IASB Journal July August 2021

July/August 2021 2019 Vol. 89 87 No. 4 3

Opportunity Found

Applying Community Knowledge

Leadership ‘or Bust’

Expert Committees

Front Page

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The Illinois School Board Journal applies the lessons of the pandemic to school district plans for the future and seeks to identify how districts can address the loss and opportunity this generation of students and educators is facing. We emerge hopefully from the pandemic with an outlook of decisions, cautions, concerns, and the full focus of hindsight.

There is both the fear, and the hope, that public education will never be the same.

“Moving forward into 2021-22, my concern is that people will have a short memory,” says Diane Wolf, Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction at Bloomington SD 87. “I am concerned that decisions we had to make in December 2020 will be criticized as we move out of the COVID pandemic.

We made decisions at the time with the information we had present and then we adjusted accordingly. I’m worried that parents, school board members, teachers, and our communities will forget the difficulties of changing an entire system of education and be critical of administrators due to those decisions.”

“My greatest concern is getting back to a normal educational environment,” says Eric Misener, Superintendent at Seneca CCSD 170.

“Students need to be able to socialize, participate in extra activities, and just be kids.”

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“How do we capitalize on what we have learned about our students and differentiate an entire educational system?” queries Kankakee CUSD 111 superintendent Genevra Walters, “And how do we do this with the knowledge that education as a system hasn’t changed significantly since the early 1900s?”

Even as school districts celebrate what they can as Summer 2021 arrives and school personnel (I hope) take a short pause before the wheel turns again, the education community moves forward. Illinois school districts are addressing learning loss, seizing the opportunity for change, learning from peers in the education community, and determining how to best use the funding earmarked for recovery. Anticipating the 2021-2022 school year, educators at all levels are seeking opportunity in recovery, to overcome the setbacks of the pandemic and discover to address disparities and inequities. Read about this and more in “Learning Loss, Learning Opportunity” starting on page 9.

We also bring some of the national-level research, data, and outlook for looking ahead. On page 21, learn about “Operation Reverse the Loss” and how the Institute of Education Sciences, the United States Department of Education’s science agency, aims to speed up

the process to identify what works for whom under what conditions.

Also read, beginning on page 24, an analysis of priorities for intensive academic intervention strategies, presented by Elaine Allensworth and Nate Schwartz of EdResearch for Recovery.

Three school districts that opened last fall (and stayed open) for five-day learning join the Journal this month to offer key elements of their experiences and recommendations for moving forward. Thanks to Butler SD 53 in Oak Brook, Gower SD 62 in Willowbrook, and Roselle SD 12 for sharing valuable guidance, which begins on page 14.

The Association and the Journal are cautiously steering back into normal-time waters. All board members, new ones in particular, are advised to discover how, once you are an elected or appointed school board member, “your personal phone could become public business.” Attorneys Scott Uhler and Mallory Milluzzi, with Klein, Thorpe, and Jenkins, Ltd. bring us this update, starting on page 29.

As always, I welcome your comments about the Journal and all topics of interest to school board members in Illinois.

Theresa Kelly Gegen is Editor of the Illinois School Board Journal and can be reached at tgegen@iasb.com.

Table of Contents COVER STORIES

9 Learning Loss, Learning Opportunity Advisory Committees Guide 14 Superintendent Districts through Pandemic

By Theresa Kelly Gegen

By Paul O’Malley

16

Born from Crisis: An Emerging Framework for Effective Leadership

By Victor Simon III

18

Creating a Pandemic Response Manual is Critical

By Steve Zurek and Mary Henderson

24 School Practices Address Student Learning Loss

By Elaine Allensworth and Nate Schwartz

COMMENTARY

REGULAR FEATURES

21 Operation Reverse the Loss

2 Front Page

By Mark Schneider

4 From the Field

The Difference is Process

FEATURE STORIES

6 A Career of Communication and Negotiation 29 Breaking Up with Your Smartphone

By Jim Hook

38 Milestones 39 Insights

By Scott Uhler and Mallory Milluzzi

July/August 2019 Vol. 87 No. 3

Kara Kienzler, Associate Executive Director Theresa Kelly Gegen, Editor Britni Beck, Advertising Manager Jennifer Nelson, Copy Editor Katie Grant, Design and Production Jeff Armbruster, Typesetting

ILLINOIS SCHOOL BOA R D JOURNAL (ISSN-0019-221X) is published every other month by the Illinois Association of Sc hool B oa rd s, 2921 Ba ker Dr ive, Springfield, Illinois 62703-5929 (217) 5289688. The IASB regional office is located at One Imperial Place, 1 East 22nd Street, Lombard, Illinois 60148-6120 (630) 629-3776.

The JOURNAL is supported by the dues of school boards holding active membership in the Illinois Association of School Boards. Copies are mailed to all school board members and the superintendent in each IASB member school district.

Non-member subscription rate: Domestic $18 per year. Foreign (including Canada and Mexico) $21 per year.

Publication Policy IASB believes that the domestic process functions best through frank and open discussion.

Material published in the JOURNAL, therefore, often presents divergent and controversial points of view which do not necessarily represent the views or policies of IASB. Copyright © 2021 by the Illinois Association of School Boards (IASB), the JOURNAL is published six times a year and is distributed to its members and subscribers. Copyright in this publication, including all articles and editorial information contained in it is exclusively owned

by IASB, and IASB reserves all rights to such information. IASB is a tax-exempt corporation organized in accordance with section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

July/August 2021 • 3

From the Field

The Difference is Process

By Dee Molinare

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What has it been like to be a board member through the pandemic? What does the future hold? The challenges school districts have faced during the pandemic have been paramount.

The polarization of our society made its way into the fabric of our educational system. Some boards rode these challenges gracefully, while others were in a topsy-turvy ride in a lifeboat, constantly bailing, trying to stay afloat. But why the difference?

In my recent in-district work with boards, I have discovered the difference. Or, so I believe, it is a big part of the difference.

The difference is process.

Boards that have followed the process, vetting through decisions, appear to have had less turmoil than those that have not stuck to the process. Notice I say “less turmoil,” because no board has experienced this time as pleasurable, or without turmoil.

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Boards that have weathered the storm in their metaphorical lifeboats had a process in place for decision-making before the crisis of the pandemic. The process includes bringing forth a decision that must be made in a timely manner and allowing opportunity and time to vet the decision.

For example, a discussion item is placed on the board agenda to allow discussion and questions on the item, for all team members to have clarity. This helps guide the superintendent and the staff on what further information or research is needed by the board on the item. At a subsequent meeting, the item is placed as an action item. This process does not “surprise” board members with an urgent, must-do-itnow decision.

Furthermore, big-ticket items such as boundary changes, closing a school, a referendum, etc., require deep discussions and

ample time for decision-making.

Vetting often includes bringing together a team of stakeholders (parents, community members, staff, students, board members) to provide input and perspective to the decision. With those types of decisions, it is important to hear from and include many voices during the process. This not only provides clarity and communication, but also creates ownership of the decision throughout the system.

The process helps build consensus around the decisions at the board table. Granted, board members will not always agree unanimously. But allowing the divergent exchange of thought at the board table in a respectful manner gives a positive impression to all stakeholders. When I work with boards of education exhibiting inappropriate behavior (yelling at one another, foul language, name calling) at the board

table, I ask the group to look at IASB’s sample PRESS policy 8:30 Visitors to and Conduct on School Property. It states, “The School District expects mutual respect, civility, and orderly conduct among all people on school property or at a school event.” Why would board members at a duly convened meeting violate their own policy? This type of behavior creates angst throughout the district. And it is not the behavior to model for staff, students, and community members.

At a recent board self-evaluation, a comment of a retiring board member to fellow board members resonated with me. He stated, “In this environment, I have never had this much respect with a group I have disagreed with.” Respectful dialogue at the board table creates a solid team, prepared to ask difficult questions and make challenging decisions.

Facing the ever-changing landscape of COVID has put school boards in a reactive mode, challenged with making decisions in an unknown landscape. For many, it was chaos like never before experienced.

Boards that have the process in place fared better. Now it is time to get back to a proactive mode, looking at the district goals and planning for the future: a future beyond COVID-19 and the new normal.  Dee Molinare, Ed.D., is Field Services Director for IASB’s DuPage, Starved Rock, and North Cook divisions.

July/August 2021 • 5

Feature Story

A Career of Communication and Negotiation

By Jim Hook

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His gait has slowed a bit but his mind is as sharp as ever. And with that sharp mind, Tom Kostes has helped negotiate every North Palos SD 117 contract for nearly 50 years, as a superintendent and as a board member.

“I just love being part of the negotiating teams,” said Kostes, who began his tenure in District 117 as assistant superintendent in 1973. “I knew nothing about the negotiating process. I mean nothing. Chuck [Feigl, then the district superintendent] told me at the time ‘you’re going to learn. And I did. Boy, did I ever. … The key is keeping an open dialogue.”

The amiable Kostes was named superintendent in 1976, after the passing of Feigl, and held the position for 18 years. During his tenure the district, after 11 tries, passed a tax rate referendum in November 1993.

“It was the greatest feeling … when we passed that referendum,” Kostes said. “It meant so much to the

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district, students, and staff who had worked so hard. We got to the point where we were going to sell the buses to put money in our education fund.

That’s how desperate we were.”

Kostes said it was important for him to visit the schools every month and observe and talk to teachers and principals. “I’d sit in the school libraries and teachers could talk to

me about anything, except grievances,” he said. “That was not open for discussion.”

Kostes retired in 1994 and Ken Geraghty took over as superintendent. Kostes stayed on as a consultant to the superintendent, a position he held through 2003. In 2006, he was asked by then-Superintendent Ken Sorrick to fill an unexpired term

on the school board. “The only request I had was that I could be part of the negotiating team,” Kostes said.

He was elected to the board the following year (2007) and re-elected for each term since. He will be up for re-election at the age of 85 in 2023, should he decide to run. “That’s a long way off,” he said. “We’ll see.”

He has served as president of the board for the last eight years. “We’ve had a great mix of people on the board who bring their own unique strengths and perspectives to issues. You’re always going to have differences of opinion, and that’s good,” Kostes said. “You need that. Our job as a board is to make the superintendent’s job as workable as possible. How can we make his/her goals more attainable?”

