Curriculum Workshop

All right, good evening everyone. This is the curriculum workshop and special meeting of the Downers Grove School District 58 Board of Education here on Monday, February 23rd, 2026 at 7 p.m. at the Downers Grove Civic Center. This meeting is being livereamed on the uh for the public on the village of Downers Grove's YouTube channel. Melissa, will you please call roll? >> Member Bernard >> here. >> Member Doshi >> here. >> Member Ellis and member Hannis are absent. Member >> here. Member Thomas >> here. Member Hughes >> here. Tonight, members of the audience will have an opportunity to provide public comment to the board later on in the agenda. The board asks anyone wishing to make a comment to please fill out one of those cards by the door and place it in the basket. Uh I have allotted 30 minutes tonight for public comment. We're going to start out as we always do with the pledge of allegiance. If everyone would please rise. 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. >> All right. To kick off the curriculum workshop, I'd like to welcome up Lizer. How are you? >> Good evening, board. Um, I want to go through some of our agenda items for tonight's curriculum workshop. We're going to start with our winter data snapshot, which will review our MAP and AS web data that um, benchmark testing took place um, in January. Then we will look at our middle school math pilot update. Um, we'll have a presentation about middle school athletics and activities as we continue our transition planning to our new middle school model. and then we will wrap up tonight's um curriculum workshop with some district committee updates. So our objectives tonight as we look at our um winter data snapshot is to look at the district level overview of our winter 2026 benchmark assessment data. Our this data gives us an opportunity to discuss our review of data and how we use the data to respond to students needs at the building and district level and then highlight areas of of success and areas of focus for the remainder of the 2025 2026 school year. So as a reminder with winter data this allows the district to review student achievement and growth in alignment with their end of the year projection through the ECRA model. I'll have a um slide where I kind of explain what that ECRA model is um further in the um presentation. Our mid-year benchmark assessments allow us to analyze our current systems of support and make adjustments as needed. But recognizing that winter is really just that. It's a snapshot. It gives us an opportunity to see how our students are progressing towards their um growth targets, but also how they are doing in um terms of their achievement as well. And then we utilize additional classroom assessment data which adds to our staff data conversations in relation to student success in the classroom. So an overview of that ECRA model as we start at the bottom of the arrow and move forward. We take all of last year's universally administered assessments and ECRA creates a projection for the students both in terms of achievement as well as growth. we receive an individual student um composite achievement score which is their propensity and then from that ECRA projects um future scores for both fall, winter and spring. When we receive those actual scores that tells us how students are progressing towards their achievement and their growth and then at the end of the year we will take their final growth measure in spring and look at our overall growth progress. In the winter, our um students take their MAP assessment which is administered again three times a year, fall, winter, and spring. And then we also utilize Ames web early numeracy for um kindergarten and first grade. And then this year we had early literacy in kindergarten. first grade when we adjusted our MTSS processes, we are currently only giving our first graders the oral reading fluency assessment and then only giving probes if students um showed that they needed additional um diagnostic assessments. So, we don't have an early literacy um as web score for reading this year. So when we take a look at our mathematics growth data, what we see is that all of our elementary schools had met their growth target in ex and had hit expected growth. We do see that our middle schools are still in that um lower thanex expected range, but we are addressing that and you will receive an update today um from our pilot um process in terms of what we are doing already to kind of meet that trend because that's a consistency that we've seen over the past couple of years. The one thing of note though is that if you look at the percentage of students meeting benchmark, we do see those numbers continue to increase including at our middle schools. So that is just another place of being able to look at both the achievement of our students as well as their projected growth models. Consistent with that is going to be our seventh and eighth grade scores again um in relation to their growth. But we do see that um in terms of our seventh grade scores that percent meeting benchmark consistent with other grade levels. Our eighth grade is a little bit lower in that um sense but we also see our fourth grade students hitting higher than expected growth. Typically we will see that at our middle intermediate level. Um you know in many cases we can attribute that sometimes to our acceleration process when we look at individual student um successes. As we do with every um data snapshot we also want to take a look at our subgroups. So we do see um progress being made especially in that growth um category in all of our subgroups um except for in our homeless population. That is something that our schools continue to monitor and how we best support our um homeless population especially because we do um see that that's a more transient population and so the students represented in that subgroup are often different than past school years. So that's always a group that we're monitoring in addition to our um mobility data. As we take a look at that reading um growth summary, we see that all of our schools um except for HERIC were in the expected growth range with HERIC just being under in that um you know below expected growth. What we do also see though is that percent meeting benchmark continues to increase. One thing of note is that we do see often when we see high achievement specifically in our IR scores that sometimes that growth target can be raised a little bit higher when we're only looking at MAP we tend to see um less growth in math or MAP than we do in AR. So sometimes we have to balance um where that growth model is coming from and be able to ensure that we're looking at each individual student and making um you know decisions about their instructional model based um on their classroom success as well, not just on their benchmark assessments. Again, all of our grade levels except for seventh grade hitting that expected growth target, but you do see again that percent meeting benchmark being in that high 70s for seventh grade. So, um you know, a good percentage of our students hitting that benchmark and all of our subgroups meeting their expected growth targets um in reading. And then this is where we may look at our um percent meeting benchmark and see how are we helping support and lifting that achievement level of those students as they're increasing their growth targets or hitting their growth targets. I wanted to share a visual from the ECR platform. So, as we look at those kind of stagnant PDFs and the information that's available to us, this is really the screen that our teachers are utilizing to help support um instructional decisions that are happening in the classroom. So, um this is a um screen of all fifth graders map mathematics. Um and what each school gets is just their students represented. So each of those individual dots is a student in fifth grade and how they um achieved and grew in uh or on their winter map test. So that those that blue what we call river is the expected growth target. So any of the circles within that blue river are students who have hit their expected growth. Anyone above that blue river is going to be students who had higher than expected growth. And anyone who's below that river is going to be students who are um lower than expected growth. When we look at achievement, we're starting at the the left side of the chart as um students who are maybe not hitting their their benchmarks and have lower um achievement than others. And then as we go all the way to the right of the chart, those are our students who are in that high um achieving range. The green line is students who have met their benchmark target. So that kind of gives us an analysis and we're able to differentiate the students that we need to um help support by looking at that left end of the um of the model below the river of students. What interventions are they currently in? If they're not in intervention, is this a new is are they a student who is newly popped on our radar and what supports are we going to provide? if they're in that low achieving range and they're within the the river or above the river, what has helped u make them successful in meeting their growth targets? And then as we move along to the right side, our high achieving students, what supports are in place for them already? What differentiation are we presenting in the classroom? And are they in our acceleration um program or potentially our gifted program as well? So, there's a lot of information on this chart that helps our teachers navigate um how to best support the instruction of the students in their classrooms. Again, this is all 512 fifth graders represented on this chart. At the individual school level, they see their specific students at their grade level. Um we've also had teachers build um custom groups so they can also hone in on the students that are specifically in their class and not the entire grade level at once. So, it just gives us options of ways to look at data when we're utilizing the ECRA platform. Um, ECRA is also coming out with a new data dashboard for um schools to to start and districts to start using and so I'll have some um like prototype pictures in our spring data snapshot which I'm really excited to share. um we've seen some um additional ways that we can disagregate data use utilizing that instead of a stagnant single dot that tells us whether growth targets are being met or not. So when we utilize our winter data again this is that snapshot midyear to help us analyze and make decisions about instructional um supports we're going to provide to students. So we support our teachers through implementation of the resources. You know we have a robbo rob robust um curriculum initiative where when we implement new um curricular resources we ensure that the teachers have professional learning through our PLMs um as well as any additional um supports that they may need. Utilizing consistent protocols for our data review has been something that has been um really a a great shift for our teachers because everyone's asking the same questions. Um and we will see that even grow further as we implement PLC plus over the course of the next um school year. When we have that opportunity to have a shared understanding of data, we're able to build academic plans for students and have common conversations across schools and across the district. This also gives us the opportunity to identify students who are in need of academic support and targeted enrichment through this data review process. So at the building level, principles and um grade level partners and teachers are talking about what are the groupings of students that we have in front of us. Who are the students that we want to ensure are receiving intervention? We're going to bring that to our IRT groups and have them take a look at data and potentially do some diagnostic assessments. And then who are our students who kind of hit above the mark and what enrichment opportunities are we providing with differentiation in the classroom? Um, but we are also in the midst of analyzing our data and I'll share this on the next slide for math acceleration and gifted programming. So that's another way that we ensure that we are utilizing the data to make instructional plans for our students. We continue to build and implement consistent intervention processes across buildings including progress monitoring. So that's something that we have been working with our um reading specialists, our math interventionists as well as our resource teachers and ensuring again that consistent practice. And so our next step in data analysis and school improvement, our building teams meet by grade level to review this winter data using ECRA as their starting point. So tier one data is reviewed to see whether the winter data encourages to encourages us to stay the course or to make um instructional adjustments at an overall grade level or a specific content area. A deeper dive into student data, including classroom assessments and adjustments to instruction and additional professional learning opportunities are just some of the many ways that we respond to the data that we see. So our teachers not only have ECRA as a um a starting point, but they can also use their classroom data at the elementary level, they are utilizing forefront for data entry, but it's also a great analysis tool to see how students are um meeting their grade level standards at the middle school and ELA. Common lit has a great platform that allows them to allows our ELA teachers to review data within the system. And as we talk about the math pilot, we'll see that that's something that is consistent in um the resources that we are reviewing as well. Additionally, individual students continue to be identified for um specific targeted support. So that's the time when we talk about how have students done in um identified intervention. Are they meeting those goals that we've set for them? Do we need to set a higher or new goal or are they ready to maybe lower the amount of intervention they're receiving? also do we need to increase our intervention. So all those conversations are happening as we do our data analysis then as I shared um when our data is gathered to begin that eligibility determination for both acceleration and gifted programming. And as excited as everyone is to get those notifications that is something that does not happen until the end of April. Um if you have questions, you're always welcome to, you know, ask um building principles. We tell parents that to to talk through what we can do to help support enrichment, but really letting us um complete the process and get our teacher rating scales completed. All of that information will be shared out with families by the end of April. It's a lot of information in quickly. So, any questions about the winter data snapshot? >> Questions or comments at this time? It's exciting to see um that most of those subgroups and >> schools to schools we're seeing growth. >> Um one thing that concerns me though that I know we've spoken about before as a group is that opportunity gap um in terms of some of our subgroups and from school to school. I mean looking at math there's a range from 81% meeting the benchmark to 56 depending on what school you're at. Mhm. >> Um for subgroups 70 versus 30. >> Um those were for math and then reading similar 57 to 82 and 24 to 83 on the subgroups. I would love to see and some of it was included in the presentation. You know that you're looking at the data and what interventions but um what specifically we're doing for some of those opportunity gaps. >> Absolutely. So I think that is one of the things that as um groups are are or groups of teachers are looking at their data and they're recognizing if a particular subgroup is is struggling in a in a certain area really just being very um explicit in the instruction that we're providing and also the interventions that we're providing. But um one of the things that we can also take a look at and something I can share in the spring is that analysis of the progression that our students in those populations are making. Right? So like looking at the trend data for for those groups. Um the trickiest part is we do know some of these populations are our more transient um populations and so it's not always the same students who are represented in these subgroups. But I do think it's an important um piece to share and um we'll be sure to bring that with um to the spring data snapshot. And for the school to school, again, it's gonna our schools are very different dependent and again on the population and things like that, but um for schools that have similar demographics, I guess I'd have to dig deeper into that one, but that range there um what would you attribute that to? >> Yeah, I think when you look at the percentage of each subgroup in each of the schools, I think that that's kind of where we see some of those discrepancies lie. And so a um a school that may have a higher low-income population, a higher um homeless population, we may see some discrepancies to some of our schools that may have students within that subgroup, but not necessarily a high representation. Um