Il Community Consolidated School District 15 Board of Education - Regular Meeting

the meeting to order. Could we get a roll call, please? Yes. Here. Anino here. Taylor, not here. Absent. Shupai absent. Khan here. Bachmann here. Hunt here.

All right. Uh the mission of district 15. Uh by leveraging strengths and providing high quality support, we will honor our diverse learners in reaching their full potential. All right. Good evening everyone and welcome to the first meeting of our 2025 to 2026 school year. Um before we jump into our agenda, I just wanted to start with some gratitude over the summer. I know many of our staff have been hard at work. Uh especially a short summer. Uh each playing a part in making sure that our schools are ready to welcome our students on day one. So, um, your dedication shows in every detail, um, and all of the care and heart that you put in to, um, making a great school environment for our students, and we are so grateful. Uh, to our students, uh, who start next week, welcome back. You are the reason we're all here. Um, and we can't wait to see all that you will accomplish this year. To our families, thank you for trusting us with your children uh, and partnering with us in their learning. And to all of our staff, thank you for the care and professionalism that you bring to your work every day. We know education today comes with both challenges and opportunities and we um believe our shared commitment to students will guide us through both. Uh so here's to a great school year. All right, let's get started. Pledge of Allegiance, Winston Campus Middle School. Make two rows. There we go. Perfect.

Good. Good evening, Dr. Hines, board president Bhater in district 15, board of education community. May I please introduce uh our student advisory committee, Alex, Alexandra, Noah, Kenan, Jackie, and Sam. These students spend their lunch every month talking with administrators about what is going well in our school community and what changes that they would like to see in our school. We're very proud of them. Thank you for all your help.

Right. Ready? Please stand. I pledge algiance 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.

And I would like to say that I have had the pleasure of working with many of these students last year as part of my superintendent middle school student advisory. Um, they're very insightful, always willing to share what they love about school, and they're not shy about making recommendations to make that help better or district team better. So, I thank you for giving up your time and sharing your thoughts with us. It really does make your school experience and the district better for as a result. So, these will be put to good use come Wednesday, right? These highlighters when school starts. Thank you again for your participation. Awesome. Thank you.

If parents want to head up, if you want to take a photo, you're more than welcome to head up front. Can we shift the first row towards the left a little? Just so we're a little more balanced to be in there. All right. And then we're going to smile a couple times. We're then we're going to do warriors. Okay. All right. Okay. We're going to do a one, two, three warriors before you leave. Okay. Are you ready? Okay. Good. One, two, three. Warriors.

All right. Yeah. Great. Okay. So, we will um now open our meeting for public comment. Public comment is governed by board policy 2 col 230. Uh please remember this is not a dialogue between you and the board. If you have a specific issue that requires a response, Superintendent Hines or a designate will follow up with you as needed. Please state your name and identify any group that you represent. Please limit your remarks to no more than 3 minutes. If someone has previously articulated something with which you agree, please state that you agree. Rather than reiterating the entire comment, we encourage you to avoid comments specific to any person, student, or staff member respecting their right to privacy. This is not the forum to comment on personnel issues. Finally, the board accept expects and appreciates mutual respect, civility, and orderly conduct throughout the meeting. All right, Lee Bennett. Oh my goodness. Try standing. Hello board superintendent. I'm Lee Bennett. Did you miss me? I've been around the district earning back a small portion of my property taxes from the referee stand in both the winter and spring seasons. Thanks for the opportunity. Last spring's boys volleyball season seemed to go well according to this

unbiased observer. I would like to hear back from the district on a proposal to move the boys tournament to Winston. This is based on lessons learned last year at TJ. Dr. McFaden has acknowledged receipt of an email with plenty of details for this proposal. I also want to acknowledge Dr. Hines for her precience on the night I was most missed. She recognized that sixth graders would be disappointed with a new athletics program and that it would not include track and field for them. Many sixth graders also experience heartbreaking disappointment when they failed to make the team for the cut sports like basketball and volleyball. I realize this is tough, but trying and failing is what toughens you up. kids. The middle school format has improved the physical a physical education for both fifth and sixth graders. Programs previously run for the sixth graders are now available for the fifth graders. Similar opportunities are now available for all the sixth graders in addition to the opportunity to try out for the cut sports. The sixth graders also have sufficient space for the regular PE classes unlike at the elementary schools. For those who miss the Bennett bits to the board on boys volleyball, the tour has graduated to the high school level. It plays for district 211 most months in a bigger room down Rosel Road. Admission is free and welcome walk-ons are welcome. You can also register your support for this show throughout your neighborhood this school year. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you. the only one? Yep. Anyone else? All right. Okay. Superintendent report.

Lots to share. Okay. So, um while a lot of our staff is home and hopefully they have been enjoying and will continue to enjoy another couple days of summer. Many of us have been very busy this summer. This is just a little snippet of how we spent our summer while the students were away. Hello, district 15. My name is Dr. Lorie Haynes and I am the proud superintendent of this wonderful district. As you can see behind me, every school plays a vital role in our collective mission as a district. One that begins with the belief that all children can and will learn as a result of District 15 education. It is a mission we can only accomplish when each of us intentionally aims high and works to achieve higher while also setting the stage for students to do the same. [Music] Here we are at Whitley, one of our elementary. They received a lot of exciting work this summer. They have new parking lots. So, when parents and students and staff arrive, there's going to be new places to park. And there's going to be a new flow of bus and parent traffic. [Music] We can't wait for you to see all the exciting changes here at WY and at other schools across the district.

Hey Pip, welcome to our new workout area and sensory path called the Paladin Path. Come on, let's check it out. Use the handle big feet of yours. Get those arms in shape so we can throw t-shirts into the stands and our pep assemblies. Yeah. Do some stretches, Pip. Yeah. Get those legs out. Yes. The other arm. Yes. Hey, Pip. Do you like the new sensory area?

Give me a high five, Pip. [Music] We're excited for the 2526 school year to be engaging in a whole new math experience at our middle school. During the last year, a collaborative process took place between teachers with special education services, multilingual programming, and teaching learning and assessment to look at our current programming and review other possible curriculums. [Music] This summer, learning never stopped in District 15. From vibrant summer school programs to district-wide professional development, our educators showed up, collaborated, and committed to continuous learning and growth. And our team participated at high levels, and learned together, all for the benefit of our students. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] [Music] This year we're welcoming over 100 new certified staff to District 15 and we're excited about our new and rejuvenated staff that's ready to work with us. In case you can't tell, we're extremely excited for the school year to begin. So, enjoy the final days of summer and we look forward to seeing staff on Monday and all of our students and families on Wednesday. I know it's going

to be another wonderful year in district 15. [Music] That's great. All right. Hot off the presses. Literally finished it today. All right, nice job. So, a couple things I'll point out. Um, where you saw Pip the Paladin,

that new equipment is to support the SIP program, which is one of our special education programs that is now at the junior high or middle school. And some of the other playground components that you saw, we were able to use constru uh money from the idea funds, which is our grants that we received that to support students with IEPs to purchase additional components of playgrounds for students. and we're just excited. It's the first time we've had anything like that at a middle school. I think the other five are going to be a little jealous, but it looks really nice. So, again, we've been very busy. So, I ask everybody on my team to give me like their top three. We're going to work on counting because nobody ever does just three because we're so busy. But, this is just really again so the community and staff know what we've been focused on kind of monthtomonth. So, um, as the board and I talked about with Diana during close session prior to this meeting, we gave them an update in terms of how our negotiations are going with our SEI union. Those are hardworking custodians, maintenance, mechanics, uh, mechanics within the district and and hopefully we're going to have an agreement soon. Um, we did some new administrator onboarding. You saw many new uh, administrative combinations. We have a a new uh promoted principal, just one new one this year, although she came through the teaching ranks in D15, administrative ranks, and a new principal, but we have a number of new assistant principles. So, we did some onboarding with them to just orient them to district 15 in general. Um, in addition to the administrative advance, uh, we're working on administrator goal setting this summer, uh, opening day planning that that really takes place all summer. I'm doing onetoone principal check-ins, checking on their facilities, their staffing, enrollment, um construction, if their buildings are still having it. So, that's a nice time to connect with our principles to see how things are going and what they might need. Um there will be a recommendation, Mr. Bennett, about uh middle school athletics. So, hold the phone, hold stick around. And then, uh the cell

phone policy, we are making some changes to that that I will talk about in a little a little bit later. Um so, that's some of the things I've been about. So, we have updated the language as you know and you saw and heard from um our our chief technology officer, Miss Warden, last seems like a long time ago. It was just a few months ago uh about her year-long smartphone committee and we are really um upping our game. So, this last year we had posters we said during the day put it away. Many of our kids did that um but some of them did not. Some of them had them on their person, some of them had them in their in their uh cinch sacks. some of them had them out, you know, as as reported by their classmates who will will always tell you everything. Um, some of the principles and some of the teachers. So, what we are doing, uh, based on all of the research that we've made, we are really going to double down and say we want you to disconnect to reconnect. We do not want kids having their cell phones with them during the day. Everyone will survive. It will be okay. It will be an adjustment, but we want our kids when they are here to focus on learning, focus on the human connection with their teachers, with their classmates, with their teammates if they're in extracurriculars. So, we want phones in lockers at the uh junior middle school and in elementary cubbies or backpacks at the elementary school. We're asking that smartwatches be kept in school mode in case you don't want to look at a clock on a wall and you want to look at a watch on your wrist. You can still wear your wrist uh watch, but we want notifications, calls, and access to apps locked because again, we want kids focused on learning while they're at school. I used to tell my daughter when she was little, school is your work when you're a kid. So, they're going to come to school ready to work. And we really believe that after they get over the initial uh shock of it all

um they're going to be able to disconnect and they will more deeply connect. So that is our new mantra. Wish us luck as that word gets out. The administrative services department which is Dr. Lazour has also been part of our SEIU negotiations. She's working on mentor training of our new staff and as you heard we have roughly a hundred new staff members this year down from years past. Uh Dr. Dr. Lazor though does work closely with all departments at the ESC because everybody has a hand in onboarding and mentoring our new staff. Uh we're interviewing for a director of person. We interviewed for a a director of personnel services. She is also doing administrative goal setting. Uh Dr. Lazour, uh Dr. McGuffin and I do share administrative evaluations. uh the business office finalizing fiscal year uh budget, wrapping up summer facility projects, which you'll learn more about in a bit, and preparing uh for the fiscal year 25 audit, which is already underway. Uh you'll hear a lot more about the budget and at a board meeting uh September 10th and we like we are likely scheduling another meeting to spend two meetings in September talking about the budget. Okay. the communication department. Um it administrative and secretarial training is going on for parent square and how to use that tool to communicate. Uh summer recap projects you saw uh the video and some others that are being put together was constructed this summer. Back to school family and staff communications staff received their letters today and uh families a couple days ahead of time and we're interviewing for an assistant director of communications. I do want to say relative just for any parents listening or staff, we typically allow our teachers to communicate um a couple days in advance of the start of the school year with their families because a lot of our staff members like to write a welcome letter um because we're doing this major overhaul with to power school our our student information system. It is a massive lift. We're we're waiting.

Last week we had close to a thousand people that still hadn't registered. We're really doing a lot of outreach to get folks in. I think we're each day we we get a couple hundred more people registered, but because we still have a lot of moving parts. We are not going to be able to send out welcome letters from our our teachers that choose to do so to our families until the weekend because we have an an overnight on Friday migration and it it literally takes overnight because there's just so much data. And then once that happens, we're all going to hope that it goes extraordinarily smoothly and then uh staff can send letters to parents. So we don't want our parents to think that our staff is not interested in doing it. It's just they're not going to be able to do so this year. Just wanted to put that out there. Uh Ed services co-f facilitated the administrative advance. Everybody had a hand in that, but they helped train administrators in the foundations of restorative practices. Uh we did have a nationally renowned um expert on that topic, Ally Hearn, with us for the first day. The second day it was district 15 staff. Um they designed month-long summer programs for around a thousand kids. You'll hear a little bit more about summer school. That's for our students that uh receive title one eligibility. They have an opportunity to have some extra time spent learning with the hopes of uh less regression and over the summer and greater recruitment time when school kicks back off uh here in just a week. We created they created and led a four-day jump start training for new staff in special education because there's a lot to learn especially if you're just coming out of college and we they developed and will lead a full day trauma-informed intervention training um for our program assistance once school starts. Uh human resources are working on staffing. Uh we had a administrative cabinet meeting yesterday. I think we were down to five or were down to three and then we had a few people resign. So, it's it's a dance back and forth, but I think as of right now, we're down just two to three certified positions. And we

attribute that unequivocally to the work that we did to get rid of the the two-tiered salary schedule and to bring our base uh salary up from roughly $40,000 for a new teacher to 52. Everyone is is just giving feedback, every department that's trying to hire, how much easier it is. And we're hoping that we also get a higher caliber candidate that really will be able to afford literally and figuratively to stick around and grow their career here in district 15. Uh state reporting is always fun in the summer. Everybody's trying to get their state reports in. Most of them are due by August 15th. So everyone's in crunch time. Uh partnering with universities. lots and lots of requests for students to do observation hours and or student teach in district 15, which is great because oftentimes our student teachers become our teachers. So, we love the partnerships that we have and that kids want kids, young adults want to come here and and uh student teach. And then um human resources of course was involved primarily in um the director of personnel interviews. Multilingual hosted a summer family engagement event, Amazing Bats, Mad Science, and Stormchasers. Uh you saw some of those pictures in our video. You'll see some more and learn more about it when um Renee and her team do their update today. Uh they're welcoming we're welcoming just two cultural exchange teachers this year uh from Colombia and Spain. So a smaller number than in years past, but we're excited nonetheless. Welcome. We're preparing four new Spanish bilingual preschool classes in instead of three at CLA. Uh the dual language roll up to second grade at Kimell. So it's our third year with duel en rolling meadows and uh seventh grade at Winston campus. So duel is is continuing to roll uh for this year into seventh grade and that is primarily because of how we shifted from junior highs to middle schools and then we have 32 new e blended classrooms. So a lot of work is happening in the early learning early childhood space. Uh Dr.