He said while District 117 has had some really outstanding superintendents, “current Superintendent Jeannie Stachowiak is probably the best one we’ve ever had.”

Kostes’ mind is always working. “How are we doing on bus drivers?” he queries the transportation director during a recent board meeting. “Did that new restaurant on 95th Street open up yet?” he asks no one in particular in a reference to future tax dollars to the district. “What’s the current enrollment?”

Reflecting on the last eight decades, Kostes credits his wife Carolyn and his family. “I’ve been lucky,” he said.

“Very lucky. I have a great wife, great kids and grandkids.

“I’ve had great jobs and I’ve had/have great friends. Ken Geraghty is one of those great friends with whom I still talk to five times a week and play golf with once a week weather permitting.”

A hip replacement in 2010 forced Kostes to use a cart rather than walk the courses.

Geraghty said Kostes has been more than a great friend. “He’s been my mentor. He taught me a lot when I was assistant superintendent. We discussed everything back in those days regarding education. “We didn’t always agree on things which was a good thing. He told me once that if we agreed on everything, one of us wasn’t needed.”

Geraghty said Kostes also taught him people skills.

“Tom showed me that it is all about how you talk to people, Geraghty said. “Tom also gave me confidence.

Probably the greatest compliment I can give Tom is he is such an honest man. He is — and has always been — about what is best for kids.”  Jim Hook is Director of Public Relations for North Palos SD 117.

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Cover Story

Learning Loss, Learning Opportunity

By Theresa Kelly Gegen

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COVID slide. Learning loss. Unfinished learning. Learning disruption.

Whatever you call it, it presents questions: How much has been lost? Compared to what, and whom? How can we address it?

Who decides?

There is both the fear, and the hope, that public education will never be the same. The fear is that we have lost a generation of students. The hope is in the opportunity to innovate and make changes to the system.

Anticipation of the 2021-2022 school year, and beyond, raises questions about loss and opportunity, identifying needs and

supporting students, and funding it all. “COVID slide” essentially refers to academic learning loss experienced by students as classrooms closed, teaching and learning moved out of the classroom, and later, for most, came back in some form.

Educators at the national, state, and local levels are seeking opportunity in the recovery, by identifying not only how the K-12 community can overcome the universal setbacks of the pandemic, but also how the lessons learned might change the conversation and create opportunity to address disparities and inequities.

Opportunity. Reframe. Reset.

Leapfrog. Seize the moment.

Whatever you call it, the challenge locally is in discovering the answers and solutions for students.

“The pandemic reality is that it was challenging, and we’re still in it,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, speaking to a meeting of the Education Writers Association in early May. “It’s also a tremendous opportunity to hit the reset button on things that we know needed fixing way before the pandemic, so I’m eager to do that.

“My biggest fear is that we go back to practices that were July/August 2021 • 9

comfortable, before the pandemic, but led to the disparities and outcomes that we are experiencing as a country.”

Disparities have long existed.

The COVID-19 pandemic, a crisis that impacted every community and every student, brought disparities into focus. Recovery presents extraordinary challenges and opportunities, with questions addressing unprecedented problems on a national scale, while at the same time keeping individual student needs paramount in local decision-making.

“As educators, we have known about summer slide or learning loss for years,” said Diane Wolf, Assistant Superintendent for

Curriculum and Instruction at Bloomington SD 87. “But now that it is a common denominator for all students, regardless of economic level, we will hear about this for years to come. I think we need to quickly change this narrative so that our students begin to realize what they have endured and overcome instead of possible things they may (or may not) have lost.”

According to data collected mid-pandemic and made available by Emma Dorn of McKinsey & Company, students had, on average, learned about 87% of the reading as they would in a normal year, and about 67% of the math.

Concern is heightened due to large disparities in pandemic-era

achievement between majority-white schools and schools that have majority students of color.

This reflects both opportunity gaps in technology availability and access to in-person learning. Projections from the same studies indicated that without addressing learning loss, overall students would be about 10 months behind, with students of color potentially being 12 to 16 months behind.

Can the slide be “solved” by learning more, faster? Or does that put those already behind, further behind? These questions arise as school districts address learning loss, not only academically but socially and emotionally as well.

Overview for Board Members: Federal Recovery Funding Federal funds from the coronavirus recovery acts ESSER I (CARES Act), ESSER II (CRRSA Act), and ARP ESSER (ARP Act) are being distributed by the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) with 90% going directly to schools and districts.

Each Act has applicable dates and deadlines, with current information available on the ISBE website.

School districts are required to provide opportunity for stakeholders to give input and publish its plan to the community. Districts have some flexibility in the making of the plan and the use of these funds, within parameters listed in the Acts. ISBE lists among its priority areas: • “Support enrollment, retention, and re-engagement initiatives to ensure academic progression across P-20 spectrum • Invest in infrastructure for mental wellness and trauma-informed, culturally responsive schools, including educator professional development and support • Build individualized student fact base with academic and behavioral diagnostics and progress monitoring

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• Evaluate and improve hybrid/remote learning models to develop long-term digital strategic priorities • Reimagine school calendar and expand school day/year • Improve quality of learning through altered classroom structures, educator professional development, and digital tools • Provide out-of-classroom learning experiences through tutoring, afterschool, summer camps, etc.

• Increase flexibility of secondary, post-secondary environment to accommodate for other responsibilities • Support students with structured engagement and enhanced communications in transition periods • Enhance accessibility of academic and behavioral counseling resources, especially for at-promise students (including year-round support) • Design an integrated education/workforce strategy and playbook and offer work-driven credit opportunities.

“In the early days of the pandemic, many of us ‘hoped for the best, but expected the worst,’” said Sycamore CUSD 427 superintendent Steve Wilder. “We began to look at this issue as ‘learning disruption’ as opposed to learning loss. Our teachers continued to teach, and our students continued to learn; it was just different. While student achievement and growth dipped a little, there is evidence that it hasn’t been as catastrophic as we thought it might be. This is a credit to teachers and students everywhere for their hard work and flexibility, and I believe one of the greatest successes this year. Despite the very challenging circumstances, we reinvented what education looked like.”

Some students thrived on the alternative platforms that education undertook in the pandemic.

“Many students who struggled

and opportunities, with differentiation in time and place and level of support. We confirmed what we always knew, ‘students learn

“We confirmed what we always knew, ‘students learn differently.’”

— Kankakee CUSD 111 superintendent Genevra Walters

in the traditional system increased engagement with academics and learning [when the buildings were closed],” said Kankakee CUSD 111 superintendent Genevra Walters. “What we found is that students need varied experiences

• Connect districts/institutions with community organizations that connect students to comprehensive support.”

Funds may be used for a wide range of activities to address needs arising from the coronavirus pandemic.

ARP ESSER funds may be used to develop strategies and implement public health protocols including policies in line with guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

This includes development of procedures and systems to improve the preparedness and response efforts of schools and districts, and coordinating preparedness and response with other local entities such as health departments, and education on minimizing the spread of infectious diseases.

Facilities options for the funding include purchasing cleaning and sanitization supplies for school facilities, improving indoor air quality, and repairing and improving school facilities to reduce risk of virus transmission and exposure to environmental health hazards.

The funds may be used for addressing learning loss, specifically the needs of children from low-income

differently.’ This experience is leading us to the challenge of creating opportunities tailored to the individual needs of our students.

Students who did struggle are given additional support. The support was implemented early and often

families, children with disabilities, English learners, racial and ethnic minorities, students experiencing homelessness, and foster care youth and other activities that are necessary to maintain operation of and continuity of and services, including continuing to employ existing or hiring new LEA and school staff.

Also included are providing mental health services and supports, including through the implementation of evidence-based full-service community schools and the hiring of counselors.

Funding can be applied to planning for or implementing activities during long-term closures, including providing meals to eligible students and purchasing educational technology for students that aids in regular and substantive educational interaction between students and their classroom instructors and planning and implementing activities related to summer learning and supplemental afterschool programs.  Sourced from ISBE webinars and website. Resources associated with this article can be accessed via the Journal’s resources page, bit.ly/JA21-Jres.

July/August 2021 • 11

throughout the pandemic and will continue.”

Small, local programs may have the greatest impact, as school districts determine how to use the funds provided. Sustainability is a huge factor — getting relief funds is vital, but the inflow

of not being prepared for the next grade level. That could mean expanded summer school, beforeor afterschool programs, high-impact tutoring, and an early start to the school year.”

School districts will also be required to seek broad public

“We have an opportunity with this influx of funding to alter the educational trajectory of our most vulnerable students.”

— Illinois State Superintendent of Schools Carmen I. Ayala

won’t last. While seeking change and innovation, districts must calibrate short-term and longterm needs to identify what funding is needed to address “recovery,” and what must be adjusted for long-term goals and rebuilding.

Illinois public K-12 schools will receive an estimated $5 billion of federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds (see sidebar, page 10) to be distributed by the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) “to address the impact that COVID-19 has had, and continues to have, on elementary and secondary schools.”

“We have an opportunity with this influx of funding to alter the educational trajectory of our most vulnerable students,” Illinois State Superintendent of Schools Carmen Ayala told educators in an April letter. “I encourage you to use this funding to increase in-person instructional time for students, especially those at risk 12 • Illinois School Board Journal

input and develop plans for the use of ARP ESSER funds. Among the targets: closing the digital divide, adding extended-time learning and personalized learning, addressing social and emotional needs, and assessing not only the loss, but the outcomes of the interventions.

“We need to make sure that our school houses are prepared to meet the social and emotional needs of our learners, to make sure that we’re that students are seeing themselves in the curriculum,” Cardona said. “We have to make sure we’re connecting families, to the learning process. Parents are the best teachers, and we play a supporting role.

So what I want to see more of is a natural authentic engagement of families.”

School districts are deploying techniques based on experiences with the learning gap that opens each summer to address the longer-term COVID slide with the additional layer of opportunity gap that comes from

inequities in technology and language acquisition. Summer learning programs are underway, although not without concern over fatigue among students, teachers, and communities.

Technology, both where it is and where access needs to be improved, was a critical factor in the gaps, and addressing it requires both short- and longterm initiatives.

