so noting the hour and a presence of a quorum I call the act and box bro Regional school committee to order uh members of the public who wish to watch this meeting May do so online at Acton TV's YouTube channel uh the link is found at the top of our agenda as always this meeting is being recorded and will be posted on actant TV's website at acent tv.org uh welcome everybody uh I do want to take a quick moment to thank the town meeting members of both Acton and boxboro who have since successfully passed uh our school budget and their two Town budgets so thank you uh for everyone who attended and did their civic duty in in participating in town meeting um I will share that for members of our school committee who are from Acton they found the boxboro town meeting to be a a unique opportunity and those of us from boxboro thought the act in was also a unique uh experience so we all do do do things a little differently in each Town um uh but at this point now we have an approved budget and we are moving forward with our planning for next year so that is a a a great great um Milestone to finally hit after a very long budget season um first up on our agenda will be public participation and I will remind everybody that per our policy bedh members of the public are invited to speak for up to three minutes um public participation will only take place at this time in our meeting um and speakers need to be recognized by me before speaking and as a reminder the committee does not typically respond to comments during partic public participation so with that I will get a timer ready and I'll ask folks to line up at the mic and just give me a second hi go ahead uh let's make sure that microphone is on there's a switch that you push up towards the top okay perfect thank you Dave lunger Wong Drive Indian village enacted the offering of this evening's comment is in the spirit of JFK's quote what you can do for your country with the upcoming semiquincentennial anniversary of acting Colonials leading the charge to American Liberty at Old Northbridge there is no more noble way to honor our country than to stand for the pledge to our American flag the most recognized symbol of our nation and unifying identity as a people we stand here this evening to acknowledge you the act and boxboro school committee through your leadership ensuring that our children the next generation of citizens now participate daily in honoring our nation and unity through the pledge of allegiance to our flag we stand here tonight to ask you to take this to the next step as written in Massachusetts general laws chapter 71 section 69 and encourage teachers all teachers and school leaders those we have entrusted to guide our children to lead by standing and reciting the pledge to the flag the symbol of our nation and those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom like our neighboring communities of Bolton Lancaster Littleton Westford stow and marbo we believe it is important for school leaders to set this example for our teachers in order to cultivate and Foster the next generation of responsible and active citizens the Acton Republican Town committee presents this gift of an American flag to display in your school committee meetings so that you may set the example in a show of unity and leadership as a school committee stand and recite the pledge of allegiance to the flag please join us as we recite in honor of our nation and what it stands for I'm sorry you said the rep yes I pledge allegiance to the flag United States of America and to Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you very much thank you thank you very much uh is this working okay yes you're good uh hello I'm Alex swah I'm a junior at the high school and I'm here as uh representative of resource force uh almost a year ago we sent a resolution to the school committee uh on the decarbonization and electrification of the school district and uh we're here once again to reiterate our support for that resolution and hope that you pass it uh in uh hopefully soon uh because we think there's no better time than now to be pushing for this kind of policy uh in order to combat climate change and secure our future thank you hi Gary probably guess who I'm here um I am winding down so it'll be somebody else asking this in the future but I'm formally asking you when you do your public speaking policies for next year that you allow act and boxboro finance committee members to ask questions on any Financial component of the school committee meetings during the meeting and not just at the beginning thank you thanks car Judy Hodge of on on High Street we moved to act in 50 years ago and our two sons graduated through the Schools starting with McCarthy town and our grandson is now in McCarthy town and I'm here speaking on behalf of mothers out front and the children in the schools um to support the resource force uh resolution and hope that you can pass it um congratulate everyone that we passed the school budget and in addition the Acton chapter of mothers out front is working towards electric school buses it's not the highest impact change that can be made but it does have an impact on the climate to have electric school buses and it also improves Health um the school emissions the buses emissions from school buses impact Health especially asthma and so it would be good for our students to have a red better climate and better health and I hope you can resource look into all the resources available to help fund that thanks thank you very much Judy any other public comment this evening all right thank you all uh we will move on to the superintendent update Peter all right thanks Adam um you know I know you already thank citizens and ACM boxboro for uh passing the budget but I just also want to re reiterate on behalf of all of our leadership and staff in the district um a sincere thank you as well um you know we are moving forward now in you know with hiring doing everything else that the school district would have been doing over the last month or so um so it's you know certainly um refreshing to be able to to take some of those steps um you know I also know that you know we are we aren't fully funding the schools for what we would need to provide level services so we are taking a hard look at some of the goals that we had intended to set for next year evaluating those and you know deciding okay what is feasible or what might we have to defer or maybe even pause uh because we might not have the staff to support um so you know we're certainly thinking about that as well but yet I also want to recognize you know this override was a significant investment in the schools um and I think it comes with an expectation that we recognize of making sure that we're spending our tax dollars really wisely in support of you know student achievement so that's something we're going to look hard at over the next year or so um and make sure that we're really focused on you know good efficient and effective schools um as we move forward I want to give another thanks to the town of boxboro for approving CPC funding that's going to allow the Blanchard Memorial School to accelerate plans for a new playground um huge thanks to principal Dana lab for leading an incredible fundraising effort he raised over $170,000 um uh all of the different corporations and families that donated um and the citizens of boxboro supporting uh that project at town meeting so big thanks to that group um we have a number of different celebrations and recognitions that take place over the course of May uh we already has sent out that it's mental health awareness month and Asian-American and Pacific Islander heritage month so we're sending out some resources for families and students to be able to look in and learn a little bit more uh but it's also Jewish American Heritage Month uh which began April 20th on 2006 when George Brush proclaimed that may would be Jewish American heritage month so we're sending out some information on that as well um and I was um actually surprised to learn doing some research um it was actually his father um George Bush who actually had recognized Asian-American Pacific Islander Heritage Month in 1992 I did not know that as a bit of History so that was interesting to learn um I want to congratulate Sher Matthews um she actually drove up from the cape uh where she was at a luncheon with the Massachusetts uh School business administrators something in a different acronym I have the acronym wrong but the idea is right um she was actually just recognized with a friend of masbo uh award that is in recognition of significant contributions to the field of school business and operational efficiency so congratulations [Music] Sherry and that is the second year in a row um an AC and boxboro finance director has been recognized by that organization uh last year Year Dave verino received their Lifetime Achievement Award um so you know we're really proud to have a great lineage of Finance directors here in the district um some School news um I'll just highlight one thing over the last month um you know Gates grade one students have been um coming to the steam lab to learn about force and motion during their first visit students went on a scavenger hunt for things that could roll out and then tested them out on different surfaces uh we quickly realized that friction causes the motion of objects to slow down on their second visit students worked with a partner to create a chain reaction students had a great time exploring different materials and worked hard to redesign the setups uh to get it working so we're going to send home a little video that families can see of some of the steamwork in action our kids are doing um we are sending out information um on the do atamian uh campership program that provides scholarships uh to summer camps and programs that's a very important program and we're fortunate that that program supports our students in the district we're also sending out a call for help Project Graduation um this would be a great opportunity as a school Committee Member if you are around um graduation night uh this is an incredibly important initiative that has a long history in our community of making sure that our graduates have a safe evening of fun um after graduation so they are desperately in need of volunteers again that's an annual thing we try to send out and support so please consider volunteering at that and that is it for me tonight and so I'm going to actually transition into a little bit of of recognition um you know Deb came to me a few weeks ago and said please please please make sure I get recognized at school committee uh it it's really important to me you know I love being the center of attention I love the Limelight on me um and I said Deb I don't know if we can do it but let's see what we can do um no in all seriousness um as you all know Deb bookas um is moving on from the district this year uh to pursue some other opportunities in education uh Deb has been here many many years and I I don't I couldn't even recount all of the contributions that Deb's made she was a teacher here at Miriam um she was a curriculum coordinator and now is an assistant superintendent um for the last stretch of her career Deb is one of the most thoughtful reflective practitioners I have ever met in my career um she has an incredible wealth of knowledge of teaching and learning she understands what Educators do um and all of the work that Educators do she understands um how to move change forward she has a deep understanding of educational research and best practice and you know the the role that she has played um in helping our schools move into a more unified system over the last you know six or seven years can't be understated um I mean she has been really the backbone of the teaching and learning department and this this District um certainly since full regionalization and I know even before that um her team members adore her uh they respect her work she is you know one of the most personal bu people that you can ever uh imagine in addition to loving the Limelight and being talked about publicly um you know but but just you know I am personally Going to Miss Deb a tremendous amount some of the recent things you know just to highlight some of Deb's work she's going to be presenting tonight so you'll get to hear about mtss but thinking about moving to you know a consistent Mathematics Curriculum and I know Heather's here Dora is here from A literacy perspective but we've moved to a consistent literacy curriculum that is a structured literacy curriculum so all of the things that you read in the Boston Globe about all the districts in Massachusetts not providing evidence-based literacy um in a structured literacy format we are not those districts um we are following the research we're following the evidence there's a tremendous amount of work our Educators have to do to be able to make that shift into the structure literacy model um Deb has been thoughtful in working with her team to make sure that that happens she has been the backbone of all of our mtss planning um she works very closely um with our multilingual um Educators she works very closely in terms of you know collaborating withal and making sure that that's integrated into the curriculum she works very closely with Jen Faber around all of our Equity initiatives in the district and you know just she does it with Grace and she does it in a way that is never drawing the attention to herself which is why I just wanted to take a few minutes and make sure she was sufficiently embarrassed um you know in front of school committee and I will say Deb thank you so much for everything you've done um I know you will be smiling every day next year in what you're doing um and you know just you I hope you leave knowing what an absolutely tremendous impact that you've had on not only all the Educators but the community and first and foremost and I know most important for you all of our students so thank you so much we have a small token behind you um I won't necessarily bring it out um but that is for you to take home um and thank you [Music] and I will say Deb's husband John is here tonight as well um you know as only Deb would do trying to stay out of the Limelight she tried to not let him come uh but you know little did she know I actually had already emailed him directly and and kind of headed that off at the past so John thank you for coming he's a mathematics teacher at conquered Carlile so you know education is is deep deep in their family so John thank you Deb thank you congratulations and certainly best wishes are we going to move to a quick Finance director's update yes Sherry I'll turn it over to you I just wanted to follow up with the school committee on an email that I sent out yesterday I'm not sure if you all got a chance to look at it but I had miscalculated where I think eend D is going to be at the end of the year I misunderstood the formula at the end of last week I had gone to see Tom blondon who our Town accountant our districtwide accountant and I said to him I thought that there was too much money in there and he explained to me which I then called the department of local Services just to understand it a different way that the 1.375 million that we had set aside for FY 24 actually comes into play before we get our certified number as a designated fund balance I thought the number came off after so when I did our second quarter report and I estimated where end was going to be at the end of the year I estimated that we'd be at around 1.37 now I got to add back in that 1375 and we also thought we were going to need to use additional eend funding for the S rest of the year but because we got the extraordinary relief I don't need to use that amount so an approximate maybe 3.1 million is where we're going to be at the end of this year which I guess if you're going to make a mistake this is the right kind of mistake to make in the right way but I just wanted it everyone to be known that it's it was my discrepancy and I apologize can I make one comment on that um just to you know highlight that that is still below kind of that 3% floor that we know act and finance committee has recommended on on multiple occasions um I don't know if boxboro Finance has a hard recommendation on that but you know we do think 3% is a good number to to really think of as your floor so we we're below that but the good news is you know we were concerned about only carrying a million dollars into next year would leave us particularly susceptible to health insurance and you know um and Gary I saw your your question come in um around health insurance you know we are expecting there's going to be more runout costs for health insurance um claims on the year have been running 20% over there was a period of time where um health insurance claims had uh you know I hate to use the word calmed down but calmed down from a financial standpoint um but those picked up again in March um where we were seeing very very high claims for the month of March um I you know and we have not yet seen you know April's reconciliation and then May and then June so you know we are you know I asked you know last health insurance trust meeting and just kind of checking my you know back of the napkin calculation I was thinking probably between 750,000 and a million and a half is going to be our FY 25 liability the the um treasur for health insurance trust felt that that was probably a fair approximation um we don't have a number we're not going to have a number um until we see what happens to claims but certainly you know being able to know we have some buffer in end um gives us a lot more flexibility and you know we'll have to I think what we know is those health insurance claims are going to run hot particularly hot in July and August that's when the vast majority of run out claims are going to come do um and then it will trickle off over the next two years and we'll just see some sporadic claims come in um but we're going to have to really analyze cash flow and at that point we're going to have to make a decision about where that you know 750 to a million half resides we've put aside about 600,000 in a reserve account just for that purpose so you know that that's a good step forward and then the two remaining alternatives for school committee would be you know to either use excess and efficiency or and I want to think about this a little more before I give the firm recommendation but to me a last resort would be to go back to opep again I don't think that's a long-term financially healthy uh move so um just to to put it in perspective it's good news but it's going to be necessary good