Township High School District 214 Board of Education - Regular Meeting

[Music] Test one, two, three. Test one, two. [Applause] [Music] Welcome to Jerry's Cafe.

We are a destination cafe and we offer craft food and beverages, meaning we make everything fresh on site when you order. And all of our food and our beverages are prepared and served by adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. And then lastly, just say the name. Tom. Here you go. Enjoy.

My favorite part of working at Jerry's Cafe is definitely interacting with friends I've met throughout the years and the expressing machine. My co-founder Amy Philpot and I opened Jerry's Cafe for job opportunities and a staggering statistic tells us that 80% of adults with disabilities are unemployed. I believe differently and this is the place where our employees can work and feel proud and contribute and can see that they have value and purpose and they are given the responsibility that anyone would be given in a job and we expect nothing less than them to perform at their highest level. So we see great success in every single employee and their independence and their offerings and activities here at Jerry's Cafe. the large hot white chocolate pumpkin pie with whipped cream. It is to die for. It is delicious. It's amazing. Well, the uh favorite part of uh working here is that I I get to serve customers. I am a cashier. They understand to include people with us with exceptionalities. I wanted to tell you, I've been watching you today. You're really good at your job. You've been doing

I always am. I always like to serve customers. Customers go first.

We are super proud of our partnership with District 214. District 214 has been a supporter from the very beginning of our foundation and several of the schools have done fundraising and helped us get our doors open to Jerry's Cafe. Proudly, we have 12 or 13 graduates from the District 214 schools who will work at Jerry's Cafe as our active employees. This is where we do our salar prep. This is where we make all the salads. And then over here is the sandwich line. This is where we make all of our sandwiches. I have worked here since day one. I love it here. I love my supportive team members and I like serving customers. Here is one chicken Mediterranean trip salad. We know that our community members have lots of choices, but we're hoping that you will come and choose Jerry's Cafe.

Thank you. When you come inside and engage with our employees, you feel a sense of joy and you will start your day feeling the best way that you can with a joyful heart and knowing that Jerry's Cafe has provided you with delicious coffee, breakfast, or lunch. [Music] Mac and cheese. Mac and cheese. Mac and cheese.

All right, welcome to our 55th year of putting together an incredible community service project through our SOS class here at John Hershey High School. As you can see around me, it is organized chaos, but it is an incredible day for our students to serve our community by packaging and collecting food that's going to be going to local food pantries in our area to support those in need. We're really happy to be able to do the food drive here at Hersy because it really just brings the whole school together and we are able to help our community and bring the energy with everyone here.

All right, take it out. For the past, I would say about two months, we've been kind of working together with SOS, Junior Leaders, baseball, and we've all gathered together. We've done bag and tab with 12 different communities, and we've all come together, and it's really amazing to see the turnout. And then later on, we're going to be visiting eight local food pantries, and it's really exciting. We're just thankful for everyone who's helped each other along the way. It's been really fun. It's a team effort, but it's been so fun. Prospect marching nights are heading to DC. We're in Washington DC.

Prospect Marching Knights were invited to travel to Washington DC this year for Veterans Day. So, we're taking the band out um to our nation's capital. We're going to do some great tours of some of the monuments and the museums and a lot of the sites of DC. Um, but it all culminates with performances on Veterans Day. Um, so we've been working really hard to prepare and we're so excited for our students to have this opportunity. Throughout the trip, we had a few opportunities uh where veterans would actually see our group of students out out and about and spoke to our students. Um, so in addition to uh touring these places, our students were able to actually interact with a number of veterans over the course of the trip, which kind of made everything a little more real and genuine and authentic. So, our first day in DC was really impactful and gave our students sort of a big picture overview of the city and some of the history and really set the stage for our performance day coming up. So on Veterans Day, our morning started off with a performance at the Lincoln Memorial. There we were right on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial facing the Washington Monument. Just a really special opportunity for our students to have a a really great place to perform.

It was an honor to perform on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with the PMK where so much of America's history has taken place. The experience was very impactful for me. It was a unique opportunity that I have never had before and it was something that I will cherish for the rest of my life. One of our students, Emily Pollock, was also asked to deliver a speech at the Lincoln Memorial. I've always wanted to help people, so I'm going to serve my country. More specifically, I want to become an officer in the military.

Her speech was really wonderful and got a really great reception at the event. In fact, after the event was over, I had a number of veterans come track me down to tell me how great her speech was. And actually, they wanted to meet her and take pictures with her because they were so moved by what she had to say. My father served in the Navy and so he instilled in me like the value of um serving and like caring for our veterans and those who serve us. And so being able to thank them today and um place medals around their careers and think and welcome them home was really impactful for me as well. United States. It was an honor to play at the World War II memorial today. It was such an honor because music is a way to share emotions without using words.

Our performances in DC got a lot of really good responses. Um, one of them, a story was told to me by one of our chaperones that there was literally um, a Marine veteran who was at a performance at the Ewima Memorial who was literally in tears watching the performance and just expressed to our chaperon how much it meant to him that this group of teenagers from from the Chicago area had come out there and was was performing. Um, and he was just really moved by it and uh, I thought that was just a really neat neat story to hear coming out of the the performance. So any trip like this uh takes a lot of time and energy to put together. I feel really fortunate that our school was very supportive of this endeavor. We had a bunch of parents who traveled with us and did anything they could to make this a great experience for our students. Um I'm so glad we were able to bring our students to DC. Uh Veterans Day seemed like a perfect time to bring them and uh it really just in the end I think the whole trip turned out really really great and I'm so happy we were able to make it happen. [Music] We're super excited to have the 911 never forget mobile exhibit here at Hershey High School. As the truck arrived, we had her parents out front with some patriotic balloons. We had her students lining the the sidewalks. We had some, you know, many American flags like they would show on the honor flights. The spirit was high. [Music]

Good morning. and I'd like to welcome you to the Stevensilla Tunnel Towers mobile exhibit. We have a 5050 ft trailer approximately 1100 square ft exhibit. We travel our nation to commemorate the brave sacrifice of the firefighters, police officers that gave their life that day in the greatest rescue and recovery effort in our nation's history. The reason we're here is at Hershey High School to come educate our youth uh on the happenings of that day, but also the the happenings of the days after and to let them know that it was a huge tragedy. It was the single largest loss of life day we've ever had. It was also the largest largest rescue we've ever had as well. but just all the good that has come from that tragic day. And they they're going to learn things that they they can't read about. Uh they're going to hear stories that some have never been told, some have been told many times.

Steven Siller was uh one of the 343 firefighters that died that morning. He was getting off duty that morning. He was going to play golf with his older brothers. Heard the plane strike. heard on the news that the plane struck the building, turned around, drove back to his firehouse, squad 1, located in downtown Brooklyn. They had already been dispatched to the disaster. He got his gear, drove his own truck to the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel where he dawned 60 lb of gear, ran 2 and 1/2 miles through the tunnel, mustered up with the rest of the firefighters, and gave his life that day, honoring his oath that he took to protect life and property.

So, this is about remembering. So we want people to remember how see for adults to remember and for the kids to learn. So we don't want this forgotten. It's not taught in most schools in in America and they have the privilege of talking to people who are there. You know, we can't talk to people who are in the Civil War or these other moments in American history, but they can. I think that's pretty special. Thanks for having us. And this means more to us than you. This means a lot to these kids. And these kids have been great. They're very respectful. They listen. It's uh it's nice to it's nice to see

a special thanks especially the FDMY crew to the silver foundation to Soldiers Journey Home to District 214 to all of Hersy. I I'm grateful for everybody. Special shout out to Bill Dustin for the for the magic spirit. Special shout out to Chief Harris Arlington Heights Police. The coolest part about this project was there's like a whole bunch of people that were on it and did it. It wouldn't have happened without a whole bunch of people. The list is just too long. And to me, that's that's actually a good thing to celebrate. [Music] This is the uh Rolling Meadows band alumni event. So, we decided to uh get the band back together. This year being the 40th anniversary of the Jazz Meadows Festival. So, it was kind of an opportunity to, hey, can we bring people back at homecoming? I had talked to some of the previous band directors. That's Len King in the 70s, '8s, early '9s. We have Bill Jastro and David Bogs from the '90s. Then, of course, Chris Booty, who retired several years ago. Those people set the foundation for everything that we have here.

I'm giving you a huge I I'd have paid money to be here tonight. I really would have. It's one of those things that I I paid money to be here. This is the banner where your closest friends were really at in high school. So you're with your closest friends and regrouping after 40ome years and going, "Holy cow." Mr. King is the reason why I'm here today. Not just at the school, but what I do in in life. I owe everything to Mr. King. If it weren't for him, I wouldn't have gone to college. And if I hadn't gone to college, who knows what I would be doing. You know, some of the stuff that we we're doing right now is like we never stop doing it. You know, you know, just to be around these guys again and just hanging out. 40 years seems like a long time, but it seems like it's kind of a short time, too. You know,

this is fantastic. I mean, I I knew it was going to be good, but not this good. 52 of my actual students are in this group. I get a lot of feedback from them telling me how much they they enjoyed the music program, excuse me, and how they appreciate music now for for their lives. That's really special because to know that they are still thinking about me and what what we did here. It's it's just very satisfying.

Well, I flew back and I'm glad I did, you know, especially to see Mr. King. He meant a lot to us. He just brought in the jazz and I mean, we had world class, you know, experience that most kids never would have had, you know, a real depth of of exposure to great music because of Mr. King. So, I'm glad I got to see her. It's so good to be back, though. I love it. My family's here. They're so excited. So is my family. My son's here. My husband's here. So, it's really great. If you are on the fence of coming, whether it's debating about whether to come or not, you should definitely come next time.

It feels like a long time ago, but in some ways, like you never left. Like, I'm like, "Okay, we're going to go march over to the stadium and we're going to play for the football team." So, yeah. Okay. [Music] Happy birthday. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Thank you to all the alumni who are coming here today. I mean, some people are traveling across the country. I know one of the directors came from Arizona. Um, and that's a testament to really what this event is about. And it's bringing people together through our shared love of music and how music has changed our lives and shaped who we are as humans. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. I'd like to call to order the business meeting of Township High School District 214 Board of Education for Thursday, August 21st, 2025. Miss Marini, could you please call the role? Valdino here. Chung here. Dustling here. Fiorto here. Hinineman present. Sager here. Cryer. Present. We have a quorum.

Thank you. Uh, next we have close session. Can I have a motion to go into close session for the purpose of discussing the employment, employment, compensation, discipline, performance, or dismissal of specific employees, specific individuals who serve as independent contractors in an educational setting or legal counsel for the public body? Motion in a second, please. Oh, so moved. Second. Baldino. There's been a motion in a second. Please call the role. Dustling. Yes. Baldino, yes. Chung, yes. Fiorto, yes. Hinaman, I Sager, I Kiter,

I. Uh, we are now in close session. We will return approximately 7 o'clock. Thank [Music] Wow. [Music] Nah. Hey. Hey. Hey. [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

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I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. Um, you know, District 214 has a long history of of celebrating student and staff achievements, and unfortunately, um, times come where we have to celebrate the lives of those that are cut far too short. Uh, tonight, uh, we we pause to honor the memory of, uh, Jennifer Welter, who recently passed away. Uh, Jennifer was a longtime member of the District 214 family, uh, having graduated from Rolling Meadows High School before embarking on a career in education. During her 20 years career at Prospect High School as a science teacher, she dedicated herself to creating authentic learning opportunities. She would engaged once to bring a literal menagery of fruit bats, parrots, skunks, a chameleon, and a gecko so that zoologology students could have a real life learning observation experiment um in the classroom. This kind of creative and student centered thinking made her a valued member of the district 214 community and an extremely valued member of Prospect High School's staff. Um, so I ask that you please join me uh with your thoughts and express and share in our gratitude for Jennifer's contribution uh and and the time and and energy and love that her family gave to District 214 in Prospect High School. Thank you. Thank you everyone. Uh next we have a dedication, a special dedication and uh let me read this. Harold Slickenmeer arrived in the northwest suburbs in the mid 1940s and by 1948 was a guidance counselor at Arlington High School. He served as an officer for the Arlington Cardinals booster club and was a member of the Lions Club. Woohoo. He became superintendent in 1954. While Slickener was superintendent, he

served on the original steering committee that created Harper College and in the early 1960s was a member of an advisory council for Northwestern University. During his tenure here, the district experienced a period of rapid growth. Prospect High School opened in 57, Forest View in ' 62, Wheeling in ' 64, and Elkrove was set to open just weeks after his retirement in August of ' 66. In 1966, the board renamed the former administration center, which is now occupied by NSSO, the Harold Slickenmeer Administration Center, just a few months before his retirement. In 1986, Forest View High School was closed, the building we're in today. An architect was hired to relocate the administration center to the Forest View campus. In 1988, the new boardroom there was named in his honor. We are here today to rededicate this new space to Superintendent Slickenmeer. After almost two years, we are here today to celebrate the new location of the board of education room with a ribbon cutting ceremony. Anyone new to the district would not know that we are standing in what was once a courtyard, a courtyard where a family of ducks would take up residence for a few years. About a year and a half ago, a committee was formed to revamp this space. As you see today, there are panels outlining the history of District 214, as well as a plaque outside this room honoring Mr. Slicken Meer. I have um I have a gift for his granddaughter who's here today. If you would like to say a few words, I welcome you up to the podium. [Applause] Hi, I'm very happy to be here today. I'm

Nancy Slickenmeer and uh yes, granddaughter of Harold Slickenmeer and uh I grew up in Indianapolis, but I live in Evston now, so it was easy for me to come and be with you this evening for the rededication. Uh I remember a little bit visiting my parents in Arlington Heights, but kind of barely. But uh then after they retired, they traveled all over the US and then moved to Mesa, Arizona. And so we visited them a lot while they lived there, which was lovely. And then they moved to be near my parents uh in Zansville for quite a few years before my grandparents both died in a you know retirement community. But they we had a very long uh lovely loving relationship. So um anyway, nice to be here. Thank you.

