This is a summary of the District 100 board meeting that occurred on September 23, 2009.
1. Education improvement - District superintendent Stan Fields talked about the investment in technology the district has made to improve education in the district. The district created a vision statement in March of 2009 that stated the district wants to rank within the top 25% of the districts of the state of Illinois as evidenced by testing. Currently, District 100 is ranked in the top 66%. The district has invested in new technologies. Last year, the district purchased 750 new workstations at a cost of $565,000. This year the district has budgeted $270,000 for more technology purchases. Federal stimulus money will be used to purchase some of this technology. Last year, the district piloted 19 classrooms using Smart Boards and has budgeted $625,000 this year to purchase more smart boards. 80% of the budget of the South Berwyn education foundation will be used to purchase more Smart Boards. The district has also hired 28 new certified staff and invested in 726 hours of professional development for certified staff. The district has implemented a program where they have two certified staff teaching in the same classroom at the same time in an effort to reduce class size. It was stated that, with this investment, the district will be holding teachers and principals more accountable and that teachers and principals clearly understand that the district expects an improvement in test scores.
2.Performance Dashboards - D100 will be deploying a reporting system to the public that will graphically depict test scores, attendance and district performance, similar to the NIU Education website. It has graphs that can be filtered in a variety of ways to depict the district's performance on attendance and tests and can drill down to school level data and daily attendance data. All data will be aggregated data and will not be down to the student level. The dashboard is expected to be available to the public on October 15, 2009 throught the district website.
3. STI - STI is a system that allows parents to log in through the internet and find out about their children's grades and attendance. The district expects all student information to be available on STI by November 2, 2009. The district has also implemented an EAI-like system interoperability software package to automate the exchange of data between its various systems rather than transfer data manually from one system to another. The district expects this to save time and cut down on errors. The district expects to deploy the interoperability software by the summer of 2010.
4. THINKLINK - The district has installed and is deploying a new technology for assessments called THINKLINK. It is an online assessment tool that is based on Illinois standards and can be tailored to a particular child. It provides immediate quantitative data on what areas a child is strong in and where a child is weak. The greatest advantage of THINKLINK is that teachers can immediately spot areas to help a particular child rather than wait 6 months for test results. The assessments are very detailed in matching up with ISBE standards and the reporting features are impressive. It was stated that in previous years, teachers and principals could only give qualitative information about how they felt a student was progressing. With THINKLINK, teachers and principals have accurate quantitative data that is up to date and can be used for predictive analysis.
5. Enrollment - Enrollments have held steady over the previous year. There has been a total increase of 8 students in the distrct. Enrollment for the district this year will be 3,657 students. There are 436 students enrolled in the 7th grade - 220 students at Freedom Middle School and 216 students at Heritage.
6. Financials - As of August 31, the district has received $3 million dollars in revenue (10% of budget) and incurred $5.1 million in expenses (14% of budget). The district has $4.7 million in its fund balances. Most of the revenue has come from the state. Most of the expenses have come from summer construction projects and the purchase of new computers ($276K for the computers). It was stated in the meeting that the state of Illinois has passed a new law requiring that all employee salary and compensation be listed on a website by October 1. District 100 expects that they will meet that deadline. It was also stated that the state "suspended" the usual state rules on funding and sending money to the districts because of the financial situation that Springfield is in with its budget.
7. Building and Lifesafety - The board was presented a report by Green and Associates about building and maintenance issues that the district needed to address. The report categorized problems as high, medium and low priority. High priority items should be addressed in the next 12 months. Medium priority items in the next 5 years and low priority items in the next 10 years. The cost of the high priority items was $84K; the cost of the medium priority items was $776K; the cost of the low priority items was $746K. Jim Swicionis made the suggestion that the board ought to do a building plan and cost out what it would take to either build new buildings or re-vamp existing ones. Hiawatha was used as an example of a building that was getting very old and would need a lot of maintenance in the next 10 years. The construction project at Pershing to address the flooding problem and the installation of new windows at La Vergne has been completed.
8. AYP - AYP is the way the state measures how well a district is doing in terms of meeting state education standards. District 100 is on the state's education watch list because the district has failed to meet the state's standards for 2 years in a row. Last year, the district did not meet the state's standards in 4 categories. It was reported that this year, the district is meeting the state's standards in all categories except for the category of educating physically and mentally challenged students.The district has a 34% rating where as the state standard is 37%. A district must meet the state standard in ALL AYP categories in order to be taken off of the watch list.
9. South Berwyn Education FOUNDATION - The South Berwyn Education FOUNDATION made $8,000 on the circus. The FOUNDATION is having a fund raiser at the Skylight restaurant on Friday, October 17. The South Berwyn Education FOUNDATION also had a presence at OktoberFest. Board President Joanne Zendol stated that the South Berwyn Education FOUNDATION has been in existence for almost 20 years and has raised $660,000 dollars for District 100.
10. District Improvement Plan - The board approved the District Improvement Plan, as required by state law. Some highlights from the plan included the use of new technologies such as SMART boards, addressing special education problems and hiring new reading specialists.
11. Board meeting schedule - The board approved a new meeting schedule that would include having more than one board meeting per month.
12. Usual business - The usual business of approving the minutes of the last board meeting; approving personnel decisions; approving payroll and payables; approving the teacher assistant unit negotiation agreement; approving the custodian unit memo of understanding; formally voting to recognize that there are 8 schools in the district (several board members questioned the state's rationale for this requirement); attending meetings and conferences; met with the mayor to talk about traffic problems; met with the "Clean Green Berwyn" committee on educating kids about litter; attended ABC meeting to discuss the H1N1 virus; DCFS training; DACEE is working on best practices. The district received a letter from the state of Illinois stating that the Regional School District for suburban Cook County has been abolished and that all correspondences that went to the regional office should now go to the state.
The next board meeting will be on October 28 at the Pershing School.
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