McGuffin and her team um will talk to the board about all the things we've been doing with early childhood. I believe it's at the next board meeting. And then we're planning for the BPAC welcome back picnic which is always a huge hit and extraordinarily well attended on September 20th at Winston campus. As always, the board is welcome to join. So watch for more specific details. Student services, we're welcoming new staff, finishing up regular and summerterm uh special education claims. Again, that's that's funding we submit and then we receive reimbursement. So it's important to not to miss a kid. Uh planning for ECD and preschool transitions. Continuing the yellow folder that this is the project that never seems to end, but we're we are getting close. So, all of our uh records will be digitized. You know, thousands and thousands and tens of thousands of records. And then they're launching fusion reading instructional strategies pilot. Uh Kristen Ortland, a former principal of ours, has worked in that department this last year and will continue this year. And a lot of her work has to do with building bridges between um general education and special education because really all all children are are general education students first. Um some of them receive additional YEL support or additional special education support. But I I love that the connection and I see Emily smiling and nodding at me because it is something that's been missing in the district. It's it's felt very separate and we're really trying to build stronger connections between all the departments and general education. So that's exciting work. uh teaching, learning, and assessment. We've organized they've organized and supported the facilitation of new staff orientation. It's a two-week big undertaking. Um and we're almost done, ladies and gentlemen. So, they'll be thankful when uh they love every minute of it, but it's a lot. Um constructed a full year learning with the learning league for K5 administration on evidence-based literacy practices. So, what that means in plain English is we're really like the reading league is going to help our administrators learn

more about um the complexities of K5 reading. Um what it looks like, what they should should see, hear, feel when they're observing or visiting classrooms in reading. So then they can be those instructional leaders that are helping to make sure that our teachers are really utilizing the resources that we're providing them and meeting our students um learning needs. uh they're collaborating with multilingual on the development of a 35 ELA curriculum review again connections between EL and general education. Um we've put that supplemental reading in place at the K2 and now we're working on the 35. So that's very very exciting. Um arranging professional development for institute days which will be Monday and Tuesday. And in partnership with ES with um ED services and multilingual there they've redefined um MTSS multi-tered systems of support paperwork and processes. During the administrative advance there were cheers I'm not exaggerating cheers clapping. People almost fainted because of what they have put together in terms of multi MTSS paperwork and just access and clarifying everything putting everything in one place. I mean, everybody was really excited about it and we're a little weird, but it was it was it's very exciting and I think it's going to help all of our teams as kids need um come forward for problem solving and determine whether or not they're eligible for additional support with interventions. We we have uh we're working to standardize our processes. So, it's exciting. Uh and then last but not least, technology services uh training for different roles within that powers school cyst migration which is about to go live. It's live, but we'll do the all the rollover and all the things on Friday, which is class lists and all the good stuff that the schools are waiting on. Uh they're deploying the next wave of new line interactive boards uh within classrooms. That's been exciting. Uh they're readying devices and all systems for the new year, including the launch of a new student information system, arranging those uh PD sessions for institute day, one of

which will be a lot about technology and all the new stuff. Um they've updated STEM curriculum and they're going to prepare professional development for our teachers that are in charge of STEM uh electives and they're carrying forward action items from that uh smartphone at school committee those recommendations. Okay. So I think that's it for my report questions comments and then I want to just talk about the middle school athletics. I apologize. Um, so Emily McFaten, and I don't know if you want to come up to the mic to you can you and I can kind of tag team this, but I have the memo in front of me. Um, with Dr. Lopez, who we hope is enjoying retirement. She sends us pictures of mountains and bike rides. Makes us jealous. So, it seems like she's having fun. Um, they had a committee meeting um with all the coaches, the middle school coaches, uh, in the spring. And do you want do you want to talk about it? Do you want me to take it?

Sure. No, I'm good. Uh, so we met with every single middle school team here in district 15 and then we followed up at the end with a lot of our coaches to kind of just doublech checkck through things. Um, we got a lot of feedback and we brought a lot of the items that were that you all had heard about um, as the community was, you know, also experiencing the shifts and changes from um, our shift to middle school. So, the big thing is you want me just to go for it? Go for it. All right. right up.

Yeah. All right. So, the big uh you know, I think the big pieces that we were looking at are first off, we were reviewing how how were kids participating. And the fantastic thing is kids are participating. We have tons of kids trying out. We have tons of kids engaging in sports whether they're cut or non-cut. Um and so that's really exciting for us. um both teachers, students, everybody's thrilled with sixth grade participating in our sports. So with that um we worked very hard and talking to a lot of those track coaches about what it would look like. We are going to have sixth grade join track and field this year. Um we're very excited about it

and a teeny bit nervous.

We we're a little anxious about it. uh but we'll run off that anxiety and um we're really excited because we know the sixth graders want to be part of it and so we want to give them that opportunity. Our biggest hurdle, pun intended, for sure. Um our biggest hurdle is really that spacing concern especially at the schools that have significantly larger size uh track and field you know uh teams. So, there may be some things that people see, especially when the weather is not great and you can't be outside, especially now that we have boys volleyball happening in the spring, it takes up more of our facilities usage. So, there's only so many places that track and field can be working out and practicing. So, what we've talked to coaches about is we're going to have to be creative and say if there's inclement weather, maybe seventh grade doesn't come to practice that day. Maybe sixth grade doesn't come to practice the next day. We're going to have to be fluid and flexible because we want everybody to be safe. Um, and we want kids to be able to join, but we need to make sure that we do it in a way that's responsible and manageable. So, sixth grade, start practicing non-cut, come on out in the spring. We're really excited to have everybody. Um, so we're excited for all of that. Then the other piece that we were talking about is, you know, really this the amount of teams per school. You have Plum Grove, which is significantly larger than most of our middle schools. And then you have other schools that are that are smaller, right? And um but Winston Campus is writing a fine line kind of in the middle. And so in talking to their staff and the students, the students especially, um we have decided that we are going to have a third team for try out sports. Now, one of the

things that we did notice is there's certain sports that honestly don't have nearly as many kids trying out. So, if for some reason we don't have enough kids trying out for, let's say, uh, girls basketball, if we don't have enough to field a third team, we won't field a third team. Um, and we'll use that coach in a different capacity and we just won't have as many supervisors. So, we're going to play it out. I remember being at the board and parents saying, you know, kids get nervous to try out when it's very competitive. And so, our hope is that we have more kids try out, we can make these teams. Um, but you know, we have in our back pocket, we'll have conversations should you know, we not have the numbers that we hope to have for those third teams.

And if I may, I think an unintended consequences of having like A teams, B teams, and potentially a C team is at a larger school, you're going to run an A and a B and a C, and all of those kids may be top tier talent. And then you're going to field two or three teams at a smaller school. And it's like slaughterhouse rules. they the games are not competitive. The kids, it's just not an applesto apples comparison. And that's been hard

for some of the smaller schools to to have tournaments or have games against their their classmates from another school because this the the depth of the talent pool is maybe is is a little bit different because of the the vast difference in in number. So that is something we want to pay attention to. I think some of the coaches and we heard from a couple parents that were pretty loud on this topic, but some of our even our own coaches are not happy that we're making this decision. They don't think it's necessary. But we are going to try it

for the year and see if it's necessary. And then the proof is going to be in the actual pudding, not what people outside the organization kind of think is happening. We're going to use data, survey, try out data, you know, uh, scores of matches and whatnot to to make a decision going into next year as to whether or not this was the right decision. We asked everybody for their patience as we were trying to get middle schools off the ground. We couldn't make everything a reality in year one. We moved heaven and earth. We did a lot in year one. We're going to make some refinements in year two and then we'll continue to do that as we build, you know, our capacity and just continue to grow in what we can offer.

And and for some of those things that Dr. Hines is talking about, um, you know, one of the pieces is the way that we had games set up is everybody played each other twice. And when you had four middle schools and you know you were playing one other team at those other schools, that's a significantly that's less amount of games that when you bump it up to five schools and one of those has an A team and a B team. And so one of the things that we did is uh we heard from the coaches loud and clear too many games because what happened was there wasn't enough time to have practice in between games. So you would have a game, you didn't have time to learn from what that experience was before going to the next. So we um shifted the amount of games to be equitable to the amount that happened before 15 forward. And then to Dr. Hines's point, what we did is we were strategic in looking at how teams performed last year. So that yes, as a team that may not have as many kids who've had experience with a given sport, playing against kids who maybe are on club teams, they may play that team only once, but they may play a B team twice. So we're trying to find a a happy medium. So we want all types of students with all types of experiences to engage in sports. We want them to love it. Um, but we know different kids are coming in with different backgrounds and lots of coaches say, "I have kids that join basketball that have never dribbled a ball." We still want those kids to to come out for teams. So, we're trying to find a way to to balance the competitiveness with just the enjoyment for the game.

All right. So, that's the big unveil there. Unveiling of max for every school. Max of three. Plum Grove has four total. 267 278 and eight. Yeah. In 278. So it's four four teams total. They also still have over it's close to 300 kids more at that school. So we we did it essentially by numbers of students and we tiered them out. And so there are three teams now at Winston campus. And then the remaining schools will all have two. Yep. All right. Thank you. Thank you.

Can I just double check um Yeah. Uh as far as the um IEA um enrollment and is that only still limited to track? Is there an evaluation about whether or not um we can have other uh it is it is track right now. We have not looked into that. We had to do a memo of understanding with and cross country rather the two uh field sports. We we have anou with our union. We had to come into a an agreement to bring that in. So we would just have to go to them if we felt as though we we were interested in doing that, which at this time we we didn't want to tackle that. Okay. Okay. We're still getting our our sea legs under us with middle school sports in general. Yeah.

And adding new teams, volleyball and more teams and Yeah. Okay. Um I have another quick report before we turn it over to multilingual. All right. So, a summer update and you heard some of the summer update. Uh, if you could I'm going to move through this pretty quickly uh because some of it was in the video. So, every year we offer a multitude of summer offerings. Um, from June 16th to July 17th, we had over a thousand students um that were really focused on academics to um to just extend the amount of time that they're learning. the full service community grant in 21st century schools um which are at uh Lake Louise and Lincoln um attended they had an afternoon extension program with sessions focused on hands-on learning and social emotional skills and then our ALAP our alternative uh learning opportunity program partnered uh with us to provide integrated support and services throughout the summer um and this was something new this summer use utilizing our our partnership with AWP out of our uh North Cook Intermediate Service Center. That's been exciting. Multilingual had EL newcomers camps, driving readers, accelerated math, and their dual language culture camp. Um, ESY 113 students were in attendance. Um, it really is for kids that are eligible for that through their IEP, and that's determined by the IEP team. Um, so they can work on uh skills found within their IEPs to prevent that regression um from from being off for a couple months in the summer. um summer committees out of teaching and learning. They had a school improvement team committee. We are going to invite a couple schools and hopefully some school improvement teams to talk to the board this year about goal setting. Um teams are setting goals in either reading or math and attendance or behavior. Middle school social studies, they built scopes and sequences, online assessments. There's a new requirement you heard Dr. Lopez say in the spring about economics and financial literacy. And then the document-based questions. So, uh, some middle school social

studies, uh, staff were to work together this summer. Instrumental music, we're revising our orchestra scope and sequence and building seventh and eighth grade band scope and sequences. In science, uh, 3 three common assessments are going on. That's for teachers to measure how kids are grasping science concepts throughout the year. Sixth through 8th grade notebook revision and our K5 health scope and sequence, bless you, was updated. And in math, we're working on grades three through five common assessments. Again, those are assessments given um at the unit level to make sure kids are mastering skills and then teachers can make adjustments to instruction based on how kids are responding. Um ed services every year offers deescalation. I saw some of that happening today, CPI training. Um, and they're really focusing on making sure that our approaches are aligned to the ISBY guidance in terms of how to to use CPI uh especially beyond verbal deescalation if we ever had to do anything with a hold for a kid that was really putting themselves physically or others physically in in danger. MTSS, those updates we talked about, we're excited. Kindergarten preparedness, we've made some adjustments. Last year was the first year we had 5-year-olds all day and it was tough for some and it was tough for many teachers for the first month or so uh having a full classroom of 5-year-olds. So, we've made some adjustments to the behavior systems to scopes and sequences interventions. Um, we've also created a one-pager for parents as they register and they come in for their assessments. So, they just get a general sense of what uh maybe a typically um you know developing kindergartener might be ready to be able to know and do as they enter kindergarten. So, that that um was developed by the team and shared with families. And then we're looking at attendance. Last year we had a huge initiative to improve attendance and they're working on updating messaging, looking at how we review data and then what strategies can a whole school use or a grade level or even a classroom,

you know, if they're having more trouble than maybe some of their other uh you know, building mates in in terms of getting kids to and parents really to get kids to school unless when they're really legitimately very sick. uh in student services in math the able over at CLA a mile and sip programs identified their priority standards so one of the most important things that the students will need to know created a scope and sequence for math we've not had that and it's very exciting that we that we now do implemented um the implementation uh year is for teacher feedback so getting feedback systemically how how are our programs working and then what are we going to do with that feedback and then those priorities standards will be used um linked to assessments so we know how kids are doing against what it is that we're expecting for them um you know to learn in that in that year within that program. And then this fusion the intervention and reading strategies middle school leap and our instructional resource classes will use this resource will uh they receive feedback from teachers on how that's going to be paced and then we're going to pilot year one uh use of these strategies and then how to connect them again with that general education uh curriculum. Busy not like busy last summer busy with construction but we did a little over 11 million worth of work this summer. Um, main office renovations, Hunting Ridge, Jane Adams, Willow Bend, Winston Campus, stay patient, Pleasant Hill. You're it'll happen this either winter or spring break. Uh, parking lot improvements. Hopefully, you noticed it as you pulled into Sunling. It looks beautiful. Um, different orientation, different everything. And three off, right?