Okay, board members, you want to join me in the front? Nancy, you want to come join us? Both of us. Yes. There you go. I also have a certificate regarding the rededication. Thanks for coming. Appreciate it.

And next on the agenda is um approval of the agenda. Does anyone wish to pull anything from the consent agenda? Yes, I do. Item 13.3. No, I'm sorry. From consent, Mr. Dustling.

No, that's okay. Okay, that's coming up under uh roll call action. Okay, great. Uh, can I have a motion and a second to approve the agenda, please? So moved. Seconded. We have a motion in a second. Please call the role. Sager, I. Baldino, yes. Chung, yes. Dustling, yes. Fioro, yes. Hinaman, yes. Kiter, I. Thank you. Motion carry 70. Okay. Uh item eight, approval of the minutes from the open and closed meeting of October August 7th, 2025. Motion in a second, please.

So move fito. Second, Tinyman. Call the RO. Frito, yes. Hinaman, I. Baldino, yes. Chung, yes. Dustling, yes. Sager, I. And Croitzer, I. Motion carries 70.

Thank you. Next on the agenda is board recognition. Mr. Maggi, please. There we go. Good evening. Uh Dr. Row, um tonight we recognize the city of Rolling Meadows for its valuable support of our internship program. Would you uh board president Kitzer and board member Heidman please join me for partner recognition? I would also like to invite uh forward mayor Laura Lara Senoa, finance director Molly Talkington, city manager Rob Sabo, and deputy information officer Kelly Vager. If you please join us right over here. Yeah. The city of Rolling Meadows has been a steadfast partner in providing work-based learning opportunities to District 214 students throughout the year. In every fall, spring and summer session, they open their doors to multiple students, giving them hands-on experience in finance, technology, and city management. Their supervisors guide, mentor, and encourage our students and often put in extra hours to ensure their success. Their commitment to youth career development has created fantastic opportunities for students to gain real world experience, explore career paths, and build the skills they need for future success. Beyond internships, the city also supports our skilled trades fair with engineering and public works teams showing students what careers in those fields can look like. We are deeply grateful for this partnership and we look forward to continuing it for many, many years to come. Thank you again. [Applause]

Thanks.

Thank you so much uh for those kind words and to the board. Uh the city of Rolling Oh, my name is Lara Sona. the mayor of the city of Rolling Meadows and I'm here with my staff um to receive this recognition. For us, we believe that local government is an extraordinarily viable career path for all of our students at District 214 schools. It's not only an opportunity to be able to be creative, it's not only an opportunity to have an impact in their local communities where they live and work, but it's also a financially smart move. This is a type of work where you are able to see how much a job costs. You're able to see like what you can be paid because all of this information is public. It's very transparent. Um and there's also included growth for many of the positions as well. So um we hope that all of the interns that worked with us um will continue to be curious about local government and know that they will always have partners, supporters, and mentors with the city of Rolling Meadows. Thank you so much. [Applause]

Thank you. Next on the agenda is public comment. There he is. And we have two people that have signed up. Before I call the p first person up, I have I'm going to read this. The board of education and district value comments from the community at our meetings as well as emails. We appreciate everyone appearing before the board and treat all with courtesy and respect. The board of education asked each person to please limit all of their comments to three minutes. However, several people want to address the board on a similar topic. The board president may limit the time to two minutes per person. Public comments agenda item only at this time that the board of education will have public comments during this meeting. Although comments may be made on almost any matter related to the operations of schools, comments will not be allowed identifying individuals, students or staff members. As this is the board of education business meeting, the practice not to respond to public questions or comments at this time because this is not an open-ended forum. However, we do listen carefully. If requested, a written response will be provided. Please ensure that Miss Marini, who's down to my right here, uh has your full name and address. uh for a response to be fair and consistent to all addressing the board. The same protocols and procedures must in place for everyone at the podium. The green light indicates your time has started. The yellow light indicates 30 seconds remaining and the red light indicates three minutes have expired. Lee Bennett, could you please come forward to the microphone and clearly state your name for the minutes?

Hello board, staff and community. I'm Lee Bennett, a competitor. As an advocate for boys volleyball, I might come across as someone fighting for boys over girls. Rather, my desire is to win market share for volleyball in the arena of school sports. I see the sport as a better vehicle for teaching students the many lessons of team sports. Basketball is a formidable competitor with home court advantage. The world's best come here to play in the NBA. Our top volleyball pros are playing far away in Poland and Italy, much like the top soccer players are in the UK's Premier League. In this attention economy, the opposing conglomerate of B multi-billion dollar franchises continues to grow by marketing to girls and women. The counterattack from team volleyball is to engage more boys and men. The world of collegiic sports is changing this year. The news often incorrectly reports that football and basketball are the two revenue generating sports. Actually, basketball is not an NCAA sport. Men's basketball generates revenue from any schools. Women's basketball does not re reliably produce profits for any school. The only women's sport that some university programs have made profitable is volleyball. Something your power ad partnership should consider. At our schools, boys volleyball and girls volley boys basketball and girls volleyball are very popular and universally available. So the battle between these two sports is boys volleyball and girls basketball. In our MSL athletic conference, basketball leads with a team a score of 10 teams to eight. It's time for volleyball to score another team. Outside the technicalities of Title 9 regulations, basketball and volleyball

are two sports, not four. Each builds a community of players of both sexes and they support each other's teams. In this district, student interest in volleyball is second place only to soccer. Basketball finished fifth. Since D214 has the smallest schools in the conference, its metrics determine how many teams are appropriate for each sport. Nine volleyball teams is more sustainable than 10 basketball teams. policies favoring basketball over volleyball are not fair to the girls. Why should the sport that they prefer have only eight teams when the sport the boys prefer gets 10? Please expand our volleyball program to better align with student interests, teach additional boys, and support a sport that the girls love. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Brian Carlson, please.

Good evening.

Good evening everybody. My name is Brian Carlson. I am proud to say I've almost been a lifelong resident of Arlington Heights. I grew up here, went to Prospect High School, went to Windsor Elementary School, went to South Middle School. I have three daughters. One is currently at Prospect. Two are currently at South Middle School. I'll tell you, my mom worked in district 214 community ed for about 10 years. Then she worked at Roland Meadows High School for another 15. My brother taught at Roland Meadows High School for many years. My very first job when I was in middle school was actually a D214 employee working coach at the senior dances that they used to put on at Hershey High School. So, I mention all that because my ties run deep within the community here and also deep within District 214. I'm here specifically to talk about a concern that we've recently run across um which is Prospect Girls feeder basketball program. And bear with me, I'm going to read specifically what I wanted to talk to everybody about here. Um my passion runs very deep within athletics. Uh I played sports growing up my entire life. I played sports through my collegiate years. All three of my daughters are active in many different sports. soccer, basketball, softball, gymnastics, cheer, lacrosse, tennis, you name it, across the board. Um, if you are I'm here specifically though to talk about the prospect feeder program and really an issue that we've encountered over the past past week. If you're unfamiliar with the feeder program, it's been around the girls basketball feeder program specifically. It's been around for about 30 years. It's an incredible program. Our mission is to provide girls with a chance to play organized basketball in an environment that emphasizes learning, teamwork, fun, and a healthy competition. Just as importantly, the program helps their future P these future PHS classmates form lasting relationships and strengthen their connection to the school community. Our program is a non-for-profit organization, and 100% of the families we service live within the PHS boundaries. We're all parents. We

get it. We all want what's in the best interest of our kids. And that's why I'm here today. I sent all the board members an individual email today with much more details. My my my writing and email is much more eloquent than my speaking in public. So I would tell you to reference an email with some of the details. Um but we are we got a challenge that we we're coming across and that's the feeder basketball team program which I'm the director of is really looking for help and guidance from all of you up here with the challenge that we're facing. Unlike other district 214 schools, Prospect has limited space and is unable to provide our program any gym space for practices. Over the years, we've been able to utilize the three gyms here at Forest View, the Fieldhouse, the North Gym, and also the Smaller South gym to get all of our practices in. And we've been told now that's not an option for us. And that's a major challenge because now our program, which is supposed to start next month, doesn't have any doesn't have any room to practice. these 80 families that are part of the program now. We are struggling in figuring out where we're gonna be able to practice for these kids for the junior nights program. So, I'm hopeful we can work together. I'm an open book. I'm hopeful we can work together to find a solution to find a solution to the problem, which is helping these kids find practice space. Thank you.

Thank you. Uh that's all that's signed up for uh public comment. Next is the superintendent report. Dr. Ro, please.

All right. Thank you, Mr. Crocher. Just a couple things I would like to highlight. Obviously, uh we're a weekend back to school. We had an extremely successful launch of the 2526 school year from opening day with staff uh to the first week of classes. The energy and momentum across our schools has been has been strong and it's been very clear um that that we're starting off on a positive note, which I'm incredibly proud of. Uh and huge shout out to our staff for making that happen for our students. Uh second topic just to highlight is tonight's a big night for us. Um, you know, we it represents an important milestone uh where we are going to finally, it seems like we've been talking about it forever, present uh our metrics to you for approval that puts the the bow on um a year's worth of work. Um thousands of voices including our teachers, staff, students, and families helping build this future 214 in our path over the course of the next five years. Um as we now formally shift from the planning phase to the five-year implementation phase of future 214, um the plan is organized around four goals. as you know, inspire, connect, align, and innovate. Um, each area includes measurable strategies with clear accountability um that we are very proud to transparently share those metrics um and and partner with you as we monitor our progress uh with regular updates that I'll give a little bit more detail about. Um every school and every department will have a hand in bringing them to life. Uh and the plan will be dynamic and responsive and very much alive. In the next five years, we'll focus on action, impact, and results. and we're extremely excited to enter this next chapter from a position of strength in this incredible school district with so many amazing opportunities for our kids. We're looking to uh to really take our district from great to exceptional. And then finally, something new to to highlight that uh that I'm very excited to announce uh just it just went live this week um that we have a new event for first ever event to reflect our commitment to transparency and community partnership. On Friday, September 19th, the first ever state of the district lunchon will be held uh in this room.

The program will highlight early implementation steps uh for future 214 and reflect on the past year. Um community partners, families, stakeholders are invited to hear where we're headed and how they can get involved in supporting the district and celebrating our success. Uh I look forward to continuing that conversation there. Tickets are available um to anyone who'd like to attend um and on the district website if they'd like to join us. So, look forward to a really great event. Hopefully, it becomes an annual tradition. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Row. Uh, board member updates. Mr. Dustling, would you like to start? Sure.

