Superintendent's Message

I'm not sure about you, but I feel like each new year brings hope and excitement for new experiences, opportunities, and ongoing improvement. With that in mind, I am excited to formally announce our D102 Strategic Plan renewal's launch. For those unfamiliar with this process, it could best be described as a formal way to envision what we want from our school district over the next five years. Any good strategic planning process involves voices and ideas from members from all aspects of our District - most notably families, staff, administration, and community members. We will identify areas of focus for the District, create action steps to achieve our short and long-term goals, set metrics to measure progress and identify multiple ways to communicate this work and our progress to all stakeholders.  

While the Board of Education, the district administration, and I will be facilitating the development of the plan, it will represent the voices, ideas, hopes, and goals of the entire District. Here is how we plan to make that a reality:

1. At the end of February, all families and staff will receive a Strategic Plan survey that we will use to help inform all of our conversations. We will invite all stakeholders to participate.

2. I will be hosting Coffees with the Superintendent throughout March in our school buildings to hear from staff and families directly about the direction they would like to see our District moving.

3. In late February, we will ask families, staff, and community members to formally join our Strategic Planning committee. The charge of this committee is to review all the data collected from the survey and our small group conversations and help draft priority goals for each of our focus areas. The majority of this work will take place over two evenings in April.

All of these conversations will be open to the public and publicized well in advance. The very first Strategic Plan discussion will be held during the February 8 Board of Education meeting. We intend this to be an open, inclusive, and data-driven process. I am looking forward to hearing from many of you. Stay tuned!

In the immediate future, please be on the lookout for two important communications from D102. 

• At the end of January, all families will receive a Semester One Progress Report (Report Card). I am proud to say that our students and teachers are doing great work! If you have questions about what these report cards mean or how to understand your child’s progress, please check out our Family Resource page (LINK) located on the right side of the picture on each school’s web page. If there is a question not answered there, please contact your child’s teacher, your building principal or a member of our Teaching and Learning Team.  

• Please be on the lookout for this year’s 5Essentials Survey from the State of Illinois. It will be emailed to all our families the first week in February. This is a yearly survey given through schools to all families in the State. It was developed by the University of Chicago and is designed to provide the school district input on improving programming, instruction, and climate. Results from this survey become part of the Illinois School Report Card for our District and each of our buildings.  

I recognize that D102 will be asking you to take two surveys in the next few months. I want to thank you in advance for taking a little time to help us with our continuous improvement process by providing your perspective and sharing your experiences. Have a great January, and Happy New Year!

Chris

Our curriculum department hosted a district wide meeting on Thursday, Jan. 11th with the English Language Arts teachers for grades 6th through 8th grade with guest speaker Kate Roberts. Ms. Roberts' work is well known as she "has worked nationally and internationally to help teachers, schools, and districts develop and implement strong teaching practices and curriculum". Our teachers had an insightful day filled with great conversations and learning strategies to add to their practices. In the coming weeks, grade levels will have the opportunity to work with Ms. Roberts' on unit planning utilizing various strategies that were discussed in the presentation. 

Dear Parent(s)/Guardian(s): 

Between February 5- February 16, second and fourth-grade students will participate in the administration of the Naglieri General Ability Tests. The purpose of the assessment is to identify student potential and Verbal, Non-verbal, and Quantitative reasoning.  This assessment is one component of data collection to identify students who may benefit from placement in the Talent Development programming in Math (grades 3-8) and Reading (grades 5-8). Though the assessment is primarily utilized for placement in the Talent Development programming it is also useful information for the classroom teacher to understand student strength areas.

You can learn more about the Naglieri General Ability Test at https://naglierigiftedtests.com/test-prep. The questions on the three tests measure a student’s general ability to understand relationships among pictures (the verbal test), diagrams (the nonverbal test), and numbers (the quantitative test) and can be solved regardless of what language a student speaks or what a student has been previously taught in school. 

Assessment reports will be sent home in May.

Sincerely,

Samantha Melendez

Talent Development Coordinator

#d102studentspotlight In December the Cossitt Connections classes and Mrs. Troyer took a tour called "Art + Access" offered through The Art Institute of Chicago. This is a guided tour designed for students with special needs. They had the opportunity to create their own art and visited three different artworks: two paintings, and one sculpture.

