Cherry School District 92 issued the following announcement on Sept. 18.
At the State Board annual planning retreat last week, we reflected on our shared accomplishments and discussed guiding principles for the year.
On the first day, we discussed the “Teach Illinois: Strong Teachers, Strong Classrooms” report. One of our seven Board goals is that all students are supported by highly prepared and effective teachers and school leaders. The report proposes solutions to the teacher workforce crisis based on evidence of what is already working here in Illinois and across the country. Underlying the entire report is the need to fully fund the Evidence-Based Funding formula, so the districts experiencing the brunt of the teacher shortage have the resources to implement these proven teacher leadership, mentorship, and pipeline models.
We want to hear your feedback! We intend to have specific next steps and policy recommendations to present to the Board at the October meeting. Continued dialogue with districts and communities will prepare us to present immediate next steps for the Board to act on. The report is open for public comment until Oct. 2; please send your comments to TeachIllinois@isbe.net.
Before the retreat, Board members read 5 Steps for Liberating Public Education From Its Deep Racial Bias. I appreciate the thoughtful engagement around this piece – Board members asked meaningful questions, pushed each other, and reiterated our responsibility to the children and families in the state. The Board’s values and discussions will inform our upcoming conversations about the fiscal year 2020 public education budget. ISBE Chief Financial Officer Robert Wolfe gave an instructive presentationPDF Document at the retreat on the mechanics and implications of Evidence-Based Funding, now one year into implementation.
A budget is the manifestation of an organization’s vision. The Board began to articulate a set of guiding principles for the Illinois public education fiscal year 2020 budget. These are the draft statementsPDF Document the Board will continue working on this fall:
We believe that everyone has the right and ability to learn and that we have ethical, moral, and legal responsibilities to set high expectations and ensure that every student achieves success.
We believe that while racial disparities exist in virtually every key indicator of child, family, and community wellbeing and that individual, institutional, and structural impacts of race, racism, and other biases are pervasive and significantly affect key life indicators of success these differences can change when directly addressed.
We believe that ending disparities and gaps in achievement begins with the delivery of quality early learning programs and appropriate parent engagement and support.
We believe that communities, parents, teachers, educational leaders, and community-based organizations have unique and important solutions to improve outcomes for our students.
We believe that teachers and leaders in every school and classroom in Illinois need to demonstrate competency in their content, their ability to adjust their pedagogy to student need, their ability to establish positive relationships with all students including students whose background and life experience is different from theirs, and their understanding of human development.
ISBE will host three budget hearings (in Springfield on Oct. 17, in Mount Vernon on Oct. 24, and in Chicago on Nov. 16) to gather your feedback on the needs of your students and communities. You will see these five draft values at the bottom of the page on the budget request forms. We will share the updated budget request form very soon.
We began Day 2 of the retreat by celebrating shared successes. Our progress over the past year in improving service to schools and families sets the foundation for the year of work ahead. Samuel Aguirre, division supervisor of English Learners, spoke about the development of the ePlan, a consolidated platform that will allow administrators to submit 12 currently separate grant applications in one place to better support the whole child. Jason Hall, division administrator of State Funding and Forecasting, reported on the deeply collaborative work required to calculate and distribute the additional $700 million in Evidence-Based Funding. Scott Harry, director of Budget and Financial Management, emphasized ISBE’s results-driven practice and improvements to align our daily work to the Board goals. Allison Sherman, executive director of IL-EMPOWER, shared the progress we have made in building a school improvement system grounded in trust, peer-to-peer learning, and data.
Our Division of English Learners launched a webpage with a series of professional development modules created in partnership with the Midwest Comprehensive Center about the state and federal requirements for bilingual programs. The modules accompany the English Learner Toolkit launched by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of English Language Acquisition in 2015. The statewide annual Bilingual Program Directors meeting on Thursday and Friday will delve deeper into this guidance to help educators understand and meet the legal obligations to English Learners. The Every Student Succeed Act has shifted accountability for English learners from Title III to Title I; therefore, district Title I directors have been invited to the meeting this year for the first time to promote collaboration in service to our bilingual students.
Original source can be found here.
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