and but we again we can kind of look at some of that trend analysis um school to school and share that um with the board. >> Thank you. >> Yeah, absolutely. there questions, comments to piggy back on the the subgroups and all that. >> Uh in the spring last time we looked at it and and it'd be nice to see it again. Uh the difference between the kids that have spent some time with us, >> correct? >> So that we can see a trajectory of the impact that our district is having. Uh because multiple times today, you mentioned that this subgroup is one that frequently changes. And so while we may not see a lot of change in meeting the benchmark, what I want to know is if we've had those kids three years now, are we seeing a a different trajectory for them as opposed to the kids that that are turning over every year? Yeah. >> Um so we we looked at that a little bit last spring. If we could do that again this spring, that would be great. >> Yes, absolutely. The other question I have for you on math is um back several years ago uh the the test changed between like fifth and then six seven eight we had a little bit of a problem with the way some of the numbers had with kids that were accelerated that got normalized. >> What I can't remember I think we've talked about it before is for our kids in the middle school that are in math one and math two. >> Correct. >> Um >> how does that impact this this test? Does it grow enough to test that ability that goes beyond um eighth grade? >> Yes. So, within the um 68 math assessment, there are standards questions that hit all the way up into algebra 2. And so, they are being exposed to new material on the MAP test. It's just a matter of how much of that content are they being exposed to in their classroom to be able to answer those questions. And so many of our students will see we go deep with our, you know, we um go as deep as we can with our with our standards. And we'll talk a little bit about that through the math um pilot as well with some of the new resources that we've been piloting. Um but the exposure to some of those standards won't have happened within the mathematics classroom. And so we do need to kind of recognize that some of our students are being presented with algebra 2 questions and you know trig questions that maybe they aren't exposed to within the classroom. >> Okay. Okay. But for our kids that are gifted that are, you know, aren't >> accelerated, the questions definitely go high enough to to support that. >> Yeah. I think one of the things with NWA map in particular though, the higher you get on the RIT scale for mathematics in particular, what we start to see is, you know, a generic rule of thumb is 235 means you're ready for algebraic thinking. 240 means you're ready for uh geometry. As you start to get above 240, which many of our kids who are in math one and math two will will be in that higher range, the typical growth number is um might be one or two points at that particular level. And the the RIT score itself, it has a plus or minus three margin. So it does once you start getting kids in the 99th percentile in terms of achievement, it's not necessarily an exact science because the RIT score basically tells you that this kiddo could have scored, you know, lower than three points or higher than three points on this one. And so if that typical growth range is inside that RIT range for kids who are in math one or math 2, those are some of our our highest achieving students, it it does become a little less predictable than it would if you know your typical growth would be five or six or something like that. >> Great. Thank you. >> Anyone else? Other questions or comments? All right. Thank you. >> At this time, I'm going to um bring up Dr. Christine Prester. She's going to talk through the middle school math pilot updates with you. We have um a couple of our piloting teachers to present um on our resources as well. >> Good evening. This year, the math committee um the middle school math committee had two main goals. The first is to preview the draft of the Illinois comprehensive numeracy plan and the second is to evaluate our pilot of Carnegie's middle school math solution and amplified Desmos. So brief update about the Illinois comprehensive numerousy plan. The second draft was released last week and so as a committee at our next two meetings this year, we'll be looking at the key themes and what we can pull out. We're expecting in June the plan um to um be published. Um I just like with the literacy plan, this is really great timing for us as a district as we are um focusing on middle school math and soon we'll be focusing on elementary math as well. I included some key takeaways on this slide. You know, in the plan, you will see that educators will build and use evidence-based numeracy instructional strategies to strengthen students mathematical understanding and confidence. True numerousy extend extends beyond procedural fluency to encompass reasoning, problem solving in the ability to communicate and apply mathematical ideas. Instru instruction should incorporate multiple representations including concrete representational and abstract models and we need to use highquality instructional materials and tasks that promote reasoning and conceptual understanding. Just a few of the things that we are seeing um in the draft this year. We um are piloting and we are excited to share just a little bit about the resources that we have used in the classroom. Um we have been able to have the entire middle school math department pilot um those that are teaching seventh and eighth grade math. And then we've also have three um sixth grade teachers um pilot as well and the elementary schools that will go on to teach math at the middle schools. Um at this time I want to invite up two of those staff members here tonight. We have Casey Chick. She's a sixth grade math teacher who's part of our pilot. And then we also have Ganna Frail who's a Heric middle school math teacher. On this slide you can just see um our two resources in the brief timeline uh timelines that we piloted. Um we started the year with Carnegie um piloting to about November. We had a transition point there that was specific to the grade level. So by December everyone was in to amplify Desmos. Um on this slide you can see the Carnegie topics that sixth, seventh, and eighth grade were able to um get through in those three months. Um I love piloting because I love to try those new resources with my students and they enjoy it as well. Um these are the guiding principles that Carnegie um reminds us about that all students are capable learners that um we learn by doing. There's a lot of hands-on um in this material and also that uh we're not going to master those skills the first time and in Carnegie we'll see those skills coming over and over again um throughout the year. And collaboration is a big part of Carnegie. There's a lot of group work. There's a lot of partnering um a lot of discourse and conversation during those lessons which is important. Um this is a typical routine of our lesson that we would go through on the daily. Uh first we would engage students in that prior knowledge maybe do some practice problems that they might have um encountered the previous years or in a couple lessons prior um to kind of get them thinking about what they need in order to move on in the lesson. Um, next they're going to develop those conceptual skills and understanding. Um, that's a big part of con of Carnegie that we're going to build those conceptual understandings before we move on to the procedural. Um, one of the lessons that we did in my classroom is we're working on area of um, triangles and parallelograms and trapezoids. And students were able to use um grid paper and cut the paper apart and kind of see the relationship of the height and the base um with a rectangle as well as a parallelogram and a trapezoid and a triangle and kind of understand conceptually how those heights and bases compare and how then the um the uh the area the area um is going to compare and how that Um, what am I trying to think? The um A equals BH. Help me out. The Thank you. The formula is going to um compare with all three of those um shapes. And so students are able then to practice those um formulas and demonstrate what they know. They're going to work together and they're going to talk about it. um Carnegie has them discussing using the math vocabulary and really working together before they um encounter the independent practice. Um additional components for Carnegie were um technology based. So they have um what's called Mafia and it's kind of an AI um tutor coach kind of um procedural um tool that they use to um kind of practice that procedural fluency. So students are then going to practice those um formulas to um press in numbers and kind of work with the formula in more of a procedural basis instead of just that conceptual understanding. Um and then students are able to access a a help button and they can get hints. They're also able to get solutions and help online. So that's helpful when they're working from home. Um, also within Carnegie is our math stream, which is video um, of the lessons that are available for students online um, at home. Uh, if they are struggling with the concepts in class, they're able to go home and rewatch lessons and look at their workbooks and kind of follow along. As well as if they're absent for the day, they can um, access the lesson at home, work through those um, lessons at home. Um the master room is also interactive. So it will pause. It will allow the student time to work. It will follow up with questions and students are able to um work on the the skills that they were learning, press in their answers, and Mastering will tell them if they're correct or not, and then move them along in the lesson. So um they were able to use that tool. Um teachers found the tool valuable if they had to be out of the classroom for a class period or the day. and um students could continue their learning with the Carnegie instructors online which was kind of nice. So um that was Carnegie that we piloted and I'll let Gianna tell you about amplify. All right. So good evening everyone. Amplify Desmos math was our second pilot curriculum. We're currently utilizing this in our classrooms as well while we work through our math committee process. Similar to Carnegie, we have some of the key topics as well as their aligned standards that have been covered in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. Um, during our Amplify time with Amplify, they have four kind of core values that they focus on. First is math that motivates. We want students, you know, to be motivated to learn math and engage with it. Um, as a math teacher, I know it's not every student's favorite, so we really want to bring them that excitement to do math. Um, student thinking is valuable and made evident. I see this in my classroom with Amplify. Um there's a lot of opportunities for both verbal discussion as well as with the online platform. They can share explanations with their classmates while also in an anonymized mode. So students don't feel, you know, embarrassed if somebody knows it's them. That's been a very valuable feature for that element. Uh the third is access to grade level math for every student every day. We don't want students to feel intimidated by the math and that level of being able to access it for all students regardless of if they're really high achieving at grade level or maybe struggling with the concepts. They all have some access point. And then the fourth one is a structured approach to problem based learning. The first kind of sub uh category of that is low floor high ceiling tasks. In my classroom, I see this with our warm-ups and our activity intros. It's kind of a very entry point using prior knowledge. Every student can access it, but it also allows students who are advanced or accelerated to show that high level of thinking. They also encourage a conceptual understanding and procedural fluency similar to Carnegies as well where we base off our exploration activities and then build towards that algorithm or procedure with each concept. And then social and collaborative classrooms. I've seen a lot more talking about math in the classroom, which has been really awesome to see with this curriculum. Um, some of their routine focuses on a four-step process. So, first is activate. I mentioned a little bit about that warm-up activity where it has that low floor, every student can access it, but it gets everyone engaged into the lesson, bringing in prior knowledge, whether it's from a previous lesson or just previous general knowledge. Sometimes it'll ask them just to tell a story about a scenario and relate it to the math we're doing. Then we generate the launch, monitor, connect. This is with the basis of our lessons. So typically two to three main activities that we focus on that teachers pace with our monitoring system on the online platform. With that, if it's an online lesson, I'm able to monitor how they're doing throughout the lesson by looking at my computer as well as, you know, the general just direct observation of how the classroom's going. But then that also guides the next step of their lesson routine, which is direct instruction. If I see a lot of X's popping up for a particular section, that might be something I spend a little more time on with more direct instruction with students versus some areas that they're all really doing super well at. We might move along to the parts that they were struggling with. And then it ends with a synthesis of the lesson. So what were the key takeaways for students? What were the main components of the lesson that they want to focus on? And then finally, every lesson has a lesson practice embedded within the workbook. Um, many times at the middle school level, this is assigned as their homework for the evening. Um, but there are also additional practices as well as extension and intervention tools that we can use with students in the classroom with small groups or if they're struggling or need a little more practice. Some additional components that Amplify had was key takeaways for teachers. I find for myself with a little bit of a different procedure with Amplify. Um, this helps me understand how to not like overte some of the takeaways of the lesson because we'll see it in later components. So, it's nice to see when I'm preparing for a lesson, this is what we really want to focus in on and knowing what's going to come next in the lessons as well. Um, Amplify also is continuing to develop their refresh videos. So, pretty short um, concise videos that'll come every few lessons that focus in on what were the main components, main topics. We use these in preparations for assessments as well as for struggling students or students that were absent. So that was a little bit about our amplify routine and then I'll hand it back over to Christine. >> Thank you both for sharing more about the resource just having their perspective of utilizing them every day. I knew they could capture it better than I could for you. So thank you both for being here tonight. So we began our or continued our committee work um just last week. We met for the first time to really look at the feedback from our teachers and um from our students. Um we began with reviewing how we got there, you know, looking at during our curricular review year. We looked at our student of achievement data over our last implementation. We looked at how much are students using our current resource or how much are teachers using our current resource in the classroom. and then also evaluated big ideas with a curriculum review rubric. We began um last week going through the consensus decision-making process. And what that is for us is we read a lot. You know, there are people outside of the room that piloted the curriculum that give us a lot of feedback on how it went. We have a robust rubric for them to fill out um both with, you know, quantitative items where they are rating things on a scale and also open-ended questions. And so we take the time to read through all of that and tease out strengths and also concerns or weaknesses through this process. We read, we discuss, we listen to those key points and what what are those major strengths and those concerns? Um we want to eventually get to that question next week hopefully. Um the which curriculum will position our district and each teacher to provide the most intentional and effective instruction for their students. So, our anticipated timeline as we work through the committee work is at the March 9th board meeting, we would be able to bring back a recommendation um for you um of our next steps for math. Um at that time, if we're at that point, we would put on display any material for the community. That would be at the Downers Grove Public Library and here at district office at the civic center. And then that recommendation for approval would be at the April 13th board meeting. So one question we get, you know, especially when it's paired with uh you our winter benchmarking moment is how can we utilize our student achievement data to help us make