news uh that we're going to we're going to need to use so thank you Sher for for letting us know okay so questions on the superintendent update uh any more embarrassing thanks for Deb bookus or questions on the finance before we move on to the presentation Deb this isn't a roast you didn't have to come forward Becca's got a question I don't have a question actually I just wanted to say thank you to Sherry for being so transparent and forthcoming about this and I think it just really speaks to your leadership and you know sort of the careful eye that you have on this process so I just really appreciated getting that email and the fact that you're willing to stand up and say that publicly also so thank you other questions or comments from the committee all right I I will share one Dr bookas anecdote before we get started which was about four five years ago as I was a young Committee Member we were discussing imagine this all day kindergarten uh and I was curious what it meant to go to Al day kindergarten and what it meant from a curricular standpoint once we made that decision um what was the difference between what we had for curriculum as a half day and a full day and I sent a message to Deb and she graciously welcomed me into her office and I think we spent a good hour talking about what kindergarten looks like what it could look like all of the research that exists around kindergarten curriculum um and I just want to thank you for taking that time and and explaining to me like a kindergartener what it means to be in kindergarten thank you all right so we have a presentation that's getting brought up on the computer right now that is uh for our district goal number two e e yeah terrific thank you if you click off into the slide will make that thing go away make this go away off into here there we go do not advancing there we go all right there we go all right so tonight you're going to hear a little bit about the a quick overview of the goal and the strategy um we're going to also review different types of data that we've been looking at we'll share with you again those Med year the January I ready results and then you'll hear a little bit about how the results and the assessments are used um at the school level at the district level so the goal whoops we go goal number two um the outcome of this goal um was to increase the number of students meeting their stretch goals with particular emphasis on students performing two or more grade levels below Benchmark on the fall which is what we consider the base line assessment so that is what we were looking at for both literacy and Mathematics the strategies that we were using are listed below so this was outlined in the goals the district goals at the classroom level the school level and the district level um and it's important to note that the work that's done that has been done over the last several years we've implemented the different screening tools different instructional programs that you've heard about and resources different structures as you'll hear about t tonight all of this was in service to shifting our practice for teams of Educators working together and that adaptive work really does take a lot of time um there's also a bit of technical work that's involved that you'll hear about tonight as well how to access and read assessment reports how to make all that data visual to make it easily accessible and then how to interpret and use the data the recurring message that I want to share with you tonight that you'll hear is that the data should always be discussed and analyed in context and along with other student information and you're going to hear that repeated throughout the evening so during one of our district teaching and learning meetings um this statement was shared no story without data and no data without story I think a couple weeks ago chrisy nean the principal of McCarthy Town shared that statement when she was presenting on the school Improvement plans and this is the her statement that she shared with us at that meeting and it really is an important statement so I just want to spend a little bit of time talking about it the no story without data is when we meet and talk about our students strengths when we talk about their challenges when we talk about their growth we need to make sure that we have data to support those statements and that data can come in many different forms and that's one of the things we're going to talk about this evening the no data without story is that when we're reviewing or analyzing the data we need to make sure that we're having conversations and that we're asking questions that you see around the statement that really challenge us to address the whole child this can also include going out and Gathering even more data to make sure that we have answers to those questions so as we talk about data there are different kinds of data that we've been looking at Satellite data is really that big picture kind of data we call it the large grain size when you think about mcast data I ready data it can illuminate different kinds of patterns of achievement and equity and can help point us in the direction to look further for further investigation but there are C ctions when using this type of data um whether it's for decision making or for any or for instruction it one of the challenges with it is that we don't always know the questions that students were asked um it can project sort of a single story about students it's pretty much broad brush uh broad brush kinds of Strokes as we're looking at the data um this idea around underperformance really doesn't sometimes illuminate the complexity of what what goes into learning and the tremendous assets that different children bring and often times the scores are lagging and really then can't be used for instructional purposes or decision- making so you'll see that I ready Dibbles and usns are highlighted there on satellite data because that's some of the data that you're going to hear about this evening I really is that satellite data we don't see all the questions Dibbles and usns kind of straddle between satellite data and map data um map data when you think about a unit assessment so if we're thinking about the new math curriculum or the new literacy program the unit assessments would be considered map data um they're curriculum based assessments and they can be used to help identify student gaps student overall perception and sometimes satisfaction these assessments point us in a slightly more focused Direction um because we know all the questions that students were asked we know how they're aligned to our instructional materials and we actually can see all the students answers um and so with Dibbles and usns we can see those questions and those answers the last kind of data is called Street data and that's that really fine grain in ubiquitous it's everywhere kind of data and that helps us understand students staff parent and caregiver experiences it also helps us to monitor students internalization of important skills and it really takes us to the locus of control of locus of learning for students really so that we're Gathering artifacts right when you think about that street data you're right there with the stakeholders and understanding their experiences so let's take a look at a little bit of the data um from I ready and just quickly again before we get started on looking at I ready data I ready data is not sumita of assessment data so it's not a summation of what students have learned it's really designed to help teachers understand where to start with instruction um sort of that beginning path it's also an Adaptive assessment and that's really important because as students are taking the assessment based on their answers the questions will either become progressively more difficult or progressively more easy right for the student it's also expected that students are going to get about 50% of the questions wrong and that's actually adaptive for our students as well because our students who used to trying their best and doing their best and really doing well and so that's a shift and that takes time to learn how to take that kind of a test but really what it does is provide that first step to understand what is a student most likely ready to learn so as we're looking at this slide and the next couple of slides will show the reading results by grade the upper right corner was in your memo so you can see um starting off the year we had 35 students um at grade two um who scored two grade levels below um but by mid year in January that was a 21 so that went from 10% to 6% 26% of those students um or nine of them by January had already made their annual typical growth goal and that's what a typical student would be expected to grow in one year 3% or one student at that point had already made um their annual stretch goal which is really the growth that's recommended to put students on a path to proficiency who might be behind um and it can take actually several years to sometimes close that Gap so we do have to watch it over time 49% of students had already improved um their placement by January for third grade we started with 30 students that dropped to 23 by mid year so 9 to 7% um and by for three or more grade levels below from 10 to six students or from 3 to 2% and again you can see the percentages of students who met their annual growth goal at midyear and their stretch goal 40% of students and 33% of students had already had improved placement for mathematics 53 students for grade two 53 students had started at two grade levels below at the be um beginning of the year by mid year that was 18 so from 15 to 5% 69% of our students had already had improvement with their placement and then for grade three 44 students I'm sorry this is very temper metal okay thanks 44 to 17 students um at two grade levels below so 13 to 5% and then three or more grade levels below 10 to three students or 3 to 1% anything around 7 to 8% is usually considered pretty good and so we're very much on Mark for closing up some of those gaps um and in some places the the uh the category percentages really closed significantly in your packet there was also some information about the demographic graic data um the yellow here highlights um the over representation of the students in the group when compared to the total grade level so you can see um the student groups there that were over represented in the group of students for grade two and for grade three again you can see the over representation here of the students in that that cohort that cohort of group um of students so while it's trending in the right way um there still exists that disproportionality in the cohorts of the demographic data by race and by students who receive special education or English language Services when compared to their overall um grade level cohorts these discrepancies are going to really require educator teams at all levels to reflect on the assumptions um and to really learn the story behind the data for every student so before turning this over um to our curriculum coord coordinators I just want to remind everyone again around the I ready data um it's where students begin um where teachers can focus the learning and it really can also help us Pro you know progress monitor our district goals okay so other's next okay need your mic okay thank you all right so as Deb shared uh the I ready data allows us to see sort of Trends and patterns across the grade are we seeing students generally speaking making growth um do we see any big differences between how we would expect students to perform but as she shared it's not data where we know what questions students were asked so I'm going to share with you and the rest of us are going to share with you how we're using other types of data where we know what questions students were asked and in many cases the cases that we'll talk to about this evening they were interview questions so we know how students answered those questions and we had the opportunity to prove a little bit more into students thinking and so that way that's actionable data that we can use and that Educators can use to be supporting student learning so our two so if you go to the next one beautiful uh the two Universal screeners that we're going to share with you about are the Dibble screener and the US NS screener the usns is the universal screener of number sense you all may have heard about the dible screener before I didn't know what that acronym stood for until Dora shared it with me um we give these screeners to students in first grade um three times a year and we do that because we want to see our students making progress and how can we support students to move forward the reason why we give these screeners in both literacy and math you all know how critical early literacy is we also know from research how critical early numeracy is uh there's a lot of research about that um in particular there's a long-term large scale study from the UK about how uh low numeracy for students actually impacts their later School experiences as well as their later income and even their later Health uh so it's critical that we're understanding where students are and how we can support them to grow so I'm going to share with you a visualization from our new data platform uh Forefront and so to orient you to what this data is on the leand side you're seeing how students performed in first grade middle of the Year dibles data so that green cohort on top represents the students who scored Advanced on dibles in the mid year for first grade on the right hand side of the graph you're you're seeing how students performed on the number sense screener midyear first grade students and so if you go to the next one these swooshes between the two categories show us so in this case we can see that these four students who are represented by that yellow swoosh are students who were scoring Advanced on dibles in the middle of the year but are just approaching where we would want them to be in math in the middle of the year so when we're thinking about supporting students during our mtss time those students those four students we should make sure that those students are getting support in Num Mercy because that's where they need support likewise this group of students who are represented by this other yellow swoosh are students who are meeting our expectations on our numeracy screener but are not yet Meeting those expectations in the dibles and so those students during MTS time should be focused on working on their literacy skills and so when we look at this piece we're looking at how we use this kind of data to make instructional next steps and so on this piece as Heather mentioned dibl uses several measur and if we look at this um slide we have the measures letter naming fluency full name segmentation fluency nonsense word fluency and so on um on the bottom of that bar graph um these are designed to assess various early reading skills skills the colors represented on this slide represent students performance levels the dark green indicates above Benchmark light green indicates at Benchmark yellow below and orange well below skills to the left of the diagram are generally precursors of skills to the right it is important to identify the earliest skills students have not yet acquired teach them and continue building on that foundation for later skills looking at this chart the primary instructional goals should be developing phological awareness skills and gaining knowledge about the alphabetic principle we would also use this type of data to determine where to focus on individualized instruction and assigning students to small groups ongoing progress monitoring assessments is very important um as we administer and to validate students response to current instruction we are pleased to show this slide because it provides um Educators a comprehensive array of resources which includes an mtss website resources for both math and literacy to support small group instruction as well as individual instruction these resources have been carefully curated by the coordinators the coaches the Specialists and they're available for staff on the website for all to use for individual students and for small group support as Deb had mentioned when planning for next steps in instruction it is essential and crucial to consider the whole child and base decisions on a comprehensive understanding of the students strengths challenges and unique learning profiles while individual data points provide valuable Insight relying solely on just one data point can Overlook important aspects of a child's academic and social social emotional development Educators gain a more holistic view of each student's needs and abilities by examining multiple data points including assessments observations student work and even conversations with family and caregivers this approach allows Educators to tailor instruction to meet students diverse needs and provide targeted support where it is most needed I'm going to pass it over to Katherine Thompson our liter our sorry steam coach to continue the story of a student thanks Tora um so the kindergarten math data story um really ties into some of those big ideas that everyone has been mentioning just about um how what what are the Adaptive and Technical pieces of how we're um implementing these changes through mtss and how do we um make sure that the data that we're looking at is actionable and um visualized and accessible in a way that um everyone can participate in conversations about it so um this is an example the colors are coming out a little they're funky funky on the screen but um the top of each bar there is the green meeting the standard um at The Benchmark category um so this is kind of a sample of one class what it looks like when we look at the fall Benchmark data in kindergarten so um I think what kind of comes through here is you can see clearly in this example there are some things where all students were successful in meeting that Benchmark there are some questions in which well there's one question which very small number of students was at a developing level and may need some more intensive support to um meet that expectation and then there are two questions in which you can see that um the majority of kids in the class were able to demonstrate some understanding but still could use a little bit of continued work on that concept that we're assessing with that question so um those two questions were question four and question five question four um is a question where we've already asked the student to count seven counters and they're out in front of us and then we confirm if the student maybe wasn't