##VIDEO ID:PRsHK2zaxJI## e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e uh good evening hollon and welcome to the August 29th 2024 meeting of the halls of the school committee our first meeting of the 2024 2025 school year welcome back everyone um so we will get right into our agenda there's a a lot going on uh but we'll start off with uh the consent agenda someone have a motion to approve the consent agenda um no gifts just um uh the July 18th with minutes and uh whole l warant so move second okay all those in favor okay that carries unanimously um Moving On We're on to a great start look at that we started late but we're still 5 minutes ahead of time um so report from the student Representatives our representatives are are are are engaged probably at the football so that that is far more important than this I um so now school committee individual comment Sarah congratulations to the girls AF who just won their SC y um that's all I have right now thank you heard school it was success everyone had fun I was sad not to make it but I heard from a ton of people they had a ton of fun and it was a great start the school year um yeah good first days um no uh no issues on post the first day you know we'll talk later about pre-ir day but post first day sound like everything went well um and congratulations to all the rising breaks um welcome back to all the Educators and students and thank you to all the Educators for um making those first couple of days really special for our students yeah I just hope everyone had a great first day back and um wish the best of luck to the football team that's playing out there right now yeah where's the screen um the school p is that sponsored by the class of 2027 oh this is ry's now I didn't get that right um 2 and 26 25 and 27 or 25 and 26 25 they're both successful they had fun thank you Mrs rfay and the class officers and there were a bunch of um high school students that came to help as well and I think she said something about like 170 kids came and ran the Color Run I think so um so a great start to the beginning of the year lot of little ones welcome a lot of little ones which is awesome like to see it um and welcome and welcome Dr Jordan to the first uh your first meeting here with us so thank you excited no com uh Cynthia is stle my my left Thunder but just a you know better version of Ken of Keith and and maybe Ken too um um additionally I uh attended the uh the opening day for for for teachers with uh the administrative team there and there was a a very impressive um Rising Junior j a junior now sorry yes a junior now uh not at the time though he made that clear that he had one more day anyway uh who was uh who would participate in Project 351 and and talked about his experiences and um if I could have his half of his public speaking uh skills I would uh you know be at the State House I I have no interest in going to the state house but uh but but uh towards Runo um but anyway that was that was great so that was a good addition to to that opening day uh Dr Kusa so um you know we have some really fabulous students here and so welcome back to all the students all the teachers and uh you know I hope we have a great uh great school year and we'll show you some pictures from opening day later awesome um so now is uh we have the opportunity for the public to address the school committee and since there's nobody in the room uh we are going to um pass that on to the community public Q&A regarding uh any information people and questions people have regarding the override then we did get a uh one email with uh some um I did another one too that I told her to forward to everybody but she didn't for to everybody send it now sure we you send it now um I told her to send fine um so um we've had nine now information sessions the course of the summer on zoom in person uh in the morning in the evening on the weekends um and uh unfortunately there hasn't been a lot of participation uh we had another Zoom session this morning where one uh resident uh uh logged in so I thought you know we could we could offer our meeting and put it on the agenda to ensure that we could discuss it within the open meeting law and um well you know we went in person to talk about it but um uh a former member of the school committee uh did submit comments Stacy r and I think Joe and uh and Frank are going actually would take turns uh reading that into the record you want to KI us off Joe sure thanks go forward all right dear Holliston school committee I'm submitting these questions for public comment during the August 29th 2024 meeting Stacy rafy 20 arthor Street the school committee and the hft have agreed to a contract that Mr Alfred has acknowledged the town cannot afford without an override in the issue of funding the contract via an override has been put to the public to approve or deny as the residents tax dollars will be going directly to pay for salary increases and busing costs many people are asking for detailed information about the justification for the salary increase laid out in the contract unfortunately the school committee has yet to provide that information in a meaningful way what would be helpful to do this would be to post a salary grid showing the current teacher salaries compared to comparable or neighboring towns and also a salary grid for each year of the new contract alongside similar grids for comparable or neighboring districts for the same years this would show where our teachers salaries are compared to other districts in where this contract puts us if it passes traditionally Holliston has always been middle of the road what is the end goal based on what the town can afford and sustain do you want in salaries to be in the middle of the road or at the top of the scale if the goal is to attract new staff then ensuring competitiveness at the lowest step salaries should be the focus if the goal is the retention of Staff then comparisons of the uppermost steps would be important obviously Holliston cannot compete with certain towns for example Welsley and Needum so how much higher does the Holliston school committee think Holliston needs to go the ability to track qualified staff is about more than just compensation but if you want to focus on compensation then I suggest that updates to benefits I know this needs to be worked through with the town is another channel to have more attractive compensation Frankie continue all right another piece of the override is the funding of additional buses which the school committee claims is necessary in order to adjust school start times can you clearly show that the allocated amount will fully cover the expense of the cons condensing bus r why are you asking for 200k in buses to reduce three bus runs down to two when you do not have a clear plan in place there has been a bus driver shortage issue for at least a year locally and nationally ston and Framingham are two of the most recent stories just last week hollon lost a driver that caused routes to be changed Etc so we can reasonably expect that adding buses and drivers to accommodate the school start time changes will be a challenge will the school committee commit to going through a thorough process surveyance soliciting input from parents and families before finalizing the school starttime changes there's no provision in the Moa for Community input although the school committee has expressed intention to do so the school committee chair has promised quotes that the school start times will be changed regardless of whether the override passes or not so it appears that the start times of new school have absolutely changed one way or another and that's adorable but what happens if you need more money than the 200,000 because drivers demanding more money whether such a shortage or you need more time than what is promising is any as for holl group is claiming that there will be a $30,000 reduction in traffic per their flyer 30% 30% sorry 30% um but there's is there data to back up this fact if there is datadriven fact voters deserve to be shown the data before agreeing to pay for buses through this override Mr Peru in the past weeks a lot has been written on social media about the consequence of a failed override vote for example Mr Alfred made the statement quote we need to move past the nitty-gritty and understand if this doesn't pass the only ones who will truly suffer will be our students end quote I think this is a very dangerous statement as voters we absolutely need to understand the nitty-gritty in order to make informed choices we don't know what students we don't know that students will suffer if they don't get get 15 minutes more of instructional time that is yet to be defined please stop using emotions to drive the campaign use data to help Drive voters to an informed vote what are the measurements of the positive outcomes of this override what do you mean by move the district forward do you mean improved rankings do you mean closing academic achievement gaps what are the positive outcomes that we should be expecting Mr Alfred stated in the comments of the Holliston reporter quote all that voting this override down would do would be to crush morale and add significant uncertainty to people about their careers and livelihoods as well as students and parents about what the future of HPS looks like end quote um we've exceeded the 3 minutes so this is entered into the record correct are we going to continue beyond three minutes a lot of the this is Q&A so so okay ride continue okay what does that mean it sounds like speculation that there will be Cuts yes for Holliston has said that in their flyer under the question about the override failing quote there is a significant risk of cuts to programs or staff across all schools end quote what will these Cuts look like the voters deserve to know the consequences not speculation of a no vote Mr Alfred's above statement is hyperbole threatening cuts and threatening that teachers are just going to leave is irresponsible it puts the teachers and it puts the community in an unnecessary awkward place again is the speculation is this speculation or did the hft indicate that they are aware of a group of teachers willing to leave if the override fails Frank if this overrides to fund salaries and buses plus 41,000 for Town Hall employee salary adjustments why would programs be in Jeopardy speculation is leading to all sorts of Whata ifs we need to take out the emotion and stick to the facts I see this as fearmongering you are leading people to think if voters opt to vote down the override they don't support the teachers that is a statement that cannot be backed up with data when the issue of morale is invoked that's a dangerous argument on which to fund an override what are measurements of morale how do you know morale has changed or how do you know it's a result of a cola will the school committee follow up teacher surveys to measure whether morale has increased finally there are other districts who have had a successful override to open conversation of opportunities to move their districts their District forward I'm not convinced that Holliston needs an override to open conversations and have opportunities to move the district forward if there is a collaborative environment between HSC and hft and administration those conversations should be happening outside of a contract I'm convinced that the s school committee needs to prioritize the ass whether it be an override for a high school project or other capital projects or contractual obligations because the residents of this town may not be willing to say yes over and over again when there other priorities in town there are less than two weeks to provide the voters with information they need to make an informed Choice it would be helpful if your answers were shared during the school committee your school committee meeting this week and posted to the district website it will also be helpful if you pointed people to the FAQ when you communicate with the community about the override Stacy Ry uh so I'm going to take a moment to uh respond to some of that and other members of the Community Committee uh should should should the same uh to the last Point um we have been sharing the the FAQs and then the link to the website where we have information um but I did put together a little bit of data um and uh I will share some of that now why is it coming up where's the full screen it's up here yeah you got to hit the little thing at the bottom the bottom thank you man all right so just briefly uh this is a this is a chart that we've shown before but just to remind everybody sort of where we sit uh Holliston has below average class sizes for for our comparable districts um our average our per pup spending is the lowest of of all of our peer comp towns um our uh residential tax base is is on the lower side below the me um sorry our residential tax Bas on the higher side as a percentage of Revenue and our average single family uh tax bill is um below the the average of our peers and kind of in line with a lot of the the neighboring peers so H is the bright red bar H is the bright red bar and then the brown is the average and then the blue is is the other districts okay um so this is a slide that uh I has been part of a representation that we put up in at uh at town meeting and it's really a a uh uh graph a picture sort of of of where this new contract will will will put us compared to to our peers um I think it's important that we look at things this way rather than looking at at just the the the gross dollar amounts the gross dollar amounts obviously matter to those that are getting paid but if we're looking at at pay we care about how we pay relative to other towns and other districts and so to really what this shows green by the way is is is that hollon is paying above those that Square red means we're paying below gray is we're in with plus or minus 2% and so light green and light red are 3 to to 9% or it's actually 2 to 9% um dark green and dark red are 9 to 15% above were below and then the darkest red and green are are above 15% so what what this shows is that on the new First Step that we're going to have compared to other District's first steps we are incredibly uh competive we will be paying um teachers coming into the district more than most other towns in in the district however as we get as teachers become more senior and and on when you look at the max step we are paying uh more in line with sort of the the median that's if the override this is 2025 okay we can't compare 2026 or 2027 because most of the districts that we are comparing ourselves to don't have contracts for 26 and 27 there are only a few districts that had signed contracts in the last couple of years and so any comparison would just be a few a few a few districts and that uh wouldn't really give you a good comparison um I realize that there's a lot of information on this side we've had this slide up on our on our website though um we can we can put it up again um but this is I think the the fairest and and most sort of useful way to the residents to sort of see where we are going to be paying I also think it's incredibly important for people to realize that um contracts are not easily comparable different districts pay differently some put more money into a longevity payment some put more money into other types of benefits some every contract is different and has sort of grown over the course in the life of the contract so simply saying okay a master's degree with 10 years of educ ation does not necessarily give you the best picture of what the total compensation of those uh people of that employee are some districts have more stien opportunities some so there's all different ways of comparing it so looking at just a gross number and trying to compare it is not um in my view anyway and it's not how we looked at it when we were negotiating the contract and this is how we're talking about things how we looked at it when we were negotiating contract so uh I hope that the community looks at this realizes that yes we we here are in 2025 are going to be paying very competitively um by 2026 we don't know but I get I I would bet you that this looks a lot more red or neutral than it certainly does uh today or for 2025 so Dan before you move on to the slide I wonder whether it' be useful this this seems just like kind of obuse to me so I'm just wondering whether there's a way for you kind of extrapolate this data into actual numbers so like if you're a first year teacher in can't even see um Ashland how much is that teacher making at first step that's exactly what I'm saying is not good I understand it's not like so is there a possibility for us to take you know three or four of these districts to see where they match us as closely as aligned in terms of things like our benefits package um which I know that we are an outlier on so that's something that we could be you know we don't have an analysis of of a total compensation package if you will so like when like we don't have data to say okay at this step this kind of first of all you have to is that person taking a family plan are they taking a PO versus an HMO are they taking you know are they um well that's not their salary you just said their benefits no I'm I'm just saying okay so I guess what I mean is if the town if we know that Ashland is uh a 7030 town and then their first step is whatever does that help us to determine differently I don't don't think looking at any one individual Town versus US is is all that is all that meaningful I'm saying that as