I did recently was I came over and joined um you all's strategic plan presentation because I wanted to make sure that as a district we align to the work that um you guys were doing obviously because we send our students right and so we want to make sure that they are high school ready when when they come to you um across the
094four um districts I personally don't think that we have done enough collectively um to ensure that um so that's again my priority but this isn't Julius's priority I'm looking to hear from from you all and I I think that's a that's a great point. And if you reference the the legacy statements and you think about the joint boards of education and what our work should look like, then you have great ideas just behind you um to think about what our priorities should look like for um as we move forward. Do you think Dr. Rodriguez came back. So, we've got the four superintendent here. Is there enough alignment or work being done between the districts to help make sure that our students are handed off from 8th grade to 9th grade in a position to not
095be like, "Oh my god, why wasn't I" or for a parent to say, "Why weren't they ready to do this?" And is that something that we as boards in a meeting like this can't even do anything about other than to say, "Okay, we're all on the same page and when it comes to budget time, we're going to do this in buying resources or we're going to do this and helping provide appropriate staffing, whatever that might look like in each of our districts." You know, that that seems like that's the core of what all of us as a group of four districts could be doing. But if it's already being done, it's probably moot. If it's not being done, then what can we do to make it better? I would agree. And the short answer to
096your question is no. And I think uh well to piggy back off that we used to. Yes, I think it used to be done and I think it hasn't been done recently enough and we need to revisit that. But you are correct. There was enough turnover I think at points six seven eight years ago where people came and went at different levels within all four of the districts whether it's all all four or at least key people came and went where that those that stopped but but that would be on us right to to not necessarily to coordinate that that's why I'm saying what we do to make sure that it's happening if for some reason it's faltered we yeah we can support and I guess to a lesser degree hold accountable right if there's
097no progress on it. But I mean, we just need to make it a priority, right? And is that a meeting? Is that us having to be in a meeting or is it the board's just saying, "Hey, superintendent, superintendent, superintendent, superintendent, make sure that your staff are doing what we need to do." And then report back to us on how well that alignment is make being made, you know, to happen. So then we might not need to sit as a group for two and a half hours to talk about it. If you guys say yes, there's an opportunity to do better. at the next time we get together. Here's a 20-minut presentation on how we're doing better. Much appreciated and I agree. I'm thinking about the next time that we all do come together. Right. So,
098as joint boards, these are the things that we will discuss priorities. So, we will talk how we have improved communication. Let me pause. I think we could add this to the superintendent's goals and ask for metrics. Okay. What metric would you ask for in terms of alignment between the districts? Is it just I would want to know first of all what needs to be aligned? What needs to be aligned? What needs to be aligned aligning math? Are we aligning reading? Are we aligning literacy? And how do we plan to do it? Do we need more textbooks? Do we need tutors? So, so what are the goals that we need to reach to get a freshman prepared for freshman year? So, I think that has to be established too. What goals? How do we get there?
099How can each school district help each other? So, we might be talking about two different things. So, alignment is one thing and what we need to get aligned is is something completely different and what that work looks like as it relates to individual superintendent is different as well. Um, so when If this is a a goal for the superintendent, I would wonder what is the metric going to be as it relates to alignment between districts. So I would want to know if you're going to hold me accountable to that, which I'm I'm fine with. Just what does it look like? And so I would I would want to hear that from from what would it look like to a superintendent? Um so I wouldn't write that as a goal as as blind between other districts.
100The best policy. Yeah. Thank you for that. So I align my work to um superintendent like compet competency standard. So the work of of the state and so aligning your aligning my work to the high school's work or other district's work wouldn't be a part of that. So I wouldn't write a goal. You wouldn't write a goal like that. Would you write a goal to identify any existing gaps? Any existing gaps gaps between moving from 8th grade to 9th grade? Sure. aren't sure that to to identify the gaps and put together the metrics of what we need to do to decrease that gap. Say that once more. Define the gap. What gaps exist and how do we address them? Yep. I mean, do we have 80 students that need to be brought up to grade
101levels? Can we decrease that to 60 students? Can we increase that to 40 students? Can we buy more books? Do we need to hire more tutors? That is very different than aligning the work between districts, which is why I said we're talking about two different things. Okay. Just like you said with the communication piece, right? We have a door to D6 newsletter that goes out to every household. What does each one of you all have? Is there something in the communication piece for this group that we can put in door to D6? D1 is doing together. D1361 126 are doing this right to communicate to the community what's happening but um you're not going to stop your 126 newsletter about what's specifically going on internal. So like Dr. Rodriguez says, you have that internal, that
102external, right? This group should be communicating what this group is doing collectively. And if we can feed it off of something, adopt something like he said, you know, well, I didn't know you were doing that. Maybe we can adopt. Yeah, that would be a good idea. the the the public the public elected you so that so we have a a a chain of command is the public first then is you as for education so the public can trusted you to to do this work as a board member and then with that you establish policies you know you work with on procedures and then you put that on us so that we can implement those policies as superintendent with our staff. So I said all of that to say that that um one thing that many
103of you have done I mean I think all of us is that we have established priorities. In some places you call it the strategic plans but that is you. So I'm just going to I use Denise as an example. Your board adopted an strategic plan. The board decided that this is what is important. They're directing your work. So you have to implement that SOT plan which might require change in policy allocation of resources and then you got to bring back a return on that investment and the same thing happens with us and the same thing is happening with you and the same thing happens in one. So so so that direction is set by you through your strategic plan based on what the public communicated to you that they wanted to see more of. So
