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East Chicago board hears strategic-plan update; proposal to buy Infinity Systems platform not approved
Summary
Superintendent presented a first-quarter update on the district’s new 2025–2030 strategic plan and described steps to expand academic supports, PBIS rewards and career pathways. The board debated a separate contract with Infinity Systems to build reporting and baseline assessments and recorded 'No' votes during roll call; the motion did not pass with the membership present at the time.
Superintendent Dr. Bornay presented the School City of East Chicago’s first-quarter progress report on the district’s newly adopted 2025–2030 strategic plan and outlined early steps to align instruction, behavior supports and career pathways with measurable goals.
“This will be the first quarter update of our strategic plan that will cover the beginning of the school year,” Dr. Bornay told the board, summarizing five focus areas: academic support systems; behavioral, emotional and social supports; career pathways; family and community engagement; and staff relations and professional learning. She said the district has expanded ST Math beyond special-education classrooms and launched an AI-assisted lesson-planning tool the superintendent referred to as “Magic School” to help teachers differentiate instruction.
Dr. Bornay also described a plan to increase college- and career-readiness through Project Lead The Way training and a newly launched School Links platform to help students plan postsecondary pathways. On behavior, she said the district is scaling PBIS (positive behavior interventions and supports) and using a color-coded status tracker to monitor progress.
Separately, the agenda included a proposed contract with Infinity Systems to design an alignment assessment and provide baseline reporting tied to the strategic plan. Trustee Rodriguez questioned the cost and asked how Infinity differed from the district’s existing Panorama tool. “Looking at the contract, I noticed that the amount was a little high in terms of just overseeing a strategic plan that we just already approved,” Rodriguez said.
Dr. Bornay replied that Panorama primarily captures student-perception data and staff surveys, while the Infinity-style assessment the contract would provide is designed to measure the district’s full set of strategic goals, create baseline data and generate reports for continuous monitoring. She described Infinity as a lower-cost option among comparable platforms and said it would design and deliver assessment instruments and data dashboards.
A roll call on the Infinity proposal recorded No votes from Trustees Rodriguez, Tanner and President Gibson King while Trustee Gomez had not yet joined the meeting remotely; the board’s recorded negative votes at that moment mean the motion did not pass with the membership present at that time. Trustee Gomez later joined by video. The superintendent said the board will continue work on tools and reporting to make the strategic plan a "living and breathing" document.
The board’s next regularly scheduled meeting was announced for Nov. 25 at Lincoln Elementary School.