an example I'm saying if we just take a few towns that are like towns that are match us closely in terms of contract and maybe we don't have we maximize uh our hourly pay over things like having holiday pay whereas others might have holiday we don't have that we don't have that we also have a different number of days that we that teachers first to some other places we're not looking at a perdm that's why this is that's why this is so complicated and why I don't want to look at just that I don't think it's not that I don't want to it's not I don't think that looking at gross numbers make sense so if you look at it and if you're you're looking at us versus Ashland next year we will pay more for a master's First Step by 70% but what is that number like you're saying it's plus 4% why does it matter I I mean why why does the number matter because I think that people want to know what is a competitive salary that we're paying our teachers like what is that number what is the number our master's First Step will be 3.3% above the average for for our peer districts and and what is that number the contract the current the current contract is available out there, I I don't I don't have the number on my head it's it's 3.3% above and then by the time you get to the max step of Masters it's it's 1.7% below the average I get it I just think this is hard to visualize that's all I'm saying does equalize it though Cynthia like it if if you look at the raw numbers sure I mean how you got to these percents you had raw numbers we can look at those but percent is what equalizes each level and step and says how much is it greater or less I'm just trying to look at another way of visualizing the data that's all and I don't I don't I don't know if anybody else has any their thoughts on this I'm throwing it out there I I can put this into a graph form if you'd like I I I don't to to me looking at a gross number doesn't it just it it starts a conversation going on a direction that it doesn't it it doesn't seem to be you know something that I I I I think that is important we're not we're first of all we're not actually voting we're voting on on a on a 1.1 one what the number $ 1.1 million 1.1 million right that's what people are voting on we're not the people are not voting on this contract yes yes under pending it is the contract but people are not V we're not negotiating this contract with with the public we're explaining what's in the context we're explaining by sharing the raw numbers what you're going to argue is should as teacher at this level the step be making that the percent show how we compare against the comp the other competing districts and I I find the ability to color code it as well is being above or below and what is there 15 different um comparisons there 15 different comparisons um over not just bachelor's Masters Masters plus 30 Masters plus 60 but analyzing is First Step maximum step I mean there certainly all of these contracts are available online um I mean I think it's also important to note what kind of percentages districts are seeing right for example Ashlin settling on their 333 but without the increased instruction of time whan um latest contract at a 433 so without also increased their longevity payments in so that that's not in I think that's relevant information as well but I mean what I see here is a comparison to 15 different districts over eight different um you know first yeah I mean it it's a lot of information it's not in comparing to one District isn't going to be accurate either so I wouldn't be looking at one just one I understand that you have 15 districts that you're looking or how many see how many you have there but I just think that this is hard to digest as well say I think we're all different Learners and and to me this is like you know okay but if you are if you're someone who is applying to come to work here looking at this graph does it tell them anything really the person applying to come to work here is is is not the people we're talking to right I understand that once once everything is is ratified and settled then then that is then we we take that we take that contract document and we turn it over to the administration and we turn it over to the union and we say go forth and prosper and you know come to us if there are problems um but but I mean that you know our job is not to to implement or enforce the contract and I think that's what a lot of of the confusion in the community right now is is they are expecting us to have not only negotiated the contract but also implemented or or come up with a a concrete plan for implementing the contract that's not the holl and need a job I don't know how many times people told me to stay in my Lane I'm staying in my Lane that's that's not our job job is to implement is to implement the contract that's these much more educated people than I for Education that's their job and then we obviously provide the oversight I'm not suggesting that no but but I'm just I'm I'm just looking for more clarity that's all I don't have the answer we'll have to Workshop it okay so moving on um one one of the things that uh you know Stacy talk a lot about is is fearmongering and and about about morale and the impact that morale has on our kids and on our district and so I wanted to put this up and share this with the community I think this is an incredibly incredibly important slide for us all to look at I will explain it for a minute so the blue is the median of our peer group and this is all from Desi data so you know could be uh some some imperfections here there but we're comparing it to 19 different districts and this is the median retention rate of just teachers just teachers we're not we're not talking about PA professionals secretaries any other employ employees just teachers and this is the retention rate since 2009 of the of the median of our peer group Holliston and then the difference between hollon and our and and the medium numbers above zero are good that means we have a higher retention rate than the than the median numbers below zero means that we have a lower retention rate than the median and what this does is this filters out the co impact of to retention rates because obviously we had a great resignation there was a lot more turnover during Co but how did we perform versus our peers in 2020 there was a contract that was that was signed in March and the school committee then voted that down in May due to the uncertainty of Co and I will be the first one to to recognize that as a member of the finance committee I I uh concurred with that view we we had no idea what was happening at the time the federal government had not dumped billions of in into the economy arpa hadn't happened cares hadn't happened we had no idea we we there were towns that had contracts that they couldn't afford and they were slashing teachers and slashing costs left and right you had towns that were relying on on restaurant taxes they that were cutting immediately because they were immediately impacted but what that happened what happened is over the next 2 years as I as that the consternation and the morale the consternation increased morale decreased is a dramatic decline in our attention rates this is the data this is what I'm talking about when I said that we have if we have a failed contract and a failed override what will happen what I expect will happen say for certain but what I expect will happen um in our district as we go forward and try to come up with a with you know a new contract we have just started to rebound last year from that decline I look at that decline is incredible we went from almost 2% above to 6% below our median PE that that is a huge just think about the number of teachers and how does that impact kids well as you have greater turnover in in your teachers it takes longer to get for new new staff on board and if anybody anybody who who has been involved in you know in hiring people that takes time and then people take time to get ramped up and up to speed that impacts kids so when I tell you when I say online that this this will 't shooting down um this contract will only will only negatively impact the kids this is what I'm talking about I think it's important to note too the lagging effect right cuz 2020 is when that happened right I think we all agree that this dat was reported in early 2020 yeah but there's like the pain that went through 202 through 2021 has reverberated through really last year and finally with with hope of a new contract I would say again correlated not caused 2024 has improved but we're still below the media slightly below but but kind of in line with where we bounced around with at least historically on the lower end but at least we've gotten back to kind of within you know it's been that last year was a significant recovery we don't want to go back and to remind the public though the median the against the median gets rid of all of the other like great resignation all the factor Holliston was more negatively impacted than others yes and who is included in this data um the prach so is it par professional no no no as I said this is just this is just people who are coded by Desi as Educators I don't know yeah yeah on Desi they don't report P professionals retention they just report teachers and administration on the website [Music] I I strongly urge anyone in the community to look at this chart pay attention to this chart I think we should make it more public there let's let's let's make it more [Music] public this is little something I I I we taped a a a um session with Mary green I talked about um because there has been other was I don't think necessar brought up by by Stacy but it's been brought up in the community about you know everyone's houses are going up in value I don't want to dwell on this too too much but um because it's just a lot of numbers here and uh people everyone but me hates numbers but um where I love numbers but anyway I went and and and you know you the state and and then desie report uh average uh assess values not perfect because assess values that's lagging um but over the past since 2010 which was the last uh override in town holl's home values home assess values have gone up by 64.5% um because a lot of people compare this to hopkington the Glory Days hopkington are up 74.7% so 10% more during that time uh hopton's uh School District spend in District spending according according to Desi or at least until 2022 was up twice as holl and you can look at ashen's values were up 80% their uh their invested went up their investment in their schools went was 50% versus our 32% and there are a lot of things going on here this not are perfect but um I mean a 10% difference between us and Hopkins so you oh my homes are everyone's hom is going up in value well if you have the median home price in hollon at $650,000 if you would had that home in in in hopkington you'd you'd have $65,000 more worth more more of equity in your home I don't know about other people but but that that seems like real money so this is an investment in in in education that does impact your your your your property values um there have also been comments about how you know the halls and public schools uh always get more and get have what we we uh you know always see the the benefits of the Town while everybody else has um gets less and and I will tell you I am partially uh at fault for for that uh for that misperception um because in my 11 years on the finance committee the finance committee always put forward a guideline budget of 1.5% almost always it was um and the schools always came in more they frustrated the heck out of me because they refused to meet the guideline budget even tell us how they would get to the guideline budget whereas other other other departments in town did but what people then missed was it kind of happened on a cycle different departments would get much more in one year they'd get an additional employee they'd get uh you know more Ser more something more hours from an employee and so you'd have budgets that would be up 20% in a given year or 30% in a given year so over time what happened is the schools over the last 15 years budget has gone up by 2.8% this is just through fiscal year 24 so I I didn't have the most recent fiscal year just because there's uncertainty in our budget and it just want to to keep it clean um but on the right you can see the those orange cells are are the Departments that had an increase an average increase an average increase over those 15 years on a percentage basis that was greater than the schools about 23 of the departments in town and there's some moving around again you know I I didn't clean every single piece of the data uh so things like the select board budget had moved out and they created a new HR budget so there's there's a bunch of different things going on but um this this this misperception that the schools uh are taking in everything is is is just that a misperception and compared hon schools to Kei teac how much as a percentage is that so ke Tech has been has gone up 8.8% and that is in h schools uh 2.8% and but I can tell you though the the the majority of the KE Tech budget increase has been increased enrollment I I don't anecdotally I'll just tell you you looking at it year to year ke's underlying budget increased less than hollon usually did but because the enrollment at kech is is has gone up and our assessment is based on our enrollment and percentage of of of total students at kech um you see that that 8.8% increase um and then just lastly the slide I put just comparing uh our the the override ask uh versus sort of the average in in uh in the state this year um oh and then sorry and then uh Frank was kind enough to to put together the worst looking slide um I know somehow it became the worst um and just there been a request out there to sort of see things graphically the impact of on different home values uh of of the of the override and so right there you see 650 in the median is $21,000 but but uh if you want to put your home in there uh to sort of approximately where your your home is you can you can do that too um and then it's obviously 31 cents on the th000 if you actually want take your property value and and cut I think the important thing here is looking at this chart your houseing under a million dollar you're paying less than 300 and then not to diminish less than 300 but less than $300 more a year like just to make that CU we've quoted the average but let's be real most of the and I don't have the number of houses that are over a million but that's even the chart that we have below a million though is the majority and that's under $300 increase a year and actually the majority the the the the there are more homes below the median yes so the majority of homes are actually below $200 yep which I think is less than three rounds of golf a year so a home assessed at 500,000 tax assessment is 155 and this is something we're putting on our website put on our I I'll add a little bit commentary just throwing numbers up there but um with a cart um let me see um did I miss anything else oh um there there's been a lot of um discussion about you know and I think uh Stacy meant you know discuss it in hers but you know about us us tightening our belt and the consequences and and we just did around the playoffs we we we cut eight positions I think people I don't want people to forget this we cut $400,000 out of our budget which it was eight positions and now it wasn't all people that ended up leaving the district it was it was at least at least one but you know the hon public schools and the school committee and the administration we we have taken a a a very prudent approach to to to budgeting we have cut costs $400,000 of cost a percent of our budget and I don't want people to lose sight of that gu we are asking uh we have asked requested an override but we this is not like we are not looking for places to save in where it's going into this we are making prudent dis responsible decisions does anyone else want to comment or we have one other public comment that was submitted to us it is also fairly lengthy um but we can read that anyone else the only thing I want to say is I mean on the record is you know we're we're saying fearmonger and whatnot but I have to put in my head and I don't have a kid in school district yet but I think about if my kid was in the school district and yes there's no Cuts right away but there will be cuts at some point needed when we can't afford to contract and looking at my son and saying your teacher's gone because I could have made a difference um I don't think it's fear M I think it's reality and I think we need to look at that and whether you have kids in the school district or not and say you know is is this the right time is this the time at all to say we're willing to say goodbye to our our best and greatest teachers um I mean they they have a right to find the right opportunity out there we don't underpay um I know that statement has been thrown I'm not saying about underpaying but we need to be competitive U competitive on multiple fronts whether it's our buildings which we we're working on and and other benefits but at the same time like compens salary compensations important part and we need to be competitive to continue to build this District up and I think there was a statement made saying you know if we don't really care then sure let's let's vote this down but I think we all care as a community and and we need to continue to care and it's important we think about that before we