104that's a so the the a strategic plan and the the idea that you do set direction is important because that's how it works. The board sets direction. We implement the board is in the balcony. We are in the dance floor but you setting direction. It's not me setting direction in 126. The board wants me to do these things based on this strategic plan. And then I have to find a way to to to make that happen and get and and provide the board with a win because I have to make sure that the brand of the board is protected that they look good. But while I'm doing that, whose brand am I protecting too? Mine. So it's a it's collective. We're a team. So but you're a team in in your external. So unless we
105have to develop a strategic plan together. Exactly. That is it's a different avenue. So when we're talking about a communication plan, we're talking about from here. So we communicate with the tribe communities what we're doing collectively, not because our strategic plan is already going to tell them what D6 is doing and the direction that we're going and there are similarities because we work together and intentionally we make sure that those there are some similarities but as you indicated I mean they're not going to be the same. Even in schools, it has to be personalized on the needs of each district. But there are similarities. There are there are universal goals that we share. So we can communicate that. So we have two priorities for this group moving forward. Um, and I don't I don't necessarily
106think that we have to have to close this out today, but to begin the work of a communication plan, individual districts that should look similarly across the four districts and um the alignment of the district's work as it relates to um care. So, we've already kind of started to talk about this um but the alignment of our work um individually. No, the alignment of our work If I could make a suggestion. So I know that I would assume Dr. Rodriguez you're going to keep these posters with the four topics from today. I do think there is value in taking potentially some of these topics and then at the very first joint meeting we have this is what we gathered from what you shared collectively at your tables of things related to these four topics overview
107wise we could give some priority areas and you guys could decide these are our top two I realize communications already developed but potenti Potentially, these could give us the help we need to come back at a first joint board meeting and decide these are the priority areas we would like to focus on for the year. What she said and not just because I'm on her board, but it's we've covered a lot of things. He he touched on it, you've touched on it, you couple others over there. We've covered a lot of things and to take these things and make a list because we're kind of talking in circles now. Got it. So that's exactly what we'll do. We take the Yes, sir. I would like to make an admission with us discussing on these topics.
108I can't speak for everybody, but I chose the ones that we chose because that was the most closest and easiest for me to speak on. Yeah. I don't want it treated like the two we didn't touch on are less important. Just those are the ones we found easiest. Right. So that just call state. I don't know if everybody else is doing that, but that's where I was at in my head space. Call them. Thank you for the transparency there. Okay. Um and we will also come back to um calendar after we reshare um what next year's priorities may possibly look like to you all. Good to go. Thumbs up. That's okay. All right. Dr. through us and could we potentially state the earliest they would like to see us do that first meeting in the
109new year? Sure. Because then we can pick a date and just share with all of you and just you know do this year we didn't do one until October in the very end of October. Would you rather see one in September in time? Would the superintendents lead that? You you guys understand the hectic of opening a school, starting a school, like when do you feel comfortable thinking the chaos is done, now let's all meet up. The chaos is never done. October 28th. So the end of October. All right. Thank you. question. Does everybody want to go back to their original seat? So, you are with your own board for the end here. You're good. Well, under everybody should have an exit ticket at their seat. And if you don't, we definitely have extras. So any
110good teacher worth anything does exit tickets because they want to kind of assess how did people do? Do they understand? Is it a way for them a student to provide feedback? Is it an opportunity for them just to reflect on what they learned? So we're going to do all of those things today. So everybody should have one of these. There are three things on it. Three ideas I have for our future, two things I learned today and any questions I have. So, what I would love is for everyone to fill it out. If you want to put your name on it and what district you're a board member of, that would be super helpful because this will also help us as superintendants help create the priority areas for next year. So, if you want to
111just take a couple minutes, there should be pens at every table and fill this out. I would greatly appreciate Does it not work? Yeah. Okay. If you can't fill in every box, it's 100% okay. We just want to thank you guys for your partnership. The last thing that we want to share with you is a date has been picked for our back to school bash, which we are going to do collectively on behalf of our four districts again here at the high school. It will be August 4th. Again, it'll be a free event to the whole community. We'll have food trucks, activities for students, and we want to invite every one of you to come and be a part of the back to school bash because that is the best way to create connected community
112is for us to come together before school starts and really celebrate coming back to school, celebrating our students, celebrating their learning, and celebrating what we're doing collectively in our four school districts. And the last thing is we brought crumbled cookies for everyone. There are some they're cut up into uh you know four pieces. You can have a whole cookie. We have tons of them because we just want to celebrate the fact that we've done a lot of work together this year collectively as boards and our kids have done a lot of work this year and if it's worth learning it's worth celebrating. So thank you so much. You guys can give your exit. You can either leave it at the table, you can come and hand it to one of us, but we just want
113to thank you so much for your time and your dedication to our students. There are plates and napkins over there. There's water. water. I think it's Oh, the I feel like this is my third time. How's it feel? Littles are getting bigger. T-ball, dance, cheerleading, track and field. You guys are sitting in church. Yeah.