You know, each summer, uh, I get my fine arts fixed by going to the summer musical and then I attend the, uh, high school's marching band, uh, practices. I'm always amazed at how they uh get out there in the heat and practice and and can go from one set to another while playing the instruments and walking along, marching along. I look forward to uh to seeing them in their uh when they finalized their setups uh in the fall. Um I was on Scotland uh for vacation and came back and I found out on that on the way over that there was a graduate from Hersy High School Morgan Deong who's now Morgan Cavage. She's an associate producer of uh u with a theatrical company and uh she and the group that she uh was and their actors put on a uh satirical musical comedy. It was called Operation Beth Gestroy Bef Jesus. Um, and uh, obviously it's a play on Jeff Bezos, but it was really an audience playalong. They did a marvelous job. It was just marvelous. I got to talk with her afterwards. She's a 2004 graduate of Hershey and it was delightful to uh, to see her there participating and living her life's dream. Um, on a personal note, a week ago, 57 years ago, I came home from Vietnam and met my wife in San Francisco. I've studied that period since that time and I still don't know what happened. Uh it was amazing but it was what it was. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Dusty. Dr. Sager.

So, uh I didn't report out last meeting. Um we had our NSSO meeting the night before our prior meeting. So, I'm just going to give a brief report of that. Um so, a one-year contract extension for Superintendent Schnore was approved by the governing board. uh this is going to be a retirement contract. So, she is set to retire in 2027 with a possible one-year extension depending on her how things are going with her and with the board at that point. Um there was also a salary adjustment to the facilities director contract to bring we know there's a lot of facilities work to be done at NSSO to bring him in line with other districts. Um and the big discussion was around the NSSO governance structure. We have a discussion item. I sent you all the information about that. And so I assume we'll cover that during the discussion. And then I attended the first day of school at Elk Grove, which was exciting cuz I got a hug from my senior and my sophomore as they came in and that was very nice. Uh I was also very pleased to see a representative of our bus company there uh checking to make sure that the buses were coming and all meeting their their routes. So that was uh very nice to see. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Fioro. Uh I'll piggyback off Joe a little bit. Um I got to uh do the opening day at Hersy. Um I just want to say I got a lot more fist bumps than the the principal did. Right, Heath?

It was that was a blast. It really is. I mean, two best things about being a board member. Opening day, giving kids high fives and closing day and giving a kid his diploma. That's that's really what uh being a board member makes you happy to be a board member. Um I started the year off by attending a couple of the PTC meetings. One at Hersy Keith, you did a great job as usual. And then last night I went to Buffalo Grove. I got to sit and listen to 35 minutes of parents not happy with the parking situation. Am I right?

Yes. But I do want to give Jeff uh credit for uh owning the uh situation. I thought he did a great job. But more importantly, he shared with the parents that were present, there were quite a few, um, some of the improvements that Buffalo Grove had. Um, 6% increase in their math scores, 17.5% on their ELA scores, 17 and 12%. Just think about that. An increase of 5% in the co-curricular participation, and last but not least, 87% of the students that took AP classes received a grade of three or better. So, something to be proud of in Bison Nation. That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Chung.

Yes, thank you. Um, I would just want to highlight a few events. First, in mid July, um, Mr. Heinman and I had a chance to go on building tours at Prospect, Rolling Meadows, and Elkrove High School. So, special thanks to Anetta, a thousand thanks to you. As well as at Prospect, Greg Mter, um, Frank, George, Dannia, and Jenna. At um, Rolling Meadows, Megan, Scott, and Eric, and at Elgroveve Paul. So, we really appreciate not only your time and showing us the buildings, but obviously all the work you do to make sure that our spaces are safe and clean and running properly for our students. So, thank you. Um, second, a couple weeks ago, I attended a Rotary Club meeting at Mount Prospect where Barb Kaine and Kathy Ganon from our Center for Career Discovery came and they presented um about our career pathways and work um work-based learning opportunities through internships and apprenticeships. They were um fantastic, very wellreceived. And so hopefully from that um they were able to build some additional partnerships. Um also yesterday I attended um a lunch meet and greet with Susanna Mendoza. Um it was hosted by the Korean International Cooperation Agency. So they invited Comproller Mendoza to meet some local Korean-American elected officials and leaders. Um so that's why I'm sharing it now. They only invited me because I'm here on the board and I'm Korean-American. Um it was actually a wonderful opportunity to talk with her and I did invite her to our state of the district lunchon. So hopefully she's able to come. Um lastly, I had the opportunity to join other board members and staff at Hershey's ribbon cutting. Um I attended Hersy's TPC um meeting with um Frank and I had the privilege of welcoming students at Prospect on their first day of school.

Thank you, Miss Baldino. Well, in addition to the tours, which were much appreciated, um Mr. Foder and I had a very good time and um learned a ton of of new things about the buildings in our districts. I had the honor of welcoming students with um our new principal Hawkins at Wheeling High School and it was a fantastic experience. High energy um great to see all the students and even the the the terrified freshmen who were very lost sometimes. Uh yeah, and um got some great there was some great videos. So, if you haven't seen that on the District 214 social media channel, go go take a look at it. And I'm going to make a plug for um the foundation event that's coming up on September 5th. Um if anybody is a golfer, I'm not. Um please come out and uh join the foundation.

I think they said they just sold their last bay today. They did. Yeah. To me. Yeah. To you. Oh Mr. Heinman, anything you want to uh just pretty much echoing uh everything you've heard? Uh it's very exciting to get get this uh school year rolling.

Thank you. Um thanks to um staff at Rolling Meadows. I was there um greeting the kids on the first day and yes, I I stood next to uh Scott Shilton. It's his first year over there. And then uh a representative from the bus company and how he was looking at his app, making sure that where the buses were, buses were on time. So, it was a great opening and uh then I shot over to Buffalo Grove. Um Jeff had all the uh students in the stadium at 9:00 and they did a wonderful job. Everybody's really excited. And then Monday, um I was here for the Wild Stang kickoff. They have a a barbecue uh style uh dinner for the students. We have 75 students, so the program is full. And then we went in the theater and we had a um PowerPoint presentation about Wild Stang, what's expected and so on and so forth. A lot of parent u involvement in uh wild stake. So wish them uh luck this year. Uh they have two robots now and uh we'll see how that goes. Thank you board members. Very active.

If I could just add one little thing on pig back on Mr. Fiorto the point that you made tremendous growth at Buffalo Grove. We're very proud of it. But the AP numbers that you shared, I I just want to share as a district, we gave over a thousand more AP exams uh in 2425 than the year prior. And as a district, uh 85% of our students across the district scored a three or better. The state average is 65%. So uh tremendous things happening. Huge shout out to our teachers and great appreciation for the work that happens in the classroom to make that possible. But uh I think the they did extremely well at Buffalo Grove, but across the district they uh they performed very well. very proud of.

Um, Dr. RH, did you want to talk about uh your meeting with the state superintendent a little bit about that?

I can. Sure. Um, as you may have seen in the uh in the newspaper uh recently, this the state of Illinois um has been working for the past 18 months to adjust uh benchmarks. The state kind of arbitrarily set benchmarks many years ago. um very high um to the point where the benchmarks are at about the top third uh students across the state would be meeting state standards and it it it told a story that um that was really inaccurate of what college and career readiness looks like. U and actually that began in this district when Dr. Lopez visited uh ISBY and and sparked a discussion with them because we were graduating students uh with 15 college credit hours u tremendous success in AP and dual credit courses who were not meeting this arbitrary benchmark that the state set. So, um, it it was a fairly controversial because anytime it looks like you're lowering the the benchmark for for success, it looks as if you're trying to lower the bar to make yourself look better when in all reality, it was placing it in line with what reality is of what success in high school translates to success in college. And it it captured a lot more of our students who have proven to be successful in college courses while with us. And the benchmark I believe are more in line with what um reality is. I believe it it will boost student confidence in their abilities. It'll boost conversations that families have in terms of the options that are at their disposal of if their child is ready for college uh or not. And I think it communicates some of the um the success and tells the story um and allows you really to tell a story that students are much much more than a test score. I think that's maybe prudent in light of the the new you know US News and World Report that comes out ranking high schools. We're very proud that we have, you know, four of our six high schools are ranked in the top 100 and all six of our high schools are ranked in the top 20% of schools across the

state, but our kids are much more than a test score that um that those those rankings provide. So, um I think that was the the moral of the story and I you know it was a difficult move, but I I do commend Dr. Sanders for making the adjustment because I think it more accurately reflects the reality of quality in our schools. Thank you. Appreciate that. So, we are at the consent agenda and no one has pulled any items from the consent agenda. So, can I have a a motion in a second to please approve the consent agenda items? So, moved. Second. Chung. There's been a motion and a second. Please call a roll. Hinaman. I. Chung. Yes. Valdino. Yes. Dustling. Yes. Fioro.

Yes. Sager. I. And Croitzer. I. Motion carries 70. Okay, we now in the roll call items and we have the first one 1411. All right, the most exciting agenda item on the of the night. Let me have a motion in a second, please. Go ahead. Excitement second. Sager, go ahead.

All right, now on to the good stuff. So, we've been we've been waiting for this a long time. And just to set the stage for you anyone in our audience who um has not been as engaged with this is that we we decided to to approve the strategic plan in April so that the board members that began the process were able to approve um our path forward before uh we welcome three new members. Um but the reality of that didn't allow us to have the process completely finished to share the five-year projections and the metrics we're going to hold ourselves accountable to. So, we worked all over the course of the summer um as you'll hear from each of the goal leads as they share the metrics and in their goals tonight uh with their strategy teams as well as with um you know Jeffrey and Mr. Smith and our our research and development department as well as our partner Rebecca Davis with Deliver Ed. So, um so I want to walk through high level just a a a kind of a high level the process we follow again and update get our minds back toward the plan. Um and then we'll cover the role of the board and then I'll pass it off to our uh goal leads to share um the progress. So what you approved was a five-year um projection of where we're going the future 214 that is centered around the portrait of a graduate. and the portrait of a graduate. Um, as you may remember on the right hand side of your screen are are the eight competencies that we we are going to work to infuse within our students um through our instructional vision and try and bring out in the classroom on a daily basis to help not only just the academic uh growth side of things but the whole child and the human side, the human development person that's ready for life beyond high school. on the lefth hand side is the more the road map that has the vision of um uh of where we're heading as a district u using data and the aspirational beliefs that are captured in the red of how we're going to make tough decisions um how we're we're going to center all of our decisions on students um and value the you know the equity and inclusivity that

that is alive and well in our classrooms today um the path that we're going so our plan is broken out into into four goal areas that are aligned with inspiring the learning in the classroom connecting in terms of creating a sense of belonging for our students, staff, and community members in our schools. Aligning the district, which is developing the systems um that we have found is a is a integral area of uh of focus for us. And then finally getting to play a little bit and dreaming about what high school can be on the innovating side through goal 4. Um so now we'll we'll actually review the the board's role. And just as a reminder, uh Rebecca went over this when she presented was with us. um your role from the balcony from the high level is to hold us accountable to u the progress that we're committing to to making to you this evening. Um you will we will update you twice over the course of the year in January and then again uh in July and throughout that time we will be participating in what we call stock takes. The first one coming up is in September where Miss Craft will uh update me with her team on uh on progress and goal four and then we shift in each goal each month that particular goal with our strategy leads will share what progress they're making toward achieving those goals. That that that's a it's a built-in structure that helps us remain accountable to progress so that we're ready for you in January. Uh then come January, I'll I'll be back and we'll present um we'll present the progress on what we're what we're the progress we're making toward the priorities that they're going to uh lay out for you this evening. So with that, I'm going to kick it over to Dr. Hubard and allow him to walk through goal one uh which is our most comprehensive in terms of the metrics um as as our academic goal.

