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The Examiner U-46 News Feed

U-46 striving to define metrics for strategic plan


By Seth Hancock
  The School District U-46 administration is seeking feedback from the Board of Education on metrics to be used with the district’s strategic plan as it was presented at the board meeting on Monday, Jan. 11.
  Terri Lozier, assistant superintendent, said that the District Management Council (DMC), which U-46 paid $175,000, helped conduct interviews with stakeholders and analyze data to develop the plan that was unanimously approved last April by the previous board at the last meeting before the new board was seated. Now, the district is developing metrics to measure if the plan is successful.
  Although there are metrics, Lozier said “these are general, broad categories of metrics” and they are looking for more specifics “that the board agrees that these are the right directions we should go.”
  There are eight priorities, the first being: “We will implement and support a challenging, standards-based curriculum across all content areas.”
  One of the goals under that is to “increase the percent of students who are prepared for kindergarten” which new board member Jeanette Ward had concerns with as kindergarten is generally the first year most students start attending a public school.
  Suzanne Johnson, assistant superintendent, said: “So one of the new assessments coming through the State of Illinois is the kid’s assessment, and that’s an authentic assessment of student readiness. We also have another number of literacy assessments that we currently utilize as students enroll and attend, initially begin attending kindergarten in U-46.”
  Ward replied: “Well, that will give you where they are initially, which is a great idea, but I’m not sure I want to give you a goal that you don’t have much influence over. You have influence once you get them in kindergarten, so how can it be your goal to increase kindergarten readiness if that’s not part of our offerings.”
  U-46 CEO Tony Sanders said that there are “opportunities for students beginning at age 3… or earlier” depending on status also “it’s partnering with our greater community here in Elgin.”
  Traci Ellis, in her second term on the board, also shared concerns with that priority saying the goals don’t necessarily align with the priority and the goals “could happen with or without a standards-based curriculum.”
  “It really is around student achievement if you take it as a whole package,” Sanders said. “We’ve kind of developed and placed under each of the priorities what the metrics would be.”
  Ellis also questioned if increasing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request responses should be a part of the seventh priority dealing with transparency. She said “great, do it, but is that something worthy of being in U-46’s strategic plan?”
  Sanders said that could be removed, but new board member Cody Holt suggested “having somebody do like a transparency audit. I know there are organizations out there that do that for free that we could maybe look into to make sure that we have all of our basis covered.”
  New board members Phil Costello and Sue Kerr asked some general questions.
  Kerr noted there weren’t specific starting points and end points set on the goals and that she’s a “very big believer in powerful, active verbs like implement and development” which are not seen in the current form. Lozier said that will be the “next step” and Sanders said that “one of the concerns with a statement is that then it becomes a check box, check off and said that you did it.”
  Costello said he understood the current lack of specificity, “but incumbent on that process is creating a foundation for baseline information and then benchmarking it to see, when you’re going to do something, if it’s meaningful and had a foundation by which you’re saying you’re going to increase by 5 percent by this date. It’s just making sure you have baseline information, and you can benchmark it against another school district, whatever stat you want to use.”
  Lozier said that “once we know that these are approved, we can work even faster within this finer detail.”
  Ward noted that “this plan was approved by a previous board, so this board wasn’t involved in the background really of developing all of this,” to which Donna Smith, the board’s president, said “I would say at this point, this is more of a community document then just a board document or a steering committee document.”
  However, public input was questioned by Veronica Noland, in her third year of a four-year term, who said at the time the plan was approved: “I’m concerned we’re not going out of our comfort zones. We didn’t go out and find those voices that have not really been engaged.”
  Costello, Holt and Ward all expressed concerns with the plan when they spoke with The Examiner after it was approved. Those concerns ranged from spending $175,000 to hire an outside firm, DMC being based in Boston, for something that could have been developed in-house as well as the plan being approved by the previous board when a new board was just about to be seated.
  Other concerns dealt with some controversial goals of the plan including in the third priority addressing workforce which says U-46 will artificially “increase diversity of staff within and across all staff positions.” Artificially increasing diversity would, by definition, mean the district would have to discriminate in its hiring practices.
  That’s something resident Todd Jackson would like to see when he spoke during public comments at the Jan. 25 board meeting saying that over 83 percent of teachers are white. He said “83 percent is alarming,” and “we need to have a well-rounded school system of teachers.”
  That issue has divided colleagues Ellis and Ward previously when Ward was not on the board. In 2013, Ellis said the district needs to be “intentional about recruiting minorities” and that minority students should be able to “walk into a classroom and see a teacher who looks like them.”
  Ward prefers to hire based on qualifications and merits regardless of race, something Ellis said she found offensive. As a member of the public in 2014, Ward said: “What I find offensive is the need to justify preferential treatment based on race as the right thing to do. Hiring, like justice, should be blind, based on qualifications and content of character.”

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