Galesburg Reporter

Elmhurst Community Unit School District 205 Committee of the Whole Board met April 12

Here are the minutes provided by the board:

Call to Order: President Caforio called the meeting to order at 5:30 p.m.

Board of Education Members

Present – Mrs. Kara Caforio, President; Mrs. Courtenae Trautmann, Secretary; Mrs. Athena Arvanitis; Mrs. Elizabeth Hosler; Mrs. Karen Stuefen

Absent – Mr. Chris Kocinski Vice-President; Mr. Jim Collins

President Caforio stated there are 5 board members present, 2 board member absent, a quorum is present.

Administration

Present - Dr. Keisha Campbell, Superintendent; Dr. Scott Grens, Associate Superintendent; Mrs. Tonya Daniels, Exec. Dir. Communications; Mr. Rudy Gomez, Exec. Dir. Technology; Mrs. Katie Lyons, Exec. Dir. Elementary Ed, Ms. Kerry Leuschel, Exec. Dir. Secondary Ed; Dr. Kevin Rubenstein, Asst. Supt. Student Services; Mr. Chris Whelton, Asst. Supt. Finance & Operations

Absent - Mr. Luke Pavone, Asst. Supt. Human Resources

Pledge of Allegiance: Board members led those present in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

Public Comments: There were no public comments.

Reports and Presentations

Dr. Campbell stated we engaged in prior presentations that provided greater insight into the process of the Strategic Plan, specifically with Phase 1 & 2. At the last COW meeting, we delved deeper into Phase 3. Part of that work, allowed us to look more specifically at the components of the Strategic Plan, Strategies, Strategic Indicators, some draft benchmarks, as well as planning some action steps. District administrators continue to work collaboratively with school teams to accomplish the following: monitoring effectiveness; make adjustments to resources, practices, and programing; provide a guaranteed & viable curriculum; and to utilize data-driven decision making to implement a Strategic Professional learning plan for all stakeholders.

As the leadership team continues to engage to move forward in Phase 3 Implementation, there is an opportunity to deepen understanding of an evidenced-based data framework that will allow the Board of Education, in partnership with administration, to set goals that are based on historical and localized student performance data. Dr. Gina Siemieniec, President from ECRA Group, Inc., will facilitate the learning and lead the Board of Education and administration through targeted learning on student proficiency and growth, ending with a goal-setting activity.

Dr. Gina Siemieniec explained the meeting will be broken up into three sections. The first will be a learning and a deeper presentation of ECRA analytic framework, the second part you’ll think about the analytic framework with looking at some actual data of the district, specifically the academic growth from the 2021-2022 SY. Through the framework, we will think about how to set growth goals. The last section, we will talk about how to use the framework to think about how to set proficiency goals, along with looking at the district’s dashboard.

Step 1: Introduction of ECRA: Predictive Analytics

Dr. Siemieniec preceded with the presentation to the Introduction of the ECRA Predictive Analytics, which included information on Achievement Proficiency and Growth, Leveraging Predictive Analytics, Projected Versus Actual Framework, Growth Models, Visualizing Projections, Visualizing Growth and Proficiency, ECRA Thresholds for Effect Sizes and Growth Inference, and Systemic Applications.

Listed below are some insights, highlights, questions, and wonderings from this section.

We have a district that typically outperforms the state and national averages, how will we use ECRA’s data framework to make sure our students move in the right trajectory.

You want kids to be proficient but you want kids to keep growing. How is the data shown in this framework?

This is the most significant gain out of looking at data in this type of framework.

Are we able to grasp different pockets of students using this model?

No matter where the students fall in the framework, it is about growth for every kid.

We need to prioritize growth for all of our kids.

Is something we can do for all different types of assessment?

Step 2: D205 Spring 2022 Academic Growth Reports

The next section focused on Goal Setting for School Improvement, how we apply it. The fundamental purpose of setting school improvement goals is to assess the effectiveness of improvement efforts. The school improvement process rests on the inferences one can draw from meeting a goal. We must focus on measuring student growth, and use personalized projections to set growth and proficiency goals in order to scientifically and equitably assess improvement efforts. Dr. Siemieniec went through the District Overall Growth Summary packet.