simply say I'm against this because it's more money and there's no facts um there are facts and we there are things we need to figure out uh in Stacy's comment are you going to in involve the community the reason we haven't made decisions because we want to involve the community uh and we can't involve the community overnight um so we have not made harsh decisions on start times or scheduled changes those are to come and hold us accountable but um you know to demand those answers right now it seems premature and just to add on to that you know there's a lot of and we'll get into a little bit of this later but you know there's constantly people talking about our rankings and how our rankings have fallen well you know how you don't improve your rankings you don't pay median M median school districts get median results median it's just I mean I I don't know how more much more clearly it is if you if you really just want to you think that we should be a median district for our compensation we fine then can just accept median schools that's not what I want from my community I know we don't have everybody in person here today but we do have one more um like office hours community Forum on September mber 7th and with at 9:00 a.m. at Coffee Haven and would love anyone to bring questions concerns um want to discuss this further or Reach Out email us set the time um a lot of This is complicated a lot of people say we need answers online I mean and and look I get it it's sort of easier that way uh for for a lot of people but you some of this stuff cannot be explained online you you you don't go and earn a PhD just by exchanging emails with your professor you go to class you discuss the difficult subjects and you learn so if you really want to learn reach out to us talk to us come to our last information session who wants to read or at least start reading Joe and I got the last one we I can start is there an address here no I didn't list an address okay Allison quinnon Holliston Massachusetts I have some questions that I hope the school committee might be able to answer regarding the specifics of the override the way I see it the ratification of the contract between the hft and the HSC is contingent on the override being approved and as voters whether the contract is approved or not is up to us but the override simply provides money for the cola increases to the teacher salaries with some additional funds for buses and of course the money for Town employees so I'm really not sure why some of Thea items were not written as tentatively agreed to or why they cannot be adopted regardless of the passage of the override for example parents clearly want to shift in the school start times for the younger students but the change in start times can be impact bargained as it doesn't add time to the school day finding $200,000 for buses should they be needed should it necessarily require a tax override discussion about changing the block schedule at the high school also does not need to be contingent on the override vote provision for research and evaluation of the high school schedule already exists in the current contract and in fact the current contract language specifically includes administrators as part of that process the new Mo MOA excludes administrators and creates a very tight timeline or tight deadline by which the HF team must vote on any changes should the override fail will the teachers be willing to stick with the current contract language which allows evaluation of the bell schedule provides a less strict timeline and includes Administration and the conversation the added 15 to 10 minutes to the school day will certainly benefit the teachers just as much as the students is it being advertised that way and many people who are being asked to shift money from their pockets many of whom haven't themselves seen a 4% increase to their own compensation want to understand whether hollon really truly is underpaying its teachers currently a quick look at other school districts shows hon teachers to be fairly paid neither the highest nor the lowest compared to other districts one teacher noted that hon schools have a longer school year than other towns but the school committee chair stated that hollon school day is shorter than other towns so perhaps that balances out and hollon teachers aren't actually being overworked and underpaid compared to their peers and others have mentioned that Hon's employees pay a larger portion of health insurance premiums compared to other town is that something the school committee can address with the town when we look at pay increases over the last decade we should be looking at other comparable school districts in Massachusetts and not include private sector jobs as that is misleading finally there have been some unfounded fear-based comments about what will happen if the override doesn't pass voters should know as specifically as possible what the consequences of a no vote would be does it really mean lay off some programmatic Cuts as some have suggested will we lose Arts Sports and after school programs will teachers walk out or go on strike they shouldn't as they have agreed to renegotiate should the override not pass suggesting the voters will destroy teacher and staff morale and cause uncertainty regarding their careers as not helpful or effective facts details and answers to questions are what voters need to be able to make informed choices I acknowledge that the answers to some questions maybe we don't know yet but almost 3 months have passed since the school committee requested the override vote so some of the unknowns should now be closure having answers and there are definitely some pieces of information which can be provided to voters so they can make their own decisions based on as many facts as possible if voters are feeling misled manipulated or believe that the school committee is not being transparent they will be less to vote in favor of fite so I hope that the school committee will consider posting some of this information on the website to that end here my questions how do hollon teachers salaries compare to other towns are they being underpaid or paid fairly this can be shown by providing a salary grid of current salaries compared side by side and a salary grid of future salaries compared side by side the school committee and the superintendent have this information and should share it with the residents who may are asking to fund the coal increases how would the school committee know that the co increases have improved morale among teachers and or improved the school's overall position relative to other towns what are the real consequences of a failed override what will the process moving past a failed override look like for example teachers will continue to be paid at the current contract level and any renegotiated salary adjust adjustment will be applied retroactively the term of the current contract will apply until a new contract is agreed to will there be staff or program Cuts what other places in the overall school budget will the school committee look at to realize cost savings should the override fail G specifics and reasons so voters will know the consequence of a no vote Beyond low teacher morale some people have suggested that going back to the negotiation table will produce a weaker contract I hope that a newly negotiated contract would not be weaker even if it might look different than the current Mo MOA some residents have expressed their opinion that the contract language should be stronger I.E Hall monitoring when plausible to address the current lack of enforceable language what would that look like as I read it what the town has gained in the new contract that couldn't be addressed with the current contract is the additional 15 to 10 minutes added to the school day everything else can be addressed with the current contract in place what will the school committee do to solve the school start time issue if the override fails what will the process to evaluate it look like if the override passes what will happen if buses and drivers can't be secure what will be the busing what will be the busing schedules look like will the school committee look back at options previously presented will the school committee ask for parent feedback and approval of a new plan what will the school committee commit to doing Beyond increasing teacher salaries to get our schools back on track in terms of rankings what strategies will they employ and how will they measure Improvement morale is affected by things other than money what other methods can hon schools use to attract and retain great teachers other than offering higher pay we will never be able to afford to offer at the very top of the range compared to certain towns so what else hollon have to offer how will the Town Fund any changes should the hft agree to a change in the bell schedule at the hollon high school a move away from the current block schedule will likely cost the schools more so will any change then not occur until after year three of the contract and if so where will any additional funding come from when any Bill scheduled change is implemented the overrate amount is very narrow and seemingly leaves no room for expansion of Staffing and or programming reinstatement of Prior cuts to Staffing and programming or reduction of parent fees for buses and activities how will those needs be addressed in the coming 3 years if en is dropping and out placements are increasing as has been suggested how will that impact the budget going forward for the 3 years of this contract will the school committee look at making adjustments to staff due to lower enrollment and if the result is that there is extra money how will it be used I hope the school committee will offer answers to these questions and any others put before them voters want information facts and data not fear tactics or emotional po I support our schools and our teachers but I also want to make sure sure that this override will not create division among residents and financial constraints down the road and I'm very concerned that voters who know we will shortly be asked pay for a new high school and new DPW facility downtown sewers so we can attract new businesses to town or other needs may decide that they can afford multiple overrides in a short number of years so we need to be prepared and provide with information and have real and respectful conversations between now and the vote on September 10th thank you for your consideration of my concerns and providing answers to my questions Alison quinnon um so just a couple things before I'll let others respond to some of the stuff though most of it I think we've already addressed um I have never said that we have a shorter day than than than most of our peers I said that uh many uh by and large of of the higher performing districts that we we saw and analyzed have a longer day than holl um additionally just to clarify things a change in the schedule of the high school well we have no idea what the what what that necessarily would cost and if we can't afford it then that's not what we're going to end up having to be able to do so you know to say that they will increase costs is is just is making assumptions that are that are unfounded um the um the one of the first things that she said I think is very important the to to clarify the mo MOA does not exclude administrators from the from the from the schedule process um it does not um specifically State the administrators will be on the the the negotiating or not the the the the members of that of that committee um and it is slightly different than the language that's in the contract today um but I think we all realize that that is going to be something that is going to be done by the administration and not by us that is a administrative function not not a school committee function that that committee will work together we'll come up with a recommendation that Mr list um we we'll at some point present to the school committee um and that is going to be our role this is the administrators that that is their job and uh we we don't have time to do their jobs and then nor should we and they uh can can can do that so I just you know I think some of these things can be um discussed but you know again we we have made cuts to our budget so so we don't have a list of what cut would be we have no idea what the new contract is going to look like or what any what if we had to go back what would it would would it so um to speculate would would be fearful but I I will say having been in the room negotiating the contract this is an incredibly good contract for hollon and I hope that the town um well I think it's a good contract I I wanted to address the statement finding 200,000 for buses should they be needed should it necessarily require a tax override and not to put you on the spot Cynthia but in the last 5 years since um we've started the school start time well even before that you started the discussion I mean has there ever been just an extra 200,000 in the budget that we could use for buses absolutely not and we certainly you know making $400,000 difficult cuts um last year coming to a budget meeting in which no person um in the public um came to discuss what some of those cuts were when we were talking about almost a million dollars of cuts and then being able to refine it down to $400,000 of cuts none of those decisions were easy um after my years on the budget uh subcommittee and my years on this committee but one thing I can say with certainty is over the last five or six years while discussing things like start times we certainly didn't have an extra $200,000 in the budget for buses so just to be clear it's not like looking under the couch questions and as I remember you were on the committee I was on the but one of the the additional buses was always a solution that that that was there right but the whole reason it was not implemented or seriously considered was the cost one piece but it was a major piece so folks you know in the the um surveys that we did they wanted to change they just didn't want to have to pay for it so it presented us with really only one option which was to flip right the elementary right because we didn't want to cut $200,000 Bud C for something else this might cost over $200,000 but there were some other logistics as well in terms of like the locations of buses and were we going to be able to go and put 20 buses in front of placentio and Logistics but we didn't get that far really I want to hold you on the point the only guarantee is the 15/10 minutes because the opportunities and I know online that there has been a lot of negative feedback on opportunities right like we need firmer language how do we know that right how do we know the bus schedule for next year I mean we through the challenges the administration had to deal with this year with the leave of a driver new technology the questions being answered are impossible uh some of them right and and that's where like we need to be open with the community of what we can provide right now but also hold us accountable to those other questions that we need figure out and some of us we don't even need to figure out we need to work with the administration to figure out and the community and the community right like you want a firm answer but then you say you want involvement and and it it's you can't get both right so I I don't think we're going to have all the answers right now but what this opens up is the doors and doors that have not been opened in the past right and should be clear that it is an additional time it's not you know we're going to figure out with within the existing schedule extra time not true and Dr cus very clear 6 hours and 33 minutes it's now going to be 6 hours and 43 minutes and Dr Kus has been very clear that it is instructional time this is not playground time recess Lune this is this is this is instructional time I just so and you don't figure that out in the weekend and you don't figure for the summer when everyone's been away and and and and and and not paying attention um and you know they're they're taking a look at a specific ific item in the contract in in in the mo MOA and saying why weren't why wasn't that language firmer show it's just it that's not how negotiations work we were negotiating the entirety of the mo MOA and I'm not getting into details of what one side said and the other side said but you have to understand that the entire thing was negotiated so you can't just say well that should have been firmer and so we go back to the table and say NOP we we're definitely there's give and take for everything right it's a compromise it's a compromise and and I got I tell you after the last uh you know contract negotiation and how that went we worked very well together all all three pieces of the the negotiating team the administration the school committee and the the hft I think that's very important the one thing our world lacks today is is collaboration and to see the school committee the administration the Union on a video yesterday with Mary says a lot right goes along way and that doesn't mean hey we're in cahoots and we're figuring this all no I mean every party has their their needs right and we came together and said this is the best path forward so when there says a weaker contract is ahead of us yeah I don't know what weaker look like but this is the strongest we're going to get I don't know how mean we met 14 times this is no no one was cing this was you know this was 14 times over over 28 hours probably over over even