Yay. So, we're excited about that. Whitley, Hunting Ridge, Pleasant Hill, Plum Grove, Willow Ben, Conurs, Kimble, Winston, Central Road, Paddock, and even the ESC got a little love. So, those are very expensive projects. Doesn't seem like they should be, but it's a fortune. Uh, partial roof replacement at VL and Willow Bend. Partial playgrounds. You saw the one from Sunling, also at VL, Pleasant Hill, Central Road, Willow Bend, Hunting Ridge, and HVAC upgrades at CLA and Central Road. Also very expensive behind the scenes, but we're just going to chip away at that. And you'll hear more um within our budget presentations in September about the five-year uh health life safety plans, what we've done relative to the referendum, what we've done relative to health life, and then what's kind of the future of work. Um the administrative advance, we meet uh we're about 100 people when we get together for four days a few weeks ago. You heard me talk about restorative practices, K prek5 science of reading with the reading league, what's new in middle school curriculum, largely math and social studies. This year we were trained in CPR and AED training, understanding power school, a lot of questions were answered. Then MTSS, safety and security protocols, we review them for veterans. We make sure our newbies know it. And then tier three behavioral coaching. That's a smattering of what we uh offer our new administr all of our administrators. It's about a hundred of our new staff members that were welcomed. Uh new new staff orientation still going on. You can see there some of the things that we're making sure that they know how to do beyond just how to teach. What is the curriculum uh at your grade level or in your content area, our Champs initiative, we're now in year three, but each year we have to make sure new folks are oriented and can get up to speed. Um they had times with their mentors and building administrators. HR comes, the union comes, business talks to them about benefits, technology, here's your device, here's how to log in. He's or here are all the

platforms. So, it's just a lot of learning. They walk out, I'm sure, saturated with knowledge, but we want to make sure that they know as much as we can give them so they can start the year off, right? What does LSCI stand? A life space crisis intervention. So, it's how we respond to students in crisis.

Got it. Yeah. What's next? Uh institute days are Monday and Tuesday. Uh the first day is largely principles have time to welcome their staff. You know, through their collective priority agreements, our classroom teachers get time to set up their classroom so they're ready for staff and for their families to arrive. As part of Monday, we have meet the teacher or at the middle school walk your schedule. Those are highly anticipated days. Excuse me. a class list will go out tomorrow or be made available tomorrow and schedules. So that that's also uh you know everybody's waiting for that. Uh the the Tuesday um we do safety our nurses give updates we talk about evaluation timelines curriculum updates there's some IEP meetings champs MAC is for the littles um or and CLA our preschoolers they're going to review this year's uh school improvement goals whether they're working on math or reading behavior or attendance. Uh there's going to be some new arrival and dismissal procedures when Whitley also has a new um a new parking lot. So that's all been revamped in conjunction with the village and the police professional development around power school and and and much more. We could use a whole another institute day in August every year because there's just so much. But um areas of focus for 2025 restorative. So the administrators have been changed trained. We now need to build the um the scope and sequence for how we're going to train over a thousand people next year. And that's all of our classroom, our certified staff when we don't have subs and we need a couple days and um so we're going to build out that plan. It's going to take us the year to figure out everything we do here is is about scalability. So we're working on that. the science of reading and and really just getting that getting down to breast text foundationally about how we instruct in literacy is going to be a big area of focus. You saw common assessments, right? We have baseline

which we do at the beginning of the year. We have summitive which we do at the end but our teachers need tools on a monthly basis so they know how kids are responding to what they're teaching them. It's great if they're teaching it, but if the assessments are showing our kids aren't learning it, then our teachers need to do something different. So that's why these common formative assessments are a good tool for our teaching staff. As you know, we're talking about smartphones and the changes there, launching powers school. Um we're into year two with our school improvement plans. Last year, our data looks great. Many of our principles at my check-ins talked about how they hit their goals or they just missed them and then they've got a real fire in their belly to tackle that goal again with their staff. Uh, as I said a moment ago, year three of CHAMPS, uh, there's a lot of new curricular resources that we're going to make sure staff know about and know how to use them. And then we're going to continue with our budget reduction work. You'll hear a lot more about that next month. And let's just move through this very, very quickly because I feel like I've been talking too much. So, our strategic plan, we have the four commitments, success and belonging, staff engagement and retention, community um, and family engagement and involvement, and then all things relative to the master facility plan. moving 15 forward and whatnot. So, we want to ensure everything that's in that plan is anchored under high expectations for all. It's our theme this year. Aim high, achieve higher. We've done a lot with hiring more staff, updating curriculum, updating um our facilities, and all along we've been focused on curriculum. You've heard time and time again all the different things we're doing relative to our curriculum and our achievement needle is moving and you're going to hear about that as soon as I stop talking. But um we really want to double triple down on our efforts because we everything is positioned now and we're really we're ready to fly. So high expectations underpins everything that we do. We know that every kid can

learn. They should learn as a result of all the things we're doing. So, our school improvement plans at the building levels are really important. You know, a strategic plan up here for us, the board and administrators is one thing, but how do we drill that down into what our administrators are doing with our staff and what our staff is doing with our students? That's the that's the focus, which is why our theme is what it is this year. Um, we've talked about other things. We can move that one along. I hit it again. Thank you. Go. If you go back just one, is this the new one? Oh, we talked about summer events. Okay, we've done a lot with this. Let's move forward to the next one. Uh, involvement is one thing that we're continuing to to focus on. So, two-way communication, hang I see a typo there. Hang with Hines, catch up with Hines, superintendent, middle school, student advisory, my parents' partners, superintendent communication council, all the other partners, and we just continue to build partnerships, try to get out into the community. taking a slightly different approach this year with my catchup with Hines. I'll still show up in places, but attendance hasn't been strong. And I like to chat about what we're doing here in district as you suffer through it every month. Right now, we're trying to figure out what are groups that are already established that are meeting that will allow me to come and talk about the work of the district at one of their meetings. So, that we're going to see if that's going to help. So, that's just I would say one of the newer things. And then you'll be hopefully approving tonight the um new communication person. Yes, that person. One of the things that piqued my interest in that interview was they had a lot of donor uh experience at when they worked at Baylor or when they worked at Weaten College. And we need to focus on donors especially as grant funding may be uh you know becoming coming coming to us in a diminished capacity. uh you know the budget is

tight as a result of all the things we're doing. We really have an opportunity with the5 to just reimagine that and to do more um to to have more sponsors and donors interacting with us getting a volunteer program rolling. That's my latest thing. I'm I'm all I'm on about. So we'll we're going to work on that. So all right, that's a little bit tech. So we've talked about smartphones, the full the launching powers school and then instructional technology. I really like this this focus focus on the instructional practices and the strategic and balanced integration of technology. You've heard the at the board table a couple families have come and talked about screen time and how much time kids are spending you know on their computers and what's the right amount of time what's the right learning task and tool should it be paper pencils should it be you know just people talking should it be technology so that in that intentionality we're trying to put some some guidelines some structure around what that looks like to help teachers uh know when tech is the right tool certainly MJ has said you not tech just for tech's sake. Um, so the team has been really busy on that and that will continue to grow and evolve and at some point early into the year here. We'll we'll give you a formal update. You know, we've got I don't remember where we put tech on our on our month by month, but at some point you'll hear more about it. All right. And then mental health, our focus focus will continue. I don't know that there's anything completely new on there other than one of the bullets to explicitly from a mental health tracking perspective. We just we're always monitoring, right? And our kids that are are popping high on some of our screeners receiving a help as quickly as possible. Uh we have a new school-based crisis management system and I'm just trying to see if there's anything else I haven't talked about. I think that's probably good for that one. moving 15 forward. Uh you will hear as part of the budget, all the things in the five-year

plus, you've heard about facility upgrades. And then we're going to give you an update. Diane and I have been talking a lot the last couple days. We talked to Liz Hennessy, our bond council, uh today. Where are we with the spendown of the 186 million in referendum dollars? Um where are we with the alt bonds and our payback? How is that influencing the budget? And then additional healthife bond issuance for consideration. So, we're going to talk with you about that because we have a 10-year facility plan now and we have, you know, revenue streams at different times, but there might be some areas, some periods of a year or two where there's a lag. So, we're just trying to keep the work moving and we're going to talk with you about that um a little bit in September when we talk the budget, but we'll probably come back to you maybe in November or December to go to do in your words like a deeper dive into that. That's just an update relative to that part of the strategic plan. It wouldn't be the start of the school year if I didn't talk to you about transportation. So, here's the latest. The three tier bell schedule is still essential. I think people keep thinking it's going away, and it's just not going to go away. I really don't think I mean, never say never, but kind of never. It would be my belief. Um we have hired 19 new drivers since June. So in a year's time despite weekly child affairs. Um 15 of those drivers however have retired, resigned or we terminated them for a multitude of reasons that made them not capable of driving a bus. Um three drivers however good news in training and two are in the queue. Right. So right now we have a total of 89 drivers. So about what we've had the last couple years, okay, despite the fact that we

pay more than most companies hourly, we provide insurance and we offer them a pension, an IMRF pension. Outside agencies do not do those last two things. So our overall package is better than others. Drivers needed to start the year. Here it is. 91 in tier 1, 92 in tier 2, 68 in tier 3. That's the morning. In the afternoon, those tiers 1 and two just flip a little. Tier 3 goes up to 72 plus activity buses. Now, it looks like, oh, 89 and 91 are close. You're right. If no one called in sick, but I've told this board time and time again, this unit calls in at a rate of close to 20% a day. That's 18 or more people out. So then it becomes a minus. So that's call-ins. And then we need substitutes. Sometimes some of our drivers are on a medical leave. They have a they have they're sick or something. So we don't have enough drivers plus subs. Tom Bramley, shout it loud and proud with your amazing accent. How many drivers do you think we need to be staffed fully and

be staffed?

Minimum. Okay. So, we're,00 500 16 away. All right. And that that'll be tight, but that's a minimum. So, we're not there yet. We're not giving up. We're still doing it. So, tonight you will hopefully approve supplemental drivers up to 10. It's a smaller number than we've gone for in the past. We'll see if it's the right decision, but we're going to we're going to start with 10. All right. I want you all to know, everyone listening, Steve, especially, we want our arbitration. Okay? We were in arbitration with the union, this the DTU. We love this union. We love our drivers. We disagree, however, on language within the collective bargaining agreement as to whether or not we can supplement our workforce to round it out. So, we think that constitutes an emergency if we don't have enough drivers to get our kids to school. We've been arbitrating this. So, it went through grievance phases. We went to arbitration. We won all three counts. We were following the CBA. We were not misinterpreting the language that allows us to do so. So, that's good news for us for this school year. what we're going to face next year effective July of 2026 if Senate Bill 1799 is updated. So it is on the governor's desk. Many bills are on the governor's desk. If they are if if Pritkar does not sign them by August 31st, they automatically come become law. So, right now, Senate Bill 1799, which makes me upset because it's going to negatively impact our ability to get kids to and from school in a timely manner. We will not have the ability to do supplemental drivers for the entire

year starting in the next school year. If this bill is signed or not signed, right? Because if it's not signed, remember it's passes. The only thing that could change that would be if Governor Pritsker vetoed that bill or any other veto any other bills on his desk for signature between now and the end of the month. Okay. So, what that means is we can supplement the workforce for non-instructional positions for two 90day terms. It's 180 days. Now, that includes weekends because if it was 180 school days, that's almost the whole year. But it includes weekends and days off. Which means that somewhere around the winter when our drivers call in even more because the weather's bad, we're going to have a problem with how to have enough drivers to drive our buses. I'm not going to worry about it too much right now. So, I'm going to see what happens by the end of the month and then we have this full school year. But it is something that we will have to keep our eye on this time next year. Okay. So that's my transportation update. Key dates next week. That's it. They're coming. Teachers Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday, kids. And then there are other breaks. Just let's focus on just the good stuff. Getting everyone back to school. And that is my report. Any questions? No. Um can I ask as far as transportation is concerned? So if you um hypothetically speaking, if you have no call offs and all your staff um are present and then we have the um the additional um emergency drivers. Um what exactly happens in those case because then you have an excess of staff. What would you do? Does that um count towards the

emergency drivers that they or because we have a contract they are um they have to take on a um a route

might have to come to the mic. It's hard to You're not supposed to do anything. Very quick update. just before I left the office at uh 6:45. We are now four uh six routes to be filled and eight sub routes to be filled which gives us 14. Uh we've had a few drivers go sick and we don't know when they're coming back. We've had a couple of resignations uh even today.