an informed decision on which resource was most effective in the classroom? You know, what could we look like look at? And there are truly just so many variables. you know, when you try to do a comparison, you're going to um from last year to this year, you're going to run into scope and sequence differences. And I'm going to highlight that one for you tonight. You also when we pilot, you know, when any district pilots, you're going to have overlap or gaps between resources. We always heir on the size of over overlap. So, in sixth and seventh and eighth grade, there were a couple topics that we covered in both resources um because there was new something new within that that we wouldn't want to miss for a student to ensure they got a complete seventh grade or eighth grade instructional year. We also know transitions between resources take a little bit of time um for both the students to learn how to navigate a new platform or when they need support where can they go or where how how will those notes look and for our teachers too. Um we also know as we are piloting curriculum um our knowledge of the of the curriculum isn't at that full year length yet. We are living daytoday and trying to get to module to module to get to that understanding of a unit. Um, as Ganna highlighted, some of the tools within resources like the key takeaways help us not overte because it's coming later. We just might not know that yet. And so all of that really impacts that that comparison piece. Um, I did look back at ELA though, like what could could we note anything during this process? We saw a lot of success there. And so starting at the bottom here of this image, you can see our winter data during a curriculum um a committee review year. So um you can see we were at 52% proficiency there and then during the pilot we saw a a little bit of an increase there um but roughly about the same in the 50s profic profic proficiency it was truly when we did that first year of implementation where we saw that big jump in proficiency which was really exciting to see. So that was for grade 8. For seventh grade, we saw similar we saw a little more growth during the pilot year and then that bigger increase um during that first year of implementation. So so why do we see that? You know if I had to you know think of a few reasons starting at the bottom during a curriculum review year you you are having professional learning but it's with a small group. It's just with the committee and everyone knows you're talking about it. So there is a little more focus there. Um, and you you do have a consistent curriculum. It's your pri your prior one. Um, moving into the pilot year, we we do have professional learning, but it's a little limited. We're more logistical focus in the resources. How do you find X or how do I do plank? Um, it may be not as much on the content or seeing the connections between grade levels just yet. Um, there is a lot of increased collaboration in a pilot year. Um, piloting is not for the faint of heart. it is a huge feat to you know prepare each day with an unfamiliar tool for students and give it your best um to them in the classroom. Um and then we have curriculum transitions with which do have an impact but that first year of implementation is the sweet spot right we have had during ELA that monthly professional learning with our instructional coaches and myself where we have unpacked each piece of it we have that increased collaboration with the the team and then we have that consistent curriculum the entire year. you know, I pulled out um you know, where we are with math, you know, um during the committee re review, we were at 67 uh percent proficiency, you know, ha had a little less growth than where we are now, but we are in the 60s, similar to ELA. Um but we did see a a a bit of a bump when we started to focus in on math. um the our proficiency for um grade seven jumped from 49 to 67. For eighth grade, we also saw that jump when we started focusing in on math and that proficiency is about the same. And so as we look towards next year, my hope is we'll go down that same path um as that first year of implementation growth. So, I did find one place where we found, you know, as I teased out the layers, we did see um a a minor improvement in our average student performance in geometry both in seventh and eighth grade. You can see on this graph, that blue line represents where our cohorts were averaging in terms of performance. And it's a, you know, it's a few points higher. Um, and this really highlights the scope and sequence differences in both Carnegie and Amplified Desmos. They begin with the geometry topics of the grade level. Whereas a big idea is we taught those in the second half of the school year. And so though we saw some really great movement when we compare, you know, last year's students to this year's students, we have a lot less students falling in that low category going from 8% down to four. And we're seeing those students in that high achievement category increase as well. Um but truly I think this is a scope and sequence. We have taught some of those standards though not to the completion but at least introduced them and we saw saw some impact there um due to a different scope and sequence. So how can we still use data? Well our teachers see that improvement in student knowledge over the course of the unit. So looking module by module or lesson by lesson going across the unit. How did our students grow in their knowledge of this topic? you know, what is that quality of discussion and explanation of reasoning that we know both of these resources really push students to to thoroughly explain what they're thinking and how they got to that answer. And then at the committee level, we we look at the data from that our teachers are giving us and our students. Um, but our teachers thoroughly tell us about the that impact of the program design, the materials, both the student and the teacher, both the digital and the physical materials. How do that that those assessments um how valuable were they and what aspects of them or were most beneficial to guide instruction? How easy was that implementation of those resources for staff? And then that impact of instruction, how how did they see their students grow um o over the course of the pilot. >> All right, I'm going to turn it to Liz. >> So again, I want to thank Dr. Pster. um our committee members, Dr. Eggmiller was part of our committee, Dr. Perkins was part of our committee. Um so we brought together just um a a wide range of stakeholders into this committee work. Um and we're really proud of um that work that the committee has accomplished. Um as Dr. Pster mentioned, we will um be meeting one more time prior to um bringing a recommendation to the board of education on um a potential resource adoption. And we're kind of looking through that timeline and what some of those professional learning opportunities would need to be for our um teachers both this year and next year as we think about rolling out a new resource. So at this point, any questions from the board of education? >> Questions or comments? >> Yeah. So how how do you foresee that that one more meeting? Right. So there's two weeks before the actual recommendation is going to be presented. >> So how do you kind of envision that meeting like you know how's that going to take place? what a success look like and how do we make sure that every single teacher's kind of feedback is is heard throughout that process. >> Yeah, absolutely. So, we started that work at our meeting last week which really talked about defining consensus like recognizing that we're not voting on, you know, which resource um we are going to pick ultimately. We want to make sure that it's going to answer that question that Dr. Pster um had put on that initial slide. I'm going to go back to it. lot of slides. Kristen, >> which curriculum will position our district and each teacher to provide the most um intentional effective instruction for their students? I want to make sure that I captured the whole thing um as I was, you know, reflecting. What we want to make sure is that we're taking our teacher feedback and they gave us robust feedback absolutely um from all of the pilot teachers as well as from our students and really looking at which of these resources are going to set us up for success. We want to make sure that we are looking at the um potential challenges that we may face and that's something that we have to discuss as a committee. Are these challenges things that we can overcome and then what are some of those steps we're going to take in order to overcome those. And so those are all part of our process. But ultimately, if we want to see success, it's going to be going into that next meeting um ready to kind of wrap our arms around all of the information that we've collected and coming to consensus on what resources best going to meet our needs. Um our hope is that within that 3 hours after utilizing the last three-hour meeting um in connection to this, we are going to be able to to come um to a collective decision. >> Just a follow-up question. you feel like we're rushing that consensus process? >> You know what, to be perfectly honest, we have had um a lot of um committee meetings prior. This is really where we review the implementation and the feedback data, but we've been having conversations about what success with a middle school curricular tool is going to look like um over the course of the last year and a half. And so while we're making a consensus on the two resources that you know we have piloted this school year, I do think that all of our conversations over the past year and a half are really leading us to that discussion because we've talked about that best practice. We've talked about the numerousy plan. Those are all pieces that we're incorporating into our decision-m. >> Yeah. >> How about a cost comparison between the two curriculums both in the initial and if there's any ongoing? >> Yeah, absolutely. That's a great question. And so we have reached out to both vendors to provide us. And right now we are seeing similarities in their um cost analysis for both resources. We'd be looking at doing a multi-year adoption that saves us the most money. Um but it also ensures that we are committing to a resource that we um that we are choosing to purchase. And so anytime that we can add um a multi-year contract onto that, it's going to reduce our costs. We've also talked to our vendors about, you know, how can we leverage maybe some of our grant funds to help support our professional development and is there any wiggle room within the procurement of materials to help offset some of that that we can utilize grant dollars for. So, we're being really thoughtful knowing the budgetary constraints that we're currently in to ensure that we're making the best financial decision as well. >> Yeah. And with either of the curriculums, were there any resources in particular for our EL population? >> Um, both resources did have components that, you know, they they will say are leveraged for language acquisition and and helping support some of our of our sub um groups and populations. Um, we also have um information about um Amplify building out um their intervention system within their platform. And then as um um Casey mentioned, there are some um intervention supports that are also available within Carnegie. So we do know that there are places that we can go within both resources to provide those supports for um some of our subopuls. >> And were any of our dual language classes used as pilots? >> They were not. No. Um our dual actually our seventh and eighth grade students um at O'Neal would have had um those resources as well. >> Okay. right in dual language right now as it progresses >> building a one-way program. >> Right. That's why I was wondering especially when we're talking a multi-year contract there that so we would see some of that progression as our current two-way model starts to move into the middle school which um Miss Crystal will talk about within our um committee updates. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> One question I had was can you share um information on how we map each of the two curriculums to the standards? And the reason I'm asking is because curious how if we think one of the two that we're evaluating covers some of the standards better than others, >> what we want to catch up some of the students >> um who didn't who weren't privy to the new curriculum next year on what maybe perhaps it's providing >> better education on. So somebody coming into the sixth grade that's an eighth grade math has one year in the new curriculum. We and they the teachers are seeing growth in certain topics. Geometry I think one example being talked about today. >> Sure. Is there ways we could we could identify that? >> Sure. So, what we do is both resources fully cover the the year of um standards that we would expect it to. Um and so if a student coming from sixth grade utilizing big ideas this school year if they were not in one of our pilot classes um going into, you know, seventh and or eighth grade math next year depending on their acceleration level. um making sure that they are hitting all of those standards is really tied within the scope and sequence that both lay out um very nicely. So, but while the um the I want to say this the right way, the um order of the standards looks different um within our new resources um different than big ideas, we will see a wide coverage of all of our standards across all of them. Uh, first of all, I, you know, as having a student that's going through it right now, I just want to say it's been, it's been done with an incredible amount of fidelity and I really do appreciate that. It's hard to transition from >> one to another and even just start learning that to begin with and then have to transition it. But it's been a very smooth process and I really feel um, in general because I've talked to other parents as well that it's been a very smooth process. So I I I as a parent I really really appreciate that. Um one question you talked about if we had a couple of pilots in in sixth grade >> and then all the seventh and eighth graders were getting it. What about the fifth and sixth grade students that are in seventh or eighth grade math? Were they all in that pilot program? >> That's a great question. So all of the students who traveled to both O'Neal and Heric were part of that pilot. We did have two schools that um instructed seventh grade math at their buildings. those stuck with big ideas for this year just because those um two teachers will not be teaching math next year and so we really wanted to focus the math pilot on teachers we knew would be um making that transition um and being able to utilize those resources next school year. >> Perfect. >> Yeah. >> And then um one of the things that was talked about in the pilot uh which is really exciting is the is the video and sort of AI learning content. Um, one of the things I would like to encourage with whichever platform we pick is having an opportunity to engage parents and how to utilize these things. One of the pieces of feedback I hear all the time is, "Oh my god, I never expected to have to relearn math to teach my kids these things and, you know, they forget the language or the lingo history." There's words that I use and they're like, "That's not what it's called." And I'm like, "Well, that's what it was called in 1987. I don't know what to tell you." Um, but if there's these great resources, making sure that that parents really know how to utilize those, even if they just have to get a a brief recap for themselves so they know how to explain it using the same language. Uh, I think would be incredibly um valuable. And I I know one of the things we've talked about over the years is really trying to help parents help their their children, you know, through the curriculum. Uh, it sounds like both of these have incredible tools. So, anything we can do to to help share that with them? >> Yeah, I think that's a great idea. I think anytime that we can engage our parents and new resources that we are utilizing, even just so that they have kind of that background knowledge of what their students may be interacting with is going to be hugely beneficial. So, we'll look at what some of those already precreated tools are because um you know, curriculums have parent letters and things that that we can share, but also what are some of the other things that we can do at the district level to help engage families. >> Yeah. I mean, uh I don't know how everybody else feels, but flu season was pretty rough, you know, this year. Um which had a lot of people missing, uh sometimes several days or a full week of school. >> And so, anything we can can do to help close that gap when they're out would be uh greatly appreciated. So, it sounds great that they both have that um >> that additional resource. Uh I think that's incredibly important. >> Yeah. >> Just to piggyback then, Darren, you got my brain thinking there. Do we ever collect feedback from families when we're doing the pilot in terms of uh which pilot um is easier as a parent