Elmhurst SD 205 principals describe efforts to build safe, engaging classrooms as district rolls out NextPath attendance and SEL monitoring

Lincoln Elementary principal Calissa Smith and Bryan Middle School principal Jackie Desipio told the Elmhurst SD 205 Board of Education on Sept. 23 that their schools are focusing on practices intended to increase students’ sense of safety, belonging and engagement.

"99% of our students say they feel safe with their teachers. 97% say they're treated with respect, and 94% say that teachers notice each time they need help and explain things in a different way," Lincoln principal Calissa Smith said as she described classroom routines, calm corners and student leadership activities in the school.

The board later heard from a district staff member (presenting the learning-environment report) who described tools the district is using to monitor attendance and social-emotional learning (SEL). The district has begun using NextPath to display up-to-date attendance and academic indicators and Panorama to gather student-reported SEL measures twice a year.

Why it matters: district leaders told the board that improvements in student perceptions of school climate are associated with better attendance and academic outcomes. The district said chronic absenteeism has declined in elementary grades and improved substantially at York High School over recent years.

What principals said: Smith said Lincoln has emphasized schoolwide "pride values," calm corners for emotional regulation, grade-level buddy activities, expanded co-curricular offerings with the PTA and a run club that draws more than 300 students. "When students feel safe, connected, and supported, their personal and academic growth accelerates," she said.

Jackie Desipio said Bryan Middle School prioritized student-teacher trust as a targeted improvement area after analyzing 5Essentials survey data. She described reviving a student advisory committee, aligning teacher goals to the school improvement plan and focusing this year on "interactive pedagogy"—strategies that increase student collaboration and discussion across exploratory and core classes.

District monitoring and interventions: the staff presentation showed NextPath dashboards that district and building leaders can filter by school, grade and subgroup to identify students at risk of falling off track for attendance or academic targets. The presenter demonstrated drilling from a risk flag to an individual student’s attendance history and said NextPath updates nightly from PowerSchool and other sources.

Board questions and staff responses: board members asked how the district decides when to start interventions and how progress is measured. The staff presenter said teams use Panorama survey scores and other universal assessments (examples cited include MAP and FastBridge) to flag needs, then deploy tiered interventions and monitor progress. "Students and their families would be engaged, really relatively quickly as soon as we notice a risk," the presenter said. Counselors, social workers and school psychologists meet regularly with school teams to plot supports.

Several board members asked whether the district tracks pre/post measures for small-group counseling and other SEL interventions. District staff said counselors maintain internal progress-monitoring benchmarks and that the district is in a first-year implementation phase of integrating those measures into the NextPath data walls; they said more dynamic progress indicators will be added over time.

Supporting evidence and outcomes: district staff reported that, by some measures, elementary chronic absenteeism is below pre-pandemic levels and that York High School has reduced its chronic-absence rate roughly by half over recent years. The presentation also noted that the district has added roughly 20 new clubs and activities, and that girls flag football is a newly popular sport in the district this year.

What’s next: the board was told the district will continue guided observations, professional learning on interactive pedagogy and administration of the Panorama survey (fall and spring) and the 5Essentials survey in February. The board will review state assessment report-card changes at its Oct. 21 Committee of the Whole meeting and district staff will return with year‑end analyses of how the integrated data tools affected interventions.

Ending: principals and staff said the combination of school-level culture work and new data tools is intended to let educators identify causes quickly and move to action for students who need additional supports.