I literally got that data like 2 days ago. I know it's changed a little since then. That's fluid. Wow. Okay. But at the moment, I'm 14 routes taking subs and filled routes still to cover for next week. So Tom, can I tell just ask you to let everybody know when these 14 routes are unfilled, what do our drivers do? They double up.

Double up. Do you see the the the difference in the route the route numbers there where you have drivers that in the third tier in the afternoon we don't need so many drivers what we will be asking drivers is to do a little bit of extra work to help us out uh in those cases as much as we can um if we pass tonight with that we'll have the supplemental drivers uh was a very good question um from Wendy Hunt about the um what we do if we are fully staffed. We don't know yet. We've never been fully staffed

is is the answer to that. But that's why I kind of like that. I love it. I'm an optimist. I really am. And don't think we are the only ones that have an absenteeism because even when some of the um private companies that we were leasing drivers from uh some of their drivers didn't turn up as well. So uh it's been an ongoing battle for over a year. Uh I do know that we have a very very good hardcore of drivers who come in every day. Um, and they're they are, but probably we don't appreciate them enough.

Well, remember when we we tried with this group to do an incentive for those that came to work, an attendance incentive to your point to to thank to show our appreciation for those that do come to work. They were going to help us with recruitment. The the whole unit voted that down, but many of our vets that come in regularly faithfully will drive three tiers plus activity if we need them to. Correct. They voted yes. Others voted no. So, you're right. We have a very strong core of of drivers, but we need the other side to it. We just had another lady solo. We've got two

and we actually have routes starting tomorrow for some of our outer district. We have two ladies ready to solo and we're hopeful of having them soloed before wed. So, that will give us another uh two drivers at that point. So to echo uh what the superintendent says, we are in a better position. Hence, we've gone for a reduced amount of uh lease drivers to tr try and help uh our own individual budgets. Um but at the same time, we're not we're not out of the woods yet.

Thank you. Yeah.

All right. Thanks, Tom. Okay, I think Renee and your crew, are you up next? Okay. Beast. Good evening, President Hines, Dr. President Ader, Dr. Hines, members of the board of education and the district 15 community. I am Renee Bansky and I am so privileged to serve as the assistant superintendent for multilingual programs here in district 15. and I am joined by my colleagues here tonight, Angelica Berani, Carrie Keith, and Melissa Dominguez. We are very excited to share an update with you on multilingual education here in District 15 and how we are bringing to life the district's mission, vision, values, and strategic plan. Okay, we'll start with a brief review of our district demographics and the different program models that we offer here in district 15. So, you can see here that we proudly serve the needs of 3,657 multilingual students in district 15 where over 80 different languages are spoken. Our top languages continue to be Spanish, Ukrainian, Russian, Japanese, Polish, Telugu, and Bulgarian. We also offer a continuum of services so that we can meet the diverse needs of all of those students. Starting with our

youngest learners, we are excited to share that last year we implemented fullday bilingual preschool programming for 60 different students here in the district. And we are excited to add three additional classrooms over at CLA this year that will accommodate 120 more bilingual learners. And we are even adding two Spanish bilingual EC classrooms for students with more significant needs. At the elementary level, we offer 37 transitional bilingual self-contained classrooms for students in Spanish. We also offer 36 different Spanish dual language classrooms and we have 102 EL blended classrooms. So, these are teachers who have ESL certification and they are the classroom teacher. Typically, they have anywhere from five to 10 ELEL students in their classroom along with non-ELL students. We often place our students at higher levels of proficiency in this type of a program model. Additionally, we offer resource services to our students. So, you can see here we have 12 different ESL resource teachers that provide services typically on a pullout basis for students. And once a school has 20 students or more that all speak the same language and all of those students qualify for services, we are also obligated to provide bilingual programming for those students. So you can see that here in district 15, we offer bilingual programming not only in Spanish but also in Ukrainian, Japanese, Russian, Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, and Bulgarian. And yes, we were able to find teachers for all of those programs, which was no easy feat. At the middle school level, we provide

ESL resource to our students. In addition to that, we have bilingual programs for Spanish, Ukrainian, Japanese, and Russian. We have five Spanish dual language classrooms. And we also offer world language programs to any student in district 15 who would like to learn Spanish. Uh we will continue with five sections of French next year and that program will sunset at the end of next year. And now I'm going to turn it over to Angelica Brifani who will share some of our data celebrations and opportunities for growth.

Okay. Thank you. We'll begin by reviewing kindergarten data and the letter sound assessments in Spanish. Letter sound knowledge is a strong predictor of future reading achievement. We're excited to share that over the course of the last four years, the number of students in our kindergarten, Spanish, bilingual, and dual language programs performing at or above the 40th percentile has grown from 32% in the spring of 2022 to 56% in the spring of 2025. That's an increase of 24 percentage points. The number of students below the 20th percentile has decreased from 53% to 29%, a decrease of 24 percentage points. And the number of students performing at the 80th percentile and above has grown from 10% to 29% and that's an increase of 19 percentage points.

Just like it's very exciting to see.

Yeah, you know me. I'm always like a candy. In first grade, students build upon their skills in Spanish literacy by focusing on learning complex syllables which include blends and dip thongs to increase their fluency with multi-elabic words. This progress is measure measured by assessment given in the fall, winter, and spring. And we're excited that the number of students scoring above the 40th percentile has grown from 36% in the spring of 2021 to 47% in the spring of 2025. And that's an increase of 11 percentage points. By the end of first grade, our students in bilingual and dual language programs have learned to combine the foundational skills of recognizing letter sounds to syllables to reading sentences and longer passages of text. This is captured by the CBM, which is an assessment um where students are asked to read three passages and they are timed on the number of words per minute that they read. Students are expected to grow from a score of 35 words correct per minute in the winter to 60 words correct per minute in the spring to meet the 40th percentile. By the end of first grade, students in bilingual dual language classes had 44% of students performing at the expected level of 40% or higher. Recognizing the need for independent fluency practice, we are expanding a successful pilot that we did this past year that targets this skill in particular. So, this initiative will be implemented for first grade and second grade this coming year um to be proactive in enhancing our students reading fluency skills. CBM is also administered in second grade. So students begin the year with having to read 39 words correct per minute in the fall to 70 words correct per minute in the spring to meet that 40th percentile. We're excited to share

that our data in this area has grown substantially over the last four years, moving from just 7% of students meeting the standard in 2021 to 56% of students meeting the same standard in 2025 and an increase of 49 percentage points. When students move from second to third grade, our literacy block transitions to a heavier English emphasis on English literacy. This past year, our third to fifth graders were introduced to common lit assessments in an online assessment which measures reading comprehension and text analysis in connection with grade level standards. A comparison of our students performance from the beginning of the year to the end of year shows that our third grade students scored increased from 19 to 34% an increase of 15 percentage points. Our fourth graders improved from 29 to 61% a gain of 32 percentage points and our fifth grader scores advanced from 26% proficient to 41% proficient which is a growth of 15 percentage points. While we celebrate our students continued growth in biiteracy, we are using this data to identify key opportunities for improvement. Our efforts in the year ahead will focus on small groupoup instruction, metal linguistic awareness and explicit instruction on academic language.

Can I just stop you for that for a second? Um cuz I'm looking at your graphs or your table um for the CMB data and it's kindergarten, first and second grade. That information is um specific to Spanish, but is that um the growth and the improvement? Are we seeing it in the other groups as well? I know um collective you you've said that there's an improvement, but there is just um uh Spanish. So I just wanted to know um is the trend the same? Is the um is the range the same? I mean certainly we probably have more um Spanish speakers. Yeah. Yeah. In just a few more slides we'll get to that. Okay.

At the middle school level we proudly celebrate a strong growth trajectory as evident by our access exit data. On the left, you can see in 2025, we doubled the number of students who met the exit criteria, moving from 24 students in 2024 to 49 students in 2025. Since 2018, we have increased from 16 students meeting that criteria to now 49 students achieving full English proficiency. At the same time on the right hand side of the slide you can see our students who are achieving the next to exit category on access also rose significantly from 89 students in 2024 to 128 in 2025. We are so proud of our students, our teachers, our families who are closing this opportunity gap each year in greater increments. Our opportunity for growth at the middle school level is to increase the number of students who are achieving the full academic English proficiency and to continue focusing our professional development efforts in top-notch highquality professional development for all educators who serve multilingual students. And we'll just point out that this data is for all of our language learners at the middle school. And as we're looking at this number, because we're looking at the number of um exit or access exits, right? Um as a uh percentage of the uh total number of students um I mean if if in prior years there's a a smaller volume, that percentage actually changes. So I'm just curious where are we really trending in in terms of percentage so we can have a better um

in about four slides. Yeah, just maybe like write your questions down and we'll this is there's a lot of slides to go over.

We wanted to show you an example of the academic language that is assessed on this access assessment in the content areas. You can see here an example from math in the context of a story problem revolving around geometry in baseball. Our students would read the excerpt, answer the question regarding the volume of baseball to ultimately answer the question on the assessment which is why do students need to know the circumference of a baseball. It is evident that it is an incredibly rigorous content area assessment that is evaluating the academic language that a student holds at their grade level across math, science, social studies, and language arts. Now we will transition to our most recent data regarding the outcomes for our dual language program. Our Pioneer class is moving into seventh grade. In order to measure their Spanish language proficiency, we use the Apple assessment, which is one they can use in high school to obtain the seal of biiteracy. Proudly, we celebrate tonight the results of our pioneer class. In order to obtain the seal of biiteracy, they will need an I5, which is the yellow star, in listening, reading, speaking, and writing. The results indicate that the majority of our students are well on their way to obtaining an I5 by their senior year of high school. The entire scale goes from N1, novice one, up to intermediate 5. Our stu students land solidly in the intermediate range and they have six more years of Spanish language learning to reach the I5 proficiency and attain the seal of biiteracy. We can see here that the trajectory towards biiteracy in D15 is strong.

Okay. Now, these next slides do address our global data in the district and they encompass the progress of all of our D15 multilingual students across all languages. So, you can see here that the Illinois State Board of Education requires uh or publishes each year a measure called the English prog progress to proficiency measure. Um this is an individual uh measure for students that measures their progress in learning English with the goal of the state being that every student reaches full English proficiency within five years. Okay. This progress is measured using the access test which students take each year to assess their English skills in listening, speaking, reading and writing. And based on their yearly growth goal, the students progress is scored on a scale from 0ero to 100. For example, if a student meets 80% of their growth goal, they earn 80 points. If they meet or go beyond their goal, they earn the full 100 points. The scores for all EL students in a school or a district are then averaged to show how well that group is moving toward English proficiency. And these scores then are a small part of the calculation for every school summitive designation. The 2025 progress to proficiency measure is not yet published by the Illinois State Board of Education, but we can see here in this graph that nearly 2,000 or approximately 60% of our students are meeting 80 to 100% of their progress to proficiency goal. So, while the Illinois State Board of Education has not yet published the official data for progress to proficiency, we've done our own

calculations. So, you can look here um and you can see that um these results show that just under 5% of our students are excelling far beyond their growth targets. While about 20 21% are fully on track to meeting their goal for readiness. Another 26% are very close to meeting their targets indicating steady progress towards proficiency. And however, there are about 17% of our students that are in the atrisisk category and approximately 30% of our students show minimal growth, stagnant scores or minimal um some regression in their scores. So in analyzing that data, we see that our biggest opportunity to reduce the number of students in the red category is to ensure that all of our English learners who enter district 15 in kindergarten or first grade exit our program in fourth or fifth grade. As shown on the graph here, our highest exit rate occurs in fourth grade. And this does align with national trends. After fourth grade, exiting becomes substantially more difficult for students. In the upper grades, we see more students in red partly because there are fewer students. And then at the same time, we also see that the test is more challenging. There are different grade level bands and the target score for exiting the program continues to rise. It is not stagnant. Many of these upper grade students are those who have remained in the program for several years without reaching full proficiency. And when we take a closer look at these students, we often see that writing is their most underdeveloped skill. And to address this, we will continue to pay place a very strong emphasis on building

academic vocabulary and advanced language structures for all of our students. Here you can see um the progress or not progress to proficiency but the scores of our students who are actually former ELS. So the Illinois State Board of Education requires that all districts monitor the progress of students who exit the program to ensure that they continue being successful without additional language support. And you can see here that once our students meet the exit criteria for access, they go on to do very well. They can, as shown here in this graph, nearly 80% of district 15 students in their first two years of monitoring score at the 40th percentile, which is average or above on our MAP reading assessment here in district 15. And other data shows similar trends. And now I will turn it over to Melissa Dominguez who will talk about community engagement. Thank you. Um so I'm going to share a few updates you've already heard so I'm going to go a little bit quickly but during summer school this year uh we had over 400 multilingual students attend summer school at Winston campus which included programs for newcomers accelerated math and striving readers in Spanish which means these students participated in additional 60 hours of learning this summer. Uh in addition, we held some fun summer family events. Uh the summer school this summer we had the pleasure of offering three assemblies to our families. Uh we know that enriching experiences for our families are critical for developing background knowledge and support language development. Each of these presentations aligned with a day where the school summer school had the same assembly which was offered again at night um with simultaneous translation happening in Spanish, Japanese, Russian and Ukrainian.