to help your kid or that you see your kid having more success with? >> Yeah, actually that is not something that that we have typically done. I think it's a a a tool that we could definitely look at, you know, potentially utilizing in the future. I think the students give us such great feedback. You know, they the open-ended questions, some of them are hilarious. um as you read them, but really they do they give you that insight into how they're feeling about a resource that's brand new to them as well. And so, especially at the middle school level, we really kind of hang on on some of those um responses from students. But I think engaging families would be another step that we could take in that process. >> Yeah. >> Anything else? >> Great question. >> Okay, we're going to move on to our third topic, which is going to be middle school athletics and activities. So, I'm going to um ask Mr. Ceil to come up um and share information. >> Thanks. Good evening everyone. The next portion of the workshop is really kind of a continuation of some conversations we've begun to have as we've talked about the middle school transition. And so tonight we want to spend a little bit of time looking at our current offerings around the areas of sports, activities, clubs, and co-curricular music at middle school and then look ahead to begin some discussion about what that may look like in the years to come, particularly next year. We also want to spend some time kind of building some background on what these activities cost us to provide and talk about the potential for considering some participation fees in some of those activities. Again, this is really a maybe not a first step, but definitely not a final step in our conversation about all of this. We're looking to begin the conversation, gather some initial feedback. None of these are decisions we have to make tonight or even in the very immediate future. We we certainly have a little bit of time to continue dialogue around these topics. I'm happy to be joined tonight by Bobby Mueller and Nicole Gillette who are our athletic directors at O'Neal and Heric respectively and Lauren Humphress and Steve Perkins principles at O'Neal and Heric and so they are going to take us through the next few slides in the presentation. >> Good evening board. Um so I'm Bob Mueller. >> I'm Nicole. And um so we're going to talk first about the transition from our previous conference that we were in for the long period of time that we were in that previous conference and then the changes to the current conference that we joined um last year. So in the previous conference the DMV there were only six school excuse me there were only six schools um that were in there primarily uh Glumbard feeder schools. Um, so most of the students that would play in different sports and stuff like that would not end up playing against our students in high school. Um, just because of where they would end up going. Um, the only offerings that we had with the previous conference were cross country, track, basketball, volleyball, and cheerleading. And even with cheerleading, there was no competitive season for cheerleading. Um, and there will be >> and there Yeah. And it was just the one season really. It was only for essentially it was only for boys basketball that the um cheerleading team was able to participate. So transitioning to the current conference that we are in is the SDA. Um this conference has 13 schools. Um, so significantly more, but almost all of them feed into district 86 or district 99 feeder schools or all of the schools that we would be participating against at the high school level. Um, so not only schools that would feed into DR South where our O'Neal students would go or also Donn's North. Um, plus some of the other ones that would be within those conferences as well. Um the offerings at this in this conference are significantly higher. Um we still have cross country, track, basketball and volleyball and cheerleading. But this conference does offer additional uh sports as wrestling, soccer, chess, scholastic bowl, softball, baseball, swimming, and golf. Currently, we do not offer the softball, baseball, swing, and golf options, but because of our change to the new conference, we did start a wrestling team last year at both schools, as well as girls and boys soccer. Um, there is now a chess team and a schol at both schools as well. >> That's just a table um showing what we did prior to what we are doing now. And then we also in addition to expanding sports um with the new conference we also joined the IIESA which is very similar to the IHSA at the high school level. Uh it's a state series. So there's regionals which is about three games. Uh there's a sectional game and then going down state which could be up to three games. Um they offer these are the sports that are within our current conference that are also offered at the IIESA level which are cross country, basketball, girls volleyball, wrestling, track and field and scholastic bowl. And then cheer and chess are um sports and activities that we currently do in our conference but do not participate in ISA. And then the three that are offered in the SDA but we do not participate in are uh baseball, softball, and golf. So if we have those activities, why would we not participate in i SA like chess for example? Like if if we're offering that to our student population, why would we not offer that as an option to the >> those participate? >> Go ahead. >> Okay. Um the from what we have heard from majority of the schools in our conference, majority of schools in our conference do not participate in the chess ISA. um from schools that have participated in it. They have said the teams that are going to the regional for chess are much more robust teams that have more experience or they have more um kind of individuals that are um have been playing and have been doing that for a significantly long. >> And chess is just a state. There is no regionals or sectionals for chess. It's just you go down to state for chess. >> Um, and then cheer is at the state level, and correct me if I'm wrong, is like a very it's like competitive cheer. Um, so I think at this time we have just felt like because we have not been at that competitive point up until last year. >> Mhm. >> Thank you. >> Appreciate it. Thank you for >> this one. This >> um in addition to IESA and um conference offerings um within the building as well, we have different activities um we'd like to build up our inter murals um within both buildings. Um last year it was impacted by our construction project. So where soccer inter murals would have taken place and all sorts of inter murals would have taken place outside, it was uh dirt most of last year. So, we're ready to really expand that beyond dirt. Um, additionally, we have club offerings at both buildings. The um there are standard clubs, three at each building that are set between Heracon O'Neal that are the same. They are student council, yearbook, and newspaper, which is still it's the it's a newspaper club, but it's been kind of rebranded as media and photography. And then both Heric and O'Neal have uh different offerings for their clubs based on student interest. A few of those are courtyard crew, cooking club, Dungeons and Dragons uh club kind of came like a like a banshee. That was a highinterest student club which has been great. Um improv, drama, and more. And again, those vary based on student interest year to year, which is great. >> All right. And um aside from our typical offering of band, choir, and orchestra, which we have as early bird this year and moving into the regular school schedule next year, um students do have the opportunity to be a partner um a part of the chamber choir, the chamber strings and jazz band. Um and so again, those students are already enrolled in the general choir, orchestra, and band, but they can be a part of those um specialty groups. We also have the annual musical. So both Heric and O'Neal um put together a musical which we are in the thick of that season right now. So in the second and third week of March, please come on out and see them. Um but we have students um that are able to be a part of that group and perform um and have a number of different types of roles whether it's you know the actual singing or stage crew and so forth and um drama. So we also have then too um just like our athletics u that are a part of the IEA our choir band and orchestra students have the opportunity to be affiliated with the ILMA. Um and so many of you probably are familiar with that as you have students that maybe are in those groups, but they can be a part of those state level organizations um that have competitions. And so we've had students go down for choir and orchestra um and band um over the last couple years as well. Um particularly this year we had a few students um and so that gives those students those opportunities to have that higher level of competition in the music arena. As we start to try to take a look at what how do we estimate the costs of these things, it's it's not a perfect math problem year-over-year because there are some things that can vary. What we're trying to look at is what are the things that consistently occur year after year. So, transportation costs, official costs, stipens for our coaches and teachers who are supporting our students in these participation fees. We are invoiced by the conference for this to a significant amount each year and all of those pieces. But we're we're not factoring in sort of the one time where the startup costs that can occur or the the the occasional costs. So we do need to replace uniforms on a somewhat periodic basis, but that that doesn't occur each year for each sport. So that's really not factored in yet. Similarly, those music organizations, there are district provided pieces of equipment that are very expensive, but they can last 20 years. And so it's, you know, that those are both those types of things are more on replacement cycles. Again, student participation can vary by a percentage for certain ensembles and certain sports over the course of some years. Some teams also stay a little bit more consistently with the number of students that we take onto some of the cut sports teams. But what we wanted to try to do was just give a little bit of background as to what is the district investment in these activities. And so this chart just breaks down each of our current activities by school and by cost per activity including kind of all of those things that I talked through in the previous slide and then just a rough estimate of what is the district spending per student to provide these activities. Now to preview, we would never expect a participation fee that would cover this type of investment. There's a philosophical foundational belief that we should be doing these things and so we budget for these things and it's part of our overall annual expenses. But when we take a look at considering should there be some sort of a nominal fee to help offset some of these things, this just helps to give us a little bit of the background behind why we would be considering such a thing because the again transportation is part of this. All of these costs do continue to increase year-over-year and the addition of new sports as we join the conference. Frankly, the the the expense of joining this conference was more than what we had been been previously paying. We're happy to be able to do it, but it's something we just need to reflect on as we're looking to move forward. >> A question on participation in general, right? Like so these aren't all unique students like some kids that participate in cross country may participate in wrestling. Like what percentage of the student population would you say actually participates >> in our offerings as they stand today? So I Steve that's a that is a great question and it's diff it it is difficult to parse out like if you add up the number of students who are involved in these things like if you just added that column that says heric number of students you're going to get a number that's slightly larger than the student population and so you know so that that does speak to your point that yes there is a percentage of students who are in multiple activities there could be a student who's in chamber choir and three sports for example you know that that's that student could exist I think we generally do see that you know well over a third to a half of the population is involved D at some level and I think I I I can't give you the exact distill down to the individual student name answer to get much more specific than that but it is it is a good portion of the student body that are involved. >> Thank you. Is there a way that we can better track that? Whether it's I was really excited at South when my son was going to um meet the Mustang night where they were saying it's an expectation at South that you participate in at least two things and it's kind of guided through their counselors um to make sure that they know what the opportunities and they're actually checking of it. >> Yeah, there there certainly are ways to do it. I think one of the you know we do for certain things we have very you know we have for most of the things on this screen we have down to the student rosters. So in in this level we could drill it down and say okay which students are multi-port athletes and what does that look like? Where it gets a little more challenging just because of the way we've approached things up till now is with the clubs and activities. We aren't necessarily keeping attendance rosters. Those are those are more I mean all of this is voluntary but those are not necessarily as attendance expected as once you're committing to a sport or to an ensemble we are expecting that you are attending every practice. with, you know, with things like student council, with things like Dungeons and Dragons, it is open to students, but there is not necessarily a continuing participation requirement, and so it just isn't tracked today in the same in exactly the same way as we do for some of these things. So, so to get to that question would take a little more um structure to that. >> Yeah, if the board is interested in tracking that data over time, one of the things that we can look at is our student information system, P school, in putting extra fields in P school and then inputting all of that, that is something that we could look at. >> Yeah, that would be great. >> Yeah. And I think just to you know piggy back off that I think the value is like if we're going to say this is $250,000 we're spending you know rough numbers you know how many kids are participating to kind of see like what return we're getting because I think that's a solid investment in howeverund many kids >> and this is exactly the kind of things that the kinds of things that are helpful because as I said I I imagine this will not be the last conversation we have about all this >> but we can certainly bring back some more specific information to unique students in those columns. >> Thank you. The one thing we can comfortably, you know, obviously say here is is the difference from two years ago to today is significant, not just with the the number of sports, but I think the board will recall last year when O'Neal gave their student presentation and we saw just the new offerings of of the conference, not just athletics, but also with Scholastic Bowl and in in chess and and having a new variety of things that kids can participate in is has been really really wellreceived at at both middle schools. Okay. So, one of the things that we've received questions on is what do we intend for sixth graders to be able to participate in it? So, certainly out of the gate, we we intend to offer sixth graders the opportunity to be in all of the non-cut pieces and which are listed here, cross country, wrestling, track, chess, scholastic bowl, and also in inter murals. You heard Dr. Perkins speak of really working to build that program up and provide some additional opportunities that that haven't been there. When we get to what about those cut sports, you know, as as I look at the bullets that we put on these on in this section, it it really kind of leads us to a philosophical conundrum because as a district, we believe in offering additional opportunities for students. That's been a core belief. But as we have offered additional opportunities, another core belief has been to not do that at the expense of any other students who would have those opportunities. That's when we've talked about gifted and acceleration and those kinds of things. That's the way we've tried to approach additional opportunities. And this is just a place where we are conditionally limited in some ways by the types of activities these are and by the limitations that the conference puts on us in some in some cases. And so that is what we have to wrestle with as we go through this. So you can you can see what's there. There are certainly are pros and cons to all of this. There are many schools that do allow sixth grade participation in cut sports. Many of those schools have a different size population than we have. And so the limitations