Listed below are some insights, highlights, questions, and wonderings from this section.

In seeing the big growth in ELA, we added new curriculum in the classroom this year, but last year professional development began with the staff on the new curriculum and resources. As a Board, that was a hugh investment but to see in year one we have an exciting return on investment.

This information gives the Board confidence to move forward in the same way with supporting other curriculums.

Currently, we are engaging in a math review, we will have 6-12 ELA and the dual language review. If we know an investment can be impactful from the start, as a board member, it makes me confident in the decisions supporting resources moving forward.

Using this program, we will be able to see classroom level data, which classrooms are moving at a higher rate, along with which students groups, etc.

We invested financially but also a large amount of time spent with our staff in professional development to implement the new curriculum/resources. It is a great one to one correlation to tie to this data.

We want the entire district student population to move up in proficiency and growth, along with the building levels.

This same framework will help set growth goals, as well as, aggregate proficiency goals.

The model offers an opportunity at the building level collaboration among educators to share ideas for different learners and raise the amount of tools in the toolkit.

This model really focuses on individual students and maximizes the value of the K-12 district. Therefore, we are able to follow kids.

There are no invisible kids in these models.

Step 3: Projection to Proficiency Goals

The last section focused on Setting District and Building Proficiency Goals. Using personalized projections at the student level removes confounding factors (different groups of students, demographic shifts, cohort effects, differential standards across grade levels, etc.) that create variation in proficiency rates unrelated to school performance. Setting projection-based goals at the district-level and aligning similar goals for buildings are not only evidence-based but also more equitable. Tonight’s exercise will look at the report for 2022-2023 IAR Proficiency Projections for grades 3-8.

Listed below are some insights, highlights, questions, and wonderings from this section.

Does the model give longer than one-year projections?

Are we aiming for 100% proficiency but separately track the student cohorts?

Growth is the means to getting more students proficient. Growth is monitored multiple times a year.

Growth ties in to school improvement, which means you are using the data to know if what is being used in the classroom is working. You have to accelerate growth for the students that are not proficient. You want to maintain or accelerate all growth for kids that are already proficient.

When you maintain status quo, the projection is saying if you copy what you did this year and do it again next year, the proficiency would not be different. The Board makes decisions to do things differently to accelerate growth through the recommendations of the administration. This is a key point.

How do we accelerate growth for students who are in the wide variance range? How do we close the variance? Appreciate the ability to use this framework to create more accurate, achievable measures.

How do we communicate this information, so that we are showing there is intentionality that goes into this? How do you communicate on a dashboard?

This a learning opportunity for us because we are considered a high performing district, this is a shift in mindset.

We can picture this as a series of conversations with our principals, then building level leaders, then conversations with building teams, then individual conversations with teachers to review individual students.

When talking about communicating to the community, we need to talk about the why and what it looks like in our schools. Then circle back to talk about how it’s effecting our students and the return on the investment.

President Caforio thanked Dr. Siemieniec.

Next Step reflections:

For a follow up conversation, we can discuss using these projections and coming up with our goal to potentially exceed the projections presented instead of a specific number because it’s different for each school.

Like the idea of the target being the long-range goal.

Would the Board like the administration to come back and reflect on the information presented tonight or is there thought as to presenting that work after receiving the spring summative?

Don’t believe what we see in the Spring is going to impact what our goals will be. Coming back sooner rather than later would be helpful.

The administration will need to bring a proposal to the Board to continue the initial partnership with ECRA.

Reminder, there are a lot of other data pieces to the Strategic Plan

Board Communications: There was no board communications.

Upcoming Meetings

- April 25, 2023 Board of Education Meeting at 7:00 p.m. - District 205 Center, Rooms 215, 216

Adjournment - End of Meeting: The meeting was adjourned at 7:40 p.m.

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