“The teachers and students have become much more proficient using technology to provide instruction and sending out and completing assignments,” said Eric Misener, superintendent at Seneca CCSD 170. “In the future it should be much more seamless when a student is absent for a day or two. Those new learning opportunities will continue to be utilized moving forward.”

Extended-time learning and personalized learning — helping each student meet their unique needs — are critical to “stop the slide.” Finding ways to deliver extra opportunities and resources is crucial, meeting students where they are in terms of technology accessibility and in-person options. School districts are encouraged to partner with community organizations to develop community partnerships to support students through academically focused after-school programs in schools with a high concentration of low-income students.

Tutoring is proving to be a difference-maker in mitigating learning loss or slide. Research suggests that intensive tutoring may be more effective than other

types of interventions, and programs across the nation are pairing students with tutors — in person and online — at all grade levels. Even using volunteers and social service providers, it’s an expensive commitment, especially providing tutoring resources to schools and students who typically haven’t been able to afford them.

Speaking of opportunity, “One of my hopes is that we have demonstrated that we used that f lexibility productively at the local and state level. If we are allowed to continue doing that, we will set the stage for innovation that will benefit our students, staff, and schools for generations to come,” said Wilder.

“Technology has allowed us to reach students far beyond the classroom,” said Misener.

“Collaboration has allowed us to be more effective as a team.

Flexibility from the State Board of Education has been unprecedented. In particular, one of my hopes is that we have demonstrated that we used that flexibility productively at the local and state level. If we are allowed to continue doing that, we will set the stage for innovation that will benefit our students, staff, and schools for generations to come.”

Just as it is at the local and state levels, at the federal level, the bigger post-coronavirus picture is developing. Cardona offered ideas for moving forward without going back.

“I don’t want us to go back into that comfort zone,” Cardona said. “We grow when we’re uncomfortable. So we’re going to have to rethink education and ensure that the funds are going to students that were impacted the most. So that’s tough leadership, right? You’re going to have to change what people are used to with schools. I always say when the pandemic ends, it’s not going to mean it’s easier. It’s going to be different work … equally as challenging to lead through the next chapter of education in our country.”  Theresa Kelly Gegen is Editor of the Illinois School Board Journal.

Resources associated with this article can be accessed via bit.ly/JA21-Jres.

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Cover Story

Superintendent Advisory Committees Guide Districts through Pandemic

By Paul O’Malley

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School districts are continually looking for opportunities to bring together stakeholders around a specific initiative and collaborate with knowledgeable individuals within their communities. Community members, parents, partner organizations, and others bring specialized skills and talents from their personal and professional experiences to the betterment of the district. A Superintendent Advisory Committee can act as the vehicle to bring the right people around the table to discuss topics, drive insights, and provide useful feedback.

As the backbone of our communities, schools need to engage the community, parents, faculty and staff, and external partners in a collaborative process for the best interest of moving the school district forward in a positive light. Superintendent Advisory Committees facilitate the connection between the community and the school.

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What is a Superintendent Advisory Committee?

These advisory committees are outside the established committees of the Board of Education, district leadership teams, and other governance or negotiation committees. A Superintendent Advisory Committee is a non-authoritative, non-binding board of education committee that is formed for a predetermined amount of time for a specific purpose to advise the superintendent on certain scenarios.

The purpose of the committee should be clearly defined from the beginning to make sure it accomplishes the tasks and the

appropriate skill sets are included in the membership. This also provides the community with the information necessary to encourage participation based upon availability and subject-matter expertise.

The initiation of a Superintendent Advisory Committee should include sharing with district stakeholders, a request for applications for consideration to serve on the committee, and an appropriate compilation of members to ensure representation of the interests of the committee and stakeholders.

Once the committee is formed, a clearly defined agenda should be developed for each meeting to ensure that conversation and feedback are aligned with the overall purpose of the committee. It is important to allow conversations to occur, while remaining within the scope of the advisory committee’s purpose to achieve a positive outcome. Detailed notes and minutes should be taken and posted for the

larger community to stay informed on progress being made.

A Superintendent Advisory Committee in Action

By forming a pandemic planning team consisting of appropriate district personnel and community members, the Pandemic Awareness Committee (PAC) was an advisory committee to the Butler SD 53 superintendent in response to Policy 4:180 Pandemic Preparedness; Management; and Recovery. While the PAC had no decision-making function, it did identify priorities and oversaw the development and implementation of a comprehensive pandemic school action plan. The PAC offered valuable and in-depth conversation on specific local situations,

including identifying emerging local issues.

To attract members to serve on this advisory committee, the district sent out text message alerts and email announcements to parents and guardians within the school district. To gather broader community involvement, the district issued a press release and promoted the opportunity through social media channels. The community responded to the needs of the school district, and after a review of applications, a comprehensive membership list was established.

Members of the committee included representation from the District 53 buildings and grounds department, school nurse professionals, Oak Brook Education

Association members, mental health experts, public health experts, doctors and medical professionals, and a daycare operator. The diverse insight and knowledge of the PAC members assisted the district in continuing to respond to the current pandemic.

The PAC met throughout the 2020-2021 school year as Butler SD 53 remained fully open for in-person learning, all year, for five full days per week. Topics on the agenda for PAC meetings included monitoring and compliance reporting of the various COVID-19 guidelines; COVID-19 testing and vaccination implementation; emotional well-being of students, staff, and families; holiday travel and safety considerations; and reopening for the 2021-2022 school year The firsthand experience of these individuals was incredibly important to the discussions pertaining to the physical and emotional health and safety of the district amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the most challenging academic year for most in uncharted territory.

A Superintendent Advisory Committee serves a function to engage community members and stakeholders, and to advise the superintendent on a specific theme, task, or initiative. The Superintendent Advisory Committee model can be implemented beneficially for hiring process for key district personnel positions, academic or athletic initiatives, technology or infrastructure investments, and other initiatives that would benefit from a diverse, outside perspective.

Paul O’Malley, Ed.D., is Superintendent of Butler School District 53 in Oak Brook.

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Cover Story

Born from Crisis

An Emerging Framework for Effective Leadership

By Victor Simon III

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It has long been understood that crisis doesn’t build character, it reveals it. While it is true that every challenge brings an opportunity to learn, adjust, develop, and grow, individuals typically reveal who they are — and what they are made of — in the face of adversity.

The same is true at the organizational level. Under great stress, organizations will show their strengths and weaknesses. This was especially true throughout the 2020-21 school year, as demonstrated by Gower SD 62, one of few public school districts to provide a full, in-person learning program from August 21, 2020 through May 28, 2021.

The important takeaway for any organization managing through crisis is whether or not there is a commitment to learn from the experience and become stronger. After distilling hundreds of hours of observational, experiential, and direct interview and

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coaching data, a framework for effective leadership is beginning to emerge from the COVID-19 emergency to shine new light on the elements of leadership called upon in turbulent times.

The difference between success and failure — particularly as perceived through the effective management of an organizational crisis — can be attributed to one or more of the following elements: • Relationships or Bust • Communication or Bust • Political Frame or Bust • Deep Roots or Bust • Stay Humble and Hungry or Bust Attaching “or bust” to each element of the framework links a sense of urgency and consequence to key leadership functions. Success and failure are relative terms; what it means for an effort to “bust” may have a number of definitions.

With the stakes high, this leadership framework is meant to bring

attention to key leadership functions in which school leaders can take deliberate steps to develop at the individual, group, and organizational levels. View this leadership framework through a lens of continuous improvement and ongoing learning and development, both for effective leadership and implications for leadership selection and development.

What can I do to develop capacity in each of these areas?

What are some of the attributes I should be looking for in a leader?

As part of this framework, the “Three Cs,” are expected for leaders to demonstrate prior to being measured against this framework.

High degrees of “competence, commitment, and cultural responsiveness” are necessary to operate effectively as a leader in any context. Highly competent leaders have the capacity to complete the work assigned and the ability to be a quick study to reach mastery

of new skills. Highly committed leaders understand that the role of a school leader is a lifestyle and they are constant advocates for those served. And leaders who demonstrate a high degree of cultural responsiveness are proactive in identifying and addressing the needs of students, parents, and community. With the “Three Cs” in place, we are able to take a closer look at each element of the leadership framework.

Relationships or Bust — Success in education comes from relationships; plain and simple.

Without trusting and genuine relationships in place, a leader will face a point where progress and productivity suffer, and bust.

Relationships with and between students, parents, members of the community, the board of education, staff, and administrators are all important and have to be initiated, developed, and tended.

Attempting to do so only during a crisis is not going to bring about success.

Communication or Bust — Without clear, accurate, timely, and consistent communication, a leader will face a point where progress and productivity suffer, and bust. A wide variety of communication strategies exist; use what works for you and your community. It’s your message. Own it!

Don’t limit yourself to a keyboard and social media platforms. Get out there and talk to people. A significant portion of our communication is non-verbal. Don’t just tell me; show me.

Political Frame or Bust — If unable to combine strong relationships with effective

communication, progress and productivity suffer, and bust. Effective leaders make connections between groups and build consensus. They compromise and form coalitions.

Making the most of relationships and communication is a skill that involves managing different interests — wants, needs, perspectives — competing for limited resources. Effective leaders understand the value of building political capital and, in times of crisis, demonstrate a willingness to risk or spend the capital they have built.

Deep Roots or Bust — To borrow an African proverb, “When the root is deep … there is no reason to fear the wind.” Effective leaders are principled, resilient, resolved, focused on the core mission, and able to withstand the stiffest challenges. “Advocate” is both a noun and a verb. There is a sense of action and urgency. Grit and resilience are not store-bought or developed in a workshop. They are hard-earned and experience-based. Leaders with deep roots choose courage over comfort and understand that leadership is not always about taking giant leaps forward. It is often about being able to hold your ground and remain true to your core principles and beliefs when times get tough. The inability to do so results in getting blown back a few steps and facing a point where progress and productivity suffer, and bust.

Stay Humble and Hungry or Bust — Two characteristics, humility and will, describe the most effective leaders and are used together in this framework to emphasize this pairing. Humble

leaders are ambitious; they tie that ambition to the organization and community they serve and to the cause, not themselves.