Uh the students and families learned all about animals from around the world, were able to pet a sloth. Um they participated in hands-on experiences for physical and chemical sciences. Um and we turned the Winston campus gym into a storm. Um our commitment to providing opportunities for our dual language students to develop social cultural competencies continued during dual language culture camp again this year. This 4-day camp provided students time to explore new countries and cultures which included Mexico, Spain, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru. Um, we have two teachers this summer, Kathy Schmidt and Jeannie Jacobs Morrama, that organized field trips for over 60 students in District 15 to the Grove in Glenio, where students engaged in outdoor education and hands-on learning, which included searching for signs of animal life while hiking on nature trails, visiting a replica of a Native American village, and digging for treasures. Just like archaeologists, this is a signific significant way for us to build background knowledge and experiences for our students to draw on during the future school years. Summer book clubs were a huge success. We offered 49 clubs um and had close to 400 students participating. Uh just yesterday, we're thrilled to have hosted the backpacks, books, and bubbles event at Kimble Hill where they gave away school supplies to families with financial need. We're grateful for the5 Foundation who generously donated books and supplies for yesterday's event. It was well attended and our students are not only prepared but excited to return to school next week. Um our multilingual parent advisory committee is the umbrella in which each of our BPACS fall. Uh this past spring we shared with you that we are hosting literacy nights in various languages. Um

this is a picture from our Ukrainian literacy night. Um we hosted a Telugu Tamil and Hindi night as well as um a night for literacy in Russian as well as Japanese. Okay. And also under that EMPAC umbrella we have the Spanish bilingual parent advisory committee. Our Spanish bilingual parent advisory committee is the oldest standing BPAC that has an established executive board. They are very active parent advisory committee and as you can see here in a few of these pictures. We have about 2,000 Spanish-speaking students in our district which they represent and elevate. RBPAC picnic will be back again this year. This is one of the events our parents look forward to the most. Last year, well, over 500 families participated and the event was complete with relays, games, a dunk tank, a giant robot, face painting, police dogs, balorico, and community resource fair. So many things. So this year, we look forward to seeing what our parents planned for this year's picnic, and we invite you to save the date and join us on Saturday, September 20th at Winston Campus. We are also proud to offer this amazing parent mentor program again this coming school year. Our parent mentors continue to be an integral integral part of our schools. The mentors spend about two hours a day, Monday through Thursday, in classrooms, not with their children, but supporting instruction. Then on Friday, they receive professional development that focuses on a variety of topics related to the support that they provide in the classrooms. Last year, our mentors spent over 5,000 hours volunteering and supporting our students and teachers. This year we're excited to expand the program and to our fifth school which will be Lincoln Elementary. And we can't forget to include our family liaison who are the bridge of communication between home and school. They promote district events, assist

with registration, connection with families and resources in the community and help us to identify community needs. I will now turn it over to Renee who will speak to elevating our educators. We know that our teachers are truly the cornerstone of our students success. Okay. So, we are committed to uh to supporting our teachers and the incredibly important work that they do here in district 15. And to this end, uh one of our examples of the ways that we have supported educators is forming several different cohorts in the district. Uh you can see here that we formed a cohort of 20 different teachers that were working together to earn their reading specialist endorsement and they will graduate in May of 2026. At which time here in district 15, I don't think this exists anywhere else. I'm going to gamble and say in the country, we will have 35 bilingual reading specialists here. And I'm excited to share that we are actually starting a third cohort in partnership with National Lewis in September and we will welcome 15 more teachers into that cohort and they will work together to earn the highest level of expertise and understanding of literacy. Um, in addition to that, we started a cohort with our teacher vacancy grant funds over the summer and we have more than 40 teachers who committed to working together to earn their ESL or bilingual endorsement and they will work together over the course of this year and all should be finished by August of 2026 at which time we'll have an additional 40 certified teachers here in the district. And you can see on the bottom left corner is a picture of our grow your own mindset um approach

here in district 15. These are program assistants or teachers who had alternative lensure that worked together over the course of two years and graduated last May. So now district 15 has an additional 20 certified teachers um here to meet the needs of our students. In addition to that, um, we've expanded our learning on a global scale here in district 15 with our partnership with the Illinois State Board of Education and the Federal State Department. Uh, we have brought 17 different cultural exchange teachers here, all from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Spain. We've learned a lot from these teachers. They have enriched our classrooms. They've enriched our practices. we've learned from them and they have broadened our students and our staff's um understanding of the world. In addition to that, um as Dr. Lopez affectionately referred to this summer of the summer of two Dougs and a Kathy, so we hosted um outstanding authors and leading experts in the field of education, Dr. Doug Reeves, Dr. Doug Fiser, and Dr. Kathy Esamia. And we will carry that learning forward into this school year with a strong emphasis on supporting our teachers with language targets, academic vocabulary development, and a strong focus on collaborative scoring. Collaborative scoring is in writing is a professional learning approach. It's a process where educators collectively review and assess student writing samples. They use a shared rubric to do this and they engage in deep conversations about student writing. And through those conversations, we really develop a stronger understanding of what quality writing looks like and we increase and

improve our student outcomes. So now we'd like to conclude by showing you just a short video of our students. And these are our students from around the world sharing what they like most about schools in the United States. What I like most about school in the United States is that my that my friends are kind to me and that teacher are at and teachers are teaching us great stuff. I have bilingual teachers lunch because I like being able to choose between school lunch and home lunch. It's fun and free and the teacher and friend of Renry so every day is fun.

I like most about school in the United States is math. I can do science, experimental science, [Music]

teachers because in the United States teachers are very nice and they don't leave yell at you is being in the English program to learn English and Spanish and res. I like most about schools in United States is they explain the lesson and we have fun while learning. They give us Chromebooks and we do fun activities and people are very [Music] people because I like drawing and making stuff. [Music] the kindness and I like just kindness. All the teachers are very kind and also they respect you. Another thing I like about schools in the USA is that the learning is always fun. Bye-bye. Thanks for watching.

Thank you very much. And um are there any questions? Okay. Back to window. I'm gonna let you guys go first. If you Okay. No, you had a question.

You know, I really appreciate how thorough this presentation was, especially addressing um the supports of the community and um addressing the um educators that are coming up. I I really appreciate that you took a comprehensive look and then presented to us that way. I just wanted to um really understand um where we are at but um really addressing where we began and so that's why I'm asking you about those trends. Um you talked about the access um progress to proficiency. Do you have any more um data as far as um maybe even a look back of up to five years? How where where have we fared? How do how do we know the success of our program until we um see the that upward growth?

Sure. The data is abundant. So I'm happy to share at the state level there is typically an exit rate of around 6% and district 15 far exceeds that every single year. We average anywhere between 9 and 10% of our students are exiting. And that's really the mark of a healthy program because you want to make sure that your program is sound. Kids are exiting, more kids are coming, more kids are exiting. Um, and we can with great confidence say that that is happening by and large for approximately 60% of our students. The the course is uh definitely following its intended path. Um, but we do have a group of students. There are about 30% of our students uh that we continue to focus. Um, and you can see a lot of that data in the data that Carrie shared at the middle school level. um we are starting to close gaps. We are very excited about the work that we've done there. And you can see that um long longitudinal study that we did where we had 18 students back in I think it was 2018 that exited at the middle school level and we are now up to 49. And if you look at the rigor that is associated with that test, it is substantial. Right? So our kids are continuing to grow and we continue to monitor the um the different approaches that we're trying right to ensure that they are effective and so we have found that the curricular anchor that we have implemented at the middle school level is highly successful and we've done that in partnership with Dr. Kate Canella, who is a leading expert here um in the country, uh who's come to our district, so has her associate to train our teachers. And we're actually looking at potentially bringing that curriculum down to fifth and sixth grade while at the same time focusing heavily on kindergarten through fourth grade because we know students need to exit at

fourth grade. And when we look at the students who are not exiting, um to be honest, it's often the students who have Spanish as their home language. Um so while many of them do very well, um typically the group that um would require more attention are what we would call simultaneous bilingual. So these are lots of students that come to school with varying levels of proficiency in Spanish and in English, right? These are the students that we continue to refine our program, look at our data, analyze it, and continue to improve, but we we are absolutely improving. Okay. Excellent. And then what did our Dr. Kathy Escala when we had the we had dinner with or lunch with the other day?

Yes. Talk a little bit about the wonderful things that she was saying about the district and what you all are doing for our students. This is a worldrenown goes all over. She she just sang the praises of the group through all of lunch as did her husband.

Well, Dr. Kathy Esamia and her husband Manuel Esamia are researchers from the University of Colorado and they have been around for well over 40 50 years um and have done a great deal to shine spotlights on multilingual education and to study what works and what doesn't work. Uh and so they spent uh two days with us. We were able to host them. Uh we provided a dinner. We had our BPAC um moms who do ballet folk glory came in and danced for them. Uh we had our teacher who is a magician do some magic tricks in between dances. Uh so we got to really spend some time with them, ask them questions, um you know, and take advantage of the professionals that were um in our midst. at the same time. Then the following day, Dr. Esamia addressed all of our teachers, our new staff were there and we focused on comparing monolingual students and multilingual students. How are they the same and how are they different? Right? Because in a lot of our classrooms, teachers have all different language profiles, right? Um you may have a classroom with 20 students who speak all English. Um and then you may have three English learners, right? How does instruction need to look different for those three students and what can look the same, right? Um so we definitely grew our skill set uh through that experience as well. and they were very complimentary of district 15 and the strong commitment um that our board of education has shown and our superintendent has shown um that allow us to do all of these uh these things that we've been doing to improve education for all of our learners because we know truly research has shown what's good for English learners is good for all learners.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Hold on. I just want to say thank you. I'm going to try not to cry this time. I know. Look over here. Um it's it's just really powerful and it's something that is, you know, there's so much data and charts and all of that which is incredible, but that is like life trajectory, generational change for for our families that need it the most. U so thank you

those 49 students who exited at the middle school level. that stands in stark contrast to data across the country. And those students will now have the opportunity to take whatever class they want in high school. Uh because often students who continue in English learner programming, they do not have the full range of courses available to them. They are stuck in certain classes that are supported uh for language. So these students will have every opportunity available to them. And we're very excited. And I want to recognize our teachers that made that happen. They worked incredibly hard uh to make that happen. And we are so excited for next year.

Amazing. All right. Thank you ladies for sticking around and for all you do. Now head home. Head home. Next up, another powerhouse team. Emily's going to speak on behalf of that whole team. Told you. Yeah, you got your own box of Kleenex.

All right, Dr. Emily McFaten, your kind of first presentation to the board in your new role. I know it's very exciting.

Hello, President Ader, Dr. Hines, esteemed members of the board of education. It's great to see you. Um, I am here to continue the great conversation that you just heard from Multilingual. Um, and tonight we're going to talk about uh strategic priority 1A, which is our student achievement. Okay. So, we're just going to we're going to rip the band-aid and we're going to start with the great stuff. We're going to go into this a little bit more in depth, but what I want you to look at is this is the first two uh three there four tests on here. The first two are reading. The second two are math. And without even looking any further, my hope is that you notice the upward trajectory of every single one of those. This is no easy feat. you saw it with our multilingual uh students and the work that they've been doing within that department, but this is representing them and every single student here in district 15. So, we're going to dive in uh to it a little bit. Uh but just so that you can kind of understand what's on here, uh that green line right there is our goal line. Our goal is to have our students as 70% or above meeting and exceeding standards. So in the first chunk you're going to see that is our spring fast bridge results from this last spring. Those are our early reading skills for K and one. It's a battery and it shifts every time the kids take it because what a kindergartener at the beginning of kindergarten uh the expectations there versus the end of first grade are different. Um and so it does a composite

score. But what you hopefully see is that blue is the end of 2023. By the end of 2024, we jumped 16% for our primary students in their foundational early literacy skills. And we'll talk a little bit about that, but right now what that is that you're seeing is directly due to our first our K1 and two teachers, even though second's not on that chart, but our K1 and two teachers implementing our foundational skills program. That's the learning to read program. It's the explicit instruction of all of the bits and pieces of how we become fluent um readers who have comprehension. So you can see that we jumped tremendously just in year one implementation of that. Year two implementation, we continue to climb. What's great is that leads straight into spring math for reading. Uh looking at that reading, we jumped higher than we have at 63%. And again, our goal for 2028 is to be at 70%. We're right there. We're we are on that trajectory. We will hit that target. Um so that is exciting and we'll talk a bit more about next steps for literacy. I think our big celebration and somewhere you probably can feel the energy. Uh Tiff Costa is watching. She is one of the directors in the department and she she is our math cheerleader. The next two tests are all about math and you can see we've made wild improvements. Um looking at again our primary battery of that early numerousy skills. You can see that just last year we ended at 58% and this year we ended at 65%. A big part of that, I'm sure, is our

full day kindergarten, which you guys were immensely um important in making happen, but having that extra time for kids to really get the instruction they need in primary math is showing results, and those are things that are going to have long long-term effects for all of our students. And then in uh our spring map, we jumped three percentage points. We're at 66%. And again, our goal is 70. We're going to beat that. We'll beat that well before 2028. Um, and a big piece of this is, you know, you saw Dr. Lopez and Miss Costa talk at the spring at one of our springboard meetings about looking at math curriculum, especially at the middle school. So you'll see that we're really trying to be attuned to all of the needs whether you know starting at our youngest learners and making sure that by the time they leave 15 that they can go in and to Miss Ransky's point they can take whatever classes they want at high school. They get to be able to choose a path that feels right and exciting for them.

