The Evanston Township High School District 202 Board of Education met Monday evening to discuss progress on literacy and numeracy programs, international travel arrangements and the school calendar.
The meeting focused on the literacy and numeracy report for the 2025 school year, presented to the board by three Evanston Township High School representatives. The report highlighted a general increase in reading proficiency of ETHS students.
The school committed to raising student and community literacy by holding Literacy Lab, the Summer Lift program and various community events such as the E-Town Community Literacy Fest.
Sixty-four ETHS students are supported by the Literacy Lab, which offers additional help in reading to students to meet or exceed their grade-level expectation. This endeavor was continued by the Summer Lift, in which students from ETHS and elsewhere are guided to read texts of their choice for 15 days.
The report said 2024 Summer Lift participants generally achieved one grade level of growth in reading proficiency throughout the program, with one student completing 16 books and achieving four grade levels of growth.
Despite this progress, the Summer Lift program will be discontinued this year because of a lack of funding, which Evanston/Skokie School District 65 previously provided.
“We need to find someone to get you some money,” board member Patricia Maunsell said. “And it cannot come from our operating budget, I understand. But that seems like a program worth raising money.”
The report also noted the importance of numeracy, the ability to understand and apply mathematical concepts.
Jake Mills, one of the three ETHS representatives and math department chair, said enrollment to data science classes has “exploded” in addition to the already-growing pre-Algebra, Algebra I, AP Statistics and AP Precalculus enrollment.
Dr. Kiwana Brown, associate principal of instruction and literacy of ETHS, presented international travel plans for next school year to the board. The school plans to organize trips to Namibia, Japan, Germany, France and China. She said students with financial difficulties will be funded by donations, restaurant fundraisers, T-shirt sales and cultural performances.
Maunsell called this opportunity for students unique.
“When I read that we were taking kids to Africa, I got chills,” Maunsell said. “I went to school a thousand years ago, but we didn’t go anywhere.”
The board also approved the school calendar for the next two years. School will start on Aug. 17 — later than this school year — to reduce students and families’ stress and make time for summer programming and maintenance. Also, a staff institute day was added at the start of the second semester, allowing teachers and staff to review materials and prepare.
“We want to have our students have a real break, and this also enables our teachers, our staff to have a real break,” said board member Leah Piekarz.
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