you know even more than that we you know the the negotiating team met in strategy sessions a countless amount of times I'm it a lot of energy went into this and a lot of time and um we tried all different things we talked about all different things I mean I just I again I want to heart back to the buses and Mr Ra's statement about asking you know the reducing three buses down to two when you don't have a clear plan to be clear I mean we worked um closely with Mr bdai who's the assistant superintendent of um operations and finance he has Decades of experience working with our busing companies this number didn't you know just we didn't just scribble down a number I mean we worked closely with him on these pieces so I am confident given you know the amount of months that we would have um and and again we'll have answers on September 10th but we then have um you know a full year before this this change takes place so [Music] is there is there anything in there factually I know you don't want to get into the the political realm but was there anything factually in there that anyone in the administration would like to to to clear up uh if you think that it should be I think I'll just Echo for me the biggest piece if we're really trying to improve teaching and learning which we've spent an absorbant amount of time um I spoke with when we were with Mar Greendale the other day about the investment that we've done in our children's future with our new curricular resources which by the way I will repeat have not been our math resources have not been reviewed as a district and purchased as a district since 2015 or prior to um we are way behind in getting new curricular resources and you can't really teach the Mass state standards with resources that are 10 years old because the curriculum has changed at the state level so this is a huge investment in our students by having all these resources we're going to spend a ton of time this year training our teachers not only on the new math resources but how to differentiate the learning and um we also reorganized our curriculum rle so that we have now full-time stem and interventionist um stem and Humanities intervention is curriculum roles in all buildings Dr manard has been meeting with them um the past few days and tomorrow again and they are so excited about working together to align our work we've done everything as an administrative team that we said we were going to do with our strategic plan we are moving in the right direction and now we are at a pivotal time where this change is so necessary to me that additional I know people think it's not a big deal as a an educator myself to have 10 to 15 minutes a day of additional instructional time we heard repeatedly when we made the changes in elementary last year we knew we weren't teaching science enough in our elementary schools and our students they deserve that we we need to be more competitive with stem for all students we weren't as comp competitive um when I taught Elementary I taught science quite a bit more to my students than I was seeing here so we invested that extra time into our schedules and the teachers are telling us it's not enough time we cannot teach all the standards so we heard that and if we want our teachers to teach more and work more because it is more planning time we do have to invest in that so I feel like all of this is an investment in students and I will stand behind to me as a as an educator that 10 to 15 minutes makes a huge difference over time for us to it will make a difference these uh these statements seem to minimize the issue of uh morale or at least the connection between morale and salaries but I can tell you that um I have left jobs you know for better pay and I know teachers do as well so I have a question for the administration I guess do you conduct exit interviews and are teachers leaving for higher ped we do conduct when people are willing to um there it it varies we did have we have some people that have said that uh we actually had someone that is leaving right now that already started the school year because they're getting more pay in another District but to me honestly when I look at that um I said this on Mary green deals it's not something you wouldn't have heard from me saying before I started that we were in mediation for a contract when I entered in 2020 we spent two years in mediation then I had we got the contract settled we had a retr of salary for our teachers so we had a year off so so this is my fifth year three out of four almost full years of my time here were in negotiations of mediation and I've had people say Dr Kuser it's your job to fix the morale morale does not get fixed top down but the frustration that people were feeling with those unsettled contracts people did leave because of that I I they have said that they left because of the uncertainty at different times so that there was a lot of factors that went into that and some people just left because they have found jobs closer to home you are seeing it's more transient people are leaving when they never did before if you on top step you pretty much stay put so there's a lot of change that Co also brought so I don't want to say it's all of that but let's face it I don't think anyone could say that if three out of four years of negotiating contracts or in mediation did not have a negative impact on morale and I think Joe I don't NE think it's the cola specifically it's going to impact morale whether it's one Co or the other it's going to be not having a a Sol contract and certainty that's go on there and then the difficult position where we will be in financially when negotiating when going back to the negotiating table and and so that that to to me is where the real morale is going to is going to be impacted not not because NE not the the specific Cola one way or the other I think it'd be helpful to share so obviously teachers leing we know are not helpful to our students but how does that impact our students yeah and I if you listen as you said you probably listen to me talk a little bit this with Mary green Dill as well I just mentioned a few minutes ago how we invested we're investing a ton of time energy resources which we should it's well overdue we're not keeping up we're not aligning our curricul the way we should have we've been working really hard on that the last few years so all this training that we're doing this year and those teachers leave and now who does all that training again seven years right quoted seven years to get to a teacher to where they're really you know well they usually say by 3 years you feel comfortable and I would say it's 3 to 5 before you start really honing and feeling good about your skills some people will say it really is at 3 to 5 years before you start settling but just I'm just thinking of everybody in the district has brand new math curricular we have Eureka Math and reveal math and now every single teacher is going to be spending that teaches math will have all of this professional development this year what happens next year if some of those teachers leave because they feel uncertain or we what if this whole year we go with another unsettled contract that would be my four out of five years that's almost unheard of I can't fix them around unless we get support from the community as well it is it's it is that uncertain and I I know if I were a teacher I would be worried about that as well I hire a new teachers this summer and one of the things I was saying to them this is your salary that I'm telling you this is what you get your letter I hope it will be 4% higher and that would be this if that happens but I can't promise you that so they took a chance and they came to hul us and we got some really amazing teachers joining us and I hope they don't leave this year if we don't give them what they thought they were going they were hoping they would get cuz I I was very clear I don't know what the contract is going to be we have an override scheduled for um September 10th that's the facts right that's not fearing that's the no and I can't tell you what kind of layoffs but I I am very worried because I I know we our budget is we have been very frugal so any salary increase for teachers regardless of what if we get those instructional minutes back will likely lead to layoffs at the end of the year and if takes a full year to get there I can't lay off mid cycle you know we would likely end up um the layouts would happen the following year but I can't predict all of that but I'm very worried about what could happen to Holliston if we don't move forward so last thing I want to say unless other people have have things is that I just I I am pleading with the community if if people are putting out there facts especially Anonymous postings of of facts please do not quote that or or or reiterate that to other people without coming to us and asking us if if if it's true or not there's so much misinformation that's being baned about out there um that it it just it it it frustrates me to to no end because um we will give you the truth we're we're volunteers we're your neighbors and your friends we're we're not here there's zero benefit to to to me personally or to to anyone here uh from doing this we're all doing this because we want to do make our our our our schools in our town better and and just to settle in facts the school committee will pay the higher taxes as well right yeah okay why yeah just to be clear like where where is you know yes we're signing up for it yeah so much more than the average um but I but seriously there's there you know we are here to try to do what we think is is is best for the school district and this is this is what we think is best for the school district and if you see something online and someone stting it's fact and especially has an anonymous you know poster just shoot us a quick email hey is this is is that right and and and we can we can help help help clear that up if need be okay jump investment uh let's see here um we're running a little behind um can I just suggest so we we talked about Sarah you weren't here when when you were first talking but you have a communication subcommittee meeting upcoming right yes so me we can just kind of include some of this more and push out you know um a revised fq yep and I think you could insert the um the hcat video as well sure we can y um so you what would you would you like to go to I apologize I I apologize for that uh you know well thank you to our administrators in the high school I want to introduce our newest assistant principal Nancy kov who joined us um at our Retreat this summer and we're so excited to add it to our team I'd like Mr list or Nancy to tell us a little bit about her entry to Holliston and then they're going to present the changes that are proposed changes to the handbook that you would vote on tonight I thanks for having me um I am coming to you all from Worcester it's where I live um and I've been an educator for about 10 years and started my career in a special education classroom uh working as a par professional and then I moved into teaching uh world history which was my favorite thing to do um I taught world history all levels AP honors everything I was the only world history teacher in my district um and I worked my way into kind of finding leadership roles that sort of came to me um until I really decided that was where I wanted to go um I have education in um do an educational leadership and um completed a a degree in that and um very very very happy to be here at Holliston um it's been an incredible start and um yeah yeah I'm just really happy to be here and feeling very positive about the school year and how things started so thank you welcome can I just add one thing I think one of the things that I've talked about with our administrative team how excited we are that now Braun has brought us um a lot of experience in math and he's been really Critical with our math curc review working with Joanie and our high school teachers and Nancy with her Humanities social studies background the fact that they can now support the two new intervention roles at the high school I I really just feel this solid team we've created here I'm I'm really excited for it and and welcome again Nancy thank you I also want to give a chance for for Ron introduce himself because last year we were outside of the football game so like and uh there's new school year as well so I think it was pretty windy too it was pretty give Ron actually a chance it's been here a year but just to introduce himself to everybody here to the community who hi everyone thank uh Ron Taylor assistant principal year two here um as Dr Kusa was saying I was in the math classroom not all that long ago it was 19 years in the math classroom six of which were in the department head role this is the start of my fourth year as an assistant principal my second here I'm thrilled to be here um I'm really excited about this team uh and and the vision that we have with our central office staff and the the meetings and the collaboration that takes place and um I got to tell you it's fun sitting here as well it's awfully tough to sit here and not speak I would I would I was ready to talk about a few of the changes we've made to the handbook and I had my ideas and now I'm my my brain is all over the place I have so many thoughts on so many things um only because I was a teacher not all that long ago so I was in that world and that that also excites me that um I feel like I can relate to the teachers having been there not all that long ago and um we're really a team not just this team but with our teachers as well we we really want to build a culture um where we're in this for the kidss and Holliston is pretty special with the the relationships the the teachers build with their students the par professionals our custodial staff our front office staff everyone is in it for the kids and that just uh brings me joy coming to school every day well welcome to your second year thanks and I'm sorry to throw you off from for from your your thought proc list to to his second year though he's been before us many many times many times and hopefully many more that's F have a good time we were talking about over here we learn a lot good sure always learn um so you want to get to the uh to the handbooks yeah I just wanted to say before we got started that the policy subcommittee met last night with Mr list and Dr Kusa to review over these so that we could you know um we asked some questions and made a couple of Minor Adjustments really to what he um recomendation and we we supported it and voted to support moving forward with it to all of you so did you make any changes and recommend we I mean they were minor not really I mean did you guys I had a couple couple I can share I can share get the Highlights yeah the highlights and where where I clarified some you know so was some questions and I was able to clarify some language yeah please please give give the highlights it's a 17 Page document so we can do um I'm actually gonna let um Ron and then Nancy start because Ron did a lot of work on the the first thing accelerated core study and then um Nancy in terms of the DSP I'm going let them start because it was a lot of work they did and I want to give them credit for it so so when students want to accelerate their course of study uh we have exciting engaging conversations around it anytime a student comes to your office and says I'm interested in learning more at a faster Pace it's an exciting conversation uh in the past in the handbook we asked the students uh uh come to us and ask us for approval share with us the course that they'd like to take it had to be kneas accredited um and there was a fee that that was attached to it that they'd have to pay what we realized is that it wasn't really all that Equitable of experience for our students some students were able to pay the fee to take a course others maybe not uh and we wanted to make sure that uh everyone was able to take advantage of these opportunities we live in this information age where information's coming at you fast and furious and you can find it wherever you want it and Mathematics is one of those places where students can find the information they want and learn it on their own through KH Academy or there's there's a million different avenues that that you can find it um some students love to self-study some students work in groups some students work with teachers during dsb and we're finding that more and more students are sitting in classes on day one where they've already pre- studied and pre-learned half or more of that material and we want to keep them engaged and not bore them uh when they're in classes so uh I had a wonderful conversation with a student at the start of the year last year um he came and he said uh I'm signed up to take pre-calculus but I already know pre-calculus I've done the studying on my own it would be in a very nice way he said it would be a waste of my time he had not taken um a neas accredited course it seemed unfair for us to say hey in the handbook this is what it says you need to follow through and do these things so we found a way to assess his his skills um so that he was able to demonstrate his knowledge to us uh and he turned out to be one of the top BC calculus students last year he did skip pre-calculus went into BC calculus dominated it and and his love of learning in school uh only grew through that experience so we're really harnessing that now and and we've shared with families last year that if they'd like