Quick question on this. Um so we are we showing here K through eight or is this just K through two or what? So, anything great question. First fast bridge is K1. Okay. Then anything that says map is 28. 28. All right. So, so when you cluster them together, you're seeing all of K8, but that first battery is fastbridge K2 or K1, I'm sorry. And then that second battery is the spring map reading, which is our 28. Okay. And then math is the same. K1 28.

All right. So 28 is the map testing and the fast the fast bridge. Fast bridge is K1. Yep. Okay. And that's just an aggregate of all of them. All of them. Yes. We we compile all of it together so that we can get just a whole district level picture. All right. Would you mind? We're going to talk about our school improvement that's coming up. Stop talking, right, Linda? I'm going to No, you're fine. Don't you worry. Dr. Guys, take your notes. I am I just called myself out, young lady.

Okay, something I just want to drip for you because it's exciting, but there's a lot more work and conversation to happen. Every 5 years, MAP, which is the second through 8th grade test that we take in reading and math, they reorm. So, we have been using and what I just showed you in the data is our 2020 norms. They just came out this summer in July with 2025 norms. So, this is new data for us and I'm going to tell you a little bit of how we scored on it and what happened for our district in this reorming process. Spoiler, it's awesome. Um, but there there's just some things that we're going to have to do now that we have this information. So in this reorming what it does is across the country you have millions of kids taking um MAP testing and they reorm every 5 years because every 5 years it it's different in schools. So when you think about the 2020 norms that's really 2015 through 2020 that they aggregated that data which is BC before co this data for 2025 was aggregated using information from 2020 to now and that's really important and so uh Dr. Dr. Heines and I have been talking about it. I went to training on it. There's really three reasons that you're going to see shifts in the norming for this new 2025 norms. The first is obvious. It's a postcoavid world. You're going to see the results of what happened for millions of kids across this country in terms of what happened during and right after CO for their education. The second is the change in the type of questions. It used to be that they would ask a question and say,

"If you are in this range, it doesn't matter your age or grade. I'm going to ask you a question that falls into a range." An example of this is I saw a third grader who had a question about amic pentameter. Shakespeare, if you need a recollection of that, that's that's not a question that as an educator helps me teach better if a third grader knows I am pentameter. So what they have now done is they have shifted the questions. So yes, you get questions at your level, but it's about topics that are a part of the standards at your grade level. And maybe they'll go a little above depending how you answer or maybe a little below, but they are asking about content that is grade level appropriate for where you are in school. And so that's really important. They did that a year earlier. I think we're now just about to start our third year with math having that change and uh the reading just changed. So that's a huge shift in the types of questions that are being asked and then the way kids answer. Then the last is student population. We're, you know, across not just our district, every district has changing populations. That's a new reality. So again, reorming is that resetting. What does this mean for us? So, if you take a look, the gray is the 2020 norms and the white boxes are the new 2025 norms. We went for our 2 through 8th grade reading being at the 63rd percentile with the old norms to being at the 71st percentile with the new norms. So, what does that mean in relation to those three things? Number one, and this is absolutely kudos to Dr. Hines and all of you on the board and all of the staff members who showed up. It is the fact

that people showed up, kids showed up, and we taught through co. The second piece is the change in question types means that our focus on standardsbased learning over the past handful of years is showing a direct impact in our student performance. Because while it's great if a third grader knows what amic pentameter is, in the end that doesn't matter because that's not what I'm expecting of a third grader. I care that a third grader knows third grade materials. And then it means that we're also supporting our population. You heard that from multilingual. You're seeing it across the board. We are seeing our students for who they are and what they need and we are responding accordingly. Math also had a wonderful jump. We were at 66% this year and we're up to 70. So what does this mean for moving forward? Well, according to this, we've hit our goals. So, yay us. But what it really means is that our baseline needs to change again and we need to look and say, okay, it's great that we met 70, but really we started in a different place. The whole it's apples and oranges. So, we're going to need to take some time this year. we're going to have to look at what would an appropriate goal be and we're going to reset our goals. This leads into some of the work that we've been doing. Um what we've done and what we're doing and I'm sorry it's so much stuff up there but it's also so much stuff that's been going on. Um the first is and you've heard it over the past few years. We have been updating all of our scopes and sequences with pacing guides, with assessment plans, with uh common not just assessments, common checkpoints, common pathways um so that we are uniform across the district and holding high standards for every single student here. The second

piece, which is what Dr. Hines was talking about, is we have SIP, which is our school improvement plans. You all have a strategic plan. We're reporting on some of that tonight. But what we do is we work with every school and their principles and assistant principles and teacher leaders to say if this is our district goal, how do we hold our our building, whatever building it may be, to a high standard? What's our goal as a school? And then they work with their teachers to say as a grade level, what's our goal as a grade level? so that we are all working towards the district goal but in ways that are meaningful for the kids in front of us, the schools we work at. And that's really important because as you can see, we have not just wins at the district, but every win that we have at the district means there's wins happening at every building and there's wins happening for all of our grade levels and those things add up. So that's a lot of the school improvement work we're doing right now and we're going to recalibrate with new baseline data but we're headed in the right direction. Other things that have happened like I said full day kindergarten has made a massive difference and seeing what's going to happen in the next couple of years for the students who started with us at kindergarten is I think a really exciting piece and prospect to when we get to look at data and see our results and see what happens when you start them young and um you keep them with us. This is our second year of our foundational reading skills program. So again, it's K1 and two that is doing this reading program. What's really exciting is for this upcoming year, our second graders are kids who have had two full years of that foundational skill work. They're going to get that third year and we should see some MAP results then from that because by that point, these are kids who've really gotten the

foundations of how to read and now can be demonstrating that understanding to read. We've been playing with writing because as you heard from Mrs. Urbansky, writing is is vital. It's a vital form of communication. It is very important in the language development process. So, we've been playing with some third through fifth grade resources to start working on writing as we tee up to do a comprehensive ELA review at our elementary. Also, as multilingual was talking about, uh we have common lit. What we've been using is uh common lit in two different ways. They have a benchmark test, but we use it in a formative way because what's really hard is that for a long time teachers have these highstakes tests like I AR and um MAP testing, but you feel a little bit in the dark about how kids are going to be doing. And so what's really nice about that is that we can get an understanding of how kids are doing in relation to grade level text that are standards aligned questions and we can help and support and address things before we get to the end of the year um in a systematic way. And so we've been using that third through 8th grade. This year, um, we had people in our multilingual department who supported us in perhaps creating a a Spanish version so that we could also see what it looks like for our students who are coming in with that language background. And then, uh, Dr. Lopez and I was smiling earlier because it's, you know, Mrs. Portland. The two of them have been working as starting our review of our intervention resources for tier 2 and tier 3 and making sure that we have a nice trajectory between what's in our tier one for everybody for kids who need a little bit more or a lot more support

or even going into special ed. Do we have a continuous flow of opportunities and resources that make sense for kids? Um because the last thing you want to do is take your neediest learners and just start plugging them into five different resources. We want to make it smooth. We want to make it feel seamless and layered upon. What we're doing for reading is really exciting. Dr. Hines spoke about it. We are bringing in the reading league. Um, and what we're really excited is is that they are a research group that does professional learning about sciencebacked reading, evidence, demonstrated reading, and they are program and curriculum agnostic. So, it does not matter what resource you use in your literacy course, the things they are teaching you can be applied right away with whatever you're using. And I think the biggest compliment I took out of it was I had two principles tell me that uh a couple of the things that we did that day that they laminated the sheets.

And if you don't know lamination is the highest form of flattery in education. Um so I people are feeling something about that. We're excited to kick that off with teachers uh during institute day. And then in partnership with multilingual, we have already started an ELA curriculum review. We're starting with third through fifth. K2 is got that ball rolling with foundational. And as you know, our six, seven, and eight are flying with amplify and um their book studies. So we want to hit 35, those really critical years. We've already started looking at programming. We are looking to make sure that it's available in Spanish, that it meets the needs of every single learner that is in our district. Um, so we are kicking off that committee this fall. And one of the things is we'll be bringing in the reading league specifically for people who choose to pilot because without having that sub availability, we need to be creative about how we get people to participate in making decisions about curriculum and the learning that goes behind it. And so the point of doing the learning this year is we always joke too news is too much. So next year to have a new curricular resource and new learning would be too much for staff. So we're doing the learning around what's best for literacy development this year so that next year 35 can implement a new curriculum with the plan that K2 would be the following year. So that's our trajectory for the rest of ELA. 68 is focusing on their assessments, common assessments, benchmark assessments, and we're going to continue working on that tier 2, tier three. It's a little bit of finding the the right menu of resources without making it the old country buffet of too many options. So we're working on that. And then the last thing, and this also

will apply to math, is that we've implemented a win block first through fifth grade. And what that means is what I need. It's time where teachers can be flexible in saying what do I have for my students in my room? Who has what needs and what are some ways that we can address it? Oh, you have some students that have this need. Why don't they come to my class and I'll run a group so that we can practice some fluency skills. So, we're working on creative ways because we have students who have need and we know that the more that we can intervene early, the better. And the more that we can push our students who are meeting standards, because now it looks like we have 70% of them that are doing that, we need to be working on how to help raise them up um even further. Math, a lot of the same parallel types of things with organization and planning of curriculum. I will say that uh the big work that has been done and teachers have been integral in this is helping find the balance between skill development and inquirybased learning. You need to have both. And so finding the right balance of being having kids be able to practice skills or practice um topics that maybe they're not as comfortable with, but also being able to play around and engage with math. That's been a big work of our pacing group and uh a lot of the fluency work that we are doing with math. And then that middle school math curriculum review, we have a really nice pathway so students can um have a couple of opportunities of how they want to leave on grade level or even above grade level here in district 15 when it comes to math. And as you can see, our math scores are really they they have flown the past couple of years. Um, so we're really excited for that. And then we're going to continue building that math fluency piece. We

really honed in on second and third last year. This year four and five, we've got our eye on them. So they are our next group. Okay. So now this goes into intervention a little bit. Um, this uh indicator is looking at our the different types of groups that are represented. In a perfect world, you should have the same proportion of student makeup to the same proportion of student makeup and interventions. Our goal is to be at 4%. We've come down. Um we're at 9%, but that's work we're still doing. However, we know all of our work for intervention is completely dependent on tier one. So, the stronger tier one is, the less we kids we should have an intervention. hopefully the more par we have between what the representation looks like and then this is our percentage of students who are meeting or exceeding goals um here in district 15 that are in intervention and as you can see this is their growth targets excuse me um as you can see we're pretty flat okay about half of the kids in intervention a little over half are meeting their growth targets So what that says to us is are we using the right things for intervention? Are we giving the right amount of time? Um part of the work from ESSER was having you know different you know we brought in interventionists. We have more reading specialists. Um but like I said number one sometimes the need is greater than the amount of people we have to support. sometimes the time of a schedule, right? You don't want to be pulling kids out for half the day to get this stuff, you know, get additional supports. So, it's a really fine balance that we're looking at at how we can best

support our neediest students. Our hope is that something like a windblock can be a win for us in that it allows some flexibility in the classroom where we can spend more time strengthening some of those skills before they become more deficits. And so, we're working on that. Uh this is something that was started last year with Dr. Lopez and Miss Zortland, but we are continuing to improve and strengthen it, which is uh a handbook. So MTSS is our multi-tieredruct systems of support. What's in the middle that's hard to tell is we're that's our menu that's looking at depending what students needs are. if they fall into tier 2, which is minimal support, and tier three is more support. What are the different programs that exist in English and Spanish? What kind of programs are they? Is it for fluency? Is it for learning how to decode? Is it comprehension? And it's just some different at a glance options that we can be using to help figure out, hey, we have these kids in front of us. Here's their needs. What could we try? And then on the far right side is trying to look at at a glance when you're thinking about your readers. You have kids who can read real fast uh but they're inaccurate and they kind of stumble or a lot of kids they say the first letter but then they make up the second part of the word for you. Right? That's a different need than somebody who reads really slowly but is accurate. Right? That those are two different needs. So, we need to attack those in two different ways. And that's just some ways that we're thinking about how we can support them and what types of activities we could be doing to help build those pieces up.