Thank you, Dr. Row. Um and thank you for the opportunity to present tonight to the board. I would like to also echo what Dr. Dr. Rose said that Jeffrey Smith and the research and evaluation department and his team have been integral in terms of helping gather all of the data that was used to inform the strategic plan. Um provided many many opportunities for us to dig into data as we talked about setting specific goals and action steps and obviously his team has been instrumental in putting together uh what metrics we're actually going to track and then the projections. um and he his team will be responsible for for helping us continue to to take tests along the way to figure out how our progress is and and make adjustments to the to the goals and also make adjustments to the metrics as necessary. As Dr. Ro talked about, um ISBE threw us a welcomed curveball last week and so you'll see that we have uh the the years past data with respect to the SAT and ACT. uh and we have set goals based on the old benchmarks. And so we will obviously do a deep dive and evaluate where we're at given the new benchmarks and and likely bring back to the board updated goals and metrics around the ACT. But I'll talk about what we have here tonight. Uh just to refresh your memory on goal 1A, um we have uh three specific strategies that we're looking at. The first is around instruction and really the the year one work around goal 1A or strategy 1A rather is for us to uh develop an instructional vision that really allows us to bring to life the district 214 portrait of a graduate. And we have a comprehensive project plan that has been put together uh by Jill Lavachek, our director of uh curriculum and equitable practices. And that work and that committee is going to be convened in the coming weeks. And we've got a a plan to by December really unveil an instructional vision that will allow us then to talk about instructional practices uh to allow the

portrait of a graduate worked and competencies and skills to come to life. And then uh the curriculum standards alignment work that actually began last year. And our plan is to develop and roll out a comprehensive curriculum review cycle that hasn't been developed yet. Um and that's a project plan that I will be leading in tandem with uh Miss Lavachek and we will roll out a curriculum review cycle and then see where the work that was done around freshman core curriculum last year with standards alignment the work around math with our feeder programs and MCMI uh how that fits into that curriculum review cycle. But that curriculum review cycle will inform our standards alignment. It will inform our procurement of resources uh for for the courses. It'll allow us to to talk about assessments and how we're assessing student learning. And so we're really excited for both of those two things, the instructional vision and the curriculum review cycle. Strategy 1B really talks about the support that we provide staff. And so in the fall here, we're doing a a comprehensive eval evaluation of how our current professional development and professional learning program aligns to the strategic plan. And then once we have that instructional vision articulated in December, the real work begins for our uh professional learning department talking about what professional development we can provide our staff to make sure that they are equipped with the resources and the tools to be able to execute that instructional vision. And then lastly is really in tandem with um Miss Kendrick and and in student services is talking about the transitions. And so the transition between 8th grade and 9th grade and then the transition from district 214 into to whatever's next for our students and talking about streamlining registration processes, but also um bridge programs for students for 8th to 9th grade to make sure that they're prepared to be successful and continuing the things that really this district has built um incredibly well over many many years. Uh, and that's the the ability for us to equip our students

with the skills, the the credits, the confidence to to transition for what's beyond high school. And so that's really the kind of a a snapshot of what district or what goal one looks like. And then as we talked about metrics for goal one, um, we've landed on five specific things that I think allow us to both get in the weeds and talk about student achievement and student learning, but also see the big picture. Uh, we tried to be diverse. um and and inclusive in terms of the metrics that we selected. And so you'll see some of these are based on student surveys with respect to their perception of rigor, but then also ACT also the growth and the progress of our EL students and also how uh well we're doing equipping our students with those allimportant 15 credits before they leave. There's a lot of research that would suggest that a student that leaves us with 15 uh post-secary credits really has a a much more um s has a much higher success rate not only metriculating into post-secary experience but also persisting and and completing that post-secary experience. And so that's uh the the story behind the selection of that metric. So the first one here is really um something that we dug into was the the five essentials survey and and I know that the five essentials survey um can and tell a lot of different stories but specifically they have two areas that we wrestled with. One is called academic press and that's really the students perception of um how much support and push they get from their teachers to be persistent in the classroom. Um, we looked at the individual questions there and that initially caught our eye. But then, uh, where we really honed in on was a supplemental measure that's measured in five essentials and that's called classroom rigor. And the reason that we selected specifically classroom rigor is number one, it's student perception and student voice. And I think it's really important that we continue to to, I think, highlight and elevate student voice throughout the course of building the strategic plan,

but also in the process of carrying out the strategic plan. And some of the questions that are asked in the five essential survey for students around classroom rigor is that um they feel as though their teacher often connects their learning to their life outside the classroom. So I think that speaks about two things. one is is rigor and and certainly that's the the research driven five essentials says that that is an indicator of rigor but more importantly I think it it's a a really good indicator of engagement when students feel like their learning is connected to their lives outside the classroom it results in in much higher engagement uh some of the other questions that are that inform that classroom rigor metric are my teacher often requires me to explain my answer and my teacher often encourage us to consider different solutions and different perspectives and then talk about and discuss different solutions and and different uh perspectives. So, I think that that really encompasses something that we want to to continue to see a positive trend and you can see we've been tracking this over the last couple of years. We've seen a positive uptick in the last three years and we want to continue that in a in a manner that allows us to eventually get to as you can see we're starting with this past year at our baseline that we're calling 69. Um and and that's just a metric that they give us in five essentials and then our hope is to get it to 82. I think one of the the struggles with this potential metric is that they renorm these tests periodically and so uh they they they renorm it so that there's a standard curve throughout the throughout the state. And so it it could potentially become a little bit of a moving goalpost, but our hope is to really hone in on and be explicit through the language that that we developed in the instructional vision and the instructional practices that we utilize that that we're talking to students about their learning and students are re responding and talking to us about their learning. And I think that'll allow them

to to perceive and to realize real increase in rigor. And I think some of those questions that then are asked um that how we're connecting their learning experiences to life outside of school, I think we will continue to see. And so there might be some ambition in the selection of this goal and and the metrics that we selected over the next 5 years, but it's something that we hold very near and dear because I we know a rigorous experience in the classroom is really important and really drill it down beyond the rigorous experience. It's really about student engagement. Uh and so hopefully that will then inform goal number two um or metric number two and that is is talking about more of the academic outcomes. And so number two and number three both uh relate to the ACT. It is something that we are going to have to revisit in the short term given the new benchmarks that the that the state has unveiled. Um, but the first one that we selected is ELA and and we weren't sure at at one point. Uh, the SAT used to give you an ELA score. The ACT has an English and a reading and a writing section and then it gives you those three tests for juniors and form an ELA composite. And uh, we were kind of waiting to see what the state was going to do and the state did uh, agree upon an ELA metric and not either an English and or a reading. And so, um, I think Jeffrey and his team forecasted that correctly and built an ELA goal that for juniors will encompass their performance on the spring ACT, their junior year in reading, English, and writing. And then for our 9th and 10th graders who take the preACT 9, preACT 10, there is no writing component. So that ELA score is a is a combination of their reading and their English score. And so one of the things that that I think we want and we expect to see an increase and an uptick in our ACT performance um that the state has put us

in a in a I think a great position now with the new benchmarks but over the last couple years a difficult position in terms of identifying academic outcomes switching from the ACT SAT to the ACT. We had the ACT for a year. Now, we're going to switch the benchmarks on the ACT and then there's going to be a newer version of the ACT rolled out. And so, as it got has gone from paper to digital, from SAT to ACT, uh student outcomes academically in in ELA and math, um have been hard to to pinpoint and hard to predict and set goals around, but I think what we've done is put together a set of goals that that we're excited about and that we think are both aspirational, but also attainable. And uh what what we commit to both with the ELA goal here and with the math goal, which is the next slide, um is to re-evaluate the benchmarks and the numbers that we've selected to make sure that we understand truly where we are given the the the newer benchmarks and then what we believe that we can attain. And the hope is that with the benchmarks uh being re-calibrated and I and I think uh rightfully so, we should actually see an increase of students that are achieving those benchmarks. And so we don't want to set the bar too low. And so we will likely come back with uh with a more aspirational and and different numbers and and we'll certainly update the board as we get those uh calculated. The the state is going to come out with some guidance around the new benchmarks and we will allow that to help inform kind of where we're at and where we think we'll be able to go in the next 5 years. The next benchmark uh number four uh is something that that uh a number of people in the district are incredibly passionate about and has taken a lot of work in our research and evaluation department to wrap our heads around. Um but to make sure that we're measuring the progress of our multilingual learners on their language acquisition, our EL population has grown as you all know significantly over the last few

years. we are slated to to give uh just under 2500 access tests in February. So that's uh 2500 of our students um are in in our language learning program. And and what we want to do is make sure that our uh instructional practices and our professional learning to and our programs to meet the needs of those students is hitting the target and and increasing their language acquisition. And so we wrestled as a committee a lot around how we measure academic progress of our multilingual learners. And for a lot of reasons, we didn't believe that the ACT was the right metric. Uh and so we uh with our uh um director of EL services and our new assistant director of EL services along with Jeffrey and his team sat um and talked about this uh idea that uh there's a number there's a uh there's a data point that the state collects and reports on and its progress towards proficiency. So when a student enters the the EL program or when the stu student enters a c the country and then enters the EL program there is a certain number of years that is predicted that they should be able to exit out of their EL services and that that exit is through that access test and by earning a 4.8 composite on their access test. So, the state says when they enter, say as a fifth grader, that by their 10th grade year, they should be exiting their their uh EL program. And then they they take their sto their initial access score when they when they first take the access test and then walk that back from the five years to see yearly what should they be achieving to be able to be on track to exit on the predicted exit route. And so that that that number is called progress toward proficiency. And uh there's there's a lot of data that goes into it and it it takes into account raw scores and scale

scores and composite scores. Uh, but Jeffrey and his team have crunched an incredible amount of numbers and allowed us to to figure out what our progress toward proficiency has been in the past and really talk in depth uh in the teaching and learning department and with our directors of in EL services about where we want to go in the future and and I feel like we've set very aspirational goals in this one specifically u but that's very intentionally the district has invested a lot in our e programming. Um, we have ELEL services in all of our schools now where that didn't used to always be the case. We have a director of EEL, we have an assistant director of ELEL, we have coordinators of EL in all of our schools and really robust uh professional learning around EEL. And and I think some of the things that Dr. Ro has said in the past is a path toward uh academic outcomes and growth as a district is really through our EL services and our and our EL programming. And really when you look at EL programming and EL tra teaching strategies, they're just really good teaching strategies for all. And so as we continue to expose our staff to professional learning around the teaching of our multilingual learners that those instructional strategies, those instructional practices will really inform uh and I think benefit all of our students in the district. And so that's why we're really uh I think steadfast on having a goal specific to our EL learners and making sure that that goal made sense for what we're trying to do. and that's improve their language acquisition and make sure that we're on pace to be able to get them the language acquisition uh and the support and the services that they need to be successful. And so you can see that we've set those goals uh for the next five years. And the last goal that we have um is specific back to that 15 graduation uh those 15 college credits

that students are graduating with. It's a a metric that the district has has had for a long time and focused and seen significant substantial growth over the years and we've seen a little bit of a plateau but that that is a commonality across the state and really across the country. Um, but one of the things that that that we've looked at and and I think a byproduct potentially of the recalibrated state benchmarking tests is that uh some of those state benchmarks will make dual credit uh classes more accessible for some students. And so we're hoping up that opens up additional opportunities and and gives students obviously the the confidence that that they too can try it and do it. And so our hope is to continue to see uh a steady a moderate but steady increase over the next five years in students that are graduating with the 15 college credits.

With that, we we're certainly happy to to pause and answer any questions about this so we don't get too far along. I think um you know what what Dr. Huburn and his team have have done here. There's a there's a mix of really ambitious goals and as well as some that may not look like the um they're hitting a number you may expect, but you have to recognize in the ELA and math, we're stopping a bit of a slide that the district has been on since CO and turning that around. Um and that's I think that's that's nothing that can can be overlooked in terms of why the numbers are set the way that they are. So, um, we're very much committed to, um, to meeting all of our targets. However, I would say if we meet all of our targets, we didn't set them high enough because this is this is designed to be aspirational and we really are trying to push our system. Um, so we shouldn't meet all of them. We should come really really close to a lot of them. U, but I don't, you know, I hope that we meet all of them and I hope that honestly we surpass our expectations and we need to come back and say we need to reset and level set some of these. uh because I certainly know we're capable of it. It's just a matter of how quickly the momentum gets going. So with that, I have we're happy to answer any questions.

Well, let's get through the entire presentation, I think, Dr. Ro. Sure. And then we'll take questions from the board members at the end. Sounds fine. Who's up next? All right. Goal two. Uh Mrs. Kendrick, you're up next.

Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to talk about our strategic plan goal two, which is around connecting and fostering an environment that values everyone and supports them to succeed. Um, the neatest thing about this goal, I think, is that uh although it it feels a little bit like something that we can't waste our time with, we need to really really move quickly because this is about our students and our staff feeling like they belong, getting our students here through our attendance. But the neatest thing has really been about working at across all departments in this space in order to make make our goals become a reality. We have um as Brad mentioned, we've been working really closely together to talk about how to best support students in our programming. Um we've worked together really with every department around aligning uh some of our eighth grade communications, making sure that we are doing a better job around registration so that it is much accessible to all uh families, especially our incoming eighth grade families. Um really focusing more on that articulation as well as professional development for staff to support our students in the area of belonging. And then certainly uh this idea of embedding seal through our entire uh district has started just in the la in the last several months and we are really moving forward quickly with that.

Social social emotional learning. Yes. Yeah. Yes. We're so acronym here it's just drives everybody crazy.