Forest Road teachers cheered on a former D102 student, JJ McCarthy, who played in the College Football Playoff National Championship game on Monday, January, 8th, for University of Michigan. The Championship ended with a wining score of 34 - 13 against the Washington Huskies.

McCarthy is a La Grange, Illinois native who graduated from Park Jr. High School in 2017. Congratulations to him and his team for this huge accomplishment.

Calling all student scientists, engineers, and inventors! STEM EXPO 2024 is coming soon

Saturday, March 2nd, 2024

On March 2nd, STEM EXPO will showcase the talents of District 102 students in the areas of Science, Technology, Engineering and creative Making. STEM EXPO provides an egg-cellent opportunity for students from kindergarten–6th grade to explore a science topic of their choice. We encourage you to use your creative and inventive skills to create a project at home and share what you learned with other students, families, and teachers at EXPO. Projects range in complexity from simple observations to full experiments, inventions or technology projects. 

Who:  All students grades K–6

When:  Saturday, March 2, 2024  9:00 am–Noon
Set-up is Friday, March 1  4:00–5:30 pm

Where: Forest Road School Gym, 901 N Forest Road, LaGrange Park   

For more information, link to our STEM EXPO website

Are you ready to start?  Registration is OPEN,  Register Here

All participants will receive a participation certificate and this year’s STEM EXPO t-shirt. Register on or before Feb 17th to be guaranteed your t-shirt size. Exhibits will not be judged; students/teams will be assigned a 1/2 hour time period when they will be required to be at their table to answer questions and explain their project to an EXPO Official.

Do you have questions?  Call the Science Center 708-215-6405  or email Mrs. Hohl, hohlvi@dist102.k12.il.us  or  Mrs. V,  vaiciuliske@dist102.k12.il.us  We are happy to help!  

Join the Mighty Patriots for their next game on Thursday, January 18th, for their Pack the Place game versus Lyons Township. Mighty Patriots alumni will be playing on the LT team going up against their Mighty Patriots former team mates. This will definitely be an exciting game and they are excited to reunite with friends again.

Looking to get you or your family involved in activities? Check out our community page for activities and programs within the area. Here are some activities currently on our community page.

• After School Program at St. Michael's

• After School Program (Spanish)

• Our Future Reads Tutoring

• CommUNITY Diversity Group Summer Scholarship Program

• Donate to the CommUNITY Diversity Fundraising Campaign for Scholarships

• West40 Spring Educator Job Fair

We’re thrilled to announce the new app for LaGrange District 102! It’s everything LaGrange 102, in your pocket.

Download the app on Android: https://bit.ly/3zbalhW

or iPhone: https://apple.co/3sHUGnZ.

Referral GPS - Connecting People to Treatment:  We are committed to creating a culture of well-being for students, staff,  parents, and the community. In an effort to continuously support this commitment, the district has entered an agreement with ReferralGPS. 

ReferralGPS is a web-based service focused on assisting our students,  staff, and community in finding local mental-health and substance use-related treatment. The service compliments the districts existing systems of support as a tool for student service teams and families to connect with treatment. Along with a searchable database of treatment options, ReferralGPS provides Care Navigation to assist families in triage, appointment setting, and follow-up care. 

School families may access ReferralGPS in two ways: 

1) Visit this link at https://referralgps.com/find-help/dist102 to search for treatment resources or connect with a Care  Navigator anonymously. 

2) Contact Student Services (social workers, psychologists,  counselors) to seek out treatment options. 

ReferralGPS takes into account all types of private and public insurance including PPO, HMO, Medicaid, Medicare, and families who are uninsured or underinsured. The platform also filters by age, gender, zip code, and special requests. 

ReferralGPS is available for use by district students, staff, and families at no cost. All information entered on the ReferralGPS tool is completely confidential and securely stored. 

If you are interested in seeking counseling-related services at this time,  please consider visiting https://referralgps.com/find-help/dist102 or reaching out to the Student Services team.