Effective leaders are grateful to serve, understand their role, commit to continuous improvement, and understand the power in the adage, “change is inevitable, growth is optional.” Leaders with a fixed mindset and a sense of “arriving” and being beyond reproach will face a point where progress and productivity suffer, or bust.

Taken together, the prerequisites and the leadership framework have implications for gap analysis, recruiting and hiring, and professional learning and coaching.

There is an urgency to our work.

And we know, especially this year, that educational leaders matter. If we’re not working to challenging or changing the system, we have to acknowledge our acceptance of it and the responsibilities that come with preserving the status quo.

What are the implications and next steps for you and your board of education?  Victor Simon III, Ed.D., is Superintendent of Gower SD 62 in Willowbrook and Assistant/Adjunct Professor at the University of Illinois Chicago and Concordia University Chicago.

July/August 2021 • 17

Cover Story

Creating a Pandemic Response Manual is Critical

By Steve Zurek and Mary Henderson

O

Our schools, families, and kids have been through one of the most trying years in history. Could we have imagined the entire world being affected by a microscopic pathogen to the point where entire economies shut down and kids had to completely relearn how to be in school? The only way we could have known would have required time travel. Now that we are emerging from the pandemic and vaccines are being administered, we need to capture what we’ve learned so that future leaders of our districts can benefit from what is currently community knowledge, information residing in the minds of those who’ve experienced and navigated the situation. All districts need to create a Pandemic Response Manual.

Why is a Pandemic Response Manual critical for school districts? Think about how we prepare for other disasters: fire drills and evacuation procedures,

18 • Illinois School Board Journal

lockdown drills and procedures for notifying families and the community, policies for how we interact with the media. These are relevant to event responses with relatively short durations. What we have experienced has been over the course of more than a year: a multitude of decisions made, procedures implemented, and preparations undertaken as districts anticipated bringing students back to classrooms. Now think about the future of the district, when those who led through the current situation have moved on. Where do you go to learn about what was done? The solution requires a proactive, data-driven mindset now.

A minimum of 11 different workstreams can be considered for a pandemic response by a school district to bring kids back to buildings and remote learning.

Knowing these will allow a district superintendent to implement proactive solutions. Transference

of community knowledge will provide a view of what is coming and how it should be handled.

This will allow leadership to assign workstreams to other administrators, planning committees, and staff to free up time to deal with the nuances of the situation.

Many of these workstreams fall under what we call “placing big rocks.” The big rocks are safety, technology, learning, and community. Having a solid foundation in

these areas is vital to executing a response plan with excellence.

Workstream Modules

Learning Model: By far, this is the most critical and dynamic area of consideration. During the COVID-19 outbreak, states forced schools to shut their doors and go to a remote learning model. While there were significant challenges, planning needed to begin immediately for students returning to school either in-person, remotely, or through a hybrid model. Considerations within this workstream include A/B schedule, five-dayper-week dedicated instruction, synchronous or asynchronous, and simultaneous (teaching to remote and in-person at the same time) models.

Classroom Configuration: Returning students to buildings could pose a significant challenge with likely requirements for social distancing of desks, student/teacher safety, and in-room hygiene protocols. Knowing you cannot manufacture more real estate, it’s important to understand all available space and how it could be used for instruction, lunch breaks, and physical activity.

Response to Exposures: Response to exposures is one of the most nuanced pieces of the puzzle. Initially it presents as a straightforward reaction, but you will quickly learn it is a complex, process-driven algorithm. Health departments at federal, state, and county levels will likely dictate a general response, but the district is responsible for thinking through

the acquisition of personal protective equipment, potential medical response, quarantine protocols, and community notification.

Available Space: Creativity and experience will accelerate future responses. Pre-COVID, kids learned in dedicated classrooms, purposeful in their design. Now, social distancing requires identifying what space is potentially convertible as well as what spaces will be dedicated quarantine locations in the event that someone begins displaying symptoms while in the building.

Hygiene Protocols: A sound, well-thought-out hygiene plan is critical. This is an area where the most fear will reside with families, students, and staff.

Responding to a pandemic

July/August 2021 • 19

is about not only the actual response but also how you effectively communicate. Health departments might give guidance, but likely, the district will figure this out for itself. How to clean buildings, classrooms, transitional areas, and buses will need to be decided and communicated with staff and student families to give assurance that the district is implementing a rigorous hygiene plan.

Safety: Safety is a consideration regardless of a pandemic, but there may be holes you didn’t know you had. If students now have to stay in the same room all day instead of changing classes every period, how does that change lockdown procedures, and fire or natural disaster responses?

Does the public address system work in every room or in the hallways? For online learners, are they safe from hacks and other online threats that might get into the district’s network?

Staffing: Staffing considerations will be highly dependent on the learning model. Some may not want to come to the buildings, or the learning model selected is straining their capabilities.

Staffing considerations include assigning certified staff, securing consistent substitute coverage, accommodations for paraprofessionals, and more custodial staff to maintain hygiene protocols.

Finance: Having solid district finances is the key to surviving a crisis. Public schools are funded through tax revenue and reserves should be built in good times so that the district can have an appropriate and complete response to a 20 • Illinois School Board Journal

crisis or economic downturn. It is vital to have a clear understanding of what district funds are available, what intergovernmental support is coming, grant availability, and potentially what state and local funds can be secured. A good chief school business official (CSBO) will be worth their weight in gold to get the district through a protracted crisis.

Communication: While communication has been mentioned in other workstreams, it is a priority in need of its own attention. Clear, concise, and frequent communication is key in any crisis but especially in one that is long-lasting and of monumental importance.

During the pandemic, information was flying at staff and families fast and furious and from a variety of sources. Breaking things down into digestible chunks and realizing that information needs to be repeated and easily accessible will put a district on the path to success. In addition, this is a district’s opportunity to rally communities and lead them to work for the good of all. Balancing the need to inform with the need to demonstrate care is a necessary skill.

Legal: The attorney for the district should be engaged from the beginning. Knowing legal liability is critical, including in the event that the school becomes a significant source of outbreak.

The attorney can also advise on ramifications to the district of not following health department recommendations. The community may pressure the district if such guidance is “just a recommendation” and not a mandate. However, do you want to be the first district

in court telling a judge that you did not follow health department recommendations that led to serious illness or death?

Board of Education: The board is the advisor and window to the community. Listen to the board and keep board members informed. The superintendent and the board president must work together to set direction for the district, manage the message to the community, and help support teaching staff and families. A crisis will separate good leaders from bad almost immediately. Board members in most municipalities are elected volunteers, a fact that can pose challenges in terms of their personal leadership experiences. Strong and cohesive leadership from the superintendent and president is critical.

As you can see, pandemic response is extremely complicated. As you move the district forward and bring kids back to school, but circumstances will be constantly changing. Having a proactive response and knowledge of historical responses will allow decisive action to occur quickly, minimize mistakes and allow leadership to focus on the nuances of the present situation.  Steve Zurek, MBA, is President of the Roselle SD 12 Board of Education and a management consultant and owner of OakLeaf Consulting LLC. Mary Henderson, Ed.D., is Superintendent of Roselle SD 12 with 23 years of experience in education, 16 in leadership positions. For contact information and resources associated with this article, visit the Journal’s resources page at bit.ly/JA21-Jres.

Commentary

Operation Reverse the Loss

By Mark Schneider

W

Well over a year into arguably the greatest education crisis the nation has faced in our lifetime, if the estimates of learning loss resulting from COVID-19 are anywhere near correct, our nation is facing a catastrophe.

Even as we focus on a precipitous decline in learning, COVID-19 has shined a bright light on the fact that too many of our students — especially students of color, students from low-income families, and students with special needs — had fallen behind long before the pandemic and are losing even more ground now. COVID-19 is an impetus for a long-overdue effort to accelerate

learning, achievement, and attainment for students who have fallen behind or are at risk of falling behind. The Institute of Education Sciences (IES), as the United States Department of Education’s science agency, should be front and center in that effort.

Since I assumed office three years ago, we at IES have been trying to modernize our approach to the education sciences. The Standards for Excellence in Education Research (SEER) principles, which aim to dramatically improve the real-world usability of education research, reflect much of this work. Efforts such as the replication competitions,

a prize competition for digital platforms that can deliver high-quality rapid-cycle experiments and replications, and the national security DARPA-inspired transformational requests for applications (RFAs) are all part of the effort to bring our science (and IES) into the modern era.

But the challenges of the pandemic are forcing us to consider how to speed up even more the process by which we identify what works for whom under what conditions. If we can’t do our work better and faster in the face of this crisis, we are failing to serve the learners we aim to support.

Presented below are ideas for a new initiative with the working title July/August 2021 • 21

of “Operation Reverse the Loss.”

This effort aims to speed up the existing machinery IES uses to identify, scale, and verify the effectiveness of interventions that show promise in reversing learning loss for students at greatest risk — especially early learners, English language learners, students at community colleges, and students with disabilities. Our education research infrastructure must become nimbler and more entrepreneurial than ever before, all while maintaining our commitment to rigorous education science.

Operation Reverse the Loss is a work in progress, rather than a fully developed plan of action. I want to describe some of the ideas IES is discussing so that you can help as we turn these broad concepts into concrete actions.

Core Components of Operation Reverse the Loss

Understand conditions on the ground. As schools have opened and closed, adopted assorted virtual learning tools, and implemented new policies governing essential operating procedures, we, along with everyone else in the country, have largely relied on friends, family, and journalists to understand what is happening in schools. To provide schools with resources to reverse learning loss, we need a comprehensive and authoritative source of information about how instruction has changed over the last year.

To this end, National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Commissioner Lynn Woodworth and I have begun pursuing the idea of a School Pulse survey, modeled after the Census Household Pulse 22 • Illinois School Board Journal

and Small Business Pulse surveys.

The School Pulse will collect near real-time data on school opening/ closing plans, curriculum responses, online programs, and so on. We will measure the extent to which schools are finding any of these responses effective in reversing learning loss, especially among students with special needs and with the lowest achievement levels. To the extent that the pulse idea proves worthwhile and schools participate at high enough levels, we will continue this effort post-pandemic to measure the ever-changing conditions in America’s schools. Moreover, we will use the School Pulse to ask about curricula, technology platforms, and tools schools normally use so we can direct research towards commonly used items that have not yet been studied.