Our PE department has run with our uh social emotional learning curriculum. We had a great team get together last year to uh to vet different programs. So I'll get into that in a minute. But the next slide is specific to our uh absenteeism which we know has been a significant problem uh bordering on a crisis situation since COVID where we have seen a dramatic drop in attendance for many many different reasons. So this the metrics here are a little bit tricky and the reason for that is that um we have implemented many new systems many new programs here this year. So really this year is almost our uh baseline but we needed to put some metrics in here. So when I met with our strategy leads and w or with our um strategic planners, we spoke specifically about the opportunity to hopefully increase these metrics as after living through this year and seeing how some of the significant changes that we've made make a difference. Our hope is that they certainly will. So we are looking at um what appears to be a relatively small increase, but we also know that around absenteeism moving the needle is really really difficult. And so when we looked at some really incredible growth at Wheeling last year, we saw um students attend 8,000 more classes, which moved the needle half of 1%. So just as an example to you, that's incredible growth and we're super proud of that growth. So we're focused on the growth, but actually moving the needle and the percentage takes a whole lot. So we have um several new programs in place this year. Uh we have ALOP advocates which are our alternative learning opportunity program through our North Cook ROE which we have partnered with that's the

regional office of education and they have supported us immensely by providing allowing us to help in um interviewing candidates who are social workers and counselors by training and they come in. We have um two advocates in all of our schools except two of the schools which have one advocate and they come in. They work full-time in our spaces and they can have up to 30 students who are generally our highest flyers when it comes to struggling with attendance and so they are getting significant significant support in that area. And then we also have implemented other new programming much on a larger scale. Um, shout out to Rolling Meadows and to El Grove who have started new programs within their uh, schools similar to what we the reach program that we saw at Wheeling last year that had huge success for our outliers who struggled with getting to school and finding success once they were in school. And this is the whole idea. We know that we need to get our students here to be able to meet any of these other goals. and then obviously building the relationships and engaging them and then when they're here building those skills around emotional intelligence and our social emotional learning. So as far as absenteeism for all we um are certainly providing new opportunities for students and new programming to help support those students. Our ready program here at the district office would also be another great example of something that we have put in place that will connect both the absenteeism for our students who have struggled getting to school or even if they did get to school didn't always make it to class. Now, not only are they showing up, but they're also feeling that sense of belonging in a much smaller um supportive environment. When we talk about our EL students, we know that there's different factors that um make make getting to school even harder for this population of students. Uh we know a lot of our students, these

outside factors might include uh a lot of them take care of their siblings, get their siblings off to school in the morning. A lot of their parents are working when they leave for school or should be leaving for school in the morning, which um is really difficult. We know that there's lots of outside factors that have impacted that. So, we will continue to work on again all of the communications and that aligning the communications across the district to ensure that what our families are getting they can understand and um everything is translatable and so that we can help support families in understanding how critical it is that their students get to school. When we look at the next slide, um this is specific to truency. And so we are really working hard on um a lot of positive supports. Uh Jeffrey and his team are helping us with uh letters for that we're sending to families, positive letters when we're seeing improvement in attendance, um incentives for students, lots and lots of supports to really really help us with getting getting students uh to school as opposed to cutting school. So this is um again these these metrics don't look very significant but we hope that after um some of the programing programming that we put in place this year we will continue to see growth and we can adjust those metrics um and make them higher and hopefully see more growth each year. the uh sense of belonging is has a much better looking metric because we are definitely very very committed to ensuring that our staff, our students and our families feel like they are a part of our district. And so we are able to assess this opportunities for students so that we have a different pulse than we're getting from. So we'll have a second measure essentially so

that we have a better idea of of exactly how students feel. We'll be talking more about those feelings about being here, not just um engagement in activities and a different way of measuring belonging. So those metrics look a little bit a little bit better. Um, but certainly all of the new programming that we've created should should help this because we want students to feel like they are in the right space for them to feel success and then be have those relationships with trusted adults. We're leveraging that as well because we want to make sure that all of our students have someone one trusted adult at least. And so that's another way that we are able to leverage. All of our student services departments are meeting with every student who did not select a trusted adult last school year. They're starting the school year with that. And then certainly in October, just as we did last year, we'll bring in the freshmen to have them um determine who their trusted adult would be or let us know that. So that's another thing that we can leverage to ensure that students feel like they belong. And when it comes to family engagement, as I said earlier, all of this kind of blends together, but really ensuring that everything that we send to families, everything certainly anything that can be um consistent across the district, across all schools coming from the district office, ensuring that it is all translatable, ensuring that it's messaging that's easy to understand and follow, and that we're not just giving them so much information that they lose track of things. And so we will continue. This is this is an ongoing process, but we will continue to to work on this. We know that all of our buildings provide all kinds of amazing opportunities for families to engage, but really focusing on some of the highlevel things that we're seeing and rolling out a new event each semester

for things like social media that families don't always know how to navigate. Some highlevel things to help families navigate. um parenting really. And so that's something that we are focused on, but also working with Patrick and his team to start working on more of a parent series where we're bringing in presenters to speak to parents on a regular basis as some other area districts have so that we can continue to engage with families and survey families to have a better understanding of what they need to help support their teenagers.

Thank you very much. So as we shift into goal three and four, I hand over to Mr. Ulie. We transition from really um numeric metrics more to a processoriented uh aspect of the of the uh of the of the plan where you'll see uh that we're building systems and we're building processes that'll you'll see our progress being tracked in terms of reports that we deliver to you uh at the end of the the end of the year. But Mr. Julie,

thank you. Yeah, goals one and it's not as exciting as goals one and two. um not as forb facing um this nonetheless important but a lot of the work will be behind the scenes early on as Dr. Ro mentioned and very processoriented. Um, essentially we're we're across the board we're analyzing and auditing and factf finding and and understanding pain points. 3A has a focus cross district learning but that is very building focused. That team is made up of the principles um and and something small is just like a meeting cadence and a meeting structure ensuring district meetings don't overlap with building meetings. our professional development schedule, making sure that's aligned just even in the calendar itself, nonetheless goal driven. Um, a small example of that current work was our intrad district course offering. So, we are offering courses in every building that students across the district can take. Um, not as easy as it sounds, right? That has to show itself in the master schedule through collaboration with building principles, student services. We then have to turn that over to staffing and Kcraft and HR determine that master schedule. Then we have to take that and turn that over to business services to come up with the routing matrix for transportation. Right. And so so that took months and months of work to get to that point and there are definitely opportunities to improve that process and we will and we've taken notes through that cycle and look to improve upon that in a in a couple of months. Um, moving on to goal three, and we'll continue that work and continue those conversations um with with principles throughout the year. Goal 3B is really district focused and and finding those those district department efficiencies. And so, a lot of work has been done in the last year um specifically focused on HR and business services. And and really, it's a domino effect. And and what it anything we look at leads us back to good clean data. Um, and so one of one of the hot topics in

the district has been the green sheets, the paper payroll forms, and moving away from those. We're about 70% through. Um, and really what we've done is migrated to to a a smart spreadsheet where we integrate HR and payroll data into the spreadsheet and their drop- down internal controls that really minimize human error. Employee click on the name, it autopopulates their ID. We pick the rate, it autopop populates the budget account number and we do that within the payroll cycle, kick it over to payroll, download, upload, we're good to go, right? Versus the inefficient process of of using paper and the potential mistakes and the passing back and forth of paper. That's just a small example. Um, a lot of the work this year, um, again is already started the new website. Again, that's that's a a cross-dep departmental collaboration ensuring that we have the functionality that we need for all stakeholders. Um, you know, looking to pinpoint portals, students, staff, and um, parents, families, right? And ensuring that that one-stop shop has access to all the necessary systems they would need. Um, that's ongoing. and and we've kind of assembled a small little team where we have a data lens, HR, business and technology and we push in and with each department where the pain points then we start to unpack that and understand that and that that little team has kind of moved around the district thus far um and has done some incredible work. Um but we'll we will continue with that um throughout the year and again once we kind of have a good understanding we've we've started to do project maps and we've listed out the different departments that'll be involved and we share that and then we set meetings and deadlines and deliverables and so um it's really starting to come to life. Um I'm excited about the work. And then lastly and again one example in in the operations world is is the Mckinstry

project that we the board just approved. Again, we're like, we have all of this data. What do we do with this data? We found a system where we can enter that data and it help us make informed decisions moving forward. Just a small example of all of and there are a lot of systems and they could be a legacy system, it could be archaic or we don't have a system. So, that's part of all of the work that we have been doing and will continue to do. And then lastly, 3C um is is the fiscal transparency goal. Uh Justin Ataway is the lead on on 3C and we've been starting to do a lot of work with with our building budgets already. That's kind of the start is a line by line analysis uh in every building budget to understand why um and look at where we're aligned and where we're not. Um eventually moving and looking at potentially a a a building budget formula um that takes different factors into account. not this year but we have to understand um building budgets first and then we will look to move uh in that direction in the near future.

Anything I missed? And the only thing I would add is I just remind you, you know, where we were three years ago in the charge that was given was, you know, six comprehensive high schools that had six different ways of doing things. And and a lot of our conversation about the strategic plan really centered around um maintain their their unique culture, but we need to find some district 214 ways of doing things. Um and that's where this is coming from. So some of it is very tedious u but it's very purposeful. um with a lot of uh intentionality and and feedback from our principles. Um and the cross-dep departmental breaking down of silos. You probably have heard me say that 15 times by now. And it's it's like like Mr. Julie said, it's coming to life. So um this again very processoriented goal. You'll you'll get updates in in terms of um you know priority lists like this, but then ultimately reports of progress. All right, shifting over to goal four is our dreaming goal for uh Mrs. craft to highlight our innovation and premier facilities.

Thank you, Dr. O. Yes, the dreaming goal. Uh District 214 has long prided itself on our innovation and our innovative practices and so I'm proud to be uh representing goal 4. I'm working with uh Dr. McFall and Scott Schultton on 4A and 4B. uh 4 A focuses on facilities um that support innovative learning and 4B is on the the specific uh uh uh ways that which we're teaching and how we're testing innovations and how we're scaling innovations. So I want to start by talking about 4B because it it largely informs um 4A. So um we have several different ways in which we uh bring innovation, bring ideas forward. And so we have some that run through our professional learning department. We have some that run through our district office. Um we have an innovation committee. And so really the first year we're going to be um participating in these committees and figuring out a way to system systematize uh scale uh and test these different mechanisms to build on this um that work with 4B will help inform 4A which really a lot of the facilities work. We're talking about establishing a baseline into next school year. So, as you know, Chris has led the work with the um facilities assessment. So, that's kind of the the uh the behind the scenes work in the schools in terms of facilities. And this is more uh how we build our classrooms to support that innovative instruction. And so we will be doing that as sort of a secondary uh component that'll start more uh after we do uh set the baselines uh for these impactful teaching innovations this school year. Um yeah, I think that's it.

All right. Thank you. With that, um we're happy to go back and discuss any particular point of it or answer any questions that that you may have. Um board members, anyone want to start? Dr. Sager.

Okay. So, I I think I have a few sort of general questions. I think you partially answered one of them, which is how are we as a board supposed to take these? Are these aspirational goals or are they set goals that we will meet? Right? Because I think that's two different ways of thinking about this. One of our charges as a board is to monitor progress of the district and this is the mechanism to do that. And so when we look at these trend lines and I look five years out, am I supposed to say we're going to hit that number guaranteed or this is the number we hope to hit if everything's going well? I I kind of just want you to reiterate that point.

Sure. Well, I I would say that it's you know that it's it's aspirational without a doubt. We expect that we're going to hit it or surpass it. However, anytime you're you're the work that we're putting in place, we're expecting the outcomes to come with it. And there are so many variables that are there. Um, we're setting as, you know, aspirational goals that are um a push goal for us. So, they're not set beneath what uh what we expect to be, which they're not easily easily attained, I guess I should say. Um, that said, I expect that we're going to hit those, but they are very much aspirational goals. Okay. And then my next question was the 2425 data that data point that's shown on each of the graphs. Is that a data point or is that a projection? Is it data point?