that they are looking at for opportunities for the students within their own school population are different than ours. And yet we also know in a community like ours, there are sixth grade students who would be able to compete at those levels. But then there would be eighth grade students who might not be competing quite at that level who would end up not having an opportunity that that same student today would currently have. And so it it just is one of those things that you know you you can you can make several conversations and discussions and points about. And it's something we are just going to have to to wrestle with with the goal going with going back to what are our foundational goals, which is to make sure we're providing opportunities for students and maintaining those opportunities for students as best we're able. So, this is one I'll ask us to to come back to and talk about a little bit. Another question we've gotten is why are we not currently offering some of the other conference sports that are available? And so, we've just sort of listed those those four sports here, sort of baseball and softball in a combined category. and and some of the reasons that we as of yet have not pursued involvement in these sports. Some of them are certainly logistical. All three of these sports require very specific facilities for practice and games and things like that. And we don't have the we don't have those facilities on our property. It doesn't mean they don't exist in Downer's Grove, but it would require some additional agreement, some additional transportation, some additional work and and and potentially expense to to to get into some of those pieces. There are also for, you know, the seasons are also considerations. We really haven't gone into beginning middle school sports seasons more than a day or two before student attendance begins. And to to work through certainly baseball, we and you know, in softball, those seasons begin much earlier. you have to really begin practicing where games have all but concluded as student attendance begins. And so that really is a piece of of consideration there. Joining that sport actually requires a pretty early commitment. As of this point today, the calendar of games for the fall or the or the late summer are really already established by the conference. And so that's just another another consideration. Again, with golf and swimming, one of the other things that we note is that in the end, there is a single competitive event that is limited to truly a handful of students. And again, that's not a reason never to do something, but it is a consideration of what that would look like. Those two sports also would offer us less teaching and coaching and building opportunity and would be much more of an opportunity for students who are coming to us with those skill levels to participate in something. Again, not a reason not to do something, but a little bit different philosophically from some of the way we approach our other sports and seasons. So, this is today and this is, you know, where we are at now. Again, nothing on this screen is never, it's just where we are today. >> Out of the 13 schools in the conference, how many offer each of these activities? >> So, I I'm I can't quote that number for you. I can I can we do have >> I think that's always you know when we especially in our community of downers grow they people always assume that we're missing out right >> and I think having the the data to say you know out of the 13 schools >> um you know two off for baseball or 11 off for golf I don't know what those numbers are but I think having that on our um website you know for athletics for Hurricane and O'Neal would be beneficial for for parents. >> Thank you. Okay, we can bring that back. >> And is football like I know it's listed on the website, but >> football's done. Um, so this conference did used to offer football uh that fizzled away um prior to the pandemic and then after the pandemic it was um never brought back. So th this conference did have football prior to but but no longer is that offered as a sport. Baseball is actually one of the newer sports that just last year they met the threshold for having um more than half of the schools interested. So they they brought that in. Uh but baseball wasn't offered as a true conference sport. Um some of the members um of the conference participated but not as a conference sport. Um but just kind of on their own. Um so for instance like Lyall is a good example of that. Um, Valley View is a school district that has um, baseball and softball pretty well established. And so, a lot of the games that were played were against Valley View because of the number of uh, junior highs that they had and and the number of schools that were offering that. >> Go ahead. No. And then the the last thing we wanted to just put before the board is, as I mentioned, you know, the consideration of some sort of a participation fee for certain activities. And so again, as I said, this this certainly wouldn't come close to covering the entire cost that we incur, but it would be something that could potentially offset some of those costs and and start to help look also at some of those, you know, those recurring um cyclical costs like we talked about with uniforms and equipment and things like that. And so, you know, as we as we look at it, a starting place for the conversation is when we look at those cut sports potentially somewhere in the $50 range. And when we look at the non-cut sports and co-curricular music, somewhere in the $25 range, we're not suggesting any kind of a participation fee for inter murals or clubs or things like that. Though certain clubs do incur a a decent materials cost depending on what they are. And so we're not leaving that off the table forever, but in terms of the initial conversation, we wanted to focus just on those those areas that we're talking about. So that takes us to the end of the the prepared slides for this portion of the presentation. And if there's some board input or questions, we're happy to take that now and particularly as it might relate to information that would help us to further the conversation going forward. >> Questions or comments? >> Sure. Uh first I want to thank the staff who serve as coaches or sponsors of the clubs because extracurriculars can make such a difference in students sense of belonging in the school in their attendance which we are always looking to have higher and their self-worth. Um and teaching can be a very long day. So for them putting in those extra hours, just thank you to all of them. A couple of questions. One, I want to say intramurals I think is such a great option because with it being so competitive on some of our cut sports to allow students um the opportunity to develop their skills in that way is fantastic. It was mentioned that with clubs um that student interest is driving what the clubs are and I was just curious on how we collect that data. So, at the middle schools, there have been some some surveys done over the course of of of the past couple of years. I know Dr. Perkins mentioned Dungeons and Dragons was definitely not something that was being planned for this year, but was a but was a but was an interest that rose up and we were fortunate to have a staff member willing to sponsor it. The um we actually mentioned this at the district leadership team meeting earlier today. We are in the process of developing a a survey for incoming third through fifth graders and incoming sixth through 8th graders to really give universally at all schools and annually and in the spring. So all three of those things so that we can gauge that student interest and it's going to it's going to provide two opportunities for us. One, it'll give us some of that feedback in a time frame that is a little more actionable. You know, it'll it'll certainly give us a chance for staff members to consider whether they could provide different offerings or what that would look like. And really the other thing we talked about is that it might help spark the interest of some staff members because as you as you mentioned we do need those staff members to be the coaches and sponsors of all of these things and and sometimes it it is the idea of I of the students who will bring some of that energy to bear and it might give somebody the opportunity to think about developing something over the summer and providing that opportunity. So we are we are looking forward to that becoming part of our spring routine in a much more systematic way. >> Okay. with open-ended questions or will it be like a brainstormed list and then you can add your >> It is it is definitely a combination. You know, as we think as we think about sports and inter murals and things like that, that'll probably be a slightly more closed list maybe within other as we think about clubs and activities. You know, I think for our our elementary students in particular, you need to give them somewhere to start at the very least. But also, we want to be careful that it isn't simply a closed list cuz, you know, I I don't know. I would not have put I'll just keep using Dungeons and Dragons. That would not I would not have in in 2026. I would not have put that on the list in '92 maybe, but that's a story about me. But I but I but I would not have put it on the list this year necessarily. >> We're learning a lot tonight. >> And then this one's in a different field, but do we pay more insurance based on the sports that we do? >> Uh swimming looks like one that would >> That's a great question. So your insurer is always going to take a look at what you're offering. Okay. the big ones that they are always going to red flag and we don't have this at the middle school or elementary level. Gymnastics. If you offer gymnastics, you are going to have a higher premium. Um there are though uh it's tough to answer because each insurer looks at it differently. So, perfect timing though because we're going out to pay for insurance and so that will be a question that as we go through uh which ones uh cheer is another one depending on how you approach cheerleading. you have the the differentiation that Nicole talked about where you know you just have your traditional cheerleading which we've historically always offered in district 58 and then you have your competitive cheerleading and competitive cheerleading is going to get thrown into the mix of gymnastics type of activities where you are going to be paying more for your insurance if you offer that um versus just your traditional cheerleading if that makes sense because there you're talking about stunting and I'm going to be careful with my words because this is not my area expertise uh But yeah, >> obviously. Um uh however though, once you start doing back flips, all those other things, then that's where you have to start having higher levels of insurance. >> Okay, thank you. >> But I thought you were a flyer for sure. >> Yeah, I admit that's what I was. >> Katie, you asked what I was going to ask and you teed on questions you asked earlier. My only favor is when we do that survey similar to what we're doing for sports. I think it'd be interesting on clubs to do to your point non-opened questions but also do some surveying benchmarking of area schools and what they offer. Um just to give students a bit more ideas of what to choose from and I'm curious too if the maybe the STEM committee that we have has ideas of how to get some more clubs and of that nature and a potential survey to to get student evaluated interest. >> Absolutely. Thank you. I I can just throw out there because I know you guys had a question too about the number of clubs and activities and so we do have a running list at O'Neal. Um and it just shows like even by student name like how many different things they're involved in. So many of our students are involved in way more than one thing. Some are in four or five different things. Um but that would include all the athletics that have run up to season date and um some of our clubs that maybe can finish or over the halfway mark. Um, and at that point with the student numbers that we have, we're at 48 students total in the building with 313, I'm sorry, 314 participating. So, we're at 77% and that does not include soccer for boys and girls, track, scholastic, bowl, and volleyball. So, there are still plenty of different things that kids could be a part of, but just to kind of give you a ballpark, we're really doing pretty well with the amount of things that kids have available to them and being adopted. >> Thank you. One other clarifier. Um, thank you Lauren. You sparked something in my head. The previous conference, the DuPage Metro Valley, um, did have limited offerings and they set up their sports a little bit differently than what our new conference um, does. So, for instance, there's two sports cuz I got this question today from a parent. Why did you combine seventh and eighth grade for volleyball in soccer? Why did the district make that decision? And that was not a district decision. um that is what our conference offers. Um so we often run into that with golf or swimming. How come there aren't more practices? How come there aren't more meets? It it's what the current conference offers. So track looks a little bit different um in in this particular conference than it did in our previous one. Volleyball looks different. Um the old one didn't have soccer, but but soccer is more of a combined thing. And so um there are nuances and differences between the two conferences but um we are very fortunate to have landed in this new conference because for those who were around 2 years ago our previous conference simply dissolved and um it took a lot of leg work to be able to get us in. Um there is some tension in our current conference. Um one of the unique things about our conference is it it comprises this entire area. And so what we see is you have three types of schools in our conference. You have very very small schools. Uh Butler is a wonderful example of that, right? And then you have kind of middle of the road schools, your Westview Hills, your uh Lyles, but then you have the bigger schools. Um and that would be O'Neal, Heric, Jefferson of Woodridge, and Old Corey. And so even within our conference, I do want to make the board aware, there's this tension where the big schools were were thrilled to have us in their conference, right? Because they finally had more schools that were like them who could compete. The smaller schools weren't so thrilled to have bigger schools like O'Neal and Heric in the conference because there is a difference when Heric is competing. You know, Heric will have 900 kids next year in the in the building where Butler might have 100 maybe 125, right? And so there there is a difference there. And so our conference continues to work with our athletic directors on how do we balance this competitive nature of the the conference. So you don't always have this big school versus the the small school. Um but that es and flows as well. So in our previous conference um I would field a lot of parent complaints saying first of all there's only five other teams besides my kids school and we're blowing out every single team. Um, sometimes we are just good at sports and we do see that in Downers Grove because there is such an investment in youth sports whether that's travel or park district that our our teams do very well in in this new conference but know that that is some underlying tension in in this uh conference. Um, and then in terms of sixth graders, um, every school handles this differently. Uh Justin did a nice job of of talking about why some schools will allow sixth grade and other schools won't. Um a lot of the schools in our conference um offer all the non-cut sports, right? But because so many of them are smaller than what we do, they do allow sixth grade uh to participate. A lot of it though is out of necessity. They might not be able to feel the team unless they open it up to everyone. We have the opposite problem the bigger schools where now you're talking about should a sixth grader do it? Should they take away an opportunity from a seventh or an eighth grader? And so the those are the things that we're wrestling with and certainly we want to have some some board input because as we said there's no clear-cut answer. There's pros and cons to both of uh these. >> Do we have a represent like how does the conference work? Like does each >> It's a great question. So each school has an athletic director and um they meet and they will give that feedback back to their building principal. If it becomes a real thorny issue, then the superintendent will meet and and get involved in that. Um but typically we have really good athletic directors and and most of the things uh get handled there. Um so for instance, when it when it came to can O'Neal and her join this conference, that's when the superintendents got together and then they voted on that. when we're talking about scheduling, when we're talking about um you know, one of the big concerns that the conference has right now is that when you do have the bigger schools and you're having three schools show up for a