Dupage Policy Journal

The Downers Grove grade school board of education welcomed Herrick Middle School as their spotlight school.

“We had a very good year and we're very proud of it,” Herrick Middle School Principal David Norman. “80% of our students met or exceeded their expected growth. And we hope that, you know, although we are pleased with this data, we feel that we can continue to improve and find ways to continue to allow our students to reach their full academic potential.”

The board uploaded a livestream of its public meeting to the district’s YouTube channel.

At their January 9th school board meeting, the Downers Grove school board highlighted the students and staff from Herrick Middle school. Some of the students helped lead the board in the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of the meeting before Norman addressed the board. He introduced some of the advisors of the student council, which is a very popular organization at Herrick. All of the grade presidents from the student council were at the meeting: Council president Stormy Fletmer, 8th grade Vice President Michael Novotrey and 7th-grade vice president Andre Cheng.

The board also discussed the upcoming 2023 to 2024 academic calendar.

The student council facilitates the Spartan Pride award, a monthly celebration that has students nominated by teachers for showing a PRIDE element: purposeful, respectful, inclusive, driven, engaged. The student council helps host the monthly celebration breakfast which parents of award winners are invited to. In their first semester of school, they had 40 students win this award. Another event that the council helped put on was a winter Olympics that ran alongside the Beijing 2022 Olympics. They had minute to win it style games and hope to do it again with the next Olympics. They also had door decorating competitions between different classes, often working on a picture of their teacher’s face.

The board will meet again at 7 p.m. on Feb. 13 at Downers Grove Village Hall at 801 Burlington Avenue.

The Herrick PTA president, the organization that often partners with the student council in their events, spoke to the board. They were excited to have experienced the most normal school year in quite some time and had a lot of the well-loved events that people missed. They already have over 200 8th-grade students signed up for their dance classes and will host a VIP Day (grandparents' day) again this semester.