It's a data point. So it's known. That's where we hit this last year. So the first year is the the first year in blue is a known number, right? That the district achieved blue from last year's school year. That's correct. Right. So that's correct. So for instance, we saw a jump from 56 to 69 in terms of the rigor from 2324 to 2425, right? I just want double check that because that's what I confirming that Jeffree that's correct. Is it not? I assume because they have particular one. Yes, there are a few like the new publishing. I was going to say you have three sigfigs on there,

but this is these are where we are. Yes. Okay. So, for most of them, it's a number that we know. So, that that's kind of baseline kind of first year progress, right? Um and then my questions were sort of if you go back to metric one for goal one, 82% strikes me as a very high number to get any number of teenagers to agree on something. So that strikes me as very ambitious. Um, do we have any data that shows that there are districts that hit that 82%. Well,

so, uh, Jeffrey probably knows this much better than I do, but I'll take a stab at answering. Um, I there are so the rigor metric is a supplemental metric that isn't not I don't believe published from other districts. However, the academic press one that I spoke about and I was very intentional in talking about the conversations that we had around that academic press. I don't know of any districts that have hit it, but I can tell you that we have schools both in district 214 and in other places that are at or around 80 or 81. And so Hersy, I believe, was 81 last year in academic press. So I think there's some rationale to think and that that's a student reported metric. Um, the one thing that Jeffrey and I have talked about is roughly for those questions that I read that were examples of that got that fed into academic or the classroom rigor. Uh, roughly 80% of students already answer agree or strongly agree. And so really to move the metric, it's going to be taking students that are agreeing and getting them to strongly agree. So there could certainly be some challenges to that. And the fact that they reorm periodically and things could make this maybe unattainable, but I but as we sit here right now to Dr. Rose's point, I think it's aspirational and potentially attainable.

And then what we expect on on all of these graphs, so next year we'll have a data number that goes, you know, in that that second year, will it go on here and we'll keep that trend line so we can see whether we're above trend or below trend? Absolutely. You know, I would add that

if you mind, Jeffrey, if you want please hit the podium to if you and while Jeffrey moves up here, I just want to just give some context. What I what I have asked our team to really focus on and emphasize um less about hitting the number is I want to see growth year-over-year. If we're not hitting the number, but we're growing, you know, I'll be disappointed, but I'll be still be pleased because what you see is has not been a a trajectory of growth over the last few years. It's been a a a a decline. And that's what that's part of the reason why, you know, we're I mean, we're creating our own little miniature crisis if it's time. We have to turn this around because we know we're capable of much better than that. And we're still I mean our you remember our juniors were in sixth grade when they were remote. So we're still very much dealing with students that in the the formidable years of middle school when a lot of the foundation of the highle math that they're in now they were building that foundation. So we're we're still trying to turn this around. But um this is what you're seeing in our eyes is something that that we don't find acceptable. So growth year-over-year is is step number one in my book that we're after is that even if we don't hit the number, but we've got three years in a row of positive growth. I think there's then they will know we're really on to something and we're heading in the right direction. Thanks Jeffrey. What what do you have to add?

I just wanted to clarify in response to that EL progress, this is a very recently developing that we're doing this. I think our wording is a little incorrect because it's not percentage. The 82 is not actually a percentage of students. That's a standardized score. So this this metric it's a it's like five or six questions that they create a a data and then they create a standardized score across the state of all schools. So right now we are like you kind of think of as like the percentile. We're sort of currently we're at like the 69th percentile and we're it's not really a percentile but it's a standardized score 69. We want to get to the 82. So it isn't 82% of our students all agreeing necessarily.

Right. So, so if it if it's a some some sort of norm score there, there must be districts that are hitting that school because there's a norm. Okay. Okay.

Just I'm I'm very happy you clarified that we're we're not necessarily we're setting the level of we want to see growth over time, right? Um so one more point on these questions. uh for the attendance in particular, we know that there's this global effect of, you know, this is this is not unique to us, this this spike in non-attendance. And so there's this societal component that we don't necessarily control, right? That it's it's more acceptable for students to avoid school seems to be what's happening. It's not just 214, it's everybody. And so there's this convoluting factor of what's happening in society compared to what's happening to us. And so it may be that, you know, it it may be that we hold steady while other schools are seeing worse attendance, right? and and so we may be it may be necessary not to just use an absolute number here but to compare ourselves to other districts which I know is part of the state report cards that we all are reported

and I think Miss Kender please chime in if you if you think otherwise but I think our goal here like we said growth year over year we want to see the needle move that we're having an impact you know we had this conversation um prior to bringing the our three newest board members on last year with last year's data And I believe it was Mr. Dustling that that made the point and it was a it was a really good one of um he asked that we we not only talk about the the progress of of of curbing chronic absenteeism, but go into more detail about the efforts and the detail of what we're doing as a staff and as a district to try and um and encourage students and families to prioritize it because when when you're dealing with teenagers, we can, you know, we can beat our heads against the wall, but they have to meet us in the middle at some point in terms of coming to school. So, um, this really is about that that family engagement of really prioritizing and giving the nudge letters of, um, that that we began last year of, you know, your students attendance as compared to our ideal of what we're striving for so you can see if you're on track. They actually are really powerful when those when those are sent out. So, they'll be automated and uh it's really we want to see that that negative growth here year-over-year, but as Cara said, it's really difficult to move the needle and a lot of great work by our um our student services teams in our buildings that has have been invested so far,

right? And I I think that story is important. So, as a numbers data guy, there there's more to these graphs than just without a doubt. I also would just add that our attendance committee is really focusing on the positive the positive ways to intervene with students when we see growth and even if it's a very very small amount of growth but through our solution finding teams we can see and the data that Jeffrey's team pulls for us um we can see when students have shown even just a little bit of growth and and acknowledging that and sending letters home for that Jeffrey and his team are also helping us with. So, we're really trying to focus on just small improvements which hopefully will

and and and kind of to wrap this up, an example of of that that was a new uh effort this year by student services teams in all of our buildings as they actually went and identified students who have a track record of poor attendance as well as struggling in terms of their credits and they held home visits with them over the summer to begin that relationship and prioritize that. They were really positively received by a lot of our families. So, we're hoping really starting off on a positive note so students don't fall behind that 10% trend line that is really difficult to get back over the hump. Thank you. Done. Okay, Mr. Fiorito.

Okay. I I'm going to keep it brief. I have one question and one comment. I'll start with the question first. Um I'm going to Chris. Um so you talked about the six schools. Will Forest View also have a building budget? Yes. Yes, the specialized schools does have a building. So have seven budgets. Yes. Okay. It looks a little different um given the program.

Yep. Okay. So, that was my question and my comment. Um it's something I raised to Dr. Row. I just wanted everybody else to hear it. Um one of the things that I thought about with goal number one, so BBU bread was I I noticed that all the all the metrics were all focused on on basically um kids that were going to college. I felt it was you know more college than the trades. So that was my question for Dr. Ro was like I looked at those those growths and I and I really didn't see anything that was focusing on the trades and and Dr. Ro if you want to.

Sure. I I just you know shared actually Brad and I discussed it. I just shared the uh the 15 credit hours through dual credit. All of our pathways are really um entrenched in dual credit work. uh and it really sets paves the way for there'll be post some form of post-secary education required for certifications or additional learning and our students that uh are engaged in our pathways that are strengthened and prepared for post-secondary work. Um I think it I think it actually does um accentuate and elevate the u the trades and you know we want to celebrate our areas of strength as well as identify our areas for improvement and pathways are certainly an area um of strength for us. So we want to accentuate those and maintain while other areas are in my opinion a little bit more pressing in in terms of turning around some of our performance levels.

Okay. Thank you Dr. Chung.

Yeah. Um thank you so much for the presentation. Um first I want to piggyback on something that Dr. Sager asked about about the goals. So um so we've got our five-year goal and I see on some of these graphs you can see maybe um incremental one-year benchmarks. some I saw some other verbiage where like by December 2025 will XYZ um if the board is going to review maybe progress twice a year it sounds like would it be possible and maybe you're already planning this to have those some sixmonth anticipated milestones set in place understanding that you know progress in itself is a I mean growth in itself is a huge um achievement Um but at the same time if you know the board is going to try to understand engage and monitor performance it would be really helpful at least to me to have some kind of you know every time like set in advance some milestones that we anticipate hitting at that six-month mark. And that's not to say if we don't meet it it's a failure. It could just be that the milestone was off. But something to help us monitor and understand. I hear I hear what you're saying there and I think this is this is an example of that. Like for instance, the biggest one in in Dr. Hubard's world is that by December of this year um that instructional vision there's a there's a a form to it so that we can begin really uh farming it out and getting some feedback, socializing it with our staff. um that when we come in January, I would think that would serve as one of those six-month milestones that when I report to you in January, if we're not giving you an update on that, we'll have some rationale of we've hit a snag. This is delayed. We'll have it finished in February. We're still on track for completion by June, which is that annual target. Okay.

Um so there are a few of those like in, you know, spring 2026, we'll have the implementation for the instructional vision on what the the second step of that would be on the professional development side of the house. If I'm not if we're not unless we're on the same page, I'm viewing that as uh as what you're asking for. Yes. Um is that possible then for all the goals to have something you know just again something to shoot for something that when you report out we can say hey we were expecting to hit this we didn't. Again that doesn't mean it was a failure. It could just mean we're you know

growing. I think with some of them it's a challenge to do that. Um, I think in in some cases we definitely will, but what I what I'm viewing our January midyear update um is how are we tracking toward having it in in July where we'll be able to say, "Hey, we're off because the stock takes what we're going to be reporting on is when they're with with in our meeting um on each of those at the end of that they'll have to say, are we on track? Are we slightly off track? Or do we really need to focus on this?" And then our work then becomes if we're in the red, we have to really narrow our focus. So when you get to January, we'll be able to report to you. These are the areas where we are on track. These are the areas where we are not and we're really investing a lot of resources to catch up. Okay.

So I I don't know that I would feel good about placing specific targets at six month because a lot of the work is just so fluid. Okay. Um and so I would say let's so I would ask then let's do this. Let's go through it and if it's not hitting that then I'm happy to try and adjust that. not having followed this particular model before, I I really want to follow our partners' textbook setup to live at once. And if it doesn't meet the mark, then I'd be happy to talk about adjusting it and seeing if we can tweak it. Okay, if that works.

Yeah, that sounds great. Um my second question is about um under goal one, one of the um year one priorities is to establish a joint uh working group with our sender schools to align on academic expectations and instructional practices and all of that. I love this. I think it's um I love the work that D214 is doing with our um sender district. My question is could you share how this new group will expand the existing you know group that's working on the um math curriculum alignment as well as what outcomes might we expect from the the new group or the expanded group.

So it's in development and I don't have concrete I don't have a concrete answer but I can tell you that we are looking to expand the partnership similar to the way that we've expanded math. And so one of the things that that we've done is talk to to my counterparts in our feeder uh districts of of which we have periodic meetings. And one of the things that we've that we developed a couple of years ago was a a joint institute day. So January 5th is a common institute day that all of our feeders share along with us. And while we have not partnered with them in every content area, we have partnered with them obviously in math over this past year um and in the performing arts, our performing arts teacher. This year we we've we've started very preliminary conversations about potential partnership in ELA to talk about instructional practices, professional learning, um specific to to reading and writing in in ELA and and then broadening that out to some potential other content areas. And so we're just starting to scratch the surface of does it make sense to have a a singular group that comes together with district 214 and all of the feeders or does it make sense to do it more contentbased like we did with math like we potentially do with ELA like we're already doing with performing arts? Are there ways to create those partnerships in pockets that allow them to kind of really talk about instructional practice, professional learning, standards alignment, uh curriculum alignment. uh and so that the the math was kind of the first foray into that and I I anticipate that that similar model will expand.

Thank you. Thank you Dr. Bradford. Um my last question is how will we share our progress towards these goals with the wider community? So for example, will we have a dashboard on our website that shows progress or um what's the plan? That's a good question. Um we have not discussed a dashboard for progress. I'm sure that's something that we could create, but I I envision that our tracking toward progress would occur um at our January and June update, July updates with the board, as well as uh we'll certainly share in our annual report that we've sent out to all of our community members the the progress in terms of tracking our goals and then the annual state of the district uh which I have a considerable amount of media, but we'll share our progress from the year prior.