sure there were seven that there are actually seven then we rotate the seven and ask the student again to tell us how many there are and somewhat surprisingly for adults um there are quite a few students who um really need to go back and count them and just to make sure there are actually seven there and there are um you know a few kids that also are able to really solidly quickly identify that nothing has changed and that there are actually seven counters there um so then the other question similarly thinking about those concepts of um Counting and cardinality is a question where we've asked them to count the seven counters and then we add three more and we're looking to see is that student able to count accurately the number that is there now and how did they do that are they counting all the way starting back at the number one or are they able to know that they have seven and then continue counting from there um so the other piece that's really helpful um about this assessment um is that idea of there being these different kind of layers of things that we're looking for and observing and that there's really a lot of clarity to that because it exists in this rubric so when we sit down to have a conversation as a team we aren't spending our time inter in And discussing and debating what we think a student knows and understands we have a very clear guideline where our conversation can really focus on who's not quite there yet and what skills do they need to continue to work on and where are we going next um so another great feature um is that this uh assessment is also available in Spanish um which especially thinking about the fact that we use this for kindergarten and first graders who are still developing link language um especially for our multilingual Learners um you know we don't have it in all languages but for students who are multilingual and speak Spanish it's a really wonderful opportunity to be able to um offer them the chance to show what they know in their um native language and often times that is really different especially when we're talking about counting where number names can be very important so um that is you might not have I don't we have time for that but you it's it's okay quite cute um so the other feature of the assessment and the platform that is especially helpful when we're getting together for those collaborative conversations about our next steps is that there are um documents embedded right into this platform and that um are aligned with the different questions that we're asking students so you can click on that and it will um draw up for you as a teacher a whole set of activities and resources that you can then explore with students who maybe do need that continued work on that concept whether that's um the whole class that you might want to be experimenting with these things on these lessons or whether that's really a a smaller group of students um so for example that those are the resources that we would use to continue that Exploration with that question of um do we really know that there are seven and all different ways that you could explore that idea with students um we've also you know Incorporated some of our materials from our curriculum our tier one math curriculum that align with those questions and have conversations about how to um combine and incorporate those two elements and additionally also some materials that we have for um fluency practice and things like this for example also that are available in two languages and often some of the fluency resources include games that can be really helpful as a family connection as well um which is another feature of the assessment and the platform that we're using that has some tools for guiding those kinds of um guiding parents to those kinds of resources as well so now I'll begin with sharing a story about literacy for a third grade student and so similar to the data how data tells a story the story about this child um she's a very strong and engaged learner um she has strong oral vocabulary and comprehension I was able to support her through an mtss Flex model in grade one and grade two with really explicit structure literacy instruction uh teaming all throughout with the teacher through communication regarding how to make sure our language was common among us a lot of communication with family and caregivers which I think is a big piece of their literacy lives and then all throughout this process um progress monitoring through our dibles data uh to support our instruction or to make any changes or any shifts and then from that data setting goals and setting a purpose for our instruction both in tier one and also through my instruction in tier two and three so for this student um the data for I ready for the fall and winter really didn't show much progress so we as teachers dig deeper through our really work through Dibbles um she the student really um had made progress in certain domains for her high frequency words and reading like that in phonics but um other pieces around her comprehension um and vocabulary were still growing so how can we enhance that so through those pieces um the Dil screener is given and that's her the historical data from grade 1 grade two and grade three and a composite School is given so if you see those circles at the top and you see the color coding um yellow really means that the student is below the expectation at that time of year and you see the goal number of right above that um and then you see again at the end of grade one a little bit below grade two based on the beginning of the year there could have been a little bit of a regression from Summer to the new school year so now the student was well below and and again the student also was support Ed my additional support for reading through our mtss Flex model um mid year still in the red as we say but well below end of the year jumped up a bit so now she was just below um and then to start grade three she began the year in the green which was like yes awesome um so I did not support the student to start the year because the data was telling the story that she really was where she should be um and had other needs to meet to actually through some math support as well um but then mid year of grade three so when we gave it in January um slipped down to now well below in the red so then that's where we met as a team looked at the data again and said okay the students going to come back to the support um four days a week through our Flex model in a small group of structural literacy instruction so these are all the subtests of our Dibble screener um and this is the data that I'll be speaking about for the story of this child and you can see across the bottom timeline you'll see the subtests that are assessed from kindergarten all the way to third grade um and how it changes over time based on the development of a reader and a learner so these are like my best friend at these graphs um why I say that is because um I love graphs and I love when it can show that visual model of a student so um when you see those dots and you see um all the way throughout you'll see Benchmark data there um that are the more solid dots the white open Dots or what's called our progress monitoring data um the dotted line shows What's called the students aim line so where can this child really project to what's that child's trajectory um over time so when you see the nonsense word fluency subtest students know um that Mrs cusk loves the subtest because it's our ticket to decoding and reading and when we read multi-op words so many multi- slabic words are made up of nonsense words so we get two scores um for correct letter sounds and then words read correctly um so we really see how students can blend their sounds to decode and then read words with automaticity and fluency so there's two scores that sort of pair each other but good news for the student was that through the additional support through the classroom teacher and myself she's on a positive trajectory to go forward for the end of the your assessment the other subtests in the Dil screener uh word reading fluency so that's our term that we coin high frequency words or site words so what do students have in their mental memory already what have they mapped out to make sure they can automatically name those words um so that's a piece of single word reading and the other two on the right hand side that's passage reading so an oral reading fluency score is a passage no illustration so students are using all their mental memory and mental work to read and to code uh grade level text so you see the difference when it comes to reading a list of words versus reading a passage where the student is like a little bit around um so all around the place so for me I was really focusing my instruction on yes reading lists of words reading phrases focusing on scooping focusing on multiomic Words actually because she was showing some growth in Reading those nonsense words but now I had to Branch it to syllable types and things like that the good thing for the student is that their reading accuracy was able to really stay like in the 90s about which for us as reading teachers that's a really great thing because they're not guessing they're using their strategies to really monitor their comprehension and reading so that's a good thing as a huge strength for her um The Maze checkin is one that is a three minute timed assessment and it's a silent reading comprehension assessment it's a measure of comprehension so it's called a Clos reading task so students read a passage and they get to L of a word Bank of three choices and they have to Circle one word that makes the most sense so they're really relying on vocabulary syntax Grammer just understanding of word flow as well um and this is another one of my favorite images because when students can have that fluency push and that growth there's that bridge that can really just Branch so nicely to really make meaning and comprehension and third grade is a huge year in so many ways for students but it's just to make sure that we are always keeping up with that to making sure that they're really monitoring their reading and gaining vocabulary because I am who I am as a reading specialist I dig deeper when I look at the encoding piece so encoding is spelling um decoding is reading so with this piece this is a spelling inventory I like to see if students have the connection of their decoding skills to Branch it over to their hearing the sound the phic awareness then their output um and great news for this student there's a lot of great gains where her errors are falling are really like as I say as a teacher some good mistakes that she's making because she's hearing all the sounds she's just really overusing some things um or the one one1 rule as we say for the word clapping that's something that's a big Focus throughout third grade big Focus throughout foundation so we just have to work on that a little bit more but um she's got some of it already which is great has a suffix of ing um and yes all of those pieces just to make sure she's got some great gains there for her encoding as a big piece so just to close up for my story of my student um all throughout this time when we were analyzing this data as a team not just with the teacher but even as the whole team of grade level teachers um the consult time's really important so being able to share observations share work samples how's a child doing in the classroom that's a really important piece and then having that shared understanding of a the student strengths and needs based on the sbles data um our teachers in the district are really rocking it when it comes to this screener um so it's a really great thing to see the conversations grow among us as schools um so credit to all of them and then through that the next steps for instruction that are modeled and shared teachers come into my room a lot just to sort of see what we do um and see what the kids can do really I am a huge supporter of that so having that common language is really important to me and that ongoing consult time to support that student's striving needs to grow from those instructional moves then just to close out as Katherine and um was saying earlier before and Carrie as well how important the parent caregiver engagement and communication is with all the work that we're doing last year we did a survey for all of our families and elementary schools to find out and to learn how they would want to learn more about our new literacy program and so these are the four major areas through newsletters through their conferences with their teachers um through their PTO uh presentations which are I believe still ongoing Dora um and so thanks to the the literacy coaches and toora for preparing those presentations and then also a website that was built out to really inform families and for helping them understand how we are teaching reading and what the new regulations are all about um we've also held thanks to all these folks here at the table Steam and literacy nights at the schools um and Title One um mornings and evenings um to promote literacy learning and math learning at the schools so we are um ready to take your questions and comments and thank you for the opportunity to share with you what's happening around gold 2 thank you all very much lmi's got her pen handy so we're going to go to LXI first some of these questions are going to be so totally ignorant so ex excuse me for that so the focus on asking what questions are being assessed on for students does would that lead or would you make sure it doesn't lead to kind of teaching to an assessment would there be a concern about that and I have a few questions let me go through and then you can you can take it from there um so why did uh the second one is why does I already not disclose what questions they give um then uh what are the long-term implications of teaching to a qu teaching to questions on the students especially The Learning Experience right I mean I come from I'm a product of that kind of experience which is extremely difficult and burdensome to undo the last one is how many kids can we support in this system how do we scale and how much need do we have and what are the fut what's the future look like questions yeah there are four questions there um so we I'll start with the speaking uh talking a little bit to to teaching to a question and then I can have my my friends here join in um so with the screeners you know we start at the beginning of the year um this is the first time that students have seen these questions right so it does provide us a really nice Baseline um and the the questions actually change over time so we're not asking the exact same question so as teachers we we want something that's also aligned to what we're teaching so that we can see if our efforts are having an impact um but I think it's the culture of ab that we don't teach to test we teach children what we need to teach them and then we have assessments to gauge sort of how we're how we're doing with that work and I would say you know in terms of like teaching to the test I think that's something that like maybe would be more worrisome when it's a summative sort of assessment all of these pieces are formative like where are students now so we don't have any incentive to try to teach to the test because the goal is to figure out where is this student now and how do I move this student forward um so I I would say that's why I wouldn't really worry that someone's trying to you know fores speed the student information we're trying to figure out where are you and how do we move you forward the other question you had was for I ready um so we know generally some of the buckets of kinds of questions but because it's so individualized when I talked before as a student answers a question the questions change we don't always know exactly which questions along the way and the reports don't show us it just shows us the end results and generally in buckets um the kinds of questions the student might have missed and then what we can perhaps do with that information but we don't have it individualized for every student microphone L me microphone my so they give buckets would it not be formative instead of summative like you said I mean why do we need to know exact questions because I think to when Katherine and um Carrie were talking about we dig a little bit deeper so what I will do is it'll give us a general sense to point us in that first Direction and then we know okay the students really struggling with some vocabulary okay well we have other assessments now that we can dig deeper where in vocabulary is a student struggling and so now we have other assessments that's that map not the map yeah it's the map data that then shows us well we now know the questions we know how the student answers and we have instructional resources that can help support that so it's really just layered kinds of Assessments that we need in order to really pinpoint the instruction the next steps for a student okay we're going to make a just a a quick idea on time here it's 8:03 we're probably about 10 minutes behind where I already wanted us to be so we're going to limit to one brief question from each Committee Member and we're going to ask for brief responses as much as possible from our presenters vicam um I just want to say I'm really sort of blown away by this presentation uh I come from like a long line of Educators my grandmother my father um my mother my sister I myself at one time or another but and both my children actually attending school so seeing sort of it seems to me this sort of like actually sort of the brains of the operation of how children are actually being educated throughout the ab school system um and so I'm looking I'm listening to what you're saying and sort of comparing it how my my son is going through my daughter in kindergarten but I mean I just find it so fascinating that it's sort of a larger scale where you sort of look at things and then depending on the student you kind of drill down deeper and then even deeper uh and that there are all these resources then to help them every stage along the way so is this is this multi-grade I imagine it must be you're tracking just through the whole I mean I I'm just I'm really I'm just absolutely Blown Away thank you so so much great thank you in your report you had indicated that there exists disproportionality in the cohorts for the demographic data by race and students who receive special education what are you doing to ensure that these students who have scored two or more grades below are lifting them up so I think hearing the kind of work that car's doing um