to do this we're not putting pressure on people to do this um but if you'd like to pursue this Avenue you certainly can and we're using ISL to help us with this Mr tivan our math department leader at the high school has aligned our standards with our new career curriulum uh using EXL and um we're putting together comprehensive assessments that really make sure that students um don't have gaps in their learning along the way um I'll try to keep this a little bit shorter than I'm going here um students have to earn an 85% on the assessment uh to to move forward with that said if they earned an 84 and we could identify that there was just one particular aspect of their learning where there was a gap we might provide them with resources and a plan and say come see this teacher or myself you know during dsb and we'll make sure that you close this Gap and we want you to move forward so there's a lot of fun conversations taking place with students about their learning and their growth and what their goals are and it's exciting to help be a part of that process okay I have just one quick question on it um and thank you for all of that and I I I love that you were able to work through that last year too um under eligibility and examination it says exams will be offered in July and August and I found that a little um stringent especially in light of the fact that we have block scheduling where we have kids that you know you you might almost have to jump into that uh Algebra 2 in the fall semester find out you're doing really well and you're already grasping that pre-cal class so why not offer that opportunity July August remember to set like twice a year right and maybe not even at least as long as we still have block scheduling because I do think there's kids just we do things a little differently here in hon with the block scheduling so I think there's an additional opportunity to maybe move kids one of the problems that we face is and even with the block scheduling is that when one of the caveat of this is if there's room in the class right so um even in August we're looking at terms three and four and so in theory we can offer that test whenever um it's just much easier to I would hate for a kid to plan on taking a test in November and then us knowing ahead of time you know there's really no space in this class um or it does or most more likely it doesn't work in their schedule versus not space is more likely to be the issue we can offer it all throughout the year um and the other issues that arises are also like the kid takes it in November they have two months of class left have they then passed out of the rest of that class are they done with that class like they just become a lot of sort of moving pieces um with it so that's why we kind of put here and most of the kids are taking um a lot of the kids are doing the Russian School of Math throughout the year um and so they're on their pathway and it kind of aligns with the school year for a lot of the kids so that they're taking their courses throughout the year they then have the summer that's when they're taking this test and then but I mean it could be offer to just adds a layer that I'm not sure that would have the outcome that we necessarily would want but so forgive me I I have not studied the handbook before this all that much it's not part of my reading uh but is just say you sign every year that you do yeah reading right right no just makeing sure you I sign many I sign many things that I don't actually read um [Music] no nothing officially well anyway but is it implied within the handbook that this is at admin Administration discretion for exceptions so I just is it worth adding offered in July and August or at you know counselors or administrators you know we can we can discretion just so you well the point is valid that if you've already we've already done the schedule for the entire year for you know in August I will say on opening day I was out here doing bus Duty and I saw Mr Taylor running to the office is and asking for a calculator or something and I said what's going on and a student was taking it on opening day correct but it's so and so initially we had set a date of by August 15th well and then students reached out and said I'm I'm out of the country and you know and sure you know what I what I love is that just because it's in writing and it says something we're always going to do what's right um it's a guideline and just because it was done a certain way in the past doesn't mean that we have to do it that way this way because it always worked before we're always engaging in conversations and when someone shares an idea it often times makes us think and if it works we'll do it but many things times we've heard from from people is is sort of I didn't know that could be done or or something like that and many times it's because people like me haven't actually read the the document um but other times it's because the document didn't actually say something that is is is actually done but it's not is not actually written there I own my faults okay read your documents they need to exactly yes no we can I think we can add that language in there because it's you know Equitable making sure everyone understands that this is something that they can at least seek and doesn't mean they're going to get it but they can at least ask for it and you guys can set up a whole process for how you want to deal with it and makes more sense for you so people aren't just coming your office every every day asking for these things and just for complete transparency I think it was 16 kids took exams and 10 or uh he was either 9 or 10 N9 or 10 yeah umel accelerated through and um I think the but the benefit of the exam and as I said because we're using ilel it's like straight out of the standards we're able to look at the work in person that the students who didn't pass could clearly see where those gaps were um CU I EXL it's really cool if you haven't played with it but can show you all of that information how are we encouraging there are gifted students out there that either know about it or don't know about it so communication and making sure people are aware that it's out there are we encouraging anyone or our students to take advantage of this so the that our of of this opportunity I mean so it's very very public like I sent out to to families um this information um and you know we share all this and uh we have more and more students who are doing a lot of individualized work outside of school um uh we have a lot we have a group of students who are doing the the open courses MIT multivariable calculus course this year because they've accelerated through yeah I was going to take that class but my my court still you were just talking with Mr tiffan about how exciting it could be in a year or two if we enough students Beyond uh accelerate beyond what we currently offer we might have a teacher teaching multivariate calculus here and I think that speaks to like sort of that the The Innovation side of what what Hon's willing to do and what our teachers are willing to do um like this year we have our own organic chemistry class which you don't see at High school um we have 24 students taking organic chemistry um and I sat in that class and did not understand the word they were saying um it was tough yesterday when us um but no I mean I think that I we want to see um these opportunities and and our our staff and our teachers are really um engaged in supporting kids in doing it so we hopeful that we can expand some of these opportunities for kids for the record I enjoyed organic chemistry but in in college so the fact that we've got high school students taking it is is quite quite quite impressive yeah um the next thing on the list is the directed study block um this won't probably take as much time it's a little bit more straightforward um as many of you probably know the purpose of directed study is to help support students um and one of the things that I love about hollison that brought me here is that we really think about the whole student um and this is a testament to that because it allows the student to sort of think about what they're doing throughout the day what they need to support themselves and learning whether that be um extra help from a teacher missed assignments um you know maybe they're trying to pass an exam that we're offering um or maybe they just need some time to help manage their own stress um so that's all part of this program that they can you know choose to do those different things uh what you'll see that's different here is the is the suggestions of what should be happening during that time um and the list of things that students you know can access um so for example um it gives a little bit more information about like passing time between uh second block and the start of dsb um it lets kids know that they can have uh breakfast at that time um and then asking students to choose the place to be and uh use their time as they need it in that place there's anything else you want to add no I think the other Kee here is we want to make sure the kids had access to breakfast um and that that time wasn't spent solely as where they are in dsb um and give kids students the opportunity to be with any one of their teachers um in their dsb block so okay um the the next one is the um dual enrollment um a lot of this is cleaning up language um here um basically hoping to encour you know we'd love to encourage students to take advantage of dual enrollment programs um right now we're not a partner institution with the dual enrollment program so students do have to pay the cost associated with that there are different Partnerships that exist um for dual enrollment um it also clarified um how the credit system work within it so you're in a semester class it's a semester credit um was clarifying that piece uh there was also language in here that talked about dual enrollment and gradu early graduation but we cleared that language up later um to remove that um and also add of the language um just to make sure people are aware that if they're in a full-time dual enrollment program that they are still eligible to participate in uh after school activities uh the next piece is the advanced placement courses um here we added a component um that we uh would are encouraging students to take the advanced placement exam I know that we've talked about making that a requirement here I think one of the things that um with our current schedule the way it is you have students who might finish a Class A couple months before the exam itself um and so right now it didn't feel appropriate to you know make that um recommendation or may say you have to take this exam when our structures are not necessarily set up to support the student um who's going to take that exam um so we just added that language of of encouraging students um strongly encouraging them to take it um for the time being know any questions on that one attendance um along with uh the other schools we looked a lot at our attendance over the the last year and the previous years and um this policy is really in place to to encourage families and students to be in school because that's where you know obviously we believe they should be um and we clarified a lot of the language just around what is considered an excuse and unexcused absence because we're told clearly by the state what an unexcused or excused absence is um and what we were doing at the high school was we were kind of lumping everything into ABS verified absences um which wasn't very clear as to what that is that could be like the fames on vacation for two weeks or but it also could be the kid is hospitalized it's everything was just verified um and so there wasn't great clarity in terms of what was what was excused what wasn't um also what happens in here with these absences is it allows us it really works with that multi-tiered systems of support right this what this does is um gives us some checks and time where we can reach out to families so when we create these situations where a student might lose credit it seems like that seems very harsh but that what that does is sets a standard for us to be able internally to be able for our assistant principles and our intervention teams and our counselors to be able to reach out to families and students who might be missing um a lot of time uh in classes um it's aligned with the basically with the um uh chronic absenteeism numbers um for the credit attendance um so like for a 45 day class a term long class over five um absences they would lose credit um and as I said our goal is not to take away credit from any student but it's really to have an intervention prior to that needing to happen um the other part is if a student does lose credit for this it doesn't impact their grades the credit is specifically tied to attendance right because what would be the point of attending class anymore if you lost credit for that class um the student still gets the grade for the class it's that internal credit counting that we would say so the student and in our schedule and in most high school schedules no matter what the structure is students have plenty of credits to be able to make up most of our students graduate well beyond the required credits um that are necessary to graduate um and they do have means within this to make up credits so let's say they did lose credits they do have a mechanism in here to be able to make up credits by showing that they're coming to school um regularly yes just one piece that I feel like could be clarified and that is you say medical and then documented right but that's not solely a Physicians know right it's up to 3 days or 5 days that you so I don't want families to think my kid just has a bad cold and a fever so I'm doing the right thing by keeping them home but that doesn't mean they have to go incur their $50 copay and get a doctor's not I can clarify that and I think the other pieces here and Ron talked about this before was was that clar of the we're not try like we know that obviously there are costs that are incurred by going to the doctor and that not all families can do that and so you know we reach out to families who are absent you know to to figure out what's going on and we're not docking you know we when we know that information where then we have the ability to excuse an absence um what we're really trying to cut down on here is students is skipping of classes those those really those problematic pieces um and again also where we can intervene where we can um recognize that there's an issue using um different data data points all right that's the longest one we here so um the tardy policy was just uh thanks to Dan we're now able to sort of push kids through the more quickly through a line versus which is why that we had to change the policy there was this policy before they kind of had this like weird buffer where kind of school kind of started at 8:20 cuz it said like oh between 8:10 and 820 show up and then you're kind of tardy but you're on time um I I when I was looking back it was added during Co um and so it was never just changed back to really account for the actual school start time um but as I said Dan has also given us a system in the main office where kids can punch in their IDs turns out a pass take it and go um and so get you know won't have we didn't have long lines of kids out the door um ining this but that this is really actually just a going back to a pre-o um policy that existed within the [Applause] handbook um I would say the the electronic devices um rule here is um I already started in our classrooms we have um our students putting their devices in a holder on on in a on pocket uh when they enter the classroom um they're those in the air the airpods um and they don't take them out till the Bell Rings it's pretty I mean as I know it's laid out here is a lot but that's the basic premise of what the policy is um and then the consequences for students violating that policy um and then also just making sure that we were very clear about the recording of of Staff um being not allowed in the building uh the uh parking lot um we ran into an issue last year um where we had over 275 requests for about 235 spots um and so just wanted to make it clear that we were going to give seniors access we're number all the spots people are going to get uh parking passes um with those permits with those numbers and then um we were going to go seniors then Juniors um for spots um early graduation was a was a I don't Cynthia I don't remember language it wasn't a school committee policy it was a it's a procedure I have to change that we'll have do that later yeah it's a school committee procedure um and this just took it and put it into our handbook um lowered the requirements of the the GPA um and also brought in more involvement with um the uh the school counselor myself and the final saying made by the assistant superintendent of curriculum instruction uh so is it is it standard in most districts that there's not an appeal process to to the superintendent or the school committee I I for early graduation I'm going to be honest 99% of I I've never seen it denied anywhere because a kid coming forward with early graduation there's usually some something there um and it comes out to maybe a kid every few years that's doing this um but as I said I don't think I've ever seen I mean we can add I can add an appeal to the superintendent I could get what you're saying I just it was weird that it was a school committee like the first stop was the school