Mokena District 159 Honored By State Board Of Ed For Strategic Plan
MOKENA, IL — When Mokena District 159 officials received just more than a $700,000 federal stimulus grant coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, the timing of how those funds could not have been better.
District officials initiated a strategic planning process in the spring of 2021 to begin focusing on several priorities. Chief among them was the enhancement of its English Language Arts and STEM programs as a way of kickstarting better instruction in a critical subject area to students in the K-5 grade levels.
Now, nearly three years later, and with those Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds still being used to serve district students in several ways, the district has been recognized by the Illinois State Board of Education for its efforts to make the most of the money it received.
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State Superintendent Tony Sanders recently recognized District 159 in his weekly address for its use of funds. In addition to the ELA curriculum that was enhanced because of the grant, Sanders also praised the district for supporting its goal of providing interventions to students not yet meeting state standards by hiring a reading interventionist and also providing after-school and summer instruction.
District 159 Superintendent Mark Cohen told Patch on Thursday that while not receiving the grant would not have prevented the district from moving forward with its strategic plan, the large one-time infusion of cash made the plan much more sustainable.
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“It’s not something that happens every day and so we wanted to capitalize on it and make sure that we put it to use that would go well beyond a one-time event,” Cohen said about receiving the federal grant.
He added: “(The timing) was incredibly fortuitous. We could have supported a lot of these things with our strategic plan in other ways and dipped into reserves, but this resource to fund these new programs ….made it so much easier. We were able to not take away from anything else.”
Cohen said the adoption of the ELA program may be the top initiative the district offers just because of the fundamental nature of reading and literacy for district students. After receiving the $700,000 grant, the district made sure to be transparent with district families about how the funds would be used.
While other districts used grant money for capital projects and building improvements, District 159 invested the funds back into its students in meaningful ways, Cohen said. After receiving the funds in 2021, Assistant Superintendent Kristin Johnson began looking into possible resources for ELA programming, including phonics and foundational skills programming which were implemented district-wide beginning in the 2022-23 school year for K-5 students.
Last year also represented another reading resources pilot program involving literacy programs, Cohen said. The current school year is the first in which those programs have been used. The funding from the 2021 grant can be used up until this fall.
Of the $700,000, about $175,000 was invested into literacy materials, $100,000 went to professional training for teachers, $175,000 went to literacy intervention programs for students and additional funding went to STEM programming and technology improvements district-wide.
“Everything was part of the teaching and learning process,” Cohen told Patch.
While the state praised the district as a whole, Cohen said that the recognition would not have been possible without district teachers “taking the ball and running with it.” He said that while federal funding and the purchase of new materials go a long way in improving instruction that the district provides, without teachers doing their part, the benefits of everything else become limited.
In October, the district received high marks on the State Report Card, showing improvements in both math and ELA over the past year. Students posted the highest scores ever for the district as students at Mokena Elementary, Mokena Intermediate School, and Mokena Junior High all showed improvements in the subject areas.
In addition to having a reputation for fiscal responsibility, District 159 also has a well-established track record of putting students first, Cohen said. The recognition received by the state earlier this month is validation, the superintendent said, that the district is living up to its mission.
“You can buy whatever books and STEM equipment you want but if you don’t have a group of professionals who are going to take the ball and run with it, then it doesn’t matter,” Cohen said on Thursday. “It just becomes window-dressing. I just look at this as giving the teachers the tools they need to be successful.”
He added: (Recognition from the state) gives you the confidence that things moving in the right direction and I’m very proud of that.”
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