As out local daily newspaper’s capacity to cover local news has been greatly reduced, I’ve decided to offer some minimal coverage of our local school board meetings. The plan is simply to offer up things that could go unnoticed for folks who don’t tune in to things like local school board meetings. I’ll likely add context and some commentary where I think it might be helpful.
Following the Pledge of Allegiance, acknowledgement of board members’ with students who had their first days of school that day, and swearing in this year’s student representative on the Board, Board President Micah Miller turned the meeting over to Superintendent Jennifer Gill for her report.
Gill reported 13,004 registered students as of the meeting time and a 89.03% district attendance rate for the first day.
District Vacancies
Across the district, Gill reported 11 current certified teacher vacancies and 64 vacancies of the 309 paraprofessional positions in the district. Of the paraprofessional openings, 15 of the 111 classroom para positions were vacant and 49 of the 111 one-to-one positions. Gill noted several of the vacancies would be filled by Board approvals at the meeting.
Student First, the District’s student transportation contractor began the year short 13 drivers necessary for all routes, Gill said. To make up for the shortfall, 17 drivers from the District’s ELC would be handling those routes until the ELC opens Aug. 27. By that time Gill said the some of the 17 new hires currently training with First Student would be ready to take over.
Gill said anyone interested in becoming a bus driver ($25/hr) or bus monitor ($16/hr) should reach out to First Student and noted training time for new hires was compensated.
Celebrations
Gill began her celebrations noting the District’s theme for the year, “Level Up 186.” She said it was meant to connect to students’ interest in leveling up in gaming and also “taking their learning to the next level.”
Gill shared photos from welcome back celebrations for teachers and students across the district as well as photos from the “AVID District Path Training: Creating Engaging and Rigorous Classrooms” from Aug. 13 and 14 attended by teachers from Southeast High and Jefferson Middle. Gill said the training was of particular note because all schools are “focusing on AVID” across the District.
Read more about AVID here.
Approval Items
In addition to standard items such as payroll, the following agenda items were unanimously approved by the Board:
- $55,000 to the National SAM (School Administration Manager) Innovation Project (NSIP) for a site license. The District has already implemented the SAM process with select schools and leaders.
- $53,000 in federal Title I funds for the contracting of The Thoughtful Classroom as the State Board approved Learning Partner with Dubois Elementary School. Dubois is required to contract a Learning Partner by the State Board because the school earned a Comprehensive rating on its 2023 school report card.
Title I, Part A (Title I) of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, as amended by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESEA) provides supplemental financial assistance to school districts for children from low-income families. Its purpose is to provide all children significant opportunity to receive a fair, equitable, and high-quality education, and to close educational achievement gaps by allocating federal funds for education programs and services. Title I allocations to state education agencies and local education agencies (LEAs) are based primarily on annually updated LEA poverty estimates produced by the U.S. Census Bureau. Then, within-LEA allocations to schools are based on school poverty rates, for which a common measure used by LEAs is the number of public school children eligible for free or reduced-price lunch (FRPL).
The Board approved up to $119,00 for “RSM US LLP to assist with consulting needs for the Fiscal Year 2024 Audit Preparation.”
Board members approved moving the maximum allowable reimbursement amount for staff and board members from $3,000 to $4,000 and increasing the per diem for food to $70. Gill said the increases were necessary to accommodate rising costs of travel and other expenses.
A final item on the agenda was adoption of new district language on personal electronic devices into the student handbook. Discussed and ratified over the course of the last few meetings, this new language moves to a centralized approach to policy and away from the previous freedom of schools to set individual approaches. Of particular interest were the universal consequences listed in the new policy:
- 1st – Take phone for the day & send to the office, admins call the parent / guardian
- 2nd – Take phone for the day, Parents/Guardians will be required to pick up the phone before the office closes and take the phone with them. The time should be communicated to the parent of when the offices closes. (If the phone is not picked up, it remains in the office until it is picked up).
- 3rd – Restorative conversations and classroom detentions and/or administrative detentions will be issued.
- 4th – Other disciplinary consequences will be issued for repeat offenders and repeat offenders can be required to bring the phone to the academic office with the appropriate grade level administrator each day if parents/legal guardians require their child to have a phone before or after school for safety.
Full minutes of the meeting can be found here.
The next meeting will be September 3 at 6:30 PM in the Board Room, at 1900 West Monroe, Springfield, Illinois.
This is great. I wish someone would do this for my local school board.
Oh, right, I should probably do that.