committee for for that defin very weird I think it should have been with in US involved at all right but it but it sort of most these are appealable at least to I'll just add I'll out of line that it's appealable to the superintendent that's easy enough just for contacts we've done this I think four times since I've done the no it's not it's a huge deal individual one but it's not yeah and they were all agre by way every one of them that question can I have one question that I probably should have noticed earlier did does the changes to the excused absences and taries and all of that does it align with the changes at the state level and the stuff that we put into power school as well so it aligns with State rules around attendance and and also aligns like we working with jod Renee um to align them to what power school has we've also worked with open Architects to make sure that it is pulling the correct information for both our tardies and um our uh our absences CU When we looked at it um we noticed that there were issues with what it was pulling and that information and what we were getting out of it because everything was sort of lumped under this one title so it wasn't really great information that we could use to understand why our students were out of school I just to tr why I'm chiming in is just is I think when we initially made the the migration over to power school there were constraints with how we had to enable it unexcused was one of the terms we were not able to use um in that as far as our selection board as far as the way attendance was being pulled to the state that may have or Jody Rene may have found an adjustment to that but I know that I I don't know have there been are we in alignment with the other buildings as far as how we're pulling our attendance data for State reporting so I I have to find that out I don't know but I do know that we can have it unexcused now so but I don't know the answer to that I can ask the other principles if that I guess Jody Renee would be the one to know how it pulls comparatively right Dan she would be yeah we can see we can see the other buildings and then compare it to sure yeah I just want to double check on that cuz I don't want us to have to come back later with that one piece no that makes sense so so can we approve as amended and with the potential for that one change you want to just hold that one I can hold that one yeah cuz then I think what what you could do is you could come back cuz you would you'd have to send out if there was another change later you'd have to just notify all parents at that time y that's fine thank you but do we want to come back to us for an additional Vote or no if there if there's something CH change okay um so I'll entertain a motion to approve the high school handbook uh as amended as discussed uh at this at this meeting move by S second by all in favor thank you all that hard work appreciate it thank you it was a lot I'll take the rest thank you was that yes Lisa watching at home um see thank you good night thank you um where we should go back to the presentation of dat an assessment as you wanted to table something no behind we we're we're we're off the CH but we don't have you know anything executive session afterward so it's off tomorrow so all right so we're going to go to one right that's right assessments dat assessments so um so in so as a followup to the uh to the presentation that the administration did uh in December uh there was some recommendations I think asked Dr KES and her team to up and and maybe include some some recommendations and uh uh take it away sure so last December if you remember um we had presented at length um Jo Joanie manard and um danan and I on data and assessment and how that might impact school rankings as we shared then school rankings is very temperamental and subjective and while people look at that and kind of its importance to me it's about what is the quality tion that we're giv to our students and we really that alignment that we talked about the curricular resources all of that is really critical um you'll see Dean talk about some of the changes we've seen so far but I will say the data that we put together last year we don't have a lot of data that's changed since then so we'll end up coming back at a later date because what will happen is when we present our goals in October with the principles you'll see that they'll have the we we we don't have the mcast data to share right now most of our rankings we've had no updates to since that December date so I don't have a lot of changes to share with you but we'll go over what we can talk about now and then at a lat date we can come back with some of the data that will be coming out in the next com next couple of weeks and months and pass it off to you D sure good evening everyone happy to be back with you um and the second version of this presentation so this is our agenda we're going to look at the comparison districts which is similar to what Dan alfer presented with the uh salary so we looked at the Metro West area and we're going to look at uh US News is the only ranking we have for 2024 so we got a chance to take a deep dive into that ranking and we'll share the details of that and then we're going to share some of our AP data I'm glad Mr list is here uh staying with us so he can maybe speak to some of that talk about the action steps we uh took based on recommendations last year and last but not least is the data dashboard we're going to show you a preview of the data dashboard we purchased thanks to Mr Renee and his clever budgeting I guess to pull that off so all right so these are the eight districts we've chosen again based on proximity so no Shockers there all right lot of information here I try to avoid these slides so um I'll just break it down so This Is Us news 30% is the college Reven in index which we're going to spend time on and then 10% 20% is typical things for rankings but what's interesting if you stay on this for a minute last year this is what we found for US News it just said 12th graders for the 30% we've took and passed at least one AP or IV exam and then passing is worth three times more than just taking so to Mr List's point just asking kids to take it is doesn't have as much weight as the kids pass in the test go to the next slide we'll um talk about sorry this just a delay didn't okay but to be clear the more kids that take an AP exam the higher the probability that you have a higher percentage of kids who pass the AP exam right more shots on goal if you will correct if they're both high it's all good because you're it's a 30% weight so you have high takers you write higher probabil so it's all good to raise and increase the number of takers so right like so a school like doesn't have very many guard rails up to their AP courses so there are other schools in our area that like you have to have a 85 a 90 a 95 you have to have a recommendation you're not allowed to override into AP classes depending on the school district so it when you're saying more and more it's not necessarily the case no what I'm saying is if a student who wouldn't have normally taken the AP exam but is in an AP class took the exam got a two right mhm that still helps the rate the ranking because you're increasing the percent that took the right but there is but that student taking the exam has the potential to score three pass where so so my point you still want well no we still want lots of kids AK right if we're college readiness then we want like all of our kids hopefully taking some sort of college readiness course if they're that's but impr prepping for that and having a class that might be two terms or three terms they've taken a number of sample tests and if a kid is consistently scoring at a one or a two they may not be asking their family to spend $100 on a test that they're going to get a one or a two whether they're going to spend hours studying for it it also takes away time that they might otherwise devote to something they feel more successful at that they are you know hitting it at a three or four or five so I think that might be part of what drives their choice and it might be actually interesting to survey students on why they choose not to take most of our students at this point are taking them because they so if you think about a 12th grader which they're talking about not necessarily 11th grader um one they're into college they know what credit some colleges count AP some don't now some take a three some take a four some they'll take a depending on your major so you know and many of them limit it like only take one Humanities or one or two mats so if they've already hit that and as a sophomore or Junior then there's no incentive for them to do it again as a senior right yeah so there's a lot of there's allot of different variables that exist that I mean can theur us more and more I'd love as I said I'd love for lots of kids to take AP and there are APS that we could offer that are actually more accessible APS um that we should be looking at in these conversations I think just looking at it in terms of the they don't take in look out any of these variables they just look at the number take number pass and then waited three times more if you pass right yeah and we talked a lot about that last year like there was a big shift in 2017 when hollon did say we're going to be looking at Project based learning and not really looking at data we did shift away from looking at curricular in the same way um I've always said since I've been here I think there's that need for the balance when you switch from one shift to the pendulum or the other and that neither is good right you want it to be some balance so that you're looking at data using it to form decision- making and then if you're teaching to the standards and you're actually using the resources that align with those standards you're more likely to start seeing improvements as well we're already seeing some of that Improvement in in a lot of the data sources we're looking at well US News only looks at the AP or state data does report on the students that are completing Advanced coursework regardless of whether they're taking the a or not but but 40% of their ranking is is is related to the AP which to me seems like a an excessive um but it also seems like I just I I don't know what people think can we can we ask the administrators to to take a hard look do some surveys and maybe see if there's a recommendation to come to I I think that it's not a hard it's not an overly excessive ask to to to ask seniors who were taking AP exams to take at least one AP test and I think that was what we had talked about doing the concern is that the timing of our course where we're locked out you know we've talked before about how sometimes a student can take math in the fall no math in the spring no math in the next fall it could be a full year gap between their learning and that's where our schedule has been so lacking and why we need to maybe something that we need to postpone until we see we know that's why I as to put the language of encourage because I really do want to encourage that the teacher should be encouraging as well and I think that's something that Mr list has been um asking the teachers to make sure that they do stress that you're taking this we're teaching we do want you to take the test but right now until the scheduled piece gets resolved it's it would be an unfair inequity to have all students take at least one it just because to me it seems like there's a lot of things we can do to improve rankings that don't that don't improve educational outcoming because we're you change how you're teaching to the test or you're trying to you know and and and we don't necessarily want to change our educational philosophy uh the AP one seems like one of those lwh hanging fruit pieces to some degree where you just sort of you're not gaming the system but you're you're somewhat gaming the system oh it's a big waiting right what are we doing for the students that are on the C like yes get one test on the practice test is probably not going to work out but those that are on the C are we working with those students to get them to a passing so the the AP is an interesting no and we teach the test test because taught to the test there is a ton of content but then ultimately you're teaching them how to answer correct the test in the way that the AP graders or the AP want to dat it so for example we're sending one of our teachers uh at the end of the school year to be a grader because then she will then be working with other graders grading these tests and will be able to come back and support our students in how to then write the essays to get better grades right but because this is an honors class this is the AP class so in some ways that's sort of What It Is Well I'm I'm just saying like that when we're talking about like that's a working back gaming but we're educating ourselves like how are we going toce on that's student improve educational outcomes and improve ranking that's really what we want but an AP class may be that you actually teach the AP class to the test but the rest of our educational philosophy is not teach to the test take EXA exactly so I don't see that yeah I think we're all saying Mr list are you having any do you expect to have conversations in the next year about other AP Plass opportunities because you you said something interesting which there are so many other courses that are out there that we don't offer yet and that right so we have to look at it as a values based thing as a as a district and understand why we would then offer the APS and then look at how we would then support students there are great classes that AP offers such as like AP research right that can be done by any student um AP Human Geography is very accessible um they now are offering AP pre-cal um so which I don't makes no sense but anyway uh so um well it's they get paid for test um so but I think it has to do with the it's a values based thing that we have to look at as a school see where it aligns with with what our values are as Educators what our values are um as a school and and as I said like there's no AP organic chemistry but we're offering a college level organic chemistry class so our students are getting an amazing opportunity they don't get elsewhere um and there is no test that they can take it's going to shine a light on that but I can promise you that when a college sees that our kids are taking organic chemistry that's I balance we want to strike and that's yeah and that's what we have to sort of look at as as our our educational values within this um and marrying that to sort of this piece of of the AP so yes so one thing we learned this year is this is a 2021 22 data so the 2024 ranking is based on 2122 data lagg so just when we were showing you last December the data from multiple years most of the data that we presenting as 23 22 21 actually predates my time in The District in some of us you know so I mean it's that's where it's also misleading it's going back more years they they also don't tell us what so on other slides on other pieces within their data they'll say sometimes they'll pull from 2223 or 2021 so you don't actually know they don't tell you though what year they're pulling from so it's a it's a tricky yeah yeah but given this is the your point and made shift years could we look at where we fall in like next year based on three years ago so on the website the last um the presentation we did December goes back how many years 10 years it I can't remember we did we went back as far as we could we we pulled as many years as we could um on each data source but it was the first time we've gathered it so we may not have had access to all of it but we did look at multiple years and you can see the Trends and it's very clear that when we started making that shift in 2017 we were at 14% I think in US News and World Report in 2016 or 17 and we did see a decline and we are starting to see with all the data is starting to move upwards which is what we'd expect now that we put a concerted effort into um really line in the curriculum but these are very specific data sources and Frank to your point there's a slide later that we'll show you this year's data and we can kind of predict two years from now what our ranks might be so yeah can we this to the lottery too all right I want to thank J M as our data system specialist she helps with these slides and the graphs so um just to um just this a little bit so we were 76 High School we're talking about not District High School 76 ranking last year US News Massachusetts so 2324 um 62 which obviously lower is better just like and I as I asked them to flip the graph because if you're looking at it visually you automatically assume higher is better in this case it's not a lower is better because it's a a lower ranking means you're a lower number means you're higher ranking so I just asked them to flip it so you'd visually have to kind of think about that a lot of residents miss this like I don't think we talked about this enough and again ranking is not everything but this is important for residents moving in town residents in town that's a look at other districts I mean yes some other districts did improve significantly others did not improve we had a pre- sizeable improve and as you mentioned your 2023 data was better than your this data that's here based off Co data well for everyone yeah the rankings are all flawed it's just it's just but it's something that people can easily see and and