Encourage small businesses to provide schools with innovative learning solutions. Teachers and principals have demonstrated remarkable adaptability over the last year, changing how they teach, interact with students and families, and recognize when students are struggling. But there is a limit to what they can accomplish with our current slate of educational tools and resources, which largely were not designed for the circumstances we face today.

The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program is one of the most effective mechanisms through which we support tech innovations designed to come to market for wide use. SBIR applications will tightly focus on bringing small business energy and tech skills to develop tools that can help students, families, and educators reverse learning losses of special education students, English

language learners, and the nation’s lowest-performing students.

Grow the body of research with the greatest potential to reverse learning loss. IES has always supported a broad range of research to fulfill the needs of a varied field.

While this will continue to be the case, we will focus a substantial portion of our funding to focus on a few instructional practices with the strongest claims to effectiveness. The urgency of the moment demands this intentional, high-impact approach.

Off-cycle data collection will systematically support rapid testing of interventions in different grades, subjects, locales, and demographics.

This will likely require researchers to increase their use of platforms and other tech-based delivery systems for rapid-cycle, targeted tests, and replications of interventions.

Finding Focus

But what types of interventions should we focus on? We are sifting through the most reliable sources to identify interventions with evidence of effectiveness that could be subject to rapid cycle, rigorous testing to help us identify what works for whom under what circumstances. Leading candidates include tutoring and social and emotional learning (SEL).

But here’s the problem: these interventions come in many shapes and sizes and we cannot say that any specific intervention will likely work for any populations or in contexts other than the narrow one in which the intervention was tested (a context which may no longer exist given COVID). Tutoring for young learners must be radically different from tutoring for high school or college students. And tutoring for language

arts will be different from tutoring for math. Additionally, the unprecedented amount of learning loss in such a short period of time may also be a challenge to how well a specific tutoring intervention performs.

As a result, even if we say that “tutoring works,” we can’t say what form of tutoring works for which students and for which subject areas. The field is beginning to synthesize information about what makes some types of tutoring more effective than others—but we need more work identifying what works for whom. And the same deficiencies in our understanding apply to many of the educational interventions IES has supported in the past, including — maybe especially — SEL.

Part of the problem is the far-too-prevalent practice of using idiosyncratic measures of success, which makes comparisons across interventions impossible. In response, Operation Reverse the Loss will focus heavily on several key SEER principles: replication, core components, and common measures.

We are thinking of Operation Reverse the Loss as an intense threeyear experiment. If we are successful, we will have informed educators, policymakers, and families about a set of well-specified interventions that can reverse learning losses for clearly identified populations of students.

And we will have modernized our education research infrastructure to be nimbler and more attuned to the

substantial differences in the needs of the many different populations of students that constitute our nation.

Filling the Buckets

Working with Kumar Garg, current Managing Director of Schmidt Futures and previous leader of President Obama’s Educate to Innovate campaign, and I have identified three main “buckets” of actions that IES should pursue to help reverse pandemic-related learning loss.

• Understanding the crisis and accelerating discovery.

• Responding to the crisis with new tools to help students catch up.

• Making sure the most high-need students don’t get left behind.

We are playing COVID catchup—but these actions can accelerate how fast we can overcome learning losses and build a stronger education research infrastructure to improve learning outcomes for all of America’s students.

Do we have any choice but to try?

How can we continue to practice business as usual while tens of millions of our students lag further and further behind? We will reposition as much money and resources from our existing budget as we can to support Operation Reverse the Loss. Given the gravity of the situation and the size of the problem, we intend to seek additional resources to support this work.  Mark Schneider is Director of IES. Adapted with permission from “Introducing Operation Reverse the Loss” and “Operation Reverse the Loss, Redux.” Links to the originals and resources are available on the Journal’s resources page, bit.ly/JA21-Jres.

July/August 2021 • 23

Cover Story

School Practices Address Student Learning Loss

By Elaine Allensworth and Nate Schwartz

W

Which areas should schools prioritize for intensive academic intervention and what strategies are most effective?

This brief is part of a series aimed at providing K-12 education decision-makers and advocates with an evidence base to ground discussions about how to best serve students during and following the coronavirus pandemic. This piece addresses potential interventions for students who have fallen out of typical grade range — particularly those who were struggling before the pandemic. Evidence suggests that, although most students will experience some learning loss, the majority will still be able to engage with grade-level content.

Breaking Down the Issue

Learning losses are likely to show up differently across grades and subjects, with intensive recovery needs concentrated in the early grades and among already struggling students.

The students who are most likely to fall out of range for their grade 24 • Illinois School Board Journal

include those who were already struggling and those in the primary grades. Even with large predicted learning losses, most students will remain within the typical grade range and be able to engage with typical class content next year. Typical differences in achievement between students in the same classes are already large. In grades 6-8, the typical difference in math achievement between students at the 25th and 75th percentile at a given grade is 5-6 years’ worth of learning. In grades 4 and 5,

the difference is 2-3 years of learning, and in the primary grades the difference is 1.5 years of learning. Growth rates are steepest in early grades, and pre-pandemic estimates of summer learning loss are larger, as well.

Losses are likely to be larger in math than English/Language Arts, but math losses will potentially be more responsive to intervention efforts. The Northwest Evaluation Association’s recent report predicting average student learning loss forecast larger losses in math (onehalf to two-thirds of a regular year’s growth) than reading (one-third of a regular year’s growth). Many studies have found greater variation in learning growth in math than reading and greater sensitivity to interventions and school environments, although there is debate on whether this is caused by actual differences in student learning or in differences in test sensitivity across the subjects.

Evidence suggests that course completion in high school math courses

matters for later earnings, particularly for students of color.

Supportive school environments and strong teacher-student relationships speed recovery from learning loss. Strong, supportive, and sustained relationships with adults in schools consistently predict children’s capacity for resilient behavior, even in the face of traumatic experience.

Research on the stress of school closures and on the academic impact of Hurricane Katrina demonstrated that while students initially experience some learning loss, the persistence of these losses depends on the receiving environment. Losses fade after a year or two when students return to stable schools. Losses tend to persist, especially in math, when students reenter chaotic or hostile environments.

Students who have at least one

stable and committed relationship with a supportive adult are more likely to respond to adversity and succeed. Even students who have been through major traumas, such as refugees from war, show resilience if they have supportive adults in their lives.

Students who were already facing adversity will struggle in the coming year for multiple, intertwined reasons, including loss of learning from the prior year, trauma, longterm stress, and declining family resources. Rates of illness and death and the economic impacts of the crisis are hitting Black and Hispanic families the hardest. Previously low-achieving students will be least likely to have gained ground through current online learning options, according to studies of online versus face-to-face credit recovery in

Chicago, of online charters in Ohio, and of virtual schooling in Florida.

Strategies to Consider

High-dosage tutoring that is directly tied to classroom content — helping students succeed in their coursework — can substantially accelerate learning in both math and reading for the most struggling students.

Schools that have restructured to provide around two hours of daily tutoring as part of an extended school day have been able to meaningfully close gaps in achievement.

Boston’s Match Education developed a tutoring model — The Match Corps — that brought in recent college graduates for relatively low stipends to conduct daily one-to-two tutoring, four days per week, for early high school students. Many

July/August 2021 • 25

aspects of the program encouraged coherence with coursework that is often absent from other tutoring programs. The Match Corps program, which costs around $2,500 per student per year, led to gains of “one to two additional years of math in a single school year above and beyond what kids typically learn in a year.” Follow-up studies in Chicago and Houston have validated the approach. A randomized trial of daily four-on-one reading tutoring for middle school students found positive effects on attendance and ELA test scores, especially for Black and Hispanic students. The program cost $2,200 per student per year.

Extended learning time interventions, including weeklong acceleration academies staffed with highly effective teachers and some double dose math structures, show strong evidence of effectiveness.

Turnaround gains in Lawrence, Massachusetts in both math and ELA appear to have been largely driven by the effects of week-long “acceleration” academies aimed at struggling students. Acceleration academies “provided struggling students with targeted, small group instruction in a single subject, delivered by select teachers over weeklong vacation breaks,” according to a 2017 Harvard University study.

Students, who had been selected for a “special opportunity to get extra help,” worked in homogenous ability groups of around 10-12 students and received about 25 hours of extra instruction. The academies, which cost around $800 per student per week, led to student gains of 0.1 standard deviations in both math and reading, equivalent to around three months of student learning.

26 • Illinois School Board Journal

In Chicago, double-dose math classes in ninth grade where students received additional time for math in early high school showed significant positive effects on algebra test scores and long-run outcomes. Chicago required all ninth-graders with low math test scores to enroll in both a full-year regular algebra course and a simultaneous algebra support class, usually taught by the same teacher.

Teachers in the program received new curriculum to use — Agile Mind and Cognitive Tutor — and additional professional development.

This intervention was not simply about doubling instructional time.

Teachers received professional development in using extra instructional time to promote complex thinking in math through student-centered instructional practices. The extra time enabled teachers to feel like they could take risks with new modes of instruction. Students who received the double dose treatment showed larger gains in algebra scores — equivalent to about an extra quarter of a year of growth — and their algebra GPAs were about a quarter of a point higher. The gains were largest for students whose prior math scores were between the 20th and 50th percentiles.

Strong systems to monitor for early student warning signs paired with strong norms and routines help students recover emotionally and engage academically.

Systems that track attendance, assignment completion, and grades strengthen schools’ ability to individualize services and match specific interventions to the needs of different students so students don’t fall behind in their courses. Students’ success in their classes as measured by their

grades is highly predictive of their success in later years in high school or college, more so than their test scores.

Students could struggle in their courses for many reasons this coming year — not only disruptions in teaching and learning with the shift to remote learning, but also stress and trauma from the crisis itself, and loss in family financial resources. Early warning systems identify students who need support for any reason.

Substantial evidence suggests that a focus on students’ social-emotional learning is vital to building and rebuilding students’ academic engagement.

Incorporating well-conducted school-based SEL interventions has the potential to positively impact the culture and climate of classrooms, student well-being, and improve academic outcomes in the long run. Mindfulness-based programs have shown promise in improving cognitive performance and resilience to stress in children.