with our math specialist as well um supporting all students right all of our students are gened students and so receiving sort of some of that intervention and that help um the other piece that we're making sure that we're doing is making sure that our multilingual Educators and our special educators are part of all of this learning together so that we're not separating out the kinds of professional learning around the tier one instruction around the tier two and making sure that that's a real collaborative effort thank you so much for the presentation I don't have a question I just have a comment uh I think it's amazing that what you guys have just shared because I know during the budget season we talked about class sizes and you know the resources the teachers are getting Etc I mean I will share I'm not a teacher I am a coach I have 12 girls and it's very interesting because during every single practice session or games you can only watch a couple of them at a time and when you have a huge classroom of full of kids naturally it will be much more difficult to get to know each one of them and it's much more difficult to track their progress or support them so I'm glad that we're able to see what the teachers are doing in the classrooms thank you hi thank you um it's fun seeing it from this perspective because I have two students at Conan right now so um I've heard from in parent teacher conferences uh how quickly you're able to turn around from quarter to quarter and say oh well you know you needed support in English or Ela in this you know quarter but now we're shifting to math um and I think that it's great that you've also sort of been able to blend you know quantitative data collection and also seeing the whole child and recognizing that there might be a reason why testing performance was not where you thought it might be um or even they didn't test well but they actually do know you know these pieces um and so I think that's great my only questions are um sort of about time obviously you know there's a limited time during the day do you find that these Flex blocks and your ability to sort of come together in these teacher support you know consultation times really help you maximize your time and also you know mcast was on the list and yet it sounds like because the results are so lagging that perhaps that's a waste of time that we still are giving that test mcast piece and then I'll have my colleagues do what did he say um so for mcast it's you know I think I've shared earlier with all of you in many different presentations this an accountability measure um but it does help us you know when we look at big long-term kinds of things are we aligned are is our curriculum aligned to standards and I think that's the big piece when we look at it from the district level but yes it's lagging and it's not actionable because you know you get it the year after so but in terms of the flex block so in terms of the flex block sorry thank you um it is such a powerful part of our day um students are going so many different places also in the classroom and teacher by teacher run groups it is so purposeful it's so goal driven it's so collaborative so it definitely is a great part of our day in the consult time is really I wish there was more of that we do a lot of it outside the school day just cuz we're all about the Stu you know we are all about the students all of us so that's just the piece that I think is the hardest but we really make it either on email or here's this try this you know come in to see or I'll come in to see you so there's a lot of collaboration around it it's gold I I was going to say the same like time is always a challenge but I do think that the times that we're able to get together and you know do some of that collaborative planning and thinking about students are what makes it possible to do the work in the classroom so it is extremely valuable yeah Lea I just want to say thank you it's been really interesting to reflect back on what my experience was at AB like 20 years ago and then to see how different it is and how different the ways that we're thinking about our education are and just not as a comment to folks who are educating but more to just us and like as we think about engaging with the community I think this piece around data but not lacking the story is super important like if you get a not so great like I ready result like how do we think about it in terms of kind of you know your student you know like the context um and how do we make sure that both of those pieces are working in tandem even on the parent or family side as well so thank you for highlighting that thank you again I can hear the pride and the Gratitude and the care you hold for these kids as they kind to work their way through the curriculum and it's really fantastic and the use of this kind of data could be so directionally important I like that Ira is not the end but rather part of a larger system for assessing the students and I know that not all kids are ready to take I ready as seriously as they could I know my kids love cat stacker and I'm glad that I Ready's testing brings the data along with the fun but my only question regarding cat stacker which of you have the highest score Tori any questions we're not coming back to you got four at the beginning I'm sorry you can catch them after the meeting I didn't get all my questions answered so I want to hold on I want to give Tori a chance first big huge thank you I'm gonna keep it short um are there any resources that you need to be successful other than you know a couple extra hours in the day that we can help you with yeah I mean I you know I just going through the budget piece but um curriculum coordinators math and literacy Specialists and coaches literacy and steam coaches you know these are the folks who make it happen along with our building leaders who are extraordinary um and the teachers you know coming together and the time to do that so um you know we've been really fortunate with the folks we have here the grants that we've been able to receive uh to write and receive over a half million dollars to be able to purchase the curriculum that we need um but there are always going to be ongoing needs um for example the the recommended text we weren't able to purchase um we have the required checks for the new program so we're going to see if we can start purchasing those within the budget but but um there there always going to be needs yeah thank you I have two comments and a question myself because I get to go um the first comment is it's there's roughly 2,500 kids in elementary schools you're going through data for almost every one of those kids and I think that's something really really important for everyone to recognize that we're looking at every kid individually we're individualizing their plans based on the data I think that is super super powerful speaks to why we need curriculum coordinators coaches and Specialists because you need a team that needs to be able to do that um second observation similar to what Ben said the demographic data is very clear it illustrates that not every one of our students experiences education in AB in the same way and so when people are asking us why are our budgets the way they are why are we Staffing the way we staff those those data are the reason there is a very distinct group of kids who do not get the same out of ab that a majority of our students and a majority of our white and Asian students get and I think that's important for people to recognize and the third is my question and I'll be sort of channeling uh a friend of mine from the um CPAC here um what does the interaction with families look like when students are getting tier 2 in tier three how are families notified how do they find out about what it means when their student is getting a tier two or tier three intervention uh so the literacy and the math Specialists um will will send home a letter to families when a student is identified as needing additional support that would require them to be pulled out of the classroom and be working in a small group or oneon-one and then there's ongoing communication that's happening with the literacy in the math specialist where they're sending home information about here's how the student is making progress here are some things that you might try at home um and we've also had uh events for families where they can come in and learn about some of the activities that students are doing in those times excellent thank you lme I will give you a very quick one last question please okay I think this probably goes to Peter then um so if you have to give a one graphic depiction of how many students are in which tier and how how much help are we giving them through this tiered system and how does that scale what are the future needs and can the district are we looking at being able to help everyone or not only certain percentage you know Deb can fill this in a little bit but I think you know statistically what you should expect is you know 100% of your students experience tier one instruction so every student gets tier one um generally about 15 10 to 15% of students um would need some type of support in tier two and generally about 5 percentage of of students would would need tier three support so for each of those tiers how does our current Staffing levels work I mean where are we with you know I think um I I'll I can jump it I think um you know thinking through you know hearing principles hearing you know um kind of looking at at data across the district I mean in our Ideal World at the school level I I would love to see you know A literacy coach and a m a steam coach at each school full-time um in addition to the specialist um at the district level you know one of the slides here and I won't ask Deb to go back to it now from a Time perspective talked about all of the different resources that have been vetted and compiled for educators that's the work of the district curriculum staff and that is the area that I'm most concerned about as we move forward because you know we didn't have the resources to staff everything we wanted to right now um let alone move to a more ideal situation um and by looking at what our students needs were right now and the progress we were trying to make we made a hard Choice around a priority to make sure that we had the support in the schools with students but all of those resources that compiled we're not going to be able to continue that type of pace um in you know thinking you know proactively compiling resources doing that work for educators so that they don't have to do it and I worry about the impact of that in years you know can we get through next year Well we will right but what is year two three and four look like without kind of that proactive forward-looking element I think it's going to make it harder on all elements of the system and so you know I think it's going to be important that as we we think about you know looking forward into the future we think about how do we start to restore some of that type of support and then think about how do we build out at the school level so Deb I don't know if you want to add to that the only thing I want to add was back to the the tiering all students are tier one receive tier one tier two and tier three are not places that students go it's a very flexible ongoing fluid so there might be times when you do need some extra support and then times when you don't sometimes you might need more intensive support and then you don't and so I just want to make sure that that's clear that's go yeah okay thank you all very very much appreciate you finally making it to our meeting and maybe next year we'll talk about this before budget season so that it inform Ms our budgets more directly right we talked about it before next year's all right um I will invite uh principal Jim marot to come forward um and as he comes forward I'll just say that I did walk into my meeting yesterday with Peter and said all right Peter let's start planning the FY 26 budget and and then we right right Peter said I'm there already okay uh so up next we've got um principal markot from the junior high school you're going to get a real clean 10-minute presentation Jim and then a very quick 5 minute Q&A session um and then we'll time it so that your colleague who comes after you will have a benchmark with which to be measured I put no pressure I put no pressure on Miss Dean uh I did watch last school committee meeting where the elementary principales named that I would hit the spot so I said it for eight minutes let's see what happens um so thanks for having me tonight I'm here to talk about the junior high uh we've had a really great year despite it being a really challenging year and you know the reasons why you know people were living with a heavy Cloud over them for much of the year including the 25 people I spoke to in January saying I don't know if you have a position we're very happy where we are yet we're still losing some really really important people this is my third year as a principal we are still building that joyful inclusive community um tonight I'll talk about five areas about what our work has been um the biggest the bottom line the bench the whatever that word expression is what we build upon is relationship and Trust at the Junior High um we had set a goal this year that 88% of our students would have a trusted adult um and throughout the presentation I have a couple of quotes that came from a recent student survey not only we hit 88% exactly so 88.5% of kids say they have a trusted adult at school um we did this survey in may we did a very similar almost identical survey in December in 88 was the outcome in both times so we were very happy about that comparing that to last year where 80 and 83% of our students students were saying they had a trusted adults we did make progress this year um in that goal of ours um we know that it's not only school is not the only show in town you know we ask students do they have a friend or Peer who they can ask for support from they're saying 95% of them are saying yes to me that feels really good in a middle school um that they have other kids to rely on um and the quote I pulled here is is always timely at the junior high you know we certainly assigned teams to students you know they randomly assigned a lot of times to one of four teams and that could be devastating if they end up on a team where they don't have somebody close to them but this quote and then there's other data to back it up says that they do in fact figure it out and they make other connections um and so I didn't include the graphic but 97% of our kids say they've made a new friend this year and that's important I show that to sixth grade parents when they come up for orientation just a couple weeks ago um again on that on that trend of it's not just us and it's not just peers it's the adults at home so 90 93% of our kids are saying they have a trusted adult outside of school trusted adult for us at school is not just a teacher it's not just the principal it's not just the counselor it could be anybody in the front office it could be the adviser it could be a coach it could be any number of people so we just need to make sure every kid is connected to someone um that they can go to when necessary advisory is um and has been for three years a really important part of our work we're in year two of our advisory program and we've made changes in those two years we're now at a model where we have two sessions a week each 20 minutes and that actually feels feels like a sweet spot it feels pretty good in our day um we use the time to connect on schoolwide topics um we are in year two so the eighth graders are with the same mostly the same group they were with last year so the quote there is you know we're a lot more comfortable with each other than a normal classroom so it's easy to talk you know and the student reference games and that's some of what we do but I really like the quote in the circle just it's a middle school expression The Vibes like the people are just fun like that's great that's really what we are hoping to build um and so in that Vibe setting um you know we're focused on relationships and belonging um because we know that that's really important especially in the Middle School ages um and we focused this year addition to what we started in year one focusing a little bit more on community which has been a really fun part of our our work um some of the stuff that we talk about I named we use themes we use kind of lesson kind of a lesson per month in January we talked about goal setting in February recognizing discrimination and bullying in April we talked about coping with changes so again from that same student survey in the green it shows students saying I understand really well what that topic was the blue is I somewhat understand it so when we combine those together we're hitting 90% of kids saying like yeah I got that like it doesn't mean that we won't come back to those things but it means that kids are really understanding what we're trying to deliver through advisory um this year we invent we brought in something new we called it March Madness every advisory had something different um the example I'll name for you because I just find it so humorous we played Name That Tune um so over the PA one of the aps was playing 30 seconds of a song song um and here we are like oh this is going to be awesome the kids reported satisfaction with it from the top down orange blue and gold are really the pretty fun up through it was great they were most disappointed in not everyone could win because what we had them do was in your advisory you had to call in the number and on the phone and be the fifth caller it was a little radio station game they were so mad that not everyone won just because they knew the answer um so there that was a disappointment for them it was also CH it was also interesting to watch kids using a phone connect to a wall uh it was it's honestly not something that they had much experience with so you teach like no wait like let it ring she's going to pick up um so we had about 10 or 12 activities that really span the spanned you know a huge number of things they played Pictionary advisory versus advisory we had a trivia competition um the we did a couple of kind of overarching themes too we did change for change bring in some loose change we're going to donate it to an invi to a group and actually um Donna batari from the Acton food pantry came today to collect a check for over ,000 that we had rais so she was psyched we were psyched to do that so we're finding ways to connect that advisory work to community so