cross country meet and you only have a really tiny area like Cass is a great example of that, when you run over at Cass, there's too many kids there. And so they're talking about, you know, there has to be a limit on the number of kids that you can bring to a meet, right? And so that may then change how we do things. That would be an example of the athletic directors having that conversation and then offering a recommendation and depending on if people accept that recommendation or not would depend on how far it goes up but typically most of the things are going to be handled by our athletic directors with input from the building principles. >> Thank you. >> No, this is very very helpful and very eye opening for somebody that's actually tried to get this information previously. So So this is extremely helpful but I guess this feels very one side in the conversation. I guess I'd ask the athletic directors, what support do you need from the the board to kind of continue to improve because we've already made great strides to improve the offerings that are out there today and in the future >> coming up. So people can hear if you don't mind. Um I think as far as supports that we would benefit from um just time really is our main one. Um the change from even the meetings that we had with our previous conference and the schools that we were dealing with it was you know much smaller conversations. It was a lot those meetings were shorter and less frequent. Whereas now we're meeting or talking with ads from all of the other schools almost I would say almost daily I'm getting some kind of >> conversation or some kind of input from another school or >> something with either a schedule change or um you know we still have questions about some of the new activities that we're in um and we've had to reach out to even just get more information about some of the activities that we're in how does swimming work? How does golf work? >> Yeah, baseball and softball. >> Yeah. How do baseball and softball work? So I think that's our >> main just time because yeah just the more you know sports and activity it's yeah just getting kind of our head wrapped around different things and how to best manage it and make sure it runs smoothly for the students and the parents too and to get all that information because I know he's the same way like we try to be as organized as possible and make sure like things you know run smoothly whether it's just bus transportation calling and making sure you know we have all the buses lined up for the day that's a big thing cuz we've had it's >> been a challenge. >> Um so yeah, I would think I would agree. I think time is >> probably the biggest thing. >> Does it currently just a stipend and no release time or Okay. >> Yes. >> Thank you. >> Which >> I will also say thank you for the >> boost in the as well. >> We appreciate that as well. >> That did change from our last contract. So that was helpful. >> All right. Since you're up there, what would be number two on the list? >> Yeah. Um, >> yeah. I mean, honestly, that's it really is the only thing as far as the communication and stuff that we do with the other schools. The other schools are great with helping us out and um they're always willing to help us out and they're willing to answer our questions and they've been receptive. like we were talking about um you know some of the scheduling changes that might be happening next year because of that dynamic between large schools and small schools and everything else. Um some of the scheduling is going to change with regards to basketball and girls volleyball next year of kind of a more of a division split between the larger schools and the smaller schools and it will be based on the success of the previous school year. So it'll be kind of a more fluid. >> Was it at six seven in the big school? >> I think so. >> Or six six in the big school, seven in the small school. So it's like two divisions. >> Um and then based on the successes, whoever finishes last in the big schools and whoever finishes first in like the the smaller school division will flip-flop and be in the different ones. So that's something that we're we're getting used to too for next year. And I think when we're talking about time, I know that we see, you know, we really are 16 17 months into this pretty massive transition. And so I think in our conversations, we've also talked about just the time not only to to physically function and do it during the day, but to kind of get established. Part of the reason the previous conference meetings were so quick is we've been doing for 20 years and there was familiarity with all those things >> and only six schools. There wasn't >> I mean a meeting we hear about things that we are learning as we go that require us to then pivot and respond and find ways to purchase newly compliant uniforms from a very silly rule that means you're you know so there are there are lots of pieces that that they are navigating with the support of administration for sure but but while teaching and so I think some of that time from what I've heard from you is also the time to establish ourselves and kind of take things >> and I kind of do forget like we are part of ISA um now which I think is awesome for the students as well. But that is another aspect of just making sure like if we do not hit deadlines of like putting in schedules on time, putting scores in rosters, like you can get penalized, you can get be on probation, get fees charged. So that's another thing just making sure coaches and ourselves are just up to date with all those deadlines as well on top of the conference that we're in. >> All right, thank you so much. Appreciate it. No problem. >> Thank you. And Justin, just a couple of uh things. The the fee aspect, obviously, we'll talk about that at a greater date. I think it's certainly a conversation we need to broach. Uh we obviously have some financial challenges, anything we can do to offset that, but the numbers that you're talking about are within a realm of I think obviously it's not going to fully fund this, but it helps offset that a little bit so we can have some bigger conversations around that. The other aspect I would say is to get off sports for a second was on the activities. We do have a a limited number of clubs and stuff that we have. So, anything we can do to really proactively reach out and advance uh and make sure that we see a lot of interest that we're not holding on to clubs just because we have a history of doing it for for 20 years. Um yeah, you know, I don't know if if Dungeons and Dragons hit because of uh Stranger Things or whatever it might, but one cultural thing can have a big impact. um you know on on on a club, right? So, anything we can do to keep those dynamically uh changing to make sure that we really have an opportunity to engage as many students as possible uh in these I think would be really important. So, I don't know if that uh if that's just open-ended questions, if that's a two-tiered approach where the first one around is is there anything you'd like to see and interested and then compile a list and then and send those out and then tally them up. But anything we can do to to keep encouraging um that feedback, I think is going to be uh pretty great going forward. Thank you. >> So, we have some some homework uh to provide for the board. I I just want to make sure that we have all the information coming back to you because we are going to have to start making some decisions uh for what next year is going to look like in particular. You know, rightfully so. We have a lot of eager fifth rate parents right now wondering, you know, what their kids experience, you know, is going to look like next year, what what we're able uh to offer. Um so, one of the things that the board had asked for is, you know, kind of a breakdown of all the conference schools um by which sport they're offering and then our sixth graders able to participate in that. So, we can we can get that for you. The other thing um with the fee conversation is we can get what the fee breakdown looks like um because that varies widely uh between the schools. Um I I would say you know just going off memory about half half charge some some type of a fee the other half don't. Um and there's reasons for that. Every school district is is a little bit different. Um so we can get that uh information for you. I would like though um certainly by the time we get to the April board meeting um we have committed to sharing with our families what the experience is going to look like you know after spring break and so I just don't want that to go too far into the spring because I I do want to be able to start giving our um families answers to these questions and I also want to start forecasting that um to our kids. Uh you know we have our future Spartan and our future senator night coming up later in the spring. I thought it would be a really good thing uh when parents come in to say, "Okay, what's this middle school all about to be able to give that information uh to our families and and then no matter what decision we make, I I think this is something whether it's a club or whether it's a sport that we can always revisit annually to see, you know, just like we did when we added soccer in wrestling. Um you know, should we look at adding more?" Um obviously, you know, every school district in particular, ours right now is to be very conscious about our budget, but there are ways that we can talk about fees to kind of offset some of those um to continue to provide um opportunities for our kids. Like I said, we we've taken two giant steps with the new conference and ISA and uh we can continue to uh to look at it. Uh to piggyback on that, the middle school uh section of the website that is being built out um that I anticipate existing in perpetuity. I know right now it's feels so important because so much is changing but really I know that >> uh as a parent who went through it right that change feels so dramatic, right? Like you you know and being ready and being prepared for it is important. getting the sports information in that. I know we have a sports section, but having sort of almost everything of like, hey, getting ready for for middle school. I think having that be a hub for that would be great, including what triyouts look like, especially uh you know, cross country starts before the school year starts like and and if we ever implement something like baseball or golf, it sounds like that starts even earlier. Um that would be >> Yeah, baseball and softball in particular are the ones that um you know, those are going to start right at the beginning of August. That is something um and again that would be a multi-tered step if we had to do that. Um just that's a big change like recruiting staff to be able to do those things. Um we would have to partner with the park district um to see what fields would be available because that while we do have a baseball field at O'Neal and a softball field at O'Neal that's for little kids. Those aren't the official ones that you have to have with the longer base pads and the mounds and all that stuff. So, and then working out the transportation both to and from practices is is another thing uh that we would really have to take a look at. >> Fantastic. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> Thank you very much. >> Okay. We are in the home stretch. Our last topic is um district committee updates. So, myself and the curriculum coordinators will um offer updates on a um number of our committees that are running this school year. So, I'm going to ask um Dr. prester to come back up and talk about the sunset of our ELA committee. Last week, we were able to meet as a K5 ELA committee and a 68 and sunset our work that we've been going through the last four years. Um, we had a few things to finish up. One, um, just that alignment to the Illinois comprehensive literacy plan. We had a couple items we wanted to finish having ready for staff for next year. and we continue our conversation of this balance of reading print and reading digital and the impacts that has on a student's understanding or comprehension. And so we we've found many resources and we have future plans to bring that learning to our staff both at the middle school and the elementary school level. Um, we use this time also to look through, you know, UFly and Benchmark and Common Lit and what other curriculum implementation supports do we need to have available to not only our current staff but any new teachers that would be joining um those teams and then we spent a good chunk of our time celebrating our work and sunsetting the ELA committee. I wanted to highlight two areas of success. You know, after the 22 23 curricular review year, we had two main priorities as we were looking at vendors and going to pilots. The first being middle school ELA and the ste second being K2 foundational skills or phonics. To highlight middle school ELA, this is this this uh graph shows you our AR achievement or average scale score. And so you can see the three years of our curriculum work. So in our review year, our pilot year, and then our implementation year, just how far apart it was from where we were. Um, and you could see, you know, back as far as 2014, just that big jump that we saw, just that um we were able to pay attention to that area, find a quality resource, provide um professional learning and see so much success for our students. And then in the area of foundational skills, last year we implemented UFly. was our first year and at the end of the spring we were able to do that comparison and what we saw was a 10% drop of students achieving achieving below the 25th percentile on early literacy. Um under the 25th percentile are the students that we're identifying for intensive intervention. So a 20 10% drop in each grade level that's almost a hundred students. Just an impact of UFly and having a explicit systematic phonics program in all of our classrooms had an impact on all of our students. And so really to celebrate our work, you know, we were able to hit our two key focuses. You know, I I attribute um attribute a lot of our success to the commitment of our school district to a thorough curricular review process. We spend years, this was a four-year committee with three really robust years. We spend a whole year reviewing where we are with a committee from staff from a variety of positions, administrators and district office leaders too of looking where we are to figure out where we can go next. Um then that commitment in that second year to a possible pilot. Our teachers, you heard today, really take that on. It's it's not easy and we want to see how does this resource work for us and our students and what's that ease that we could be implementing this and seeing that success. And in that third year, that commitment to professional learning with ELA, we were able to do monthly professional learning opportunities with the instructional coaches and I helped out too. Um, previewing that next unit, seeing, you know, what what does that assessment look like, doing that backwards planning, understanding how how student knowledge should grow from the beginning to the end of that unit, unpacking each component of the resource. This is where we have seen in um previous implementations where oh I didn't I didn't know that was there. I didn't know that existed because we when you first implement some something you might not be able to use every single tool but we were really meticulous last year to make sure we over the course of the year we unpacked every single thing and showed that connection from you know what happened in the grade prior, what's happening in the next grade. So the teachers can anticipate that connection and what their students would be coming in with that next school year. And then I really have to credit our instructional coaches. Um they took the lead on um the two grade levels each to thoroughly understand and to partner in the classroom and co-e with teachers. So they were on the ground knowledge and from the committee members too of what grade level specific solutions we needed to find. No curriculum is perfect there. I have yet to find one. um if someone wants to partner and write one, I'm on board. But um you know, they were able to find those things that would make that implementation easier. Sometimes, you know, any curriculum, it can be six clicks to what you want to get to. Well, let's make it one for our teachers if we can take it from here, here, and here, and put it in one place so they can see it. So, having that partnership, that on the ground knowledge, and then being able to do some of that work and get it done. Um, so not every teacher is recreating that on their own. So I appreciate their partnership um over the course of these uh years with the ELA committee to help our teachers um be able to implement each of these resources with integrity. And I just want to reiterate um what what Christine said to the entire ELA committee um for her leadership, for all of our teachers who committed to the pilot of our ELA resources, the implementation process that we went through, our instructional coaches, all