So, in summary, the great news is we're growing. We are hitting our targets, our intermediate targets. We are set to hit what our growth target has been at this point. And with the reorming, we look great. We look really good with the reorming. And so for every school district that gets to move up like we just did, there's school districts who are moving down. And so it's really important to note that it's not a win for everybody in the reorming, but it's a real win for district 15. And we still have work to do, but we get to change our benchmark goal now. And we get to make it higher. And that's not something that every, you know, when you create when we created this a few years ago and you thought, well, 70%. We've got some work to do. We were hovering around 50. To to be like, oh, that's nothing now. Let's bump it up. I mean, that's a huge that's a huge achievement. And that is to every single teacher that shows up every single day working with students because it is really hard to make this kind of growth. Staying flat means you're doing your job. Going and getting that kind of growth, you're going above and beyond. So that is no easy feat. Um the things that we're going to continue doing, professional learning. We're still being creative. We're still trying to find time to to get people the learning they need. Um, we're going to come to you at the end of this school year with hopefully uh a recommendation for some sort of adoption for third, fourth, and fifth that will cover all things literacy

that's already been budgeted for. We've already budgeted for it. We're in we're in good shape. Don't you worry. We've been on top of this. Um, we're going to continue to work on enhancing our data understanding and usage because that's how you make the changes in the moment. And then we're going to continue to strengthen those tier supports because we want all kids to be able to to be part of the success that we're seeing in general here in district 15. With that, what questions do you have?

I have some questions just about um you you focused most on on on the the map adjustments. uh how does this relate if at all to I know that in the paper they were talking about the changes in I and uh ACTs and stuff like that.

Yeah, they're they're kind of if you will it's reorming but they're trying to essentially have all of these different assessments that you take at different ages here in the state kind of read the same have some parody among them because they've been wildly different. Um we were just talking about it today. We're going to dig in deeper. It looks like science we've been a little we've been higher performing and it's looked discrepant from our reading and math for a while. It looks like that got adjusted and and deflated a little but our reading and math went up. So it I mean it just came out so we literally just looked at it today to see what happened to the team. Yeah. Yeah. To

I don't know uh Emily if you've listened to Tony Sanders or Dr. Sanders on any of his listening tours when he's talked about the assessments and the accountability measures and just the work that they're trying to do at the state to make the test certainly more standards, you know, aligned. And uh you've looked at that graph and I think Dr. Lopez showed it like the Illinois assessment is way over here in terms of its overall rigor where other states are here. So I think what they're trying to do is have a a valid accountability measure that's aligned certainly to our grade level standards that know and you know be able to do concept for mastery proficiency and whatnot. But I think they're also looking at what does this test measure and what do we really want it to measure

and and then overall and I think what's hard is every test it it feels like a different language almost right it all means something slightly different and you kind of take it with a different grain of salt and it it I think the state's saying how do we make it so that like what you see in science makes sense compared to what you're seeing with reading and math because right now it hasn't and felt that way. And so I think that's what their attempt is. And then yeah, the different states have wildly different experiences. So um I think they're trying to, if you will, reorm in that way, which is honestly very helpful from a you know, from the user end is being able to look at things.

I just want to um thank you for this presentation. Um for those of us who sat here through all these um similar presentations um every year it just felt um it felt like progress couldn't come any faster. I felt like we were at this slow um rise and this is probably the first year I felt good about listening to this and and hearing everything that we're um doing. It's been since you've been here uh Lori. So we appreciate the work you've done. So, I guess I have to um aim this question towards you. What um if you could summarize everything that we've done since since you started really that um make this work, you know, I well I mean there's so many things that the board has helped say yes to all my hairbrain ideas and that of the team. I I think back to our first February right before everything really shifted when we said we need more staff, right? We started with staffing increases, clinicians to support this the needs of our students. Um we started right away with research design improvement model RDIM looking at all of our curricular resources, teaching and learning, multilingual, student services. We built and Thomas, we built ed services. So we've overhauled core. We've been very focused on when you have a tier two or a tier three problem, what you really have is a tier one problem. We didn't have viable guaranteed written curriculum. Our junior high teachers were using a 20-year-old research that was put in place in the late 90s when I was here the first time and it was still in place. So, we didn't have a good curriculum. It wasn't aligned to state standards. Now, we're very standardminded and we've you said something that I wrote down that I squiggled and with my orange marker that I really liked. Um, we have to have a balance between skills and inquiry. And I think we have that now. We have greater clarity around what kids need to know and be able to do at every grade level. We've given teachers curriculum so they don't have to guess. They're not

independent contractors. That that's called tutoring. Not teaching in a district where you have a board approved curriculum, right? So everybody is more focused. We've we had a system of schools versus a school district. So there's greater continuity across our grade levels. So I think those are some of the important reasons. The investment in transitioning from district improvement in data as a department to ed services where we built MTSS because we really didn't have it. We had reading specialists, but not enough. We still don't have enough in my opinion. Sorry. Uh Diana, she hates that I keep wanting more FTE, but the truth of the matter is there's we need more staff in certain places. We are making growth with our students with intervention, but we don't have enough people to service all the kids that need intervention that are at the 25th percentile or below. So, I think that that's been an important lever. We've continued to invest in our teachers and their professional development, getting their voice in more committee work and decision-making. That's been very valuable. I think opening our libraries back up and and having library access to our kids, having, you know, books, my goodness, that they can read. Giving them language support in a home school or a near home neighborhood school, so all the boundary work so kids aren't on a bus for 50 minutes just, you know, to receive language support. Um, I think all of these things, the the curricular alignment, having more and the right people. I think adjusting tier two in terms of our our salaries, like we're competitive now. We were paying our teachers an embarrassing sum. Um, we made a major investment in new staff, so we're going to be market competitive. I mean, that's that's been a huge um plus, I think, having uh special education coordinators added to our buildings, expanding our offerings to have more programs, you know, having a a more robust continuum of services for for students at intervention. We overhauled gifted, so it's not just for kids who

aren't a grade level. We continue to invest in an optional program in which we receive no state funding for gifted education, but we value it. So, it's in place. I think all the work we're doing with um parent advisories, learn 15, educating our parents, seeing them more as partners, like they educate kids first, you know, we get them when we get them, but they they've had them since we get them and then after we send them home each day. So, I think that that partnership has been great. Um gosh, what else? We've done so many things. I think those are some of the big ones. Yeah. Yeah. It's what I was saying. I wasn't this tired seven years ago, but it's still exciting. It's exciting, but it's it's been a lot. And it's it's just everybody kind of leaning into the work.

Great. Great. And heading in the same direction. Yep. I think it's been a huge piece that you all have provided for us.

Well, I just I just want to chime in as the new guy here. Um, this is so exciting and and coming at it, you know, and and seeing all this. I saw it from the parent perspective over 20 years. Uh, my oldest is 25 now. So, you know, just seeing all this progress and then hearing Dr. Hines's story about the the curriculum being the same in the '90s as it was as it was then and seeing that and I saw the proof in the pudding with my own children, but now and now they're all out of district 15, but to see uh and we have a lot of littles on our block. We have kindergarten through three on uh on in our block and knowing what's in store for them and and I live right ne next door to them is very exciting and and uh I their parents have already been talking to me about it already and and congratulations to you on your first uh your first presentation. Uh Dr. Lopez very very big shoes to fill but your enthusiasm and passion I think will carry us forward. Thank you.

Thank you. It's fun. I will say to Wenda to what you said I think that we've seen our students be able to do things in our classroom for years and we've just said why isn't it showing up in this data this data this data is the win that we've needed in the sales because I think people have been working doggedly for years and to get the wins in this kind of way I think is

it feels very earned it feels very agree with that and you said it so well and Like Wenda, you know, I would always like want to not want to look to my right. I know. Oh god. And Sam used to sit over there. It's like they're going to come at us like why isn't the data moving? And I just kept saying just wait. Just wait. It's moving. We're getting we're we're getting all the tools and everything is aligning and it's it's happening. The the shifts are happening. It's going to be slow at first and then it's going to take off. I I did say that for years and now it's it's really it's happening. Like thank you. That's really good. But yeah, it's like happening. I mean, we had to turn a barge like You did? We the district you had to lead and turn a barge over. A speedboat ride. No,

you all see me drive like that. Yes. And so it is it is a testament of all of the employees in this district, the talent that we have here. um the decisions that we've made in terms of the resources that we've invested, our community saying yes to those investments and having to contribute to that. It's it's really cool to see just like an ecosystem take shape um in this way. She likes very exciting. So congratulations everybody, staff, students.

Yes, well earned congratulations to everybody. Yep. All right. Nothing as exciting as coming next, but uh necessary nonetheless. Press 118 part two. We did a first read when we were together in June. There is an asterct. If you just advance one slide, please. Thank you. Just wanted to add kind of call to your attention visitors to and conduct on school property a 030. I'm gonna update a small portion of that um policy that's not found within 119. So, if you could advance to the next slide, I just want to explain what I'm thinking and why we're doing it. So, if you've been around town at all, Palatine, Rolling Meadows, Hoffman Estates, you see lots and lots more ecooter, ebike, motorized contraptions and people that clearly don't have a driver's license driving them, so they're not of age, right? So, um, our our current policy doesn't doesn't have a lot of information other than, you know, you need to walk the vehicles when they're on on school property. So, what we're proposing, what I'm proposing, um, is is kind of banning them on school property, okay? Anything motorized. And I reached out to Reedson, the village president in Palatine, to Rob Sabo and Rolling Meadows, and to Eric Palm and Hoffman to see what the villages were, village people as I call them, to see what the villages were up to and where their their heads were, where their plans were. So in Palletine, village council tenatively has this scheduled for September 2nd to talk about um and they he expects but you know it's got to go through the council um action to to ban them on sidewalks allowing them on streets if the rider is 16 with a valid driver's license and insurance. Makes sense, right? These

vehicles go pretty fast. So that's Palletine. um in Rolling Meadows. Similarly, Rob Assavo, they talk they will talk about it on August 26th at a committee of the whole. Um they're going to look at an ordinance very similar to Elk Grove, which has already banned it unless you have a driver's license and you can only use them on streets where the speed limit is 35 miles an hour, I believe. So, they're going to ban it for kids under 16. and Rolling Meadows anticipates um adopting an escooter rags that require users to be 18 or older. So, they're going to go through it at the council level, but it looks as though they're leaning towards 16 or older. And then when I uh look at Hoffman Estates, they cited Elkrove as well and 54. I reached out to my colleague Andy Jas who's the soup in 54. He said he's adopting what Shamberg has done, which is not allowing them, disallowing usage of them for anyone under 16. So, while our three villages aren't quite there yet, just knowing that school is about to start, I would rather there be clarity for all of our parents and students that we just don't even want them on school property. Our kids are um 13, some of them are 14 when they graduate if they come to us late or if their parents held them back. So, there's really just no need. We did have a second grader roll up to one of our schools last year. No helmet, fully motorized vehicle, you know, two two wheel motorcycle, uh, you know, what are they called? Scooter,

scooter, dirt bike, whatever. Um, it's quite dangerous. So, that's why I added the policy here. If you want it to go through second read, we can approve it in September or we can put it through. Sometimes we do that. You know, you read a policy and you approve it at the same time. It's really up to all of you, but I I just wanted it out there. And I I'd love to have things kind of tied up and ready for the start of a school year. So, that's why there's an asterct. And that's just some language that we've pulled from a couple different locals that have already done it, school districts, but it's all-terrain vehicles, go-karts, motorbikes, electric powered bicycles, but not scooters, mopeds. We've never had a segue, but um and then we address ADA. So obviously if you need something motorized for handicap accessibility or medical purposes that's a different story but so that's what I'm leaning towards.

One question. Yeah. So what are your thoughts? One question on the electric powered bicycles. So I know a lot of the bikes you can use them as a regular bicycle but you can also use it as electric. I imagine some students might have those as like their primary bicycle. Is there is there any distinction around you know if the electricity is essentially not powered or that's a fair that's a fair distinction. Um yeah I know because some people do that is that's become their bike. They have a bike and they put it in either mode.

If that were the case they would have to be walked on school property and they would have to have a helmet and certainly be locked up because those bikes are thousands of dollars. Yes. rules are not using electric bikes that are using their lights to power a bicycle but um that's just healthy um and I think safer. So electric powered bicycles it would really be in the ordinance so or the that's board policy language um I mean it's on there electric powered bicycles. So that's that's her question. So it we didn't really think about the non-electric component of the bikes that are dual. Yeah. Right. Cuz Yeah. I mean the scooters I don't think are that way. I think that would be the only potential

the verge here actually um sounds like I think in conversation we're talking about students but it sounds like even like staff and everybody else that that comes to the school. I mean I have electric um bicycle I I bike everywhere. I bike school property on it, you know. Um you know I I I think we have to make that distinction. Sure. That's that's another good I've got to get the policy pulled up, but I can make that change. And then the distinction would be students and ebikes, we would have to change the language to reflect if it's a dualpurpose, if it's a bike that's a regular bike but also can become an electric.

Is that what you're talking about? Okay. Just so I have clarity when I rewrite it. And when we say student, I mean given that we don't there might be a gap in elder siblings or thing. Should we say 16 with the driver's license if that's the direction that the other policies are going on in the village? Mhm. Good. Yep. So we don't really have anybody that's 16, right? I know not students, but you know coming on then they would have to walk the bike on school property if they're of age. Okay. You walk it on school property. So three points of clarification. So, we have to make it more student centric, but we want to denote that if an adult or an older sibling that has a valid driver's license,

we still want the bike walked on property because they go fast. We have it's hectic when kids are coming and going and I just all I see all I see are accidents. uh walk- on property if 16 plus and we're going to clarify the e- power e- power versus just a good oldfashioned bike language. Okay. So then what I'll do is I will you could put in the word exclusively power driven. Okay. Lawyer lawyer exclusively. It's like the you actually just press the power driven. Okay. I like it. It says either adaptive or non adaptive. Adaptive or not. Oh, maybe there's there's a name.