um it's been really great culturally responsive work continues to be an area of focus um this year we've got up and running the a world of difference program that's through the ADL uh we trained about 25 seventh and eighth graders we got two really strong advisers they you know just based on the year the training took longer and and all that they got into one seventh grade class to kind of lead lessons for fellow seventh graders ADL backed out of a world to difference so we're going to talk actually this week next week about what does it look like next year but that idea that peer leader model of kind of talking about these topics is really important so we're going to keep going uh with that at staff meetings we've been doing case studies and really just putting quick you know one pagers in groups of Staff like hey this could happen here how would you respond to this type of thing um we had Jan and applefield come only a few weeks ago to the junior high she's a holocaust Survivor and again we've done it for many years now but talks with seventh graders about her exper experience um and then we asked students some questions you know one of our real goal areas was adults will interrupt unkind unsafe language degraded language Etc when they see and hear it and so 27% of students said the adult almost always does it 30% said they frequently do it and for me right now those are the areas where I'd be comfortable with us remaining you know the group of students who said 25% sometimes interrupt 9% say almost never interrupt and then certainly some kids can't answer it because they've never exper experienced it this is the data that I'm hopeful we will I'll come back next year and say look we went from like I said with advisory 80 to 89 I want to say we went from this to this for next year um but that's been part of our professional learning about the intervening when we're seeing and hearing that the point being sometimes the teachers don't know what they're seeing or hearing and so in June members of our Common Ground program which is our um one of our student groups that meets after school is coming to our staff meeting to talk about this is what it feels like to potentially be gay or lesbian or an ally in our classroom so they're going to come and educate our staff so we're excited about that I'm running out of time we ask the students how often does a student interrupt that bias when they hear it um and that's actually with our work with Jen Faber working in progress about what are we training students to do and that's the goal of next year too um Family communication we've been trying more than ever to really get out there early and connect with every family to say we see your kid we know your kid um I heard from families at the end of last year that they didn't know necessarily what's happening in class what are you learning so on a rotation we send out what we call now a curriculum Spotlight so seven green sends out a blurb you know with updates from all five content areas on team to really make sure people know what's happening and student learning to match the group that was here just now um we are in the early stages of figuring out data teams and intervention and all that it's just not been something sorry that was my EMES um it's not been something we've been there yet but that's the goal for working through next year and us also talk talking at the school level about consistency and Grading and curriculum mapping The Guiding question we're kind of using right now is does our random team placement affect something for the students right is the Spanish class on seven blue and seven green consistently doing the same things expecting the same things from kids and Grading it similarly so those are areas that you know essentially we run eight mini schools you know with eight teams happening simultaneously so that's the work of what we want to um continue to do into next year and so that is where I will end for you eight and a half minutes I call that 8 minutes 39 seconds is what I have 39 all right we got you an extra 39 seconds Miss okay thank thank you anything questions we'll start here let's keep it to one brief question around the table please go ahead Vic uh really more of a comment than anything else I mean it seems that uh Middle School is sort of a where everybody sort of comes together and there's a lot of sort of turbulence that you have to navigate and I think you're just doing a fantastic job doing it um what does that really mean to be a trusted adult what does that could you quantify that it means a little bit something different to every person right um but no certainly what we would hope for is if something's happening in school and you need to check with adult you have somebody you can go to without question there is a little you're thank you for asking that because there's a good point there um some students answer no I don't have a trusted adult because my parent is my trusted adult I don't need someone at school so we balance that with like no it's as simple as hey I forgot my I forgot my Chromebook do you have a charge you know it's as simple as that or it's as big as hey something happened on the bus today that didn't feel good can I tell you about it so it really does mean something different for every kid fantastic thank you not a question but more of a comment or actually a comment I just want to speak towards the impact that my son particularly had in meeting Janet singer applefield applefield excuse me um being a Jewish Family I can say that this had a profound experience on Aaron I shouldn't say his name but that's fine uh to which which he will actually he will remember for a lifetime he was talking about it immediately after meeting her and subsequently you know uh we ended up going to the ashwoods exhibit in Boston so for him to to hear from a Survivor to see you know the impacts that the Holocaust had and then to tie it back to his identity had such an indelible impact on him that he'll remember for years to come thank you that's the goal thank you she's actually publishing a book so go get it it tells her story because we don't how long how long we'll have her story for us hi Jim hi uh I have a question and that's a I think a question on a back in Mind of a lot of the sixth grader sixth graders parents so the students are going from having regularly schedule recess to a one big giant school with everybody else and they have three minutes there are rumors about the whole three minute in between classing it's accurate it's not a rumor it's true uh how's I so like H how do we um sort of like prepare the students for like there's no longer regular scheduled recess but you're going to be fine um the extra energy or desire to move how are we there's energy at the junior high no matter what recess or not um you know I think it is an issue for us it's a challenge right so I think if we had a different building and we had a space that adjoined our cafeteria for example that was um flexible for us to to say like yep it's 20 minutes of lunch and it's 10 minutes outside and let's go for it um and we had more Staffing to be able to supervise that I would do it in a heartbeat um what we do instead is every student has PE every other PE are heal every other day all year um this year we you know we've reduced a PE teacher so our class sizes will be a little bit larger but during gry block for any students in that in that rotation we're adding a PE class there for them so we're try we agree with you that activity and moving and and getting out there is really important um I was saying to a family today with on his Zoom upcoming sixth grade family I said and also the bell rings every 47 minutes so kids literally get up and move somewhere else and I do think that helps with students being able to kind of just change scenery really you know makes it for a better experience for them um and they will always have a preferred class and they'll always be looking forward to lunch and things like that so we find that generally it helps if there's ever a challenge where it feels like oh this is not working we will be creative and work with the family to figure out what else does that child need you don't need to thank you um I really love the focus on you know building relationships and Trust in the Junior High um it's a really hard time for kids I know it was a really hard and awkward time for me um one thing that I I think it's a little um it's interesting to see the graph uh about um students talking about um adults modeling Behavior interrupting yeah incidents um you know not to go into my own anecdotal history but um there were times when I felt that adults were perpetrating harm to students um you know clothing choices and and such you know being commented on in the middle of class per se um so you know is there like an ability to hold the adults accountable can students report that to a trusted adult um in the building so that you know you can come together as a team and say Here's what's going on here's what we need to change and here's how we're going to hold each other accountable yeah very good question um speak to one point about the the adults calling out clothing it's actually a little bit it's better now but several years ago like we really changed our dress code policy that like no we're not going to we are going to Care barely at all about what someone's wearing because that does not affect what they're learning that day uh that took a little while for some teachers to be comfortable with um and I view it as like wallpaper in a room I don't even see it you know it's one of those so that is an that we've grown into um in this work um one of the trainings we did this year and the the model that we'll roll out to students um is kind of the four steps interrupt educate Echo and question you know so often a teacher might hear something and their F the thing that should ring in their head as we've kind of reviewed it through staff meetings and we'll continue to do that it's like huh why did you say that that's interesting to me so making a little bit more easy for teachers to have an entry point because the the thing they do not want to do is make something worse and so we're going with the idea that asking a curious question about it or interrupting it by maybe changing the topic but as we learned through the Coalition that's been working students want to see an adult do something and so I'm like I said hopeful that these numbers will shift over the coming years because teachers are very aware of what they're hearing and have steps in you know things in their bag of tricks to be able to respond to so ongoing just want to say thank you and there is an Instagram video on the Junior High page of the name the tune if you wanted to see that live I was going to say thank you Leela follow us on Instagram RJ gray JHS um we put out some good stuff so thank you okay I'm because I mising me I I don't have much but I would like to kind of make a comment my I have two boys who have gone through Junior High I looking at your family communication and I remember only three instances for in each year for them with Junior High that's all I remember one is the opening night what's that called open to school night yeah back to school night and the two conferences yeah other than that they didn't tell me a thing so I don't know anything about junior high so I'm glad you're doing more communication thank you and to that point we actually eliminated conferences it's not a good idea but we didn't want to waste nine hours of instruction you know with early release days I think I every Thursday I write to family that's called eye on the junior high you can read that too it's on on our website um and I just try to give snapshots so even if you're not coming in our building I think many families do get a sense of what it feels like to be oh but you don't get to meet the teachers you don't get to meet the teachers through that no we do offer um no we offer team meetings for any parent who needs it 20-minute blocks during the day yeah but not for fun but not for fun well I think it's fun yeah I just want to meet my teacher it's not going to happen right back to school night still is an option and we do that every October and September okay thank you I love what you shared about peer leadership and giving the students a real voice and their experiences and being able to share that with adults and it reminds me of something I have heard from my Scouts very often Scout leaders are e8th grade nth grade 10th grade um and their comment is that they notice their Scout peers behave differently at school because nobody has high expectations of them but when they're expected to be responsible and be in charge boy it's amazing what they can do and so seeing that starting young that's please keep doing that it's awesome thank you thank you thank you great uh super glad to see that there were uh there was a Civics uh assembly with members from the boxboro town hall we had the boxboro town clerk the boxboro planner and uh a member of the reccom um come visit at uh at the school this week so that was that was excellent and I'm I'm really pleased to see the advances that are happening in advisory we've seen this advisory program really evolve over the past few years and I think that the data that you're starting to collect and the outcomes that you're seeing are proof that it is a worthwhile effort and I'm excited to see how that same effort goes towards mtss and and and data teams and all of that in the future next yep to Adam's Point Civics Fair June 4th and 5th you will all be invited so please be on the lookout and please come if you can our kids in our staff get really excited about their work so thank you everyone thanks Jim all right up next we have uh a high school update uh followed by a preview of The High School handbook changes hi Joanie hi okay good evening how many extra seconds do I have 39 okay excellent well I actually thought my whole presentation was 10 minutes both of them together so I actually may go under all right thank you for having me this evening I'm excited to to talk about the high school and share an update of the year um in the spirit of being concise I'm going to try to share four highlights advisory of course leveling our Flex block and student staff leadership you can see at the top some of our interwoven values and themes throughout the year engagement community and culture responsive practices so to start off with advisory we also like the junior high are in year two of our new model um we believe that it's been quite successful in creating community and building connections um our latest survey which we're going to update again next week we have a survey during one of our mgas Flex blocks so we'll get more current data shared that 84% of our students said that they met someone new in advisory 95% of students said that they you know all the names of the people in their advisory and given that we have grades 9 through 12 in advisories and we have actually 155 advisories in the high school um we've created some pretty small groups we feel we feel good about that um this year our amazing advisory teacher leaders we have four advisory teacher leaders who meet weekly to um help plan what's going to happen in advisory for the whole school School keeping um connection and uh building community in mind really prioritize student input so every week when we meet we've now invited students to come to those meetings and help us out with the planning of of our advisory activities um it's kind of funny they think that our trivia which is usually like 90s and you know 2000s based you know like music or like you know TV shows uh they're like yeah no one likes that let's let's update that and and then what they share with us we're like we don't know what you're talking about but they're like don't worry it's going to work um one of the best things this year was our uh schoolwide competition um we used uh the platform quizzes and so all the advisories are kind of competing against each other and we asked questions about the school um like how long is the main way um I don't know does anybody have an idea it's an eighth of a mile um I know right you can get a lot of exercise that's just one hallway and you can go all the way around um multiple times a day and get a lot of steps in um what was another one oh the um the block that um is most popular for students to be in the library um and that that happens to be SE block this year so the students loved the competition um and that was a really great way to build community all right just make sure I didn't miss anything I think I'm good we're going to go on to course leveling so recently um one of our seniors shared this with a staff member um if unleveled classes would have made it so I've could could have been in classes with a more or more variety of students then that's a good thing and this really Echoes the sentiment of our senior survey over the past several years um in which seniors have told us um that a majority of them have told us that they felt bad about themselves or felt separated from others due to the levels in the high school and so we're continuing this work um this year we're in our second year and and I just want to remind you that our goals are are explicit and intentional and we are prioritizing first of all that students will have increased access opportunities and choice to study advanced level coursework and secondly that students will have access to a broader range of learning and social interactions that will help prepare them for today's world um if you click on the link for departmental Progress you'll see where we are in our in our sort of four-year plan I cannot say enough about the progress of of all of our departments in this work it's an incredible amount of work to create a new course let alone a whole new curriculum in the scope from 9th grade to 12th grade and to do that by creating curriculum for more heterogeneously grouped classes so what the teachers have done is is pretty incredible um our science department will have completed their work this year um social studies in English will complete their work next year language is quite nearly done they'll finish Latin in two years um math has done a great deal of work with reducing levels in algebra this year geometry will be next year followed by Algebra 2 and pre-calculus uh the math Department's also increased opportunities for students to take calculus by um allowing pre-calculus summer opportunities again please click on the the link to see more in-depth um plan Year byye great level by grade level our students report reported this year and this follows