DeKalb School District 428 details new guidelines for conference travel

DeKALB – The DeKalb School District 428 Board outlined new guidelines for professional development conference travel amid questions from two new board members over protocol.

One of the trips, meant for professional development, according to the district, already had been authorized by the previous school board. When it came time to authorize payments, two newly elected officials spoke up.

The board underwent a reorganization following the April election after four new members joined and four departed.

Board Vice President Jose Jaques, who used to work as a DeKalb police school resource officer in the district, took issue with the previous board’s handling of the matter.

The board’s decision in March authorized outgoing board President Deyci Ramirez and then-board Vice President Chris Boyes to attend a conference put on by CollegeBoard dubbed “Preparate: Educating Latinos for the Future of America.” It took place from April 9 to 11 in Denver. The item was listed on this week’s meeting agenda.

“That close to somebody’s term [ending], I don’t know what the purpose of sending a board member to that would be,” Jaques said. “If they [are] presenting something, they’re bringing something back. Then, they need to report back and say what they did. And I listened to the board meetings. I don’t remember them ever saying, ‘Hey, I went to this conference. This is what happened. Here’s what I presented.’”

Board member Mark Charvat agreed.

“I’d like, going forward, that if we approve further conferences, to provide that whoever’s attending the conference, or as a group collectively, that the public and the board get a report on what was gained from the conference,” Charvat said.

Superintendent Minerva Garcia-Sanchez said she wanted to set the record straight.

“No one goes to a conference unless they’re bringing something back,” Garcia-Sanchez said. “When they come back, there’s an expectation of what needs to happen. ... Things come back. We make certain connections with other partners so that we can also get additional supports and services in the district.”

Garcia-Sanchez said the conference allowed Boyes and Ramirez to speak on behalf of the district’s efforts to support high school students.

“In this case, CollegeBoard asked us to come again in the second year because the first year we had such high accolades on the information that we shared around culture and climate, our [social-emotional learning] and student advocacy that they wanted to know what we were doing in the aspect of high school,” Garcia-Sanchez said.

Ramirez said the district was able to share a lot of great information about what it’s doing to support students and, in turn, learn what other districts are doing.

“We don’t have a lot of Latinx administrators at the district, so to see our high school primarily white administrators that were there learning about the needs of our Latinx students from a K-12 perspective, even as they are transitioning to higher education, it was awesome, because it allows them to see the students from a different perspective,” Ramirez said. “I think that is important, and it’s critical because our Latinx population is growing rapidly at the district.”

The district intends to compile feedback from conferences in the board’s weekly update along with the quarterly strategic plan, which is delivered in a public presentation three times a year.

Ramirez said she believes the new guidelines are about “micromanagement” of conference travel requests.

“I think it is important to have transparency,” Ramirez said. “However, understand that investing in your people also shows up in being able to allow people the flexibility to also still show off what we’re also doing. The district is doing a lot of amazing things. I think a lot of the times those things are not recognized ... because we’re not in all of these different spaces.”

An attempt to reach Boyes for comment was unsuccessful.

Also at the meeting, Jessica Nall, the district’s assessment coordinator, briefed the board on a request for conference travel approval. The request, which was approved by the board, will be fully funded by a grant. The grant funds up to five DeKalb educators’ travel to attend the Northwest Evaluation Association’s Fusion Conference from June 24 to 27 in New Orleans. The conference will help educational professionals use MAP data for student and teacher success.

Nall said the grant money became available recently.

“We had a grant that we earmarked for attendance at a conference at NIU, which has been entirely canceled,” Nall said. “I wanted to go to this conference anyway. It wasn’t in the budget. It turns out now it will be.”