digest and that's why you'll hear us talk about the data dashboard more as we move Move Along because we want to look at multiple sources of data and and to see how we're improving in many areas all right this next slide just summarizes last year versus this year in the US News ranking so you can see where we were in uh every category uh 57th in Boston metro area down to down to 49th which is good uh this year in US News next one and here we can again see those rank on the left but this scorecard is what US News uses for high schools and we are higher this year uh than last year and you can see the uh taking one exam passing an exam and then the proficiencies and the other assessments but we were higher than last year which I think we had a higher percentage of how many took the aps as well they say math reading and science proficiency is that based on the mcast yes so they're comparing our mcast to other states but now don't forget that was 2122 mcast and that's why it's so confusing because it it's misaligned are they using SATs or acts know no so that so that's proficiency that's based on State State Testing All State Testing all those are State Testing y all right here's the AP data from this past year so we had 185 students in the 2024 graduated class 87 of them took at least one exam uh that's our 47% and then the thing we're excited about is 77 of those 87 pass at least one exam which is an 89% clip see that this year from that score card got 47% clip in passing so if you project 2 years that 89 should have a lot of weight we're taking L people less students are taking so we4 so one of the things right so one of the things we have to look at too is also the way our schedule is built so because we have these three term APS it limits the amount of APs that you can actually take we also offer again these really neat courses um that students want to take um and so students are having to make more choices now um in terms of their elective classes and the um so you if you don't take an AP you can take many more courses yeah schedule change just to reiterate passing is a three four or five on the exam which is impressive to [Music] do so we talked about some of the shifts as I mentioned last December when we um first did this presentation we talked about that that shift happened to we really went Allin as a district um the district all in for Project based learning which in and of itself is not a bad thing I believe in support Project based learning however when we made that shift we started to shift away from looking at the data you need to do both and then make sure you still aligned with the standards and we didn't look at mcast when I started here um I started getting ready to do an mcast presentation because I always did one every year and I was told we don't really do that anymore and I I I I hear more and more now which is I'm encouraged I'm not all about mcast I'm not all about um US News and World Report I mean to me we should be looking at all sorts of data with our students and that's why we're going to talk about the data dashboard and what what we're looking to hope hopefully accomplish this year I'm not going to go into the Cur review process too much but those are the dates that Joanie presented last year and we're really working on making sure that we don't let a long Gap in time happen like happened in the past prior to some of us arriving here so some of the things we talked about that we were going to do and we've already done um we've already purchased a dashboard to streamline the data analysis of strength and we we're collecting and analyzing longitud and programmatical data and now that we have that you know like we lost some of the data from the past because we couldn't re access it and now we're keeping it and collecting it annually we're able to keep it in this program so we're doing that with all areas the equity steering committee made a ton of recommendations and we're looking we're still looking into that know Jarelle shared um the work that he had done with the equity steering um committee and then also some of the things we're going to do this year um and continue that work on Equity as well the mass study group is going to happen Joanie and I have already sent out a message asking for volunteers I don't know that we've had too many yet Joanie but we're sending you're correct so we're going to be putting that and we'll be coming back to you next spring with recommendations from that committee about what we may potentially do a lot of questions about whether we're adding levels or taking away levels but we want want to make sure we're using research and data to make those decisions as a district the PD I already talked about with all the Eureka Math and reveal how much work we're going to be doing this year and then all Learners network is the group that's coming in that's using the resources that we have but how we can differentiate and do interventions for all students related to math and how that will transfer to other subjects as well we're continuing our alignment for prek to 12 curriculum Joan's been she'll she'll update you on the um review cycles that are happening this year at a later date I'm excited as I mentioned earlier all the intervention curriculum people we had them all in our offices yesterday they were excited they enthusiastic they were so working to align the district with all that work so it's a really nice model we put into place and I'm looking to see some reap some benefits from that moving forward the curated resources the Rew cycle has to continue the gaps continues to be um worked on Jan's going to present also um I think at the next meeting about the curriculum work that happened over the summer and some of that relates to this work as well I already mentioned y reveal so I won't mention that again and again we did encourage we and I asked Mr list to put that in the handbook we are encouraging and really trying to promote that but moving forward I hope we do sort of set that expectation that they should at least take one um in the future when our schedule better aligns to that [Music] work so dat a dashboard is going to do some great things for us yeah so we've spent uh we launched the dashboard probably we talked about a lot last spring but we really officially launched it in June so the Administration has spent time with the dashboard we're still finalizing ing dashboard but I wanted to show you a couple of slides from what the administrators are using or could be using the data for so this is called the um my student Explorer and you can see how I selected mathematics on the left on the dashboard and then in green is um how Holliston students performed on a standard it's hard to read the standard compared to the state average I can't read any of it so just if you could see that were clearly hollon students are clearly about to yeah see that this is what years ago when I was an assistant principal or get my spectacle though director curriculum we had to hand pull all this data and then we would look at we would analyze the standards together this is going to pull it for us so now we can look very quickly and say these are the standards we're weaken and these what we want to help teachers focus on is this grades 3 through eight or how does this uh this is I'm looking at the filters this is uh all schools so it's it would be great 3 through 10 right math is in 10 3 through 10 okay will there be a a login that we can give to to the school committee that takes out any student specific stuff is there a way of bifurcating it so that you know there's a access that only like gives you the high low stuff we can play play around I think what we've talked about with open architect is that we may be able to have some um data that is visible on our website but I don't know if we'd be able to have specific logins cuz I don't know how we just we're still looking into a little bit more but we were hoping to have similar to what Desi does with um mcast dat it's generalized data all so that's what we're hoping that we can at least put access so the public can see some of the different sources and we're we're still finalizing the school based dashboards to get to get the schools comfortable with their data and then we can you know investigate that I do I will share later one school is pursuing they have a really Innovative idea for parents which I'll share in a few minutes all right very busy slide here but um I'll try to break it down on two two main things so this is really neat um a feature of our dashboard is we can actually toggle the number of days students have missed so there's 15 days missed and then these scores adjust when you adjust that slider so uh and we play with this and obviously you can imagine what what's going to happen when you do that but this these two graphs actually show pretty clearly so math number of days Miss so you have 0 to 1 days you have 77% proficient I'm sorry 80% proficient but Z or 2 to9 days you can see what happens 67% 10 to 7 17 days Miss 60% proficient so you can see that clear drop with B Miss and mcast performance that's math that's Ela we sharing this not to all but to a lot of parents can be for Connect fact that missing schol down that's that's what we're hoping to get to is be able to share some of this data and then when we meet with parents at at conferences and things like that to be able to literally have that data to have those discussions as well all right you go to the next slide all right another very detailed slide but again uh just to show you this is a star assessment which is actually we're going to hold on to that data start we're no longer using but we're going to keep the data and then we're introducing ANL and I ready dashboard which are not quite ready yet but similarly you can see this toggle here this is a 50% uh star Math and how it correlates to the mcast score and the same thing with star reading and this graph shows a correl correlation you can see clearly the map is more strongly correlated than the ELA but there's definitely that trend of star being a good predictor they told us this three years ago they said when you purchase this product you're going to see you're going to see it as a reliable predictor cast performance and maybe the two principles can chime in on that but you to the star data former principal um but star was a great product but it was missing a couple pieces that we needed and that I already and I EXL give us those pieces teachers have access to that level of The Benchmark assessment for their students um The Benchmark uh for star and yes yeah like on on through open architect not just through so once once we have it all rolled out and it's all we make sure that the data is all in there at some point this year we're going to be opening that up to teachers so that they can run their own reports to this as well yes great question all right we also have Behavior dashboard and we we took picked our favorite student Big Bird to show you how this would work uh big bird has an offense let's say a cell placentino that incident is listed there uh here's the offender again you can imagine if it's a it's po Behavior day um that would be a strong a high long list and then we have all these graphs to show uh Behavior patterns throughout the school and this is filtered by date you can filter by category you can filter by special education e so it breaks down any category you want want to look at as an administrator and see the patterns and and to have this data transition not only to each grade level but to the next building because sometimes we say you know there's a lot of data that we keep in folders that gets doesn't necessarily go to the next building but for accounts to be able to flag children that could be a risk as they enter a new building is really as the as the former principal who owned the majority of the mcast that occurred in the district and but also you know sat between two buildings build the high school and the transition I'm so unbelievably excited by this and wishing as far as how we actually correlate and have conversations as far as discipline attendance impact on academic performance um and how we can do that just even the conversations in eye opening for families be like oh my goodness um this is this is fantastic and then also being able to look at it by demographics and inequities in that respect because we know that that exist as well special ed um people of color so there's all sorts of pieces we can pull from this it's interesting to be able to have a really data driven conversation about things that sometimes are a little more like Blurry blurry yeah exactly it's been hard for us great it's it's hard to uh bring all that data together uh and have a tool that actually can can do that it's a thing we know or we see as as as administrators or what the research tells us but then actually actually to be able to pull our our very real hollisten data together to tell us those similar stories is powerful at the student level too currently what placentino and Miller are doing are these just ginormous Google spreadsheets which is really cumbersome and you can't really analyze things right it's that's a good point how are we captur if some folks are using Google spreadsheets and another Das how are we ensuring all this data is getting in here right great question so we're having a conversations like can those Google Sheets be transferred to the Gradebook the dashboard does a great job pulling the grade book grades um and the assignments and the standards so why can't we put some of these Google sheet things we're doing into the grade book and we can hide those from the public usually hide certain assignments from the public so we're having those conversations okay right so over time this will just get better yes we met yeah we met with like each school I know I had a chance to meet with my team in open architects and we went through everything from the you know uh if we uh aligned standards to assignments and test questions and all you I mean you can go deep you really you know over time it just takes time to build all of those components and this is where the curriculum and interventionist Specialists are going to get training on this right away because they tomorrow yes tomorrow because what's going to happen is now when they put the Dibbles data in or any other data sources get entered into here it's going to automat be updated then they can run their reports in real time and put those intervention groups much more quickly and not have to wait weeks for the data to but some things um are going to be transferred right away I mean like uh D has been working mrcl has been working with open Architects so can something like dibles is being transferred right away mcast is being transferred right away ISL I'm ready they're working on that you know so some things we're not going to have to wait on right this will be immediately trans this year right basically it's every every night there's a SN so the dash dashboard's going to update but I do want to share Dr cus could just touch on this the student companion is what our interventionists will be able to use and that's where they can document interventions I know it's hard to see apologies we'll zoom in next time uh but we can actually list interventions attendance engagement and they are very excited about that yeah and I do want to share the one school that had a great what I thought was great idea you as you recall last year we started mailing home uh star assessment results in the physical so uh at plastino Dr slany and Miss Cordo they had the meeting with open architect they saw all the dashboards and they said why can't we take that one dashboard with attendance dibles all of our other assessments why can't we just print that and it captures everything for the parents you know their their entire entire picture child why can't we just print that dashboard so open Architects actually love that idea they hadn't done it before not going to be ready overnight but they're actually working on a potential solution where we can take that dashboard type view and provide it to parents whether it be electronic or printed we don't know yet but that's another feature of the product that we're really excited about I think this is really exciting I can see like a lot of potential for how it would inform your school Improvement goals your your for next generation of your strategic plan I'm wondering at the high school um like there's a lot in here around supporting like an early warning system are you thinking about integrating um course grades in there monitoring who failing courses passing courses so it already can pull um progress report grades term grades final grades I think what we're trying to drill down to is to where you know because you could have a paper that's due and that grades it over time um trying to find as many different data points as possible in there so that's when we in our meeting with open architect asking about you know what can we do about looking at assignments that they we talked about like assessments um looking at different assessments and that being an indicator um I think right now again with our schedule the way it is if you think about it a class runs 90 days by the time you had a test the grade goes in what's that's four weeks out of the year that's done um 20 days 25 days out of the Year done um for that class so um this that'll really help us this year you know to start that work and then you know hopefully in the future to be able to really make those interventions