also very successful data from last year um 82% of students said that the work in their classes were a healthy challenge which we think that that's a a a a good mark and um students who overrode to be in a course um of of a higher level than than perhaps they' had been in the previous year or even a teacher recommendation at the time 80% 88% of those students were still in that overridden course and didn't need to to move down a level um at the end of semester 1 this year you'll see also if you look at our quarter one averages this year we feel like those are pretty good they actually uh compare um both similarly and even slightly favorably to what they were last year I I want to note the student supports and teacher teacher leadership because this is a crucial piece of the this work um last fall you may remember that three High School teachers came to speak about their experience in in teaching more heterogeneously grouped classes um they explained that the supports that are needed to help students um include a variety of things um reasonable class sizes special ed and General Ed assistance in classes student mentors our course level leaders that have helped peers so peer teachers create scaffolded lessons the professional learning that we've been able to do in seeing other schools work in this area and even our own peer-led workshops and finally the collaboration time that we've been able to have by um grouping common free periods for teachers and also that we have on our Monday early releases have really been crucial to this work which is quite successful very proud of it um the third thing um this year uh that I'd like to talk about is the community building Flex block also really proud of of this because we had 46 workshops led by students staff clubs and community members you see um a few that I've listed there um the tus University prison initiative American Sign Language sign a club if you click on the workshop you'll just see an amazing uh array of different exam um you know the different programs that we were able to offer um our students and teachers both loved this opportunity connect um talk about um different um topics that they don't normally get to talk about in class so 95% of student presenters enjoyed it or enjoyed it very much 71% of student participants enjoyed it or enjoyed it very much you can see some of the quotes of students it's a really fun opportunity love to do it next year great great way to meet new people a teacher said I appreciated the variety of workshops offered a nice break from the rout routine and created a true community building experience um um the last thing I want to talk about is really um kind of the culture building around organic student staff leadership in the high school and so the first um bullet point there culturally responsive work as Jim mentioned um we have had um peer-led workshops with staff so our culture responsive teacher leader and and that really stems from work that also Jen Faber is doing um continued their work this year and a major contribution was uh professional learning that they LED at at one of our faculty meetings in which they shared with staff how to respond when a biased comment or event was happening in a class or even in school so say you walk into class and there's a a racially um derogatory comment on on the board what would you do ignore it notice it ask a question um and and we kind of walked through that with staff and and as Jim said and as students have told us they really want teachers to um do something about it and and not ignore it so we really walked through those scenarios and talk through this as a staff and the staff um learned a lot and enjoyed it enjoyed having those conversations especially across the building um our communities and staff leadership I would say is is really an organic um way for teachers to have leadership in our school so so you've heard about the advisory teacher leaders our culture responsive teacher leaders our course level leaders um this year we also have our organizational structures committee and we're looking at issues around attendance and structures that help support students and that work will continue next year I'll say that um additionally our professional learning day in November we had 15 to 20 peer-led workshops um in which peers Le topics um for their peers on things like Equitable grading practices building thinking classrooms academic Integrity race at AB artificial intelligence and those are really great ways to um work with colleagues and also Inspire learning um I would say in terms of student voice you've heard me say that we've um Incorporated student voice in our advisory program this year our student council and school council students have helped offer suggestions on both both on academic Integrity um grading practices and even and as I said before the flex block creation um and so that's pretty much an overview of the high school I want to Echo a little bit what what Jim said that despite um some difficult budget conversations and possibilities that would impact um people's lives at the high school um the staff really worked to support each other and their students all year um and um teachers really did their best to create a positive supportive and inclusive environment and I really can't thank them enough so want to make sure I say that and also we're really looking forward to celebrating our class of 2024 um June 7th at graduation so um I can move on now to handbook or open it up for questions let's do questions real quick okay um so first of all I will say thank you so if anybody has a question I'm saying thank you for the the whole committee if you have a question for Joanie we'll go around starting this way and go this way coms okay no any questions all right if you have comments for Joanie you can always reach out to her make her let her know what an amazing job they're doing at the high school um again really happy to see The Advisory program I think that that's a real shining star in what we've been able to do over the past few years on to the handbook sure how how many minutes did I use in my first present uh 11 minutes and 47 seconds so sorry 11 did you say 11 11 minutes that's all right it was it was admirable okay it was a good high school try always second always second to Jim all right okay um so let's see here you can click on the explanation of changes in the actual proposed handbook at the bottom gives you more detail the uh seven areas that we are proposing changes um some are pretty quick to go through at um the first two are so fees and dues we are updating our activity fees athletic fees senior class dues and parking fees um um second running for office we just clarified some of our procedures and and updated them in the handbook um the third one testing after ation so right now long-term assignments and assessments um we've noticed students and teachers have noticed um can become grouped together um so that there's many that fall on certain days um and this can happen because of religious observances um and days in which we don't have homework or assessments and also uh the three-day window after vacations in which um tests assessments and long-term assignments are are not allowed and so we are requesting that we shift that to 2 days after vacations I actually think students and staff are in favor of this so that we can spread that out and still honor the spirit of having a break after after vacation with the two days um the attendance policy so last year if you remember um we made some significant updates to our attendance policy in our handbook and one of the main um focuses last year was to start um tracking and having conversations with students around attendance quarterly instead of at the end of the year um and so that's been successful this year in terms of um interventions that actually are actionable within that year um we um would like to to shift the number of absences due um sorry uh allowed in one quarter from really 10 to eight and so if I if I can just clarify that we allow five excused absences with excused from um notes from parents and um we allow five unexcused absences before credit is revoked and we'd like to to shift that to three um and so that would be eight in a term which is still a quarter of the year it's still actually above des's guidance for chronic absentee is M we want to kind of shift that a little bit and and try to make even more progress on that we would like to add a clarification on reasonable time for a bathroom breake of about 5 minutes so we've been noticing that some students are staying out 15 to 20 minutes and we'd like to um also add that students should return to class on time following um being off-campus for off-campus privileges um number five cell phone and electronics policy um this year during class um pretty effectively and and students actually commented that it helped them focus and I actually think that they appreciated the rule we ask that cell phones um be away in bags or in phone Cubbies at the front of the room next year we'd like to add that smart watches and um headphones also not be used during class and when students do take a break from class we would like no cell phones in in the hallways so cell phones not to be used in the hallways during academic periods they can be used in common spaces and then further clarification on assessment expectations um were was also added the social media accounts um we want to put in writing our our our expectation that already exists that any accounts um identified with AB or AB related must be monitored by Club advisor or coach even when students are posting and number seven our academic integrity policy um we want to update our our policy and we've done that and you'll see it's quite extensive that that's the longest of these changes um to focus on learning and and collaborative conversations with student teacher parent sometimes Department leader and AP um we felt that we needed to update our policy especially with the the Advent and prevalence of artificial intelligence and also just more technologically uh Advanced world since since we created our academic Integrity probably about 10 years ago and so um with a focus on conversations um when something happens we really want to focus on the learning in these situations while also still having consequences and so when you read through the policy you'll see that process outlined I I also just want to comment on the productive process that um we went through to create the policy with student input teacher input um at at multiple times throughout the process and in the revision process it took us about half of the year and it it was pretty um meaningful um and so that those are our handbook changes thank you all right questions on the handbook changes Tori and but while while you get ready to say I just will say this is our first read um so we'll have some questions here if you have follow-up questions or feedback we can always give that back to um Peter andan because we'll have a second reading a vote at our next meeting go ahead Tori so thanks for sharing these um thanks for everything else darn it I got it in ha um I appreciate the thank you sorry you were limited before uh one question I had looking at the attendance policy I know there are some families um who have extended family that are many many many thousands of miles away and will sometimes take longer trips over either the winter break or maybe in conjunction with an April or February break um do we have any concerns that some of those families might read that and and feel one targeted or two just look at that and be like how are we going to get to go see our families sure yeah I think that our attendance policy is fairly generous and in terms of you know comparable policies and even what the state kind of puts in place but we also allow um you know communic a with family and and reasons to be explained I I would say that you know we also want to make sure that the you know students are in school and and missing eight days in a in a term is is a significant amount so I think um I would say that our policy is is generous in compared to other other schools and the state and and we want to work with families so I'm hopeful that that it's kind of both end and other questions going around the room on the handbook Andrew and I I probably will save more specific questions for our second read through on it but I would hope that with some of the changes you're making you would take that same conversational approach you're talking about for for absences in particular the use of Technology inside classrooms in the hallways use of uh AI as an example um I know of students who were just writing well and were accused of using AI when they hadn't been and it's difficult to properly understand what's going on with just a you know the gate falls down um and I think that plays into what Tori was saying as well with regard to absences with still burning through what's left of our pandemic in the world there are many reasons why people are out and sometimes there are things that will demand more time time than the schools will allow and I would just hope that that' be a part of everything that there is some flexibility inside of it other than that congratulations in the 88% of override students staying in their their grades I think that speaks so much more to the idea that past performance does not indicate future performance um and it gives chance gives a chance to be great thanks clear I have no control over this committee Adam has no control over this side of the table so you know but we love him for it we you have anything thanks um I also just had a little bit of a concern around the um unexcused absences going down I understand that what you're saying that maybe comparably like we're pretty um lenient but I'm thinking especially around like mental health days as students call them um and either cultural or generational understandings about mental health and that might not be a reason that a parent will or a guardian will sign and say that like it's an excused absence but um just the impact on students at you know speaking for myself and other high school students I don't know a single one who hasn't taken at least a few mental health days um and so I I don't know what this means I don't know that I'm saying anything specific but I have concerns and I hope that if we do have flexibility around like having conversations around for example travel um that that is also explained I didn't see that the handbook it might be there already um but just so that families know that that's an option yeah so you wouldn't just only get three unexcused I think I think that's a good point you'd get eight total and I don't think that we've seen like a big difference between the students who have eight and 10 and so we'd rather follow up a little sooner because usually if you have eight the 10 can bleed into more but I hear what you're saying and I think that we do need to just make sure that there's flexibility as well there's always the opportunity to you know talk with your AP and your counselor even just students not not families or or with families if if you're saying that that might be an issue so we definitely do want to take that into account hi um I sort of want to speak to the one-size fits-all sort of policy as I'm reading it here where um you know and I think this has been highlighted at quately that some of this just needs to be a conversation like why did you need more than 5 minutes in the bathroom sort of thing um because I suspect that that sort of policy would actually impact chronically ill students and assigned female at Birth students disproportionately so you know that one size fits all thinking is really unfair um I also know from my own experience and from hearing from other people it's almost impossible to get from one end of the school to the other it is an eighth of a mile and you don't have time to stop at the bathroom or even your locker sometimes and then you have to carry around extra books between classes so you know I I would hope that there's an ability there to say oh you have an individual reason every child has their own sort of thing going on um and then I also sort of wanted to ask about um you know the flexibility of testing restrictions did you also reach out to families to gather sort of their thinking on that uh the testing after vacations yeah yeah yeah um so we we have in that um caretakers often complain that their their child's tests are also lumped together and certainly the parents on student council also voice that concern and we're very much in favor of this yeah um I will say that the the bathroom in in the time is really more around students leaving class and participating in the open campus and and Commons areas for like 20 to 30 minutes than than really restricting bathroom breaks um but we definitely want to be open and flexible to to what you're speaking about certainly I understand the desire to have that written down I just worry that because you know as my reading of it is oh if I take longer in the bathroom now I have to stress about that and you know I certainly wouldn't want to add to the stress for students that's a good point yeah I I want to give this a second read as well but I mean it it seems that with stress being a huge component in the AB School District it seems these none of these things are really going to alleviate that at all right um it seems you know these kinds of things don't seem to be helping in that regard at all I mean I don't want to use the word Draconian but that's really what comes to mind when I see these kinds of things so I think maybe taking a closer look at the things attendance policies for example 8 days that's a lot I mean you have a cold and a half and you're already at 9 days I mean and then what right I mean we see how many people have been sick multiple times this season that seems to be a reoccurring theme so curtailing that kind of thing just doesn't seem to be moving in the right direction thank you yeah that's good um just just to be clear it's it's it's 32 days in the year because it would be there's there's four quarters yeah yeah so and that's well above the that state remember 18 days is considered chronically absent right a whole year um yeah and so we do we do want to be flexible some of these things we we um also just want to provide just a little bit of clarity and structure around for students so we're not saying to them you know things that we haven't stated but I think our our our um our approach would always be to be as flexible and try to understand the student perspective um and if you read through the academic Integrity