A recently-studied mindfulness-based intervention in Boston charter schools improved attention and emotional regulation to stress and other negative stimuli for middle school children. More specific approaches in this area aimed at creating predictable norms and routines and ensuring students’ physical and emotional safety post-trauma will be the subject of an upcoming brief in this series.

Strategies to Avoid

Ongoing research suggests that compressed content, grade retention, and enhanced Response to Intervention (RTI) show less evidence that they substantially shift learning outcomes for struggling students,

and some have potential adverse longterm consequences.

Teaching extra content without changing the degree to which students are getting extra support is unlikely to be successful. In general, when teachers increase expectations without providing more supports, students’ grades decline. Studies of accelerated math classes that try to compress additional requirements into a shorter timeframe have demonstrated negative effects, particularly for low-achieving students, in both North Carolina and California.

Large-scale grade retention, while still debated as a strategy, has negative consequences without substantial additional support for students. While some studies have found short-term academic benefit to retaining students in early elementary grades, many identify

large negative outcomes. Retaining students particularly in the middle grades appears to increase the probability of high-school dropout. Grade retention is also a costly educational intervention, with an average per-pupil cost of $10,700.

While there is some evidence that RTI structures have positively addressed inequities in special education diagnosis, research has not found clear gains for students who receive Tier II and Tier III intervention. A possible explanation is that studies show RTI interventions seem to crowd out core instruction.

For More Information

More evidence briefs can be found at the EdResearch for Recovery website (see resources link). Additional briefs in this series address a broad range of

COVID-19 challenges across five categories: Student Learning, School Climate, Supporting All Students, Teachers, and Finances and Operations.  Elaine Allensworth is with the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research and Nate Schwartz is with the Annenberg Institute at Brown University. This brief is part of the EdResearch for Recovery Project, a collaboration of Annenberg/Brown University, Results for America, and the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research. Visit the Journal resources page at bit.ly/JA21-Jres to see this document in fully resourced format, to learn about the EdResearch for Recovery Project, and view the set of COVID-19 response and recovery topic areas and practitionergenerated questions.

July/August 2021 • 27

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Feature Story

Breaking Up with Your Smartphone Now That You are Elected, Your Personal Phone Could Become Public Business

By Scott Uhler and Mallory Milluzzi

I

In 2021, most of us are “connected” for most of our waking hours. We can be (and are) contacted by friends and colleagues at work by text, email, or social media at all times. The lines between “work hours” and personal time have been blurred, if not erased.

For public officials, conducting public business is no longer neatly segregated into a 9-to-5 workday, or the time devoted to board meetings. Public business can be conducted 24/7 with the press of a button or reading a

screen. Public officials therefore must be wary that texting or emailing during personal time on a personal cellphone is not necessarily “personal.” Those texts or emails may in fact be “public,” accessible by anyone in the community. Does this mean you should disconnect? Or break up with your smartphone?

An Illinois court has recently issued a decision clarifying and expanding just such disclosure obligations of public officials of texts and emails involving public business on their personal cellphones.

Prior Judicial Interpretation of Limited Disclosure Duties from Personal Cellphones (2013)

In 2013, an Illinois appellate court in City of Champaign v Madigan declared select electronic messages “privately” sent by public officials using their personal cellphones, because the messages were sent during the participation of those same elected officials in an open public meeting while conducting public business, to be records of the city and subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

July/August 2021 • 29

However, the court did not make all use of personal cellphones and electronic devices subject to possible FOIA requests/searches.

It appeared to limit the disclosure obligations under FOIA by finding that generally the actions of individual public officials on their personal cellphones or laptops were not subject to FOIA because they did not constitute use, preparation, or possession of records by a “public body,” i.e. an individual public official is not a public body.

Illinois Attorney General Finds Expanded Obligation to Disclose Personal Cellphone Records (2016)

As our use of new technologies for communication has continued to expand and advance, the legal doctrines related to public access to the records of government officials have similarly expanded. In 2016, the Public Access Counselor (PAC) reached a different conclusion than the City of Champaign court in considering a request for records to the Chicago Police Department (CPD). The PAC concluded that even though an email by a public employee on a personal cellphone was not “prepared by or for,” nor in possession of or maintained by a public body, records of public employees regarding public business, created on the employee’s personal cellphone, could be subject to FOIA. The PAC reasoned that exempting such records from FOIA “would undercut the principle that public bodies act through their 30 • Illinois School Board Journal

employees, by excluding from the definition of ‘public records’ communications sent or received by employees of a public body on personal devices or accounts….”

The PAC held that the proper inquiry must focus on the content of the communication (does it pertain to public business) and not the method by which it was transmitted.

The PAC further noted that the search for responsive records by the CPD was inadequate in that no search was even made of personal email accounts, although a specific request was made for those records. While the PAC did not answer precisely what the required “search” of a personal cellphone, laptop, or

tablet would look like, it made clear that a public body cannot simply decline to search for emails contained on personal accounts, if they are relevant to the request. The critical question of how to address the logistics of properly and lawfully examining or searching the personal electronic devices of public employees and officials, and sorting through personal information and communications, to identify and retrieve relevant records regarding “public business” was not addressed.

The Illinois courts have now further clarified certain of these issues, including that communications pertaining to public business within officials’

personal text messages and email accounts are public records subject to FOIA. Current Judicial Interpretation of Expanded Disclosure Duties from Personal Cellphones (2020)

In 2020, an Illinois appellate court once again visited the issue of the possible obligations of public officials to produce records from their personal devices. In that matter, the Better Government Association (BGA) filed FOIA record requests for all communications among and between certain Chicago Public Health officials, the Mayor’s Office, and Chicago Public School officials (Defendants), related to lead (in drinking water) and the Chicago Public Schools. The Court was faced with two principal issues: (1) Were the records being sought covered by FOIA; and (2) If covered by FOIA, what constitutes a proper “search” of personal devices in response to a FOIA request?

1. Are The Records On Personal Devices Subject To FOIA?

Relying on the prior appellate decision in City of Champaign, the Defendants took the position that they were not required to search their officials’ personal accounts because the communications in those accounts are not subject to FOIA, and that they had no ability to search those accounts for responsive records.

Defendants contend that their officials’ personal emails and text messages are not public records because they were neither prepared for, used by, received by, possessed by, nor controlled by

a public body, as required by FOIA. Here, Defendants note that under the City of Champaign decision they, as officials, are not considered to be “public bodies” and that the communications requested by the BGA lack the requisite nexus to a public

and text messages from those officials’ personal accounts are considered to be “in the possession of ” a public body within the meaning of FOIA. The Court also presumed that many such communications are prepared for or eventually used by the public

The Court ... reasoned that through their individual officials named in the BGA FOIA request, the Defendants can function as public bodies without the need for an official public meeting. body. The Court agreed that the Defendants’ individual officials are not themselves public bodies under FOIA, but read the City of Champaign holding to be limited to the actions of an elected board when it acts as a public body, meaning there needed to be a gathering of a quorum of the elected members in order to engage in “public business.”

The Court found it was sufficient that the communications requested by the BGA were either prepared for, used by, received by, or in the possession of a public body and reasoned that through their individual officials named in the BGA FOIA request, the Defendants can function as public bodies without the need for an official public meeting. The Court cited to two of the Defendants’ officials, the mayor of Chicago and the director of the Chicago Department of Public Health, as examples of officials authorized to make decisions that could bind their public body and the emails

body. The Court held therefore that the communications that pertain to public business from the named officials’ personal accounts are subject to FOIA. The Court emphasized that its conclusions were consistent with the clear intent of the General Assembly that FOIA be interpreted to promote the public’s access to information, “even when applied in situations where advances in communication technology may outpace the terms of FOIA.” (5 ILCS 140/1 and West 2016). Illinois FOIA states “To the extent that this Act may not expressly apply to those technological advances, this Act should nonetheless be interpreted to further the declared policy of this Act that public records shall be made available upon request except when denial of access furthers the public policy underlying a specific exemption.”

As noted above in Illinois Public Access Opinion 16-006 (August 9, 2016), the Illinois Attorney General previously July/August 2021 • 31

reached the conclusion that the scope of records subject to FOIA is even broader and that employee emails generally that pertain to public business and are that are sent or received on private email accounts can be considered “public records” under FOIA and must be searched and produced.

2. What Constitutes a Proper “Search” of Personal Devices in Response to a FOIA Request?

The Court found that FOIA would only require Defendants to ask a limited number of officials whether their personal accounts contain records responsive to the FOIA request and if an official has not used a personal device for public business they can simply state it. The Court was clear that

32 • Illinois School Board Journal

communications concerning personal matters that are unrelated to the transaction of public business are not public records under FOIA. When a public body determines that there are no records responsive to a request, it bears the initial burden of demonstrating the adequacy of its search.

The FOIA requester does not have an obligation to request that specific devices be searched. As for what qualifies as an adequate search under FOIA, the Court stated the reasonableness of the search depends on the facts of each case, and that the basic issue is not if relevant documents might exist, but rather is whether the search conducted by the public body was reasonably calculated to discover the requested documents.

(Relative to a judicial appeal, the Court stated that a public body satisfies this burden by submitting reasonably detailed affidavits setting forth the type of search it performed and averring that all locations likely to contain responsive records were searched.

The Court found that only once the agency has submitted such an affidavit does the burden shift to the requester to produce countervailing evidence that the search was not adequate.)

A public body must conduct a search that is reasonably calculated to locate all responsive records. The public body always bears the burden to establish the adequacy of its search.

The requirement to consider records on personal devices does

not change the requirements for making a FOIA request. A proper FOIA request must provide a reasonable description of the documents sought so that the public body is able to retrieve those documents and “[a] request to inspect or copy must reasonably identify a public record and not general data, information, or statistics. A request reasonably describes records if “the agency is able to determine precisely what records are being requested,” but a person making a FOIA request needs only to identify the records being requested by describing their contents.

Need For Policies and Procedures

When a person is elected to a school board, they do not begin to carry two cellphones or laptops or tablets: one for school business and one for personal matters. Almost everyone carries one cellphone and mixes all communications — personal and business — in a continuous stream of texts, emails, and social media use.