Miss Baldino. Well, first of all, I want to say I I think that the thing I appreciated the most about this plan is that it really shows systemic thinking that all of the pieces work together um and complement each other. Um and that is obviously really central to the strategic plan. I did have a couple of questions. Um I I want to you know add on to what u Mr. Fioro said about collegebound students and asked the question are there barriers to students um taking college credit classes um that need to be addressed are financial barriers or other types of barriers that we would need to um to remove in order to have more student participation

if the interest is there

to to my knowledge We have accounted for all known barriers and what I have seen um is if when a new barrier arises uh we are very creative to try and remove them. Um I would say I would expect that to continue from the foundation even chipping in in years past. Now that Dr. Lopez is over there I believe there will be even greater partnership to use. the foundation's been very willing uh in terms of support, financial support for students in need. Um part of our rationale for shifting our um our director of equity role into the equitable practices role across multiple positions is that very thing. Um so in the curriculum office whenever one of those barriers is identified um really getting down to the root cause and looking to eliminate it um from the departmental level so that it doesn't occur. But um whenever a situation like that arises you would be I think you would be very proud to see how the people in this district rally to try and solve that for any student facing a barrier so that we can um get them access to the best. Um and then my other question was around um goal three. So um so for Chris, the priorities um were pretty pretty clear in terms of you know there's a number of areas where you're working on essential process and data consolidation kinds of improvements. Um, do you intend to turn some of these into kind of smart goals where they're more specific and measurable in terms of um, you know, you're doing a lot of project tracking is what I was hearing, but do those project track plans also include um, more specific goals around what types of improvements you expect to see out of that work?

Yes, we're just not at the point where we have enough data to create those smart goals. This is not set in stone, but we've we are analyzing our our financial system, which is massive and drives almost everything we talk about. Is it the the right fit for what we're trying to do? We're currently working through that process. If we wanted to change financial systems, you're looking at an 18 to 24month implementation. So, a massive project that would involve a lot of departments and people. So, you know, when we get to a point where we're going to make a decision like that, then it turns into deliverables and a smart goal,

right? Yeah. Because there's some of these things in your priorities, right, that in your strategy that are um clearly more uh specifically measurable um such as, you know, by the end of the year, we will do this specific thing. Um and others that are more just general statements at this point. Um, so you know, I would hope to have updates or more information as that work is moving along similar to innovation where you're just beginning to put a framework in place and so this will evolve clearly and you know we'll look forward to additional updates on where is that work going and how are we going to know. Um,

we do expect after the first year or two there'll be the baseline in goal three and goal four that we don't have like goal one and two do do and we'll be able to set those more specific uh metrics to to to grow from without a doubt. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Dustling.

Yes. Thank you. You know, since uh this is really the first big jump off the diving board into the pool uh on strategic planning, I really don't have a problem with the goals, whether they're aspirational, specific, reaching, whatever they are. I really don't have a problem with it. It, you know, we got some wizards that are setting these things up and uh you know, they're not going to uh lower the bar lower the bar down just to uh just to look good. They're too smart for that. So, I'm satisfied with the goals. If if they have to be adjusted at some point, if they have to be added or whatever, fine. You know, that's that's that's your jobs to do. You're the wizards at it. So So get it done. The other thing I didn't realize in the attendance thing, um, we co has been nuclear to us. I mean, when you take a look at at the beginning 20 21 22 19 20 what what it was and then the the graph goes up um and and you look at what we've done. I mean we've brought in uh um crisis management people at every level, filled up the schools with with crisis management. I I certainly don't have an answer to it. I I have the feeling that you're doing everything you can, principles in the back and and you up here and obviously with human resources. I mean, I don't know what else you can do. You you know, you can't there's no way we can lock these kids up in a classroom and say you got to stay here all day long and our attendance will be great. That doesn't work that way. So, so I think you're doing everything you can do uh along those lines. I encourage you to keep on doing it. I I I'm a stunned that 8,000 hours means 1/ half of 1% increase. That's I can't imagine the time and effort that that goes into that. But thank you very much. The other thing I would say is uh when we look at uh CTE and CTE is

absolutely important. I support CCT. I just want to make sure that there's a relationship between CTE the courses that are being taken there and we aren't uh uh cutting the fine arts out in some areas that that possibly uh students can't take courses because of of uh of the CTE they're involved in how we can wrestle it out so that both are winners. I hear you Mr. adjusting and I I would say that you we have our areas of improvement that don't find their ways into metrics and strategic plan that we are actively working on things in addition to this that we just aren't well this is our first time off the diving board and uh yeah it's good thank you

thank you board members um you know Dr. Dr. row last year went around to uh all of the um parent groups and did a presentation to them about the strategic plan and um I would um follow up with I think a week or two before Dr. row was actually hired. We had a board selfie val where we went over things that the we wanted the new superintendent to do and this we were so adamant about a strategic plan. We were just we want you to do that the first year and he said no no we'll do this the second year. So here we are it's come to fruition uh the wishes of the previous board and I know that this current board is uh very much in favor of moving forward with this. It's been it's been a while and it's something that um the previous board really really wanted and here we are today uh looking at the matrix. So, we're we've got our foot on the gas and I can't wait for an update. Really appreciate the work of everyone. I know this was a huge process to go through and uh continuing along that road. So, um call a roll. Vito,

yes. Sager, I. Baldino, yes. Chung, yes. Dustling, yes. Hinaman, I. And Citer, I. Motion carries 70. Thank you. Before we move on, I just wanted to add thank you all for the support. It's been Well, you you said we we've carried a lot of it, and I'm I'm extremely proud um of our team. uh you all did a great job tonight, but you've just a lot of the work behind the scenes has been tremendous, but thank you to the board for your continued support and uh in this process. We're glad happy we're here, too. Appreciate it. Thank you. So, we've got 1421. [Music] Uh can I have a motion in a second, please? Mark.

So, moved. Second, Frito. Thank you. Um Mr. to Julie, please.

Thank you. Uh, as Dr. Ro all alluded to last meeting, um, we we are having an issue with the a building roof and it needs to be replaced and so we're bringing the agenda item to you tonight. Just to recap and review, this has been an eight-month issue. We've gone through infrared testing, nuclear die testing, and finally core samples of the insulation to test the moisture. The results came back at about 50% of the roof insulation is wet, thus the need to replace the roof. I'm going to invite Miss Mistak up to talk about the new roof and the process and then we'll open it up to questions. Yeah. What happened on Monday with the storm we had? I was in this building Monday. Yeah. And

did you have any additional damage? The issue we're having, it's not automatic. It finds its way in and then it works its way down and it'll show up a week later. Yeah. Isn't that nice? I'm sorry, Anna. Go ahead.

Good evening. I would like to give a little quick overview. Uh this roof on a forest view education center building K it's about years 11 years old um roof. It has the cold pitch tariff roof. We did like Chris mentioned extended work to find a way why we have a multiple legs. We were able to control to only two rooms right now. Uh we found um I did a lot of the homework with the team in the district with our district roofer and we found the TMC call which they are not new contractor they've been on many districts they are in a Huntley school district 158 they recently finished the work on a CPS they have a very good and special system that we will be applying for that roof and I would like to say it that it's about 29,38 80 square foot roof. Uh we are planning to do five to six weeks of the work. The work will start in the end of the September and the reason why because as we all know many contractors right now are in the end of the summer when they are finishing their jobs. Uh and because that was very unexpected. We were trying to find the best way and the contractors that they have very good reputation with the district 214 and ask them if they will be able to bid the job for us through the TMCO source well program and we'll be able to do the job. We are planning to do the most of the job and the demo in a second shift since we have a students and I would like to bring because many of us we know that we did the roof three years ago here in Forest View. The major difference is on a building a we have a deck that it's concrete okay that we have a big support over there when uh what we will do we will demo the existing roof we will do

temporary roof and then we will mobilize the contractor and start the work uh with cooperating of the weather I'm hoping that we will be accomplish everything in a five to six weeks how I mentioned I am very excited about this projects because this is very immune system that we will be applying besides of the it it's seamless sim system what that mean that we will not have a seams on a roof also additionally for a typical you know building of the system of the roofs we will be applying three to four coats of the layer that will be very very low orderless it's very friendly for um you know echofriendly for everybody it will save a lot of the energy for a district it's apply and in a 20 years that's what the warranty will be for that roof. The district will not have to uh replace that roof completely. What that's mean we will have to reapply the liquid on it without completely demo. Uh and I think that will be very good future for us. I will be very excited with the team and Chris to observe how that will work for us and in the future we have a lot of the roofs that will bring very good financial planning for us how we would like to move forward with the roofs. Thank you

board members. I have a question Dr. Chung. Okay. No ladies first. Thank you. Um thank you so much Annetta. My question so you mentioned it will probably start at the end of September maybe five to six weeks and all after school hours so not to disturb um students in school um are there after school or evening programs that will now be disrupted because of that and what's the

I can answer we discussed that with Chris today this is third floor we have three floor building also when we will be having demo that will be only when it will be noisy and I will to coordination with what programs we have one program that we check with Chris it's on the first floor and then as soon as I will start for um applying the system it's so safe and it's no orderless and we have a concrete deck that it can be really done through during the schools years a lot of the district decide for this type of the roofing system because it's very safe for a students that they are in a school but the most of the demo And like I said, that will be coordination with me and Chris with school. Thanks,

Mr. Fioro. So, so my question is um it sounds like it's maybe a new type of style that we're doing with this roof because we just recently did the Prospect roof. Am I right with that? So, is this some something similar to what you did with Prospect? And my sec followup question would be is um if we have other buildings that need new roofs, is this something that we would learn from?

Absolutely. And I think it it it depends on the style and the type of roof. So So the roof we're doing here can't necessarily be installed on every single roof, but I do think and then I was very excited to to to take this leap on this product and and I think we're going to absolutely gauge um how this goes and and look to apply it in future applicable settings. the big wins here to to highlight what Anetta shared. Um, one, it's a 20-year warranty instead of a 10-year warranty. There are no seams in the in the roof, which is why we're in this situation is the water is finding a seam and then running all over the building. Um, and then the roof is actually white, so it will reflect uh the sunlight and and the heat and should be more energy efficient, which we'll be able to track and determine if it's a good fit for other buildings um year-over-year if we can start tracking how much we may be saving in energy um to really use for Lord knows we have a lot of projects in the next decade. We may be able to do a few roofs in that time frame.

And I would like to add to Dr. O one point like the contractor and the TMCO, it's nationwide. They did a lot of the roofs. We review very carefully their portfolio. Also compare for us the financial savings in 20 years. Instead to pay for example the prices are going up $100 for a square foot. We will be paying only 18 because we will not be doing full replacement. Anyone else? Dr. Sager. So this is a newer technology. Has it been used in our climate?

Uh that's not newer technology. It's existing technology. It's all over in nationwide. They have I walked three years ago a lot of the roofs in the Huntley High School. This is completely not new. It will be new only for our district. Okay. So, it's new for us, but it's been tested in this climate. That's what I wanted to get to.

My only other question was um the water is finding its way in through the seams and this building. So are is there also interior damage that the your team will have to repair as a result of the leaks? We um we we did discover that issue after the winter and we were able right away to control the leaks because it's very important for the students. During the summer, we did all of the restoration work. We painted like I mentioned right now we have a dripping. We don't have even leaks. We have a small drip that we are able to control, but everything was already restorated inside the school.

Thank you. Anyone else? Okay. Call the role.

Heneman, I. Vero, yes. Baldino, yes. Chung, yes. Dustling, yes. Sager, I. Cryer, I. Motion carries 70. Thank you. We move on to 143 under business services. 1431. Motion in a second, please. Motion Baldino. Second. Chang. Questions. Board members. Call the RO. Oh, sorry. We're We're at a accounts payable bill. Which are you going to do these by individuals? Yes. Yes. You good? Yeah. Okay. Call the role. Palino, yes. Chung, yes. Dustling,

yes. Fioro, yes. Hinaman, I. Sager, I. Cryer, I. Motion carries 70. Okay. 1432, please. Motion in a second. So moved. Furo. Second. Chun. Discussion. Call a roll. Furo. Yes. Chung, yes. Baldino, yes. Dustling, yes. Heinaman, I. Sager, hi. And Croitzer, I. Motion carries 70. 1433. Motion in a second, please. Motion Baldino. Second, Chan.

Thank you. Board members. Miss Baldino, would you like to start anything? No. No. Okay. any board member, Mr. Dustling.