policy um that sort of shift to to the conversation and the understanding and the focus on learning is is really um the the approach that we would want to take for most things yeah but yeah yeah I mean you know I've been to by the time I graduated high school I've gone to 13 different schools so I've gone to Midwood High School you had to hall pass or else you know all sorts of things um you know okay um the testing after vacations seems to me mildly problematic as well okay black did you have a question um so you said student perspectives so how do you collect student perspectives and is there a mechanism where students can give you feedback on the your handbook and a way to for you to accommodate that a review and accommodation so we hear a lot from students every day through through the feedback they give to teachers there student council meeting every Wednesday day which I usually attend about one of those a month so I ask these questions and they share their feedback and we also have our school council meetings about once a month also and the students share their feedback and so they have they have shared their feedback on all of these um topic hand items okay thank you yeah yeah thank you Joanie I have two one actually is is around the bathroom breaks as well so if you've got a student who doesn't identify as male or female there are two restrooms I believe in the entirety of the school on opposite ends um so I I would encourage maybe to go back and I'm not going to say soften the language but add some additional language that students should engage with their teachers should they have extenuating circumstances right someone needs to has Mobility challenges and needs to get in the elevator we know that we've heard about that as well so I think there's there's maybe something in there just because some people may read the about five minutes more literally than may have been intended um that's one and then the second one uh I'm curious well I I would I would like to see a mention of the school committee's social media policy in the social media section so we work we did some work I think two years ago um you don't need to copy the whole thing but I think a reference to that particularly when you've got coaches and um uh Club leaders they should look at that and be like oh hey there's a policy and a procedure that is very detailed that explains to them what it means to have a social social media account that's associated with the school we did use it to to write this one yeah yes I'll reference I'll put the reference in there because it's it's really long and you've got a paragraph and I get it but let's let's make that um so for the committee this was the first read the next time we see this we are voting on it so so there is no I want to go back and then we'll talk about it again this was our opportunity to talk about it if you choose to take another read you need to give that feedback fairly immediately to Peter and Joanie so that it can get rolled in and then we can have a memo about what changes have been made since now and in 3 weeks time when we meet on June 6th to vote this this has to be voted at our next meeting because it needs to be in place for next academic year Peter yeah I would suggest if you have additional feedback on the handbook if you could please send that to us um by Monday or Tuesday of next week um and if you you can send it directly to Janie but please copy me so I aware of the feedback that comes through that would be great but yeah that that's a good point that Adam made one of the things is is that high schools legally have to have their handbooks approved by school committees and the timeline that the high school is on they have to be able to send their handbook to students and families prior to the start of the school year so it's actually really important that whatever feedback you have she can you know read incorporate to the greatest degree she's able to um so that we can have that voted in June otherwise we have a challenge through the summer thanks Joanie thank you you're free and I stopped my stopwatch a long time ago so yeah it's all right all right we are going to move on to new business um the first is the appointment of an act in health insurance trust representative um anybody want to do it Andrew all right so uh I would accept a motion to appoint Andrew Schwarz as the uh School committee's representative to the ACT and health insurance Trust I got second I needed a who he uh second okay so Ben Ben Ben so moved and uh vicam seconded um all uh any discussion any questions about this you got it thank you maybe this is already known I would like to know how frequently do we get updates um um and uh so I'll provide just a little bit of context the whole thing yeah so a little bit of context right we have we have voted to withdraw from the act in health insurance trust and so we have about as we've said a year to two years worth of closing down the trust running managing all the runout claims um so I don't expect that we'll have the same level of updates that we've had in the past particularly over the course of this year where almost every meeting we had an update um but Andrew will be sort of filling Us in more about what the plans are for the trust moving forward over the course of the life of the trust there's been a monthly meeting of the trust which includes members of the act in town as well as the district as a representative of the school committee I attend that for the last two years every other school committee meeting I provide an update as to what has happened inside the trust that is also published in our minutes you go back and see them as well inside that update is an is information about our financials and the other policies that we may be having as Adam said we've we've withdrawn from an active member of the trust rather we've changed the trust from an active trust and are running it out through the end of June after June we'll probably continue to have the monthly meeting where we'll understand what the run out amount is and I'll bring that information back here one other aspect of this is that as the current trust document stands a trustee can only act as the chair of the trust for 2 years Steven noon had been that for the last two years and is no longer able to be which sadly means I'm the ranking member of the health insurance trust and uh will probably end up being the chair as well as the representative from the school committee that being said as Adam mentioned Peter mentioned as we've talked about in the meetings over the course of the last year the trust is going to be in a runout meaning that any claim initiated prior to June 30th of this year will have to be paid out through whatever remains of the trust everything beyond that June F July 1st going forward will not involve anything to do with the trust that amount those information that update will be provided inside this meeting any other questions discussions all those in favor of Mr Schwarz serving on the health insurance trust I I any opposed any extensions that was unanimous all right um Peter you are going to uh get some input from us on your District goals there's a slide yeah so there you know this is a very very preliminary discussion of goals and you know there's um you know they say you know forest and trees um we definitely don't want to be counting pine needles tonight um this is really making sure we're at that really looking at the farest level of goals um just to frame this a little bit for you you know overall goal setting process is is you know we do talk about preliminary goals at this time of year and that's work that we have been doing generally since about March um with our leadership team we do very early work on kind of the strategy when we propose a budget um and obviously you know we talked about anal and anti-bullying uh or bullying prevention curriculum um in this budget so you you saw some of those goals evolve even very early from the budget season um but we do start to hone those more and more and we come to you in about June May June of a school year to get some of your preliminary feedback and an opportunity to to talk to us about the big buckets um over the summer we will take whatever feedback comes from you tonight um as well as all of that work on our leadership team's part and we start to hone these into more detailed work plans that then include the action steps the responsibilities the timelines and outcomes and any metrics that we want to use to to gather that you're very familiar with that work plan that's actually the document that you just received last week which is the goals update so we have you know we set it at the beginning of the year we provide a midyear update and then obviously end of the year update over the course of the school year really it's September through June is the implementation of that plan as it was designed um we know nothing goes perfectly um so we do progress monitor along the way uh we provide you midyear updates we also present to you on each of the goals over the course of the year you obviously just heard District goal number two that was scheduled for or um well originally much earlier in the year and then April and then may because we talked about budget and then more budget and more budget um we also lost power one day and we weren't able to do it oh thank you we yep we also lost power and couldn't so you know life happens um and I think that's important to to understand with these goals as well and then as we come to the end of the year uh we provide you that end of the year update where you have more information about that um you can reflect on all of the other presentations that we've done over the course of the year here and then there's the superintendent evaluation which informs that next cycle of goal setting so just to to refresh your memory I wanted to to give that real high level overview I'm going to share this and you know happy to hear feedback but I'm also recognize the late hour of the meeting so you're welcome to send me feedback as well um and you know this is very very high level um a lot of this you have heard us talking about before but we've started U the first goal area I'm going to talk about and and I have a Mac and I'm on a PC so I'm scrolling the wrong way um as I'm sure we've all done um but this is really around seal climate and culture um been doing a lot of work this year particularly at the elementary level around the castle framework um foral and you've heard about that over the course of the year um and what the adults need to learn in order to be able to effectively guide students um around their social emotional development um so that will be ongoing at our elementary schools next year um we obviously at a district level are in a supportive role to the work they're doing in the schools and from a school committee standpoint it's just knowing about it and progress monitoring what's going on there um seal curriculum with bullying prevention uh we are in an implementation stage now we P are purchasing that now that the budget is finalized um that will be implemented at all of the schools in the district um you know K right through through 12th grade it looks different in every school like at the high school it's generally through the health education classes in elementary school it's more in the classroom with morning meetings and things like that um that they do in class but we are in an implementation phase with that that's going to require support at the district level and again school committee it's really a progress monitoring function because you've now paid the bill for that which was an important First Step academic integration ofal is something that we really started to focus on this year and our curriculum team did an amazing job starting to really look at all of our you know major curriculums in the programs that we have but doing a crosswalk with social emotional learning skills um I want to go back with you know Deb and Heather Stout and and really look at how this goal can look because if if we don't have that clearly defined next year we're really reducing we've gone from you know five curriculum coordinators at the elementary level down to you know three this year and we're going down to one next year that's a really significant impact I am not sure what this goal looks like um so I'm it's blank right now because I'm uncertain and I I just wanted to name that um it doesn't mean we're not doing it it doesn't mean we are doing it um chronic absenteeism we've already talked about I don't need to to go further I think at the the school level um Jen Faber has already been working with assistant principles this year to align practices and ensure there's consistency and how we approach that so at the school level it's the administration and counseling staff really working to implement those practices consistently at the district level I won't talk about it but we you you had saw the whole SOA plan enough set on that um and I would love to propose you can see I bolded it for emphasis uh that the school committee plays an active role in some of this by taking a hard look at The District's um policies related to attendance um and have kind of a a multi-prong approach to how we're we're tackling attendance policies and that actually I think goes well to some of the comments we heard about the high school handbook um I think you can set the guard rails and that allows the schools to better operate within those guard rails um restorative practices uh behaviors and response to behaviors um we want to talk about not only student behaviors but actually the adult responses to student behaviors um and how those contribute to either reducing or continuing and you know sometimes exacerbating a student behavior um and so you know right now the focus we want to do next year is on professional learning for leaders um we we have now booked suffk University um to come in and do the restorative practices the first tier with all of the school and District leaders at our Retreat this summer um I am trying to work on a plan to have our district and school leaders then be able to do levels two and three uh over the course of the school year um more asynchronously um so that we have a good established practice and then at the school committee level I would love to see the school committee take a hard look at discipline policies um and really think about what a new approach to to school discipline looks like um in a way that our families can understand and is aligned with all of the work we're trying to do around restorative practices advisory I won't talk a lot about that that's really progress monitoring you've seen some of the growth at the Junior and senior highs we just want to recognize that that's still going on um I do think that maybe in another year that can drop off um as a as a true District goal and it just might be intermittent progress monitoring um we are implementing anal screening tool across all of the elementary schools this is something that's been in the works it's moving forward it's in the budget um and this will allow us to start Gathering data around social emotional learning in the same way that you're seeing you know a really robust and complex set of data around the academic learning that students are doing we want to now try and build out some of the data inal but that is certainly more in its infancy than you you saw tonight in de's presentation so that is kind of the seal work that we're thinking of right now um at a very high level in terms of um improved student outcomes and opportunities um we talked uh Jim mentioned that he wants to extend mtss implementation into the junior high that will be a multi-year approach uh and process for him um and at elementary we're in that stage now where it's it's there and we certainly need to monitor it and continue to adjust our practices and improve how how we're implementing but the district framework for mtss is there schools are just at different places in their implementation and are adjusting practices accordingly um school committee that's a progress monitoring function at this point for mtss and hopefully um you know we continue to have the budget that supports the the amazing work that you heard about today um improved access and outcomes this talks about high school course leveling um it actually goes to some of the literacy and Mathematics outcomes that we had committed to seeing improve over time um you had did here earlier this year um you know we for the first time um have all of our elementary schools kind of at that midyear um screening tool all in that high achievement high growth range on on early literacy which is really exciting we want to continue that progress you saw how that's being worked out at the school and student level tonight um and that will continue to happen in the district um k6 literacy implementation this is still a very very heavy lift at the elementary schools um and we're having to provide a lot of time for our Educators to work um I think next year the the focus will be in providing time for educators to work collaboratively with structured supports around how we how we do that um and again it's really supporting it at the district level and progress monitoring I will say this is going to be a unique challenge because we just implemented A literacy curriculum and we're going to end up with one Elementary coordinator and not a specific literacy coordinator so this is something that you know I know Deb is is really thinking deeply about and talking with her team that's going to have to be a focus for Gabby coming in next year um and really trying to make sure that we can continue to support the Educators even though it will have to be different obviously um the last one it's not necessarily around culturally responsive practices because we're kind of at a stage with the work around culturally responsive and sustaining practices where that actually has to happen as part of the seal work and it has to happen as part of the academic work that we do so it's more embedded but we do need to do a little bit of visioning um as a district and strategic planning so I wanted to add this in as kind of a new bucket it's time to start to think forward in a number of different ways uh we are going to be doing um uh what's called a vision of a graduate I will be sending you some more information about that um it's fairly prevalent sometimes it's called a portrait of a graduate you may have heard um but we're going to be doing that work and launching that in the fall we've started a very small planning team I just sent a message out to all staff across the district inviting more