North Cook News

The Wheeling Community School District Board of Educating heard an update on the district’s advanced learner’s programs from Beatrice Reyes Childress, assistant superintendent for equity and learning.

During the Feb. 23 meeting, streamed on YouTube, Childress told the board the students in the program are categorized as high achieving, gifted, and talented. The program has been the focus of a panel of nearly 20 members, she noted, and the areas have differing implementations for the students and all are under the umbrella of the advanced learner’s program to better meet the students’ needs.

“And so these are the items that came out of that discussion [of offerings to talented students]: wanting to ensure that if we create classes or clubs that are in support of the areas that the students are interested in,” Childress said during the meeting. “We wanted to make sure that we gave students exposure before automatically narrowing down to say, okay, these are the students that have this particular talent.”

Childress said it was important for the committee to give more widespread exposure to students.

“And then also important to the task force membership was to make sure that we minimize the amount of time that students missed from their normal instruction,” she said during the meeting. “If this is not a class that's just embedded in their regular schedule, that was something that was really important as far as a recommendation and consideration.”

The district’s elementary high-achieving program will seek to boost the advanced instruction in ELA for students in 4th and 5th grades from twice weekly to every day and expand this option to students in Grade 3.

Childress noted in the presentation that high-achieving students in the 5th grade receive 45 minutes of advanced instruction, and that will be increased to one hour and the option will be expanded to include students in Grade 3.

The board also learned during the meeting that the committee that there were no changes planned for the middle school program.

“We have had a pretty established program and we are just going to roll with what we have,” Childress said. “It isn’t broken and it works for the students.”

Childress noted that the students will continue to receive advanced Language Arts and Math instruction, including double accelerated math classes for students in the 95th percentile.

Going forward, the committee will focus on students in the “talented” category, with a focus on opportunities in the arts programs, with a survey planned for students and parents to gauge interest in other offerings.