Well, as it previous discussions on this topic, uh I was against it uh against approval on it. I I still am for uh for the various reasons. Um, one is the cost of a property that we paid for it is uh barely covered by by what uh this bid is and there's renovations and some relocations that we put in that's well over a million dollars that we won't recover. That's first thing. Second thing is Bradford Allen uh has got a plan for the whole southern corridor of Arlington Heights Road. Uh they have it planned out for years to come. and they obviously have investors that are interested in in investing that and u they'll get resources for those funds. 2123 is again prime property once they buy that that property is large enough that if they want to petition Arlington Heights they could divide that in two which may not double the co the uh value of the property but it'll certainly make it uh something that um that they could develop on a smaller basis rather than just use the property for itself. property sits uh on has two ex two entrances or an entrance and an exe and exit on either side. Uh so it's prime moving into that area. Uh when you take a look at uh the fact that the Bears are rethinking what they're going to do with uh uh with their location moving into possibly the old uh racetrack site. Uh in my mind that even increases the value of this property more than more than uh what it is. In my mind, I think we can afford to wait. Uh, and, uh, when you take a look at what we're what we're looking at, $5 million, uh, when you take a look at our overall budget, uh, yes, $5 million is a lot of money, but you in relationship to the overall budget, we can we can wait a while and see what develops here because

it's only it's really going to develop. Bradford Island, they aren't rookies. they know what they're doing and they're grabbing this property so that they can develop it uh in the future and even make more money off it. Why shouldn't we? Thank you. Any other board member, Mr. Heinman? Yeah, I have to agree. Um I think that's a very valuable piece of property and I'm not sure we've explored all of the possibilities for it. Um there's just lots of opportunities and um I think there'll even be more in the near future.

You Dr. Chung.

Um yeah, I'm a I'm a yes vote on selling the property and the main driver is just that the millions of dollars in facility needs across our schools. Um, I just don't think it's in the district's best interest to hold on to a property that we aren't using right now, that we don't need right now. Um, especially because it's draining our resources as long as we hold on to it. I think that selling the property um would allow us to direct additional funds to support students in the building where learning occurs. Um, I hear you. I I do agree that probably if we had the luxury of time that the the value of the property would increase, but I think right now our focus needs to be on the buildings where we serve our students every day and um the funds from from the sale would uh be a huge help. So I would be a yes.

Dr. Sager.

Yeah, I'm I'm a yes as well. Um, I do want to express a bit of frustration in the mechanism by which school boards sell property. Uh, if someone was coming to you to buy your house and it was a single individual, you would be able to negotiate with that person to find the right price. That's how economics is supposed to work. And the fact that a school board has to take a seal bid puts us in a bind where we I think you know pro potentially if we could negotiate properly we could get more money for it. But that being said it is an opportunity cost to hold on to a piece of property. We shouldn't be investing in real estate. If we have needs and we do have needs that will go directly to educating students. We have to take that holding on to it while it appreciates. we're still going to be stuck with when you sell it as a school board, the system is not set up to do that in the most efficient way possible. So, I think uh getting that money and those funds available to our students and meeting our needs today is an opportunity that we have to take. Thank you,

Mr. Fioro.

Um I respect uh Bill and Mark's opinion, but I'm also a yes. And uh one of the reasons that I am a yes is I I take a look what happened with the Forest View roof. I know there are other buildings that had some immediate needs this week and the 5.5 million. Um I know it's just shortterm. It might not we might not get that for another 9 to 12 months, but we might be able to use that cash quickly if we uh have to move on some of the facilities that we're looking to do um now rather than waiting till later. Thank you. The only thing I would add just as a as a point of clarification on on the timeline and delaying. I actually explored that option with um uh with with Mr. Reckless at Arlington Hein. He reminded me that that it's it's within a TIF district and the incentive for developers to spend more is early in the TIF district because as the TIF begins to expire, their incentive of using those uh waines. So yes, typically if a property does gain value over time, however, in a tiff district, it's gets like inverted. Just for point of clarification.

Okay. Um there's been a we've been discussing this for a few months now and I know uh um I've talked to Mr. Heinman about other needs for the property, but in 52 years, we haven't built another facility. And uh I think if we needed another facility, we would have sought out some property. And the last time we sold a building, it was NSSO. And I'm guessing it's probably we gave it to them for a dollar. I'm I'm guessing. I don't know. Back in the the mid 80s. And if you look at that NSSO building, how small it is. I can't believe that we were there. Um, and I really think that you have to look at that dollar amount that we're looking at, which is astronomical. And I'm sure if it was in dollars today, it'd be well over 900 million. And I really I really feel that we need to show the public that we're serious about this. were serious about saving money towards all these uh needs um in the building. And if you were here a few months back where they talked about if you took the building and turned it upside down, what didn't come out is is what what the needs are for the building. And that really kind of shocked me because you u when we had those meetings with the students, we met with the students two or three times a year. They wanted stuff that they could see. And that's not even in the equation that 866 million and uh it which kind of scares me about what the dollar amount would really be but um we are here today so um please call the role.

Fioro yes yes. Ser I no. Dustling no. Quitzer I. Motion carries 52. Thank you. Okay, moving on. Um, do we want to talk about next steps, Dr. Adawa, or would you rather wait? I think Dr. Prepared just to remind everyone of of what the next steps are. Uh, and then of course, I mean, you know, Mr. Crowley's here from Franensic to guide in the process if needed.

Sure. Uh, thank you. Um, similar to any real estate transaction, the approval of the sale of the property tonight is the first of several milestones that need to be hit in order for this to close. Um, following approval tonight starts the feasibility period. So, that allows Bradford Allen 120 days to go in and investigate the physical and environment environmental condition of the real estate. That period is set to expire on December 19th of this year. And once that period is over, $50,000 of the earnest money that they provided to the district becomes non-refundable. Following the feasibility period is the approval period where Bradford Allen has the right to pursue any zoning and development approvals for the project. That period is the longest period. It lasts 210 days. So that puts us at about July 17th of 2026. um that can potentially be extended by another 90 days if Bradford Allen deposits an additional $50,000 in non-refundable earnest money for the district. Following the approval period, then we move into closing. So closing needs to occur within 20 days of the expiration of the approval period. So that will be either August of 2026 or October of 2026 depending on the length of the approval period. All of this timing could accelerate, but at the buyer's sole discretion. So, at worst, we're looking at a potential closing in October of 2026, but if Bradford Allen chooses, they could accelerate any of these periods and it could happen sooner.

In the meantime, we're paying utilities. Yeah. Okay. Um, anything to add? Anything else? Okay, good. Thank you. Thanks, Brian. Okay, we're at 1441. Uh uh Foya request um bill. Um motion to whatever it is. Um 14. Yeah. 1441. 14.1. Okay. Second motion for you read. Discussion. Call the role. Dustling, yes. Theorito, yes. Baldino, yes.

Chung, yes. Hinineman, I. Zager, I. And Criter, I. Motion carries 70. Thank you. We're on to um 1451 human resources. Um um motion and a second, please. I move to approve the personnel transaction reports for August 21st, 2025, including the termination of the outofd district co-curricular sponsor Gary Pros. A second, please. Second. Baldino. Call the role. Sager, I. Baldino, yes. Chung, yes. Dustling, yes. Fioro, yes. Hinine, I. And Croitzer, I.

Motion carries 70. Thank you. And now we have two discussion items this evening. Uh Mr. Maggi.

Uh thank you. We are currently own a piece of equipment that's 15 years old regarding um mailings that really doesn't work anymore and needs to be repaired. And our current process to do bulk mailing for the schools is very inefficient. The schools send us information, the lists, the mail room prints it, sends it back to the schools, the schools stuff it fold, put labels on it. Then they ship it back to the mail room to then have it um put stamps and everything on it to get it out. Uh the new process will be the schools will send us the information. The mail room will just take it from there and they'll be able to presort the mail to save money as well in terms of how it's delivered to homes. So looking to save time and and uh money for the district.

Yes. Mr. really functional. Yeah. I I I had um I I I noticed that we it talked about um reducing some of the workload at the schools. Yeah. Okay. So that they'll be able to take on other things or it's just they're overworked right now or Oh, this is at the school. So your front offices would be stuffing envelopes and that kind of thing. So be able to take that away from them. Okay. And so we're but we're are we adding any staff at the mail room here for doing all that work? No. And and in fact um there there used to to be a we did some restructuring before so that we actually um reduce some FTE. Great. Thanks Patrick.

Anyone else? Okay, moving on. Um NSSO Dr. Sager.

Thank you. So uh I sent all the board members the u memo from Dr. the superintendent of NSSO and her recommendation that uh as part of the strategic plan process that NSSO underwent to uh make a governance change in the the structure of the governance for NSSO. Uh currently there's a governing board made up of a board member from each of the eight member districts uh that operates similar to how our board operates. And the idea of going to a change two-tier system is to bring in an operations board, a board made up of the superintendent of the member districts that would act under OMA because it's a, you know, governing uh board, not a operations board in this case, and they would be brought in because they're the experts on what our students need at NSSO and to bring them closer to the organization because it's supposed to be a cooperative, not an independently run u organization and the idea at least from my perspective is NSSEO has needs to make changes. It has facilities needs that are uh ongoing. It has it has to deal with changes in necessary programming. So as the needs of each school district change, what they need for their uh students placed into NSSO has changed over the years. And so getting the superintendent involved in that more directly is an important part of uh proper governance for the uh NSSO. The governing board would still remain and need to approve the budget and meet you know half as often as it does now but the uh operations board would streamline the process. So if anybody has any questions I'd be happy to.

Mr. Ferto, do you want to add anything you were in on this process when they did the strategic plan? Um, I'm just thankful that we're finally getting to that point we should have been at like 6 to9 months ago. But, uh, um, I do want to ask a couple questions. Um, was there a group that came up with some of the changes cuz when I left um, they had not considered themselves to be, um, they were calling it like a committee or something else. And so, I noticed that change and I also noticed it looked like they they're starting to cut back a little bit on the operating board number of meetings. So, I just want to know if you have any information on that.

I I don't necessarily have uh insight into why those changes have happened. I think it comes largely from Dr. Schnor's discussions with the superintendent about what they feel that operating board needs to contribute and when there are milestones throughout the year where there are things that need to be approved. So you know you don't necessarily have to meet every single month but there will be months where operations are you know being decided on and those have to happen faster and and I think what it what it does is it sort of re removes a game of telephone that happens now where the the information is shared at a governing board meeting. It goes to the local representative. The representative speaks to the superintendent. superintendent speaks to whatever department they need to and then it has to go back through to make that information known and there are decisions that often need to be made faster than that.

Thanks Joe. Dr. Row, do you want to add anything?

Uh, no. I think I think Dr. Sager's covered it. We've talked about it pretty extensively. I would encourage you if you have not um watched the video that Dr. nor was included in in Dr. Sager's u email. It explains the rationale why and and why her recommendation is what it is. I think she hit it spot on and I think this will be a productive move and just as as Dr. Sager said, NSSO is a cooperative. It's not a standalone school district. It's been operating as a standalone school district for many years. Um this is intended to be provide additional supports and and quicker action. So, I'm I'm excited about the opportunity to uh work more closely with Dr. Schnore and her team to uh help the support system for our neediest students in our collective school district. Um, Dr. Row, we uh passed an agreement a few months ago with NSSEO um and how does this fit into what we're talking about tonight? an agreement with an SSO. We passed a resolution charging NSSO to make this change. Yes.

And actually it wasn't to make the change. It was more a reflection of our resolution um urged NSSO representatives like Dr. Sager has done and Mr. Furito has done. District 214 has been the model for that of ensuring that their vote is reflective of the entire board not as an individual.

Dr. Sager, what's the timeline with um with this with the other districts? So what needs to so the next step would be at the September 3rd NSSO governing board meeting the next one that the governing board would pass the draft articles of agreement which has the modification to the governance structure and it's not passing it for officially what it does is it transmits it to the member boards and then there has to be a 90-day uh review period. This is written into the the current articles of agreement where the boards then have 90 days to decide to pass it. If a majority do then it becomes uh operational. So December it sounds like

yes with with the goal of I believe the new structure starts in January. January. Okay. It should be on our agenda for your vote to approve on December 11th. Okay. So so all I need now is confirmation that hey I should make sure it gets transmitted to us officially. I've already given you the draft, but it um I support it. Any anyone not support it? Okay. So, to your knowledge, is every district supposed to send these draft uh talk about these draft articles with their boards of education?

Yes. So the idea would be on um once we do our September 3rd transmission of the articles then each member district so all the eight member districts should have at one of their meetings a discussion of it and we'll have to v choose to vote on it. Okay. I just want to be clear the process. Yes. Okay. Okay. Hey Bill, we're done before 10. Can I have a motion to adjurnn? It's only because we started at 6:30. So moved. Second. Call the roll. Verito. Yes. Chung. Yes. Baldino. Yes. Dustling.

Yes. Hineman. I. Sager. Hi. Citer. I. Motion carries 70.

Thank you. We are adjourned. [Music] [Music] [Music] Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey down. [Music]