of our building administrators really helping to support the work. um uh our LLTs, our our learning leadership teams of um small group of principles doing walkthroughs for look fors for all of our um ELA resources. It really has just been a really positive experience um and we're looking forward to the continued success um with our ELA um implementation and our current resources. Um another committee got kicked off the ground this year which was our science committee. And so some of our goals were reviewing our current resources and implementation data. So again, as um we talk about in all of our other um committee work, we really do follow our curriculum review process with fidelity so that we're ensuring we're following the same steps regardless of the subject area that we're reviewing. Um we want to have that understanding of NGSS and the connections to our resources. What um available resources are there with the intent to build strong hands-on experiences for our students. Um right now we see our resource as being more of um a textbook um style resource and not maybe giving the students as many hands-on experiences. So what can we do in order to up those opportunities for students and then keeping a structured review of our science-based field trips and the experiments that we offer students? So those were um the goals of this school year. And so for the upcoming school year, the um full middle school implementation of open sed, which our seventh and eighth grade teachers have been utilizing as a supplement, but really have um grounded their work in and are excited about, you know, fully implementing that um starting next school year. And then a pilot opportunity for our current sixth grade teacher uh teachers at Kingsley, Highland, and Puffer. They're going to be implementing the thermal energies unit at the end of this school year. So, we've procured procured their materials. They're actually sitting up in the district office for them to go through tomorrow during our um science committee um meeting, but then giving them that opportunity to fully implement open sed um with fidelity next school year. OpenSIED is an open-source resource. So, anytime a resource is built with grant dollars, it needs to be made available to um teachers at no cost. And so this is something that we have while we recognize there are procurement costs associated with materials and experiments of that nature, the actual curriculum um is at zero cost to the district. But we really found that it hits our NGSS standards um in a strong way and has um been successful for our middle school science teachers. and we're excited to give our sixth grade teachers that opportunity to pilot this unit this year and ensure that that's going to be the best step moving forward for them um for the upcoming school year. And then we're going to be having um a elementary review of open sed we have every grade level represented on our science committee. We recognize that we still want to be able to pilot those resources because that is a little bit of a shift. There's going to be some planning that'll shift um in looking at open sed. We want to make sure that those connections to NGSS are there and that we're ensuring that we're hitting those opportunities for our elementary students. So, we're going to have that opportunity to pilot some units next school year at each grade level and see if this is something that we want to do um utilize moving forward with the um remainder of our um elementary classrooms continuing to use TCI for one more school year. This fall we um shared the work of the MTSS committee and the new guidance document that we have been utilizing this year for our elementary um MTSS supports. And so the elementary committee has focused in on reviewing feedback from our monthly professional learning opportunities. Again, we're treating it like a curriculum implementation. We're unpacking piece by piece and getting feedback. We had one of those today um with our reading specialist interventionist and resource teachers. The committee has also been looking at our universal screening data. As Liz mentioned earlier in the night, we made some different adjustments for this year. And so we're looking at that data and we're also looking at how many students um let's say were in um identified for a tier 2 intervention at winter. How many what is our percentage exiting, right? Moving up to tier one. How many are maintaining tier two? Did we see anyone drop? And so we're looking at those different metrics at the committee level to for a few different reasons to celebrate success, but also to make sure we are I our universal screening is effective in flagging the students that need the support and being able to give it to them as soon as possible within the school year. Um, another aspect of our work this school year is focusing in on intervention curriculum. We have a robust process for our curriculum review process for our tier one core materials. Um we are looking at our interventions that are available. We have a very robust list. We're looking to support um teachers in narrowing what are the most effective ones and what are the most effective ones we've seen in Downer's Grove. And so getting a little more specific will allow us to track data a little more um intentionally of okay we know this intervention has provided you know these results in the past for us. um you know it's our go-to and so we're working through that process to figure out how what we should be considering to start narrowing that list um to support our team. Um middle school we start started a sub commmittee to focus on similar work. Um we are still in the defining middle school intervention. What um are how would we define the key priorities of when a student is coming to intervention? You know are we um supporting tier one instruction? Are we filling in skill deficits? Are we doing a combination of the two? Because we know that students are sitting in middle school classrooms and having to, you know, access that level of material. So, how can we do both at the same time? So, that's what we're working through. And then also being able to share that with the middle school staff and so everyone has a better understanding of what happens during that intervention block in terms of supporting students with math and reading. We're also working on identification criteria. Though we were pretty close on how we are identifying students across our schools, we are focusing in on how are we identifying students um that are coming from our elementary schools. And so we have fifth and six sixth graders coming over and making sure we're collecting leveraging the opportunity of our elementary specialists that are already supporting them to share that information in an intentional way of what you know whether it's an intervention or their latest progress monitoring data so we can hit that ground running supporting those students as they transition to the middle school as well. Um, we're also looking at identification criteria for students that are new to middle school and or those that, you know, what's that teacher recommendation path? And so really that full scale, but we're really focusing first on that fifth to sixth grade transition and having that ready to share with our elementary specialists in um in April. Thank you. >> NZ, good evening. Um I have the pleasure to just share an update on the district equity leadership team as well as the multilingual programs in including our um ESL and dual language program. But first I want to begin by sharing that this the district equity leadership team um committee has continued its role and its impact on making sure that our equity data is being monitored is being monitored and it's we are having uh the opportunity to oversee it. So this uh year we reviewed the ISB's equity continuum. We also looked at the Illinois's report cards to monitor districts the progress identify any trends highlights of areas that we need to take a look at. And so through all of that we want to make sure and I think this was brought up that we continue to focus and track our subgroups and making sure that all of our students are being given what they need. Um we also were able to focus on equitable access to student opportunities. The community analyzed participation in data accelerated extracurricular programs to better understand representation across across schools. Um we are um excited because our students are bene benefiting from advanced programming enrichment opportunities in the gifted program but we want to make sure that um representation from some groups are also being considered. So we are making sure to figure out what in what ways could we make those subgroups more present in not only in um those programs but also in extracurricular activities as well. Um we are excited and this is mentioned before we are this committee is also working on a survey for elementary on how can we get more student input and voice so that we can provide student opportunities that our kids want. And finally, um we are our our efforts are aligned with strategic plan number five. And so throughout the year, the committee supported different ways that we are engaging our staff professional learning and making sure that our recruitment and retention practices are promoting equitable outcomes and um we are very excited because we are also coming up with ways to look at all of these things this year and and um in the next years to come. So with that, we want to make sure that we're continuing to review gifted and accelerated data specifically as our subgroups, making sure that those student interest survey, we can develop it and make sure that it captures the student voice. Making sure that our professional learning development for our staff includes equitable practices and ways that they can also enhance their growth in this area and making and looking at our recruitment and retention specifically for minority groups. Now, let's uh move forward to our dual language programs. Uh we're excited to share that we are now our two-way program is now in third grade. Uh we started in 2022, 2023. And you can kind of see the timeline of where our students are going to be by 2028, 2029. They're going to be heading to O'Neal Middle School. And we anticipate that they're going to take two courses in Spanish. We're very excited about that. And so time flies because the last time I was here specifically talking about the dual language program, we were um discussing ways to roll it out and how do we get in public to be interested in it and I let me tell you every year the interest grows and we even had to add a lottery system because of the popularity of this program. Um, I wanted to showcase and talk about the program in a way that was maybe not so much my voice, but so you can can see students that have been in kindergarten, where are they now with their proficiency. So, I want to play a quick video where you're going to see two students that started their dual language programming here in our district. They're now in third grade. They're part of that first cohort. And I want you to take a look to see at where they're at now. The two-way dual language program brings together native Spanish speakers and native English speakers in one classroom. Students learn academic content. >> We might have to start it over once we get the the volume. right now. >> No, it's paused. Are you in? >> Yes. Oh, all right. Let's see. >> Our two-way dual language program brings together native Spanish speakers and native English speakers in one classroom. Students learn academic content in both languages. >> Students don't lose their language in our program. They gain one. >> Should I put the mic closer to them? Thank you for your patience. I really want you to see and I hear our students. Want to try one more time? Our two-way dual language program brings together native Spanish speakers and native English speakers in one classroom. Students learn academic content in both languages. Students don't lose a language of our program. They gain one. Here we have Santiago and Abraham who came into our program with just one language. Let's hear where they are now with their language proficiency. What do you like most about school? >> I love most. >> Sure. You could save it for >> take a look. I'm not sure exactly who we're in control right now. >> Okay. Um just just in case we are are able to figure out the volume, I wanted to highlight two students. Santiago and Abraham. They both started our program in kindergarten. Santiago was a is a Spanish native speaker learning English and Abraham is a native English speaker learning Spanish. Um, and so I asked them questions in their second language and their response is there. And I want you to wanted you to see how amazing it is because I'll say English is extremely hard to learn. So props to Santiago and Spanish. It it is also difficult. Um, but Abraham sounds very much like a Latino or a Spaniard. So I wanted you to hear that. um and just to showcase in how such a little bit amount of time they've been in the program for three years, how much growth they've made. And um a language acquisition research says that it takes seven to 10 years to attain a second language. Imagine where these kids are going to be by the time they get to own. So I wanted to highlight that. So um I'll just move forward until you you tell me. But um our dual language staff um they are a crucial piece to the success of our students this year. We worked with them to really continue their professional growth on specific strategies for dual language learners. I want to give a big thanks to the dual language teaching staff because they really go above and beyond. They teach in two languages. they read into, they write into and it's amazing to see even how they are able to navigate curriculums in both languages. Um, we wanted to develop u professional development on cross linguistical connections which you can see examples how is Spanish and English the same and ory strategies. How can we get our kids to start using the language? So, you can see examples of that here. Um, oh before I forget, I just want to say um I was part of the ELA committee and I want I'm very thankful that I was part of that because through that we were able to implement benchmark adilante um for our dual language program and make sure that it's very strong also for them. So I want to I'm thankful that that committee also gave voice to our program. And then the last piece is our English learners which we have English learners in all our 13 schools. Um, we have two curriculums, Express and Hello, that help them navigate their language growth. Again, thanks to the participation of myself and the ELA committee. I was able to bring back to my teams um two different curriculums that we could put into action to help our English learners and um we can see that um it's been successful in our data as well. Our middle school at O'Neal specifically, we've incorporated Kota model that multilingual wall is in one of the ELA uh classrooms. We use common lit of course, but you can see in our multilingual classroom, our cotton classroom, we have a word wall in different with different languages represented and every year our students take the access testing and so they are measured in their language proficiency and we just wrapped that up. So I want to give thanks to our multilingual teams for helping with that as well. I'll be sure to share the video separately with the board um in this week's update and we can figure out a way to to navigate having it be part of the board briefs. But it is so um wonderful to walk into the classrooms and hear the students speaking in both languages and and they'll come up to you and start speaking to you in Spanish. I'm like I don't know what you're say. I feel so bad. I'm like they are so proficient. I'm like Sandy what are they saying? So, it it's just wonderful to just see how confident they've become and our um native Spanish speaking students, how confident they are in their English. So, it's really watching the program grow over the last several years has been um just a joy. Um the last group that I'm going to um give an update on is our professional learning council. So, this was a group um that was created several years ago and um over the past couple of years because our teacher institutes have really been tied to the construction schedule and have been living at the front and back end of our school year, we have an we had an opportunity to kind of bring the group back together um and start talking about professional learning um for the district moving forward. And so we reviewed um staff feedback on professional learning Mondays from August to January and really took kind of an overview of the um open-ended feedback that staff shared with us about their experiences as well as looking at some of that quantitative data. That'll be something that I share with the board at the end of the year when we talk about professional learning Mondays and um continuing that practice. Um the discussion of PLM structure and addressing staff needs during professional development is always top of mind. We want to make