participation um we are also going to be looking for a couple school committee members to participating on the steering committee for that um you know and we're also looking for some students um and you know some families but we also recognize that many of you also represent families but many of many of you have other roles whether it be Community member or um alumni you know things like that that are all actually really valuable roles that we want to have have as part of this process so you'll be getting some more information and invitation to let me know that you're interested and then we'll be launching that in the fall that is also a requirement for the high school um but we certainly want all of our Educators and Community K12 prek through 12 involved in some way including our business community and Greater Community um the goal of that I will say is to be able to Define kind of the big picture knowledge skills mindsets that we want students to be able to leave our district with um it so it's kind of a really exciting process that then informs kind of future growth and strategic planning um sustainable budgeting we've talked a lot about that I think that needs to be part of the Improvement plan and that is a shared ownership really between the district and school committee um so we're thinking a lot about approaching it that way I know um Yang shintori and I are meeting next week uh very early I think on Monday to start to sketch out what that looks like U I know Adam's traveling but he's been in the loop and he and I have been working extensively about you know planning for that so we'll hopefully have a plan pretty soon for what that looks like um and then we need to do a little bit of um multilingual programming visioning um that's you know really an emerging population for us that's growing rapidly um and we need to just think about you know the structures that we have for multilingual Learners and how we're best supporting them so we envision that being really a planning team it it's not necessarily that Broad and Deep Impact yet because we have to plan it before we start to think about implementing and growing it um I do think you're going to need to be aware of any potential Financial impacts from that but that's really a a staff-led process on that one um in conjunction probably with our lpac because it's really important that we get a lot of you know family input as well as kind of Staff input about growing programming so I'm working with Mary and Young on that those are what we're looking at for big buckets I had on here something that I really want us to be able to pursue uh which is Early College opportunities and potential you know career Pathways exploration uh we don't have the capacity right now to take that on um you know we're going to have some changes you know in high school leadership we're going to have some changes at the district level in terms of leadership uh where you know if we have to prioritize anything I'd actually rather do a vision of a graduate first and allow the College and Career Pathways to grow out of that after so I'm just reflecting that there there's no way we're going to be focused on that next year we still will make some small gains in the area but it won't become really an Initiative for us because we don't have the capacity for it um but I would like to see us maybe think about that after the vision of a graduate process is is completed so that's kind of the early preview of what we're thinking for next year so again you know I know it's late I wanted to go through that for you I'm happy to either take some you know comments now or certainly you can send me emails that I can look at with our team and we can think about how to reflect some of that input all right thank you Peter quick comments feedback for Peter going around this way starting with Tori I liked it better when you started on the other side because then I got to think um my one thought on I think it was the second goal was we've talked about um just groups that don't show the same growth achievement I'm tired now but our subgroups just how are where does that fit in there watch me S the sustainable budgeting I thought I signed up so I got expressions of interest and I've asked Tori and yansin to lead that but we haven't gone any farther than that so we will be forming that task force um most likely at the beginning of next year um and then we will look at what the makeup is in terms of how many school committee members are going to be on that and how many other community members y Andrew Peter thanks for this um one aspect of this the restorative practices that I think it's important for us to look at is to emphasize our role in providing support to the students who are affected by the actions of students who are at the center of these kinds of situations you know we've had kids dealing with one level of trauma or another for the last four plus years and when their peers are causing issues in their spaces and they have subtle consequences to them in the eyes of those who are affected it creates conflicting emotions and fears and I know of at least a couple of of incidents over the course of the last six or so months where entire classrooms had to be evacuated because of one child having an issue or another um providing additional providing pract IES on both sides of the issue I think is going to be important I just like to see that emphasized as well that that's a great comment you know we've actually talked a lot about is as you start to approach restorative practices and shift maybe from um practices that maybe families in particular more understand that idea of like there is it's um thinking of the difference between behavior and conduct right you know we all grew up in a world where Behavior were considered conduct incidents and then there was a consequence for conduct um we've actually learned that a lot of the practices that had been in place for a long time actually don't reduce the incidents of behaviors and so there's a lot of Education that has to happen along the way too and I think that actually goes to you know what we're hearing from some of our families is actually a great point about the adult responses to behaviors actually can contribute to how everyone perceives a behavior because we are in a world where yeah sometimes there might be you know a student who becomes disregulated and either they have to leave the room or you have other students leave the room um and how the adult manages that actually says a lot about how kids perceive that and I would think that some of the guidelines coming from the district down would provide the guard rails necessary correct for the adults to be able to provide a continued Ed educational environment for the kids while also providing the support for the behavioral disregulation that you mentioned and being able to have a a balance on that side because it's easy to say okay we'll let this one work through what they're working through and we'll all kind of Step Aside but in that time everybody who stepped aside suddenly loses not only their time in class but also their emotional safety of being in class because they have to separate around so that's all I wanted to say absolutely and I think as we develop a policy with school committee what my hope is is we are able to engage in a real process that can challenge our own assumptions about behaviors and conduct and everything else that allows us all to grow because we're also the ones that then have to explain it to our families yeah um especially around where sort of practices or chronic absenteeism like I I know that often it's like school committee is just progress monitoring or kind of supporting but I would also love to see how we can Engage The Wider community in a Way Beyond just kind of like liaison on a committee um but actually getting the community to learn as well I think I would hate to see for restorative practices like families feel like we're not doing anything about a behavior or about like hate instances but really we're moving towards a practice that is more evidence-based and actually responds to harm in a way that holds folks in a community um but just wanted to see how the school committee can keep the community engaged um can you go on to the second slide like scroll down a little bit and some more the vision of graduate and the multilingual family yep um I think I have a comment so multilingual Learners are not just multilingual they're multiculture and that actually sort of um connects to vision of a graduate because it's very interesting because for me as someone who grew up in another country we don't have the vision of the graduates we have the vision of what your parents think we have the vision of the families so that um having vision of the graduates and also think about ways to support Multicultural SL lingual families that will be something that phenomenal if we can Implement that thanks I I find vision of a graduate to be quite interesting I'd like to be involved in that because I I think it's a very interesting thing it's very critical I think as well all right so um um I I would love not tonight because I'm almost asleep but um the restorative uh practices is something that I second what you said but I think it's you know really important area um so I'd love to hear more about that at some point but not tonight thanks probably next year probably next year uh so Peter my feedback I I will I've shared with you already and I will share with the committee just so that everybody understands it as well we don't have the same level of administration and implementation teams that we had 3 years ago that we had last year we're going to have even less next year um there are even neighboring towns who didn't pass their overrides who have a larger curriculum organization than we have now um and so I think we need to be really pragmatic about what it is that we want to do and what it is that we can actually do um and I would much rather do a smaller set of things with a great level of fidelity and outcome than more things that um we make shorter progress with we're already I think you know feedback I get from the community is we move too slow we talked about a task force it's been months we don't have a task force yet um and so I think we need to balance our ability to proide provide results and in a reasonable time frame and what we have for resources and be very very clear about the fact that we don't have resources to do all the things that the community expects from us so I love this idea of restorative practices and engaging the community at large on that but hey the community has told us over and over again to cut our budgets and so maybe the town of Acton needs to get connected with us um and we need to find ways to partner with our communities around some of these things but we have to be clear that like you had on your last item there you know um the the college and and and there are things that we are we have on our list that we want to do and you talked about at the top around the curriculum slide there are things we want to do there are things we must do there are things we cannot do because we don't have resources or if we try to do it all we're not going to do it well um and so that's sort of the challenge that I would give to you and the the senior leadership team as you start to go through these things to be really honest with yourselves um about what it is that you can do because I think the committee will support the idea that there was a lot to do there are a lot of important things to do but we can't do it all any last comments on or input for Peter on the district goals um Peter people might have some ideas between now and some period of time when do you sort of want to take this to the next step with the leadership team so we you know really you can send me you know thoughts anytime between now and probably the end of June um because the next step we have is we actually sit down and start doing the goals document um and that's the point where we actually start to put the details to it so you know maybe middle of June I would say the end of June's a little bit late because sometimes we start that document before we we break for summer um but you have another month I would say great thank you um as Peter makes his way back here we will as a transition into our communication goal update um I will remind everybody that the superintendent evaluation is due May 24th which is next Friday boom uh so for those of you who have done this before it's next Friday for those of you who haven't done this before you can reach out to me you can reach out to some of the other committee members who have done this before we're happy to to give you some ideas about what it means to put together this evaluation um but please please please um by next Friday send um your evaluation document to both myself and Julie um so that we can collect them I then need to collate all of that and put it together in a summit of evaluation for Peter um which leads me into the fact that our next meeting which is June it's on bottom 6th um is our last meeting so if you thought this meeting was long June 6th might be even longer graduation the night before graduation um there's there's a lot on that agenda so we will have to provide Peter with an evaluation we will have to vote his contract for next year um we also have I'm forgetting a whole bunch of other uh fun things the abaf will be here with a donation um and we'll have our retirees celebration so we're also starting early so um please please please evaluations by the end of next week um other communication goal updates Leela yeah so as we all know the override passed at the ballot um slim margins and we got notification that the board of registrars has voted to call a recount for all ballots cast in the town election um and so they will be hand counting all of those votes um only related to the override and that will be on May 21st I think that's next Tuesday maybe um starting at 9:00 a.m. at Town Hall in room 204 um but if anyone would like to observe we need to get their names in um so let me know preferably by like tomorrow um if you would like to be there for the recount we don't want like everyone to be there um but if you have a specific interest let me know thank you okay um I'd like to put another plugin for Project Graduation uh anybody who can and wants to please come and help um I think one of the best things we can do as committee members is just be present in the community and participate in community activities and it's just a lot of fun thank you um just to note that the school committee office hour in the act and tungul is still continuing last Friday I took a day off and boy people reminded me that I wasn't there right after vote I will be there tomorrow I and I'll just add to the fact that at boxboro town meeting there were comments about our availability and having those office hours so even if people aren't actually showing up they know that it's available uh and that goes a long way to being open to our community so thank you yansin and everyone else who's coming to those office hours any last communication goal updates all right we are going to move on to subcommittee and member reports um Leela do you have a quick update for policy sub since Liz is not here yeah um we continued to talk about the work kind of stemming from resource Force but also Kate Crosby's work in the district um related to Green initiatives generally and putting something together that's more concrete um so that is still on its way and we'll come back to the full committee about that and then we also talked about generally like what might we talk about next year related to policy um and so Jenny you might be happy to hear there sort of practices was like on our list um as well as things around like with fees increasing what is our approach to waivers um and generally how do we make sure that our policies stay up to date thank you capital capital budget subcommittee meeting um wow I can't read at this point met on uh May 15 2024 addressing critical issues concerning our District's Capital infrastructure discussion centered around the passage of the FY 25 budget the evaluation of the tower Cod contract and the tennis courts Rehabilitation project The subcommittee Remains dedicated to The Prudent fiscal management and enhancing our District's state of good repair to ensure long-term sustainability this was the final Capital uh budget subcommittee meeting of the Year thank you um we don't have a consent agenda this evening because we only have one item um so I am looking for a motion to approve the meeting minutes from May 2nd 2024 so moved second so Ben motion made the motion and Leela seconded any discussion all those in favor I any opposed any extensions that is unanimous thank you statement of warrants and recommendation to approve I move that the school committee vote to approve the below listed warrants totaling 4 m127926 AP vendor warrants as follows 24- 022b dated 52 2024 in the amount of 50 uh sorry 56 872169 24-23 as dated 59 2024 and the amount of $4,395 24- 023a dated 59 2024 and the amount of $2,624 12 payroll vendor warrant as follows 24-22 PR dated 52 2024 in the amount of $555,500 payroll warrant as follows uh p2422 dated 52224 and the amount of $2,790 th000 4 2,794 1548 Student Activities warrant as follows 24-22 BL dated 52224 in the amount of $614 and 94 second all right so clearly Becca made that motion and and Tory seconded all of those in favor I any opposed any extensions also unanimous anything we need to highlight out of the FYI I would just note that there's a case collaborative third quarter report that may be of interest thank you and with that again our next meeting is June 6th um we'll start at 5:30 with a retiree celebration um and then we will open our meeting at 6:30 to um have a formal recognition of the retirees we will then adjourn to Executive session before we open again in regular session at around 7:30 um we'll have Peter's evaluation we'll have to reorganize our committee uh and lots of other fun things the night before graduation Absa donation the night before graduation and I will just put one plugin in addition to Project Graduation we all will be receiving an invitation at some point from the high school to um attend graduation and we get very nice seats so uh I highly recommend it it's a it's a fun event and since you'll be here all night you actually will have Prime parking to just walk right over to graduation and is there Jenny would you like to make a motion to adjourn move to adjourn second second Tori seconded that all those in favor I that's unanimous thank you have