The above judicial decisions and the opinion of the Public Access Counselor serve to emphasize the need for clear policies and training for public officials and employees about proper procedures for conducting public business by email or text, particularly when using personal electronic devices or email.

See IASB sample policies: Policy 2:250 Access to District Public Records, Policy 2:140 Communications To and From the Board, and Policy Exhibit 2:140E Guidance for Board Member

Communications, Including Email Use. Sample policies from the Office of the Attorney General addressing electronic file man-

need for public bodies to conduct thorough and targeted searches for responsive documents when processing FOIA requests, which

A public body must conduct a search that is reasonably calculated to locate all responsive records ... [and] bears the burden to establish the adequacy of its search. agement, prohibiting the use of private email accounts for official or work-related business and prohibiting the use of text messaging for official business are available for reference are available via the website of Klein, Thorpe, and Jenkins, Ltd. (see resources list).

The judicial decisions and PAC opinion also reiterate the

may include personal devices or accounts.  Scott Uhler and Mallory Milluzzi are attorneys with Klein, Thorpe, and Jenkins, Ltd. and members of the Illinois Council of School Attorneys. Resources and references associated with this article are available at bit.ly/JA21-Jres.

“What I Wish I Did on My Summer Vacation.”

July/August 2021 • 33

Service Associates Directory Appraisal Services INDUSTRIAL APPRAISAL COMPANY Building and fixed asset appraisals for insurance and accounting purposes.

Oak Brook (630) 575-0280

Architects/Engineers ARCON ASSOCIATES, INC. Full service firm specializing in educational facilities with services that include architecture, construction management, roof and masonry consulting, landscape architecture, and environmental consulting.

Lombard (630) 495-1900; www.arconassoc.com; rpcozzi@arconassoc.com BERG ENGINEERING CONSULTANTS, LTD. Consulting engineers.

Schaumburg (847) 352-4500; www.berg-eng.com BLDD ARCHITECTS, INC. Architectural and engineering services for schools.

Decatur (217) 429-5105; Champaign (217) 356-9606; Bloomington (309) 828-5025; Chicago (312) 829-1987 CANNONDESIGN Architecture, interiors, engineering, consulting. Chicago (312) 332-9600; www.cannondesign.com; sbrodsky@cannondesign.com CORDOGAN CLARK & ASSOCIATES Architects and engineers.

Aurora (630) 896-4678; www.cordoganclark.com; rmont@cordoganclark.com DEWBERRY ARCHITECTS INC. Architects, planners, landscape architecture, and engineers.

Peoria (309) 282-8000; Elgin (847) 695-5840 DLA ARCHITECTS, LTD. Architects specializing in preK-12 educational design, including a full range of architectural services, assessments, planning, feasibility studies, new construction, additions, remodeling, O&M and owner’s rep services.

Itasca (847) 742-4063; www.dla-ltd.com; info@dla-ltd.com

DLR GROUP Educational facility design and master planning.

Chicago (312) 382-9980; dlrgroup.com; mengelhardt@dlrgoup.com

KLUBER ARCHITECTS + ENGINEERS Building design professionals specializing in architecture, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, structural, and fire protection engineers. Batavia (630) 406-1213

ERIKSSON ENGINEERING ASSOCIATES, LTD. Site Planning/Studies, Civil Engineering, Traffic/Transportation, Landscape Architecture. Grayslake (847) 223-4804; Chicago (312) 463-0551; Mokena (708) 614-9720; www.eea-ltd.com; geriksson@eea-ltd.com

LARSON & DARBY GROUP Architecture, engineering, interior design, and technology.

Rockford (815) 484-0739; St. Charles (630) 444-2112; www.larsondarby.com; snelson@larsondarby.com

FARNSWORTH GROUP, INC. Architectural and engineering professional services.

Normal, IL (309) 633-8436 FGM ARCHITECTS, INC. Architects. Chicago (312) 942-8461; Oak Brook (630) 574-8300; O’Fallon (618) 624-3364; St. Louis (314) 439-1601; www.fgmarchitects.com GREENASSOCIATES, INC. Architecture/construction services.

Deerfield (847) 317-0852; Pewaukee, Wisconsin (262) 746-125 HEALY BENDER PATTON & BEEN ARCHITECTS Architects/Planners.

Naperville (630) 904-4300; www.healybender.com; dpatton@healybender.com HURST-ROSCHE, INC. Architecture, engineering, planning, and interior design.

Hillsboro (217) 532-3959; East St. Louis (618) 398-0890; Marion (618) 998-0075; Springfield (217) 787-1199; dpool@hurst-rosche.com JMA ARCHITECTS Full service professional design firm specializing in K-12 educational design, construction management, strategic/ master planning, health/life safety compliance, building commissioning, and interior space design.

South Holland (708) 339-3900; www.jmaarchitects.com; allison@jmaarchitects.com

LEGAT ARCHITECTS, INC. Architectural and educational planners who specialize in creating effective student learning environments.

Gurnee (847) 622-3535; Oak Brook (630) 990-3535; Chicago (312) 258-9595; www.legat.com PCM+DESIGN ARCHITECTS Provide a full range of architectural services including facility and feasibility studies, architectural design, construction consulting, and related services.

East Peoria (309) 694-5012; www.PCMPLUSD.com PERFORMANCE SERVICES, INC. An integrated design and delivery engineering company serving the design and construction facility needs of K-12 schools. Schaumburg (847) 466-7220 PERKINS AND WILL Architects. Chicago (312) 755-0770 RICHARD L. JOHNSON ASSOCIATES, INC. Architecture, educational planning.

Rockford (815) 398-1231; www.rljarch.com STR PARTNERS Architectural, interior design, planning, cost estimating, and building enclosure/roofing consulting.

Chicago (312) 464-1444 STUDIOGC ARCHITECTURE + INTERIORS StudioGC is passionate communityminded partner, committed to creating imaginative and well-designed facilities.

StudioGC offers innovative planning, programming, architectural, interior design, and cost estimates.

Chicago (312) 253-3400

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July/August 2021 • 35

Service Associates Directory TRIA ARCHITECTURE An architectural planning and interior design firm that provides services primarily to school districts in the Chicagoland area with an emphasis on service to their clients, and their communities.

Burr Ridge (630) 455-4500 WIGHT & COMPANY For over 77 years, Wight & Company has provided design and construction services for the built environment. As a pioneer of integrated Design & Delivery, we’ve worked with our clients to create exceptional, enduring buildings and spaces that enrich people’s lives and enhance the environment; Darien (630) 969-7000; www.wightco.com; bpaulsen@wightco.com WM. B. ITTNER, INC. Full service architectural firm serving the educational community since 1899.

Fairview Heights (618) 624-2080 WOLD ARCHITECTS AND ENGINEERS Specializing in Pre-K-12 educational design including master planning, sustainable design, architecture, mechanical and electrical engineering, quality review, cost estimation and management. Palatine (847) 241-6100

Building Construction

(continued)

FREDERICK QUINN CORPORATION Construction management and general contracting. Addison (630) 628-8500; www.fquinncorp.com HOLLAND CONSTRUCTION SERVICES, INC. Full service construction management and general contracting firm specializing in education facilities.

Swansea (618) 277-8870 IHC CONSTRUCTION COMPANIES LLC ICH Construction Companies LLC is a full-service construction management firm that delivers new construction, additions, and renovations for School District clients on-time and within budget.

Elgin (847) 742-1516 INTERNATIONAL CONTRACTORS, INC. (ICI) An award-winning construction management firm specializing in K-12 facilities. Our firm is currently partnering with eight Illinois School Districts on capital improvement projects.

Elmhurst (630) 641-6852 NICHOLAS & ASSOCIATES, INC. Construction management, general contracting, design and build.

Mt. Prospect (847) 394-6200 info@nicholasquality.com

BOLLER CONSTRUCTION CO., INC. Construction Manager and General Contractor specializing in building and renovating schools.

Waukegan (847) 662-5566

PEPPER CONSTRUCTION COMPANY Construction management and general contracting services.

Barrington (847) 381-2760; www.pepperconstruction; jripsky@pepperconstruction.com

CORE CONSTRUCTION SERVICES OF IL., INC. Professional construction management, design-build, and general contracting services. Peoria (309) 404-4700; COREconstruction.com; mikaylavincent@coreconstruction.com

POETTKER CONSTRUCTION COMPANY Specializing in construction management, design/build, construction consulting services, and energy solutions for education clients. Breese (618) 526-7213; www.poettkerconstruction.com

F. H. PASCHEN A general/construction manager with extensive experience in new construction and renovation of educational and institutional facilities in the public/ private sectors. Chicago (773) 444-1525; www.fhpaschen.com

RUSSELL CONSTRUCTION COMPANY, INC. Russell provides successful, knowledgeable construction management and contracting services in the PreK-12 market from concept to completion and continuing care for your facility needs.

Davenport, Iowa (563) 459-4600

36 • Illinois School Board Journal

IASB Service Associates are businesses which offer school-related products and services and which have earned favorable reputations for quality and integrity. Only after careful screening is a business firm invited to become a Service Associate.

To learn more about IASB Service Associates membership, visit www.iasb.com or contact Britni Beck at bbeck@iasb.com

S.M. WILSON & CO. Provides construction management and general construction services to education, healthcare, commercial, retail, and industrial clients.

St. Louis (314) 645-9595; www.smwilson.com; judd.presley@smwilson.com TRANE HVAC company specializing in design, build, and retrofit.

Willowbrook (630) 734-6033

Computer Software, Supplies, Services COMPUTER INFORMATION CONCEPTS, INC. Infinite Campus student information System and Finance Suite, and Tableau Data Visualization/Analytics.

Greeley, Colorado (312) 995-3342 EDMENTUM We provide fully digital curriculum and assessment tools for educators to utilize in K-12 classrooms to establish blended and personalized environments and advance student learning.

Bloomington, Minnesota (952) 832-1570

Consulting DECISIONINSITE, LLC DecisionInsite provides the nation’s school district leaders with the technology, enrollment forecasts, and expertise they need to understand how enrollment impacts their district.