I have a regular bike. Yeah, if there's a name typical name for it, then yeah. Well, I mean, how is how is Palletine and Rowing Meadows? How are they phrasing it with regards to bikes that are So, what hybrids? They the emails, this is just a thread from the four of us. They've talked about sidewalks allowing them on streets. My specific question was about e motorized bikes for for young and young kids. Yeah. When they're saying has you have to be 16 to ride one. Is that regardless? Yeah. I'll have to ask you more powered by electric. I I think just we should dig into that a little bit.

Okay. So, I will I will follow up and by the time we meet on the 10th, Rolling Meadows will have had their meeting uh Palletines on September 2nd. And I can't remember if Eric said Palm from Hoffman said when they're meeting. Oh, um the 26th maybe. So, I'll find out. I'll a little more and I'll bring a revision back. Okay. For next, um September 10th, handful of days away. I wouldn't be surprised if the villages haven't parsed that through.

But I'll pose it. I will say that I'll give them the draft language what we're going to try to update and then see if if something is similar. I mean, in a perfect world, they'd have gone first and we would have been able to just follow suit, but I worry about things like this. So, okay. All right. And then any other questions with the rest of press 119 part two? Not a lot of substantive changes in this edition. We had broken it into two pieces, two parts. Okay. All right. On to minutes. Okay. May I have a motion to approve the minutes?

I move to approve the minutes from the June 10th, 2025 regular board of education meeting and close session meeting as attached. Second. Uh discussion. Think uh all in favor? I I I All right. Motion carries. Board committee reports. Ed red.

Okay. The uh state legislature is not in session right now, though we did have a legislative breakfast to talk to some of the legislators or their representatives. Um so we had like discussion groups, went over some things. Uh I think probably the main points talking about like unfunded mandates,

uh how to have better communication between school boards and administrators and the legislators themselves. So hope we can set up some meetings with them and convey our our concerns or or asks. Something that I took away from that conversation and Frank and I were at the same table for the breakfast, but something that no one's ever said before is the timing of when if we're thinking about and I was thinking about you and the resolution and and triple I and then us in with Senate Bill 1799 like it was already pretty far down the pike before anybody thought to like involve us

involve the schools in something that was going to directly you know because this was an IEA sponsored bill. They found a sp a sponsor and and Senator uh Ron Bavalam and but they said if you have something on your mind, something that you want to oppose, something that you want to forward, do it early. So then we have many months at the beginning of the year once we're out of veto session and they come back and fall session starts in October like be thinking about it when we're when Springfield is kind of closed, right? So to speak. So that was that was interesting. Like I said, I never thought of it. So that that is that was my big takeaway from the breakfast.

Yeah. I think the more communication between the legislators and the and the districts because like I said, I think sometimes they think of things in a vacuum. Mhm. For sure. You know, they don't really take into consideration the district's needs or concerns about something they may be putting in there. Like for instance, a big thing was them just putting in continuously shoveling out mandates for curriculum or other things. And it's like there's a finite amount of time in in a class, you know, in a day for for the kids.

So, you can't just keep piling on more and more mandates. So, there's supposed to be a like a committee meeting about all the mandates um that hopefully will actually be productive and and streamline things a little bit more. So, we'll see what happens. But that was a lot of what was talked about was mandates, unfounded mandates and then a little bit about tiffs. Um, but yeah, I mean that's that was the gist of it. We'll uh also be moving with forward with some uh suggestions for what Ed is going to focus on legislatively for the next year. So nice.

Get you updated on that when that happens. But going to put going to look at their little input here and put some stuff in there and we'll see what comes out. Sounds good. All right. Thanks. All right,55 Foundation, Eric.

Uh, yeah, I'm looking forward I had I I spoke with uh Adriana Cornic from the5 Foundation last week. We've been playing phone tag vacations and stuff. We finally talked and then she was on a vacation these past two weeks, but they have their first meeting tomorrow, uh, which I'm really excited to go to and learn more about it. She gave me some highlights um when we spoke on the phone a couple weeks ago um as far as just educating me as to more of what the foundation does and I'm really excited to get involved. Uh they're looking for grants. They give teachers many grants for curricular projects. Uh the 50/50 raffle is one of their big ones that they're going to discuss at tomorrow's meeting. Uh JC grants. Uh one of the big news uh big news items that they had was that the website uh in May is transferred to the district. Uh now it's linked to the district 15 website at uh ccsd.net uh back15 foundation. Uh Sandy Kramer uh is helping with that. So that's very exciting. I I've checked that out. It's it's pretty impressive. Um and they said uh staff appreciation uh of uh 2025 uh in early May. Uh they raised $6,000 to help appreciate our teachers. Uh which as a former educator I I really appreciate that too. That's always nice. and and I think our teachers feel appreciated a lot with what's going on as far as the education that was going on this summer. But but that's a nice way to end the year. Uh and then as as was mentioned uh before the better together event uh in Rolling Meadows um uh for families uh they said they donated $5,000 for books, backpacks, and school material. So what a great way to kick off the year. So I'm excited to get involved and and see uh how I can help.

Awesome. All right, finance committee. Sorry we couldn't bring the bubble machine tonight, Frank. I I think Frank really knocked that one out of the park. Want bubble magic. That's September meeting. Well, when I saw it in action, I got jealous. Those pictures were great. Yeah. Um before I talk about the finance committee, I just wanted to ask if you guys can save the date for October 22nd. Um that is going to be North Cook's um fall division meeting. Um we talked about uh communication about Ed and legislative stuff. So, usually the fall um meeting is going to talk about legislative updates. So, please save the date. It's going to be closer than it's ever been. Um it's going to be at uh Arlington Heights. Um and it'll probably

Forest View Forest View. I think it's set to go in the Friday memo. Correct, Clara? Yeah. Yeah. I asked on your behalf that it be shared. Thank you. I really appreciate it. October 22nd. October 22nd. Yes. And watch for it in your memo to Friday. how you can register. Clara will do it or yeah tell me and I Frank and I are already in but the rest of you guys just let her know. She's in I said Frank will want to go. You told me that

sounds like a I'll do a small presentation about um resolutions at that time. Okay. And um in terms of finance, uh Lisa and I um met with Diana and the um finance team on July 28th. We had a virtual meeting. Um we really reviewed the um fiscal 25 um budget and um we also really dove deep into budget um for 26. Um so if you see on the district website um there is going to be um a public hearing on the budget for um for year 26 and that will be again September 10th. um with this public hearing in all the years that I've been here, I've we've never had the audience come out, but you know, I think it's really important for the community to step forward and and ask um important questions. We are um more than willing to address these questions. Um some of the things that we're really watching is um some of what you've already heard on the news. Um the Trump administration has um said they're going to withhold grants. So, we're really um looking to see what how that impacts district 15 and we all have to be part of that conversation. You know, this is a a community um within, you know, our state, but it's also a bigger it has a bigger impact um across the United States. So, um just really important to address um and because of the budget impacts um we will also have a a committee of the whole meeting um probably scheduled um by the end of September. So everybody, if you guys can hold that date as well, so we can discuss further the um um budget.

So our regular board meeting is the 10th. We're thinking of the 23rd. It's a Tuesday. Sam and I were originally thinking the 24th and then we were reminded that the 24th for those that celebrate two nights of Rashana would be sundown. So we're going to we're going to target Tuesday the 23rd. Tuesday. That was also going to come out. But if if anybody can just let me know if that it it presents a problem in your calendar. Okay. So, committee of the whole on Tuesday the 23rd much like we did last year. We kind of broke it into what time would that be? 6 o'clock probably. I was going to propose couple hours here. Yeah. Mhm. And then we'll we'll notice it up. We'll do all the things that we do for a regular meeting.

Okay. So, that's the target date and more to come on that. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. Anything else, Wenda? No. Good. Okay. Okay. Uh, equity committee. I don't have an update at this time. All right. Um, okay. Item 9.1, approval of the minutes or no, approval of personnel report. Sorry. May I have a motion, please? I move to approve the personnel report recommendations for administration certified and non-certified staff members as presented. Second. Uh discussion. Roll call.

Ader. Herino I. Khan I. Bachmann I. Hunt I. All right. Motion carries. Item 9.2. Uh, approval of second reading of press 118 part one. I move to approve the second reading of press 118 part one as presented. Second. All right. Discussion. Okay. Roll call. Khan. I. Bachman. I. Hunt. Hi. Ader. I. Anorino. I. All right. Motion carries. Item 9.3. May I have a motion, please?

I move to award a one-year contract for multi-purpose paper to to Mine Paper Company in Elhurst for a total bid award of $19,135.50 as presented. Second discussion. Roll call. Backman I. Khan I. Hunt I. Aer I. Herino I. All right. Motion carries. Item 9.4, um, emergency transportation services.

I move to award a three-month contract from emergency transportation services for unassigned school bus routes to North American Central for up to eight drivers at 450 per day per driver and for any drivers above eight to first student for a cost of $475 per day per driver. Second. No, I thought when the presentation was up there it was 10. That's so they do they do eight in one company and then two in the other. Yeah, it does. It says it's for any drivers above the eight. There's eight and then we're hiring somebody else for the Oh, I get it. Never mind. Above the eight.

Yep, I see that. Well, that second one at you scared me and I was like, wait a second. What? I was like, oh, I see now it makes sense. All right. Sounds good to me. Our target was 10. Yeah. No, it makes sense. Okay. So, do you want to I'm just I'm thinking about what you're saying. Yeah. So, are you going to want to amend then just for a sec the suggest suggested motion to put some type of a cap 10 to 12 to four people with the other? So, if North American Central's eight, then do you want a cap for student? You want to leave it open. Come to the mic. Fine, sir.

Sorry. I mean, is this Brian? Is it because 10's not quite sure? Well, I'm sure the motion was written in such a way that it's if it's possible to leave it open. with prior experience over the last couple years, you get some that will say they'll give 10, then end up giving you six. So, if we have up to 10 drivers between the two, I'd be greatly appreciated. Do we I'm curious though because the data changed in the last couple of days and it sounded like we may need more than 10. So, is it actually 12? Or are you saying you want to keep it up open for first student? For

I would like to keep it open for first student. At the moment, I'd personally for the district would like to keep it at 10, but if things deteriorate, it would be nice to have that flexibility. Okay. And this is for 90 days. This is for the first 90 days. The first 90 days. The first 90 days. And then if we still needed them, we would do another 90 days just like we've been doing. Okay, that makes sense. So, I mean, it's limited. Yeah, it's limited by 90 days regardless. So, Right. Right. Okay. All right. All right. Yeah, I'm okay with that. And and that won't go into that 90 days won't start until first day of school. All right. Thanks.

Okay. All right. Uh, roll call. Khan, I. Bagman, I. Hunt. I. Ader. I. Anorino. All right. Uh, motion carries. All right. Consent calendar. Would anyone like to remove anything from the consent calendar? Bless you. It's been a long No. All right. May I have a motion, please? I move to approve the consent calendar items as presented. Second. Second.

Discussion. So, there's this um portion this consent calendar 10.8 8 10.9 10.10. It's this um certificate of occupancy for um Oh, those are for the portables. Yeah. Yeah. More mobile classrooms. I just want to um uh have this understanding is is our goal um to eventually move away from these mobile classrooms or are are we just stuck with them every year? Because every year we um we certify them, we um approve them. Is it

in a perfect world if we had the space we wouldn't need them but there are a few places where it's tight. So for example at Winston they use it for their portion of health uh some of the health classrooms. At Willow Bend they use it for orchestra and band. And at Lake Louise right now they don't necessarily have a specific use for it. So like we had we run it at Lincoln last year. We needed a space. We don't have that in on a docket this year although that was a really nice one. um because we didn't need it because we were able to fit everything that we needed. But in checking with Jim, I mean, I'd been to Willowbad, Mindy and I were there and and we were trying to figure out if we had room to add another um early childhood class there. So So I looked at it and and in talking to um Jim, he that's what he said Winston was going to be used for, some health overflow.

Is there do we have like 10 or do we I mean how many do we have? Okay, so it's just it's just moving between the schools. Okay. We've gotten rid of a few like we demolished the one at Kimble Hill and you know when we haven't needed them we'll get rid of them. Um the little Ben one's nice. It's you know jazz it up a little but it's in it's in good condition. Uh um Kimble Hills was rough. We we got rid of that one. So yeah, if we don't need them, we we won't, you know, re reertify occupancy, but it gives a little bit of flexibility. Um, and I think the other thing that it could potentially be used for sometimes is itinerants or interventionists if there's additional space. Okay. All right.

Okay. Uh, roll call. Bugman. I. Hunt. I. Aer. I. Herino. I. All right. Motion carries. Uh, correspondence. As always, we submitted for you as we've received. Does anyone have any questions about anything I've shared? No. still continues to drive Jamie crazy. Um, if you could forward next couple slides, just a reminder, first day of school is a week from today. Can't wait for everybody, all the kids to be back in town. I hope to see a lot of families out on Monday. Walk the schedule, meet the teacher, and uh we're ready to rock and roll. We're ready. All right. All right. Everybody,

motion to adjourn. Next meeting, September 10th. I move to adjourn. Second. All right. All in favor? Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Thank you. Go team window.