sure that those days are um being built to um have teachers find success in the professional learning that they are participating in. Um and then we want to give staff voice to topics and opportunities to present to their colleagues. So that's something that we're going to be looking at for the upcoming school year. Um we're planning for those 2026 2027 um teacher institute days and professional learning Mondays. We're going to be garnering interest from our staff um to see if there is a topic that they want to present to their colleagues either on that institute on those institute days or during PLMs. Um and also if there are staff members that want to nominate um a colleague something that maybe was shared at the building level that we can share districtwide um a a grade level team member that has a really strong um understanding of a particular content area and being able to present that knowledge as well. So, we're going to be building out some staff interest surveys um with this group in um the coming months and then sharing that with staff prior to the summer so that they can think about would that be something they'd be interested in for next school year, giving them time to kind of grapple with what that um presentation may be or what that topic may be and um you know potentially commit to to presenting to our staff. Um, so we're really looking forward to kind of integrating our teacher institute days back into our school year as right now they've kind of lived on both ends of our calendar. Um, and we haven't really had that opportunity during the school year. Um, so we're looking forward to that as well. Those are our committee updates and the end of our topic. So um, if there's any questions regarding our committee updates, I um, would be happy to um, take those. >> Thanks for those updates. Um, I'm glad to see the science committee kind of spinning back up. >> Yeah. >> Uh, we as a district have just invested a lot into our actual labs >> and I know the whole idea around the NGSS was really to get more hands-on and you mentioned that today. Uh, I'd really like to see how I'd really like to kind of hear back from you how we're trying to utilize that space and really bring back the idea of that exploration, especially now as we're bringing sixth grade into the building as well. Um, I think it'd be a great opportunity for us to hear. uh even as a parent, I don't know that I know ex how much is going on in the the the science room and I don't know that we've had as broad of a discussion on that as maybe we have on some of the other topics as we transition and you know right when that transition happened I feel like we had discussion around it we we got a new material we talked about how our goal was to have it be more hands-on but I've also heard a little bit of frustration that maybe it hasn't been as hands-on as we would have liked so I'd really like to see obviously with the investment we've made. Uh I'd really like to see what our goals are along that and and what we're because you're already talking about, you know, some of these uh kind of open- source >> Yeah. >> uh materials that we have. I'd really love to see how we uh plan on utilizing the new lab space and really getting kids more hands-on. >> Yeah, absolutely. And so I was the previous um resource that the middle school had adopted and really they did find that that was much more textheavy. Um while that is definitely still part of that open source and open SIAD resource, there is reading and analyzing of um of you know graphs and data and and being able to have those collaborative conversations. The new labs really lend themselves to students having conversations, working together. Um there's not a day that I don't go into a science room that um there are, you know, lab material sitting on those collaborative tables and the students are are working together. Um and so each um unit within open sad does have a specific um lab that they are working through but it starts with exploration and asking those like questions of students prior to even getting into the content. And so how do we make sure that the students are understanding what those like essential questions are and what are going to be the um the opportunities that they're going to have to kind of build their science understanding. Um, but what I can do is as we're kind of going through the science committee work, bring some updates back to the board, um, and maybe with some more specific examples for you as well. >> Yeah, I think as we get into, um, in next fiscal year and next calendar year, in next school year, uh, that might be a nice topic to visit in one of our curriculum workshops, really having an opportunity to to see where that's shifting. I uh you know uh we we did some great work I know with with ELA, with PE, with um with math in the past. It might be a a nice topic to touch on, especially now that we're getting into the Union middle school model. >> Yeah, absolutely. And I will say our sixth grade teachers, they're going to pilot this resource in their elementary school classrooms. Um and so they're really excited about getting into the labs and being able to have all of the the access in the upcoming school year. >> Yeah, absolutely. Any other question? >> Other questions or comments? >> I had just two quick ones on the dual language. One was what steps do we need to take to prepare for the middle school transition because that's right a big expedition in the next three years. And then second was maybe for now but also going years forward if there's a way to get a data snapshot of enrollment in the and the enrollment trends in particular. Right. So it sounds like there's a lottery there's growing growing interest. to be helpful for for us to know, okay, are we fulfilling the interest of the community or are we going to potentially need to expand that in the future? >> Yeah, that's a great question. I we can pull um how many um families were interested in participating and on how many families we were able to commit um a spot to um as well as far as the transition to the middle school. We do still have a couple of years, but we are actively already working on what is going to be the content that's delivered. And then right now, our one-way program is a mix of seventh and eighth grade. So looking at how are we going to like it's a mixed class. So next year having sixth grade kind of be its own separate entity still in that one-way model um with seventh and eighth still combined but then as we start to move the um two-way program forward really building out classes for um the two-way model at each grade level. >> Okay. So it'll continue the two-way through middle schools. Absolutely. >> Thank you. >> Questions or comments? Thank you. >> Thank you so much. >> That brings us to public comment. This is an opportunity. Uh the board has allotted 30 minutes uh tonight for this extended opportunity for board and community communications. Anyone wishing to address the board has been asked to state their name in school attendance area and please limit their comment to three minutes. Is it Jamie? >> Jamie. >> Jamie. Okay. Um, yeah. Uh, on sports and activities, please step up. >> Hi, I am Jamie Sparger. I have a kindergartener, fourth grader, fifth grader, and a three-year-old. Uh, so I have a lot of kids to go through the district. I was curious about the sixth grade involvement for sports and activities. I appreciate everything that we were presented today and all of the information. Um, one of the slides mentioned that it was it would not align philosophically with what the goals are for the district historically speaking. I was just curious if we could expand on how that would align with excluding sixth graders from the cut sports. Um, just something I know I have, my incoming fifth grader would be very interested in all of the cut sports. Um, I did do some research and looked at some of the other schools within our conference and even the the larger schools that are are similar size, they do include sixth graders in their cut sports. Um, so I was just curious a little bit more of, you know, what that community feedback would look like to make sure that those sixth graders are able to be included in all of the activities that are offered. This is a workshop so we can talk. Yeah. Right. And so one of the things that we've talked about with a good proxy for this is the accelerated programming. Um what we want to do is be able to expand the number of seats that are available and opportunity when you have um when you have the ability to participate in programming. What we don't want to do is remove a seat from one student to make room for another student. that that doesn't uh result in a net uh a net benefit generally. And so with a cut sport with I think the philosophy would then be aligning that with sixth grade the philosophy there is that sixth grade student is taking a spot that a seventh or eighth grade student otherwise would have taken because it is a cut sport with a limited number of seats. Whereas that sixth grade student will have an opportunity when they become a seventh grader or eighth grader to participate in that cut sport themselves. And so this way you're not removing a seat from a student, but you are still allowing those opportunities for the same students at the times when they when it's age appropriate. I think that's like how I interpret our our quote unquote philosophy. I don't know Justin if you would add anything to that. And I I that is part of what I spoke of and and the other part is the where that stands in some conflict with what you're with with with what we're saying about increasing opportunities in general. This is just, you know, I I think as as I shared when I spoke to that slide, it is it is more of a of kind of a philosophical dilemma for how to how to meet all of those needs and how to honor the desire for the parent of student A who might be a sixth grader who could have an opportunity versus the desire of parent B who might be the parent of the seventh grader who would be denied that opportunity if that sixth grader took it. It's just a it's an interesting moment that we that we just have to kind of philosophically work through and decide how we can best balance those ultimately competing interests that are both rooted in really good desires for all of our kids. >> Sure. And I guess I would question does that also it seems like that would be the similar scenario where if you have a seventh grader who ends up being able to play on the varsity team there are some exceptions. I've read that some seventh graders with coaches permission will be asked to play on a varsity team. they now are taking a spot from potentially an eighth grader who would have had that spot otherwise if they hadn't brought a seventh grader up versus the seventh grader staying on JB. So, >> right. And that's not something we currently do, but that is something that some schools do. Currently, we are we are we are grade level specific for our junior varsity and varsity teams. >> Okay. >> Yeah. The only time we would allow that is if we didn't have enough um participants on one of our eighth grade teams that we would allow for a seventh grader to do it. But we've tried to stay true to seventh grade is for seventh graders, eighth graders is for for eighth graders. And and you know, again, all cards on the table. I think both philosophies um carry a lot of merit, right? Um you can make an argument um both ways and I think both people would be right. Um but this is the first time we're going through this as a school district and in really trying to say, okay, what do we want to do and what do we want to believe? So public input helps. um talking with our coaches, looking at what other schools are doing. All those are going to be weighed um equally as we move forward and ultimately make a recommendation for the board to consider. >> Sure. And I know the athletic directors had mentioned it might split into two like conferences within the conference that the bigger schools would potentially be a conference within the conference and then the smaller schools. Is that a situation where then you have the opportunity that the bigger schools have sixth grade teams? >> Yeah. No, it's it's still the same number of of games. What they're trying to do within the and I'm going from memory here, so I think there's like 12 games in basketball. Um >> when we have those 12 games, putting more of the bigger schools together and putting more of those middle side schools together, not necessarily saying, okay, it's only you four big schools that are going to play each other. So picture of is you have your your very small schools on one end, you have your very big schools on the other. the crossover games will then be with those middle schools based on their size and their record from the previous year. >> That makes sense. >> Um, and I'm sorry, one other thing, the baseball and softball, I don't know what that process is like to encourage those sports to be added. And obviously that may not be a conversation for today as we're working through a lot of things. Um, but if that's another opportunity to look at adding something like that. I know they discussed um, baseball potentially running into travel baseball. Uh, I know typically those travel seasons end in July and then like fall would pick up for fall ball. >> Yeah, that's exactly what I was referencing because I helped build that particular slide being a parent of travel baseball. Sorry. Um, it's the the fall conflicts that I was referring to that you are correct. the the summer for travel, baseball and softball is pretty much done by the start of August and then right >> when you immediately run into the fall sessions as well um in terms of what we're looking at you know evaluating baseball and softball really it's facilities first um you know what facilities would be available to us in Downer's Grove so we would have to really start working with the park district because again even if you take a look at O'Neal those are not high school type of fields and that's what we would need um access to. The other big thing with that is um transportation. >> It requires you to transport because those would not be housed at our middle schools. And so unlike our other sports that can practice at the middle schools, um we would have to find a location, be able to bus those students consistently for practice every day and then have the option for students who needed a ride back to the school uh to be able to do that too. So transportation plays a big role in that as well. Um, where my students attend middle school or excuse me, my kids attend middle school, uh, that is often a big problem that they have because the field is not located at the actual middle school. A lot of days they have trouble even getting a practice in because by the time a bus is available, um, >> they're done with practice, if that makes sense. So that before we would even um you know be able to make a recommendation like that, we'd have to get some pretty good assurances from the park district about which fields we could use and then really talk with our transportation provider to make sure um that that was something that we were able to do. We do run into significant issues right now, every school does with the transportation because of the shortage of bus drivers. Typically what's happening is when our kids um are going to play a game, they um have to wait for the routes to be done, then another bus comes to pick them up and we're pushing right against that start time um for that. And with baseball um you know, if you don't get to the field at until 5:00, you're not going to be able to play very long the further you go into September. So, so those are all things that we want to um consider. >> Okay. Do you know if there'll be some sort of like survey that goes out regarding the sixth grade involvement and maybe like from the community so that we can have some more voices that aren't here? >> Yeah, right now we're still um talking about what that can look like. Uh but certainly that is something that's on the table. Um right now though it's been limited to um we want to first survey the students to make sure that you know there there's interest there. Um but certainly we can continue to look into that. >> Okay. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you for coming. Thank you. >> All right, that's the last of the cards. Is there anybody else at this time that would like to come up and make a public comment and engage into a dialogue uh with the board? All right, I have a couple of announcements. Uh Wednesday, March 4th at 3:45 p.m. the legislative committee will meet. That'll take place here at the Downro Civic Center. Friday, March 6th at 7 a.m., the financial advisory committee will also meet here at the Downs Grove Civic Center. And then on Monday, March 9th at 7 p.m. will be our next regular board meeting again right here at the Downers Grove Civic Center. Uh that uh is it for tonight? So, is there a motion to adjurnn? >> So moved. >> Second. >> All those in favor? I. Any opposed? The motion carried. We are uh the meeting is now adjourned at 9:16 p.m. Thank you.