Irvine, California (877) 204-1392 EOSULLIVAN CONSULTING Illinois-based EOSullivan Consulting has developed a proven process the helps school districts with community engagement, survey research, messaging, informational campaigns and referendums. Libertyville (815) 353-1991 ROOM READY Highly qualified audiovisual specialists who specialize in removing the complexity and ensuring that your audiovisual installations just work, both today and in the future. Normal (309) 261-3794

Environmental Services ALPHA CONTROLS & SERVICES, LLC We deliver energy cost justified solutions that make the learning environment comfortable, secure, and efficient. Rockford, Springfield, Champaign (815) 227-4000; www.alpaacs.com; jasonv@alphaacs.com COM2 RECYCLING SOLUTIONS COM2 is a premiere leader in the recycling industry that specializes in recycling of electronic waste.

Carol Stream (630) 653-2662

CTS GROUP, A VEREGY COMPANY Dedicated to assisting K-12 education meet the challenge of providing healthy, safe, and educational appropriate learning environments.

St. Louis (636) 230-0843; Chicago (773) 633-0691; www.ctsgroup.com; rbennett@ctsgroup.com ENERGY SYSTEMS GROUP A comprehensive energy services and performance contracting company providing energy, facility and financial solutions. Itasca (630) 773-7201; smcivor@energysystemsgroup.com GRP MECHANICAL CO., INC. Renovating buildings through energy savings performance contracting to provide the best learning environment.

HVAC, plumbing, windows, doors, and mechanical services.

Bethalto (618) 779-0050

IDEAL ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING, INC. Asbestos and environmental services.

Bloomington (309) 828-4259 ILLINOIS ENERGY CONSORTIUM Sells electricity and natural gas to school districts, colleges, and universities.

DeKalb (815) 753-9083; www.ILLec.org; hwallace@iasbo.org ENGIE SERVICES U.S. Turnkey partnership programs that enable K12 school districts in Illinois to modernize their facilities; increase safety, security and efficiency; reduce operations costs; and maximize the lifespan of critical assets. Chicago (312) 498-7792; sharon@opterraenergy.com RADON DETECTION SPECIALISTS Radon measurements in elementary, middle, and high schools, as well as all DCFS licensed spaces. We service the entire state of Illinois.

Westmont (630) 325-4443 or (800) 244-4242; www.radondetection.net; KirstenS@radondetection.net

KINGS FINANCIAL CONSULTING, INC. Municipal bond financial advisory service including all types of school bonds; school referenda, county school sales tax; tax revenue forecasts/projections.

Monticello (217) 762-4578 SPEER FINANCIAL, INC. Financial planning and bond issue services.

Chicago (312) 346-3700; www.speerfinancial.com; dphillips@speerfinancial.com STIFEL Full service securities firm providing investment banking and advisory services including strategic financial planning; bond underwriting; referendum and legislative assistance.

Edwardsville (800) 230-5151; noblea@stifel.com WINTRUST FINANCIAL Financial services holding company engaging in community banking, wealth management, commercial insurance premium financing, and mortgage origination. Rosemont (630) 560-2120

Financial Services

Human Resource Consulting

BERNARDI SECURITIES, INC. Municipal bond specialty firm; offers a full range of school bond underwriting services, including capital needs financing and debt refinancing.

O’Fallon (618) 206-4180; Peru (815) 587-8972; Chicago (312) 281-2014; jvezzetti@bernardisecurities.com

BUSHUE HUMAN RESOURCES, INC. Human resource, safety and risk management, and insurance consulting.

Effingham (217) 342-3042; www.bushuehr.com; steve@bushuehr.com

BMO HARRIS BANK BMO Harris Bank’s experienced specialists can help you build a sound strategy to help close budget gaps, manage day-to-day cash flow and maximize your resources.

Chicago (312) 461-7895

THE SANDNER GROUP Insurance program management, marketing & claims services for workers’ compensation, property & liability.

Chicago (800) 654-9504

EHLERS AND ASSOCIATES School bond issues; referendum help; financial and enrollment studies Roseville, MN (312) 638-5250 GORENZ AND ASSOCIATES, LTD. Auditing and financial consulting.

Peoria (309) 685-7621; www.gorenzcpa.com; tcustis@gorenzcpa.com ICE MILLER, LLP Nationally recognized bond counsel services. Chicago (312) 726-7127

Insurance

Office Equipment EDUCATIONAL ENVIRONMENTS BY FRANK COONEY COMPANY, INC. Furniture for educational environments.

Wood Dale (630) 694-8800

Superintendent Searches ECRA GROUP Superintendent searches, board and superintendent workshops.

Schaumburg (847) 318-0072

July/August 2021 • 37

Milestones

In Memoriam David Wesley Bedeker, 79, died April 4, 2021. He served as a member of the boards of education for Seneca Grade School and High School.

Richard Alan Davis, 64, died April 7, 2021. He was a past member of the school board for CCSD 93 in Bloomingdale.

Margaret L. “Peg” Dernbach, 91, died May 13, 2021. She was a prior member of the Barrington CUSD 220 Board of Education.

Chuck Flamini, 74, died April 21, 2021. He was a longtime educator in Springfield SD 186, serving as teacher, school administrator, and school board member. He once taught history “backward” starting with the then-current year and teaching back in time.

James R. Gollings, 76, died May 12, 2021. He was a past member of the Decatur SD 61 Board of Education.

Gary Allen Highland, 77, died April 7, 2021. He was a past member and president of the school board for Carbondale ESD 95.

Charles “Ed” Jameson, 93, died May 14, 2021. He served on the school board for Rossville-Alvin CUSD 7 and was a charter member of the Illiana Antique Automobile Club.

Maurice B. Kimball, 87, died April 20, 2021. He was a past member of the board of education for Rockridge CUSD 300 in Taylor Ridge.

38 • Illinois School Board Journal

Harold T. Kinney, 84, died May 28, 2021. He served on the Yorkwood school board in Warren County.

Dwight M. Klotz, 88, died April 24, 2021. He was a prior member of the board of education for Hinckley-Big Rock CUSD 429.

Steve Lovell, 64, died May 23, 2021. He was a member of the board of education for Elwood CCSD 203.

Jim Mabie, 85, died May 8, 2021.

He served on the Sunset Ridge SD 29 Board of Education.

Robert “Bob” Nunamaker, 86, died April 26, 2021. He was a member of the school board for Fox River Grove CSD 3 and served as village president in Fox River Grove, celebrating the village’s centennial.

LaVerne R. “Parky” Parkinson, 90, died April 16, 2021. He was a past member of the Aledo School Board in Mercer County Michael A. Perino, 69, died April 3, 2021. He served on the school board for Braceville SD 75.

Richard D. Pierce, 89, died April 30, 2021. He was a past member of the Streator ESD 44 school board and an inductee into the Illinois Basketball Hall of Fame.

Frank Matthew Polancic, 91, died December 8, 2020. He served as a member of the board of education for Ottawa ESD 141 for 37 years.

Margaret A. Puetz, 95, died April 15, 2021. She was a member of the Lostant CUSD 425 school board for 22 years.

Alfred J. Rucker, 89, died April 1, 2021. He was a member of the Sheridan school board in LaSalle County.

As executive producer of the Film and Video Group at Argonne National Laboratory, he made films for government agencies, including “training to avoid spy warfare, how to clear up nuclear spills, and the disarming of nuclear missiles.”

Verna Sondgeroth, 90, died April 24, 2021. She was a past member of the school board for Ladd CCSD 94.

Kenneth P. Stromsland, 81, died April 29, 2021. He served as served as member, vice president, and president of the school board for Homer CCSD 33C. Daniel R. “Dan” Weisman, 90, died April 13, 2021. He was a past board member for Springfield SD 186 and a volunteer at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.

Sally Ann Williams, 83, died April 8, 2021. She served for nine years on the school board for Farmer City-Mansfield in Piatt and DeWitt counties.

Philip Zink, 81, died May 15, 2021. He was a 20-year member and past president of the Saratoga CCSD 60C.  IASB appreciates contributions to the Milestones section of the Journal. Please send achievement and obituary information to communications@iasb.com.

Insights “How do we capitalize on what we have learned about our students and differentiate an entire educational system? And how do we do this with the knowledge that education as a system hasn’t changed significantly since the early 1900s?”

Genevra Walters, Superintendent, Kankakee CUSD 111, May 2021.

“Well over a year into arguably the greatest education crisis the nation has faced in our lifetime, if the estimates of learning loss resulting from COVID-19 are anywhere near correct, our nation is facing a catastrophe. Even as we focus on a precipitous decline in learning, COVID-19 has shined a bright light on the fact that too many of our students — especially students of color, students from low-income families, and students with special needs — had fallen behind long before the pandemic and are losing even more ground now.”

Mark Schneider, IES, Operation Reverse the Loss, May 2021.

“I don’t want us to go back into that comfort zone … We grow when we’re uncomfortable. So we’re going to have to rethink education and ensure that the funds are going to students that were impacted the most. So that’s tough leadership, right? You’re going to have to change what people are used to with schools. I always say when the pandemic ends, it’s not going to mean it’s easier. It’s going to be different work … equally as challenging to lead through the next chapter of education in our country.”

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, speaking to the Education Writers Association, May 2021.

“CDC recommends schools continue to use the current COVID-19 prevention strategies for the 2020-2021 school year…

Evidence suggests that many K-12 schools that have strictly implemented prevention strategies have been able to safely open

for in-person instruction and remain open. CDC’s K-12 operational strategy presents a pathway for schools to provide in-person instruction safely through consistent use of prevention strategies, including universal and correct use of masks and physical distancing.”

Operational Strategy for K-12 Schools through Phased Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, May 15, 2021.

“After a tremendously challenging year, Illinois has now reached a defining moment in our efforts to defeat COVID-19. Thanks to the hard work of residents across the state, Illinois will soon resume life as we knew it before — returning to events, gatherings, and a fully reopened economy, with some of the safety guidelines we’ve adopted still in place.”

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, June 4, 2021.

July/August 2021 • 39

NON-PROFIT PRST STANDARD US POSTAGE PAID ILLINOIS ASSOCIATION OF SCHOOL BOARDS

2921 Baker Drive Springfield, Illinois 62703-5929 Address Service Requested