Dear Butler D53 Families and Staff,
On Monday evening, the Board of Education held its Regular Meeting for the month. In addition to approving PressPlus modifications to a number of policies, the Board of Education approved the Otus: K-12 Student Growth Personalized Learning Platform for implementation within our district. This platform was designed by educators to be a single platform to support personalized learning, benchmarks and formative assessments, differentiation, data-informed instruction, social emotional learning, and addressing learning loss. The initial focus for next school year will be analytics and teachers learning how to access and interpret the data, set personalized goals for students, and further differentiate instruction.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, our district has taken a measured approach to the strategic layered mitigation strategies recommended by the CDC, IDPH and DCHD. Given the continued decrease of COVID-19 positivity and transmission rates within our zip code and region, the Board of Education suspended our COVID-19 enhanced cleaning mitigations, and compliance program. That being said, we will continue to offer free, voluntary COVID-19 testing for those who choose to access our program. The COVID-19 data tracker dashboard will continue to be updated weekly.
Furthermore, progress continues on our Capital Improvements and Vision project. We are posting regular updates on our Construction Corner on the district website. Please check back regularly to see continued progress. We're excited about how these improvements will impact future teaching and learning within our buildings.
As a reminder, Summer School Registration will open on April 22, 2022. If you haven't had a chance to review the Summer School Catalog, I highly encourage you to review it with your child and make plans to take part in the exciting offerings taught by our talented District 53 teachers.
Stay well, be safe!
Dr. Paul O’Malley
Superintendent of Schools