we're also going to be doing The Benchmark assessment three times a year as well and that data will be pulled into here so that will help you also put some of those that'll be the initi yeah that piece as well it'll help us with some initial data that will allow us right away to put with some inter inter iions in place I think you know somebody's missing from the party here is Jess Speedy but I think what what this brings into you know into special education as far as you're be able to go tracking and tracking progress actual interventions that you're putting in the day they can track on on that like it's it's very important removes a lot of subjectivity out of certain things and they would be using the same feature that the interventionists are using to track that and some of this data now that we'll have quicker access to can actually form the goals for the IEP as well okay you'll see some of the these percentages and whatever put right into the IEP in the future so we'll come back to you at a later date when we do have some more data to share and you can decide when You' like us to present on that but I suspect that our principles will all be like talking about bringing some of this data into our our goals discussion in October will be up the next step as well thanks Dan thank you're welcome this is fun stuff any questions suggestions we are still running behind schedule um but uh let's see do a school opening we're going to go to our central office updates so I'm going to let um we have some pictures to show some of the wonderful things that happened this year I know not everything was um perfect um so we will be talking about that a little bit but I I don't want some of the um challenges we experien with busing so forth this year to overshadow the amazing opening we've had overall and it's been very positive so I did ask Joan and um we and I also work with try to put some pictures together to share with you related to um I in the overall feel very positive opening we've had at all levels that up [Music] so really excited to share what's been going on uh I put together what's been going on this summer and so we'll go over some things new staff orientation for those of you don't know was held on August 19th and 20th the first day the peers and uh new staff of came second day the teachers and the mentors have possible came so there were presentations from all Central Administration as well as the bill building leaders presentations on the following topics um embarking on their journey in Holliston road map to Student Success State safe and support of schools in Holliston Building Bridges together District finance and operations District Tech overview educator evaluation and teach Point that's our evaluation platform strategic plan understanding by Design curriculum documentation th tour of the community time with their mentors and principles and time with new colleagues so very successful two days um Dan's Tech um Department worked with me on taping all the presentations so those are accessible to all staff to keep referring back to them um over the course of the Year staff's first day I wanted to thank the PTO for providing a incredible welcome back breakfast that everyone enjoyed in the cafeteria let me go to the next slide we had the superintendent's welcome and then Jay Patel who um chair Mr Alfred talked about he talked about project 351 an incredible student there very well spoken and talked about how project 351 has impacted him as well as the students in Holliston school committee chair also presented as well as hft um chair orc excuse me president with longevity Awards and then the teachers went back to their buildings for faculty meetings thank you for for picking the what must have been the absolute best picture I I do want to comment on Jay just because um you know I've gotten an OJ the last two plus years he started as our project 351 Ambassador in 8th grade in 2022 at Rams um and he talked you know very openly about his disability and how his hearing loss has impacted his ability to communicate at times and that student um having seen him grow and prosper the last few years project 5351 and all the amazing teachers and administration he's had in the district has made such a world of difference um this summer he came to our Mass superintendent conference and that's why I asked him to come speak with us he last year he worked with kala um on Project 351 Celtics Playbook initiative which I had applied for the last two years and we're going to apply to again so two of our students are able to attend these training sessions and they become Trainers for the district so Jay and kala last year I watched him very nervous at first training our middle school students three times or four times last year I forget and I I kept checking in with him but then to see him show up and speak in front of 500 plus superintendents and assistant superintendant I was amazed because he didn't tell me he was going to be there he kind of surprised me and he put up a very nice slide about the work that we've done together so I was so proud to see him come back and give back to the district and he's he's a student that we will continue to follow now as a junior this year and then we have some really nice pictures um from off four districts I me off four districts off four Schools they're opening days so there's some sweet pictures of placentino first day move on to Miller we did a lot of great organizing in the cafetorium um so did placentino so they really utilize all spaces to organize the students very well can I just I I didn't have pictures in time to put in here um I did I should have been able to add them tonight but I had forgotten but today we did have first day for prek and kindergarten so I know uh you were there m Dr Jordan and I was there and I ran from kindergarten over to help with preschool because they were happening pretty closely I only saw one student crying um we had a very hard time one particular student but in general I was amazed yeah oh boy I was very surprised I saw some nervous kindergarteners but I didn't see tears unless after I left you did but I did not parents gr mostly parents they were doing a nice job and then we had a very good end of the day dismissal procedure as well so that was great to see some nice pictures from RS and students were excited to get back in the classrooms and finally at the high school and um we have a new therapy doct yes so I those of you who knew Spencer and no I'm drawing a Penny thank you so um I did post some pictures of Spencer and Penny were the former um therapy dogs that um have come to holl high school in the past as you probably know um they Spencer was always holding the fle with penny at the there actually now a memorial that had been done um in Hoppington for the marathon so I did post a picture of formerly Spencer and Penny and this is Jimmy Jimmy is 18 months so I got to meet him um at opening day the other day and his sister whom I don't recall her name is 8 months old and she will be coming to join us as well he was um Jimmy was a little bit bored and um a little bit lazy that day and I was informed by his um trainer that he his sister actually is much more suited to this work but he's doing a very good job it takes over is it two and a half years I think so I think it's between two to three years we do have therapy dogs for that those you don't know at um placentino am Mar Cohen brings her dogs to school for us and we used to have dogs at Rams and we used to have a dog at Miller but um we do have still nugget at the high school and nugget I also saw an opening day I was very happy to be there as well and then we had a wonderful welcome um to school from the high school just play Quick Clip oops the detention I s nice I love it oh it's not going to go you get the idea at any rate um Mr Kay has been out there the last few years with um I can't get back in okay playgrounds um I did walk around was a little hot but I did walk around I wanted to get current pictures for you so I'll let Dr Jordan talk a little about the work we've done over the summer this play um you know this has been uh a great project uh well overdue um and you know I I think Mr Bay and I have been pretty excited about like the the outcome so far um I I spoke to uh James ke who's assisting with this on this uh and hopeful that it will be complet did um early next week is the projection for those so that's um considering when they broke ground and where we are right now I think it's a pretty pretty efficient turnaround that's great those uh those playgrounds they're looking great needed a little work they they were always safe but they good to make make some progress that no signs fell awesome and and we I will say the didn't say even prior to the new chain they did not have any broken bones or anything in the past we were but clearly there was updated cosmetically for sure we had some ISS back in the day there was cement under those monkey bars I'm just say we all turned huh cement it is a cement path that they put covering over I me hard cement no they it's almost the kind of but hard the the to Anchor the to Anchor to Anchor the equipment you know it's just pushing I don't mean here I mean it growing up there was just monkey bars and concrete and merry rounds and there was no mulch or pads or anything it was you know free for all but I will say that the visually I feel like also additionally that's it's very visually appealing as what we're adding to the front of the school fancy um there's some additional uh work we're doing in front of Miller to kind of clean that up our outdoor Alliance has been very helpful um in kind of cleaning up um kind of the integrity and kind of the the Aesthetics uh of the outsides of our ability and I think this adds to it and then as you know we talked about um other projects that we planning on doing this summer one of them being the camera project and the auditorium wall um it's finally done um I know that I'll let either Mr B or Dr joh talk talk about that a little bit more but I believe we said 20 plus years that was on the capital requests so this is the first year we were able to get the town to be able to fund that as a capital request and once I got funded James ke on the town side worked very diligently to make sure this project happened do you want to give us a little update on that well it's very interesting I mean speaking of Aesthetics like it fits in it matches what the the the roofing or the cover that's uh over the Fieldhouse enough that like when I kind of shifted in this role I was like can somebody show me where they did the project he like the whole thing that whole thing right there um and uh these photos we did uh we had kind of the final Mr buay and I had the final walk through um earlier this morning um with the company that did the work um they you know they're handful of uh punchless things that need to be kind of cleaned up or whatever but um they did they did great work and we've got some you know it's nice to get up there and kind of get a close look at at the the finished product and I think I know Mr M you can talk about the fact that you you put this through a capital request for many many years I believe the school commity voted it all those years no school turned it down okay so yes because of and part of this was that we were also putting an SOI we've had six sois put forward for the um msba project for hopefully getting a new high school so there was because we saw a figure of anywhere between $750 to a million doll there was a not a desire to spend that kind of money if we were going to replace the high school but then it's been so many years of this leaking that um the town did and it didn't cost that much exactly that's the thing we weren't going to spend a million dollars but it was a lot the price hasn't changed much in the 20 years in all honesty I mean it started as a half a million dollar project only went to 700,000 but the the the challenge um or the benefit that we had I shouldn't say challenge the town was always getting funding the benefit we had with all the aror money that came in that the town was able to prioritize a number of capital projects with that it would allowed us to kind of piggy back onto there so which if we didn't have that we probably wouldn't have had it done that again so they they water tested it and yeah there's there's one spot that they're still playing around with all so I just want to be clear I liked the color that they painted it the great weal today about they offer to go back we're in Boston Globe I think you mean the green you like the [Music] green awes I want a mural up there that's what I want I like Stone and off col you under the insurance policy to send kids up no I'm not going to put kids up there artist we have a whole artist Community yeah so if you recall a few years ago we talked about how we had exterior cameras on all four buildings um but we did not have interior cameras and we worked to get some funds to put interior cameras of five or six at the high school and middle school and we still had pictures Pockets where we could not see if there was a serious safety issue um so we did allocate some small amount of funds to increase the cameras but but now we have interior cameras at all four buildings you want entrances mostly right day you want to talk about we we put we put another 20 cameras into place we we had um 10 between the high school and middle school in the past we added five more to each building um while the likelihood of being able to cover every inch of every interior space is zero um you know we do cover a lot of the major places and you know again you you you use it when things go wrong you know and and it's not it's not going to be preventative it's going to be you know something that as as you do either as it's happening or after it's happened to do investigation so um so you know if you look at the grand total that's 30 on the inside and another 36 on the outside so we have 66 cameras right now on our campus so so we are watching not us you but when we need to yeah and I think the other piece you know we've had situations where um students on an IP might have a social emotional breakdown and we've had bolting issues when a child might be hiding somewhere to be able to go through the cameras and be able to visually see the path they took more efficiently and quickly and be able to locate you know I mean un I would say as a as a principal um I found that cameras very useful I I think that they they also serve as a especially for the the Wy middle schooler is serves as a preventative tool um as well knowing that that camera is aimed right into the place that they want to be the most naughty so do we have smile your own you know I know I should add those signs right just really make no so we we've been very busy and by far and large just have had a very successful opening um students are happy to be back staff was very excited to be back the other day um and we are looking forward to the days to come did you have anything else um on finance and operations to add Mr B did you do your tour yes I did well done the last time the last time trying to make it the last time for a number of years we can move on okay um so reports from subcommittees uh Communications can I had some things oh sorry I thought you were no no okay um I wanted to make sure you guys saw so we're really excited it's been a lot of work but we created French immersion Eureka Mass squared student workbooks and um they were translated by eron Snider and Dylan NOS our own staff and um much researched by Dan and Keith to figure out what printer to create the booklets and I'll pass some examples around uh Crystal Marino who is the placentino stem coordinator and myself delivered all the French um immersion books to teachers prior to the students arrival and they were really surprised and pleasantly um really excited to have these so this pass these around this is uh this is the English version of the kindergarten but those two are the translated ones right so the company could not and would not translate for us so we had to come up with our own Solutions so that our students could access it so this is what the company gave us in English and these are the ones that Joanie was able to actually help reproduce with the help of our French emersion teachers they're really nice um I also very briefly wanted to tell you we were very busy with a lot of Staff completing completing summer curriculum work and I just want to briefly tell you about what things were done so there was a development of a new French imersion class at the high school called sounds and screens um K through 12 Pathways to sealed by literacy work K through2 World Language proficiency mapping and rubrics and French immersion curriculum writing all three of those things came out of recommendations from the world language review um Sexual Health units for Middle School grades three and four um Health units development of organic chemistry a new class at the high school development of Project Lead the Way a new class at the high school um let's see uh conceptual Physics course creation at the high school New course social studies at the high school um election 2024 revamp 12th grade ELA course revision AP Language new unit development n9th grade Lit circles unit development high school math reveal curricul curriculum work Rams math curriculum shifts did a ton of work over it so did a lot of work in prep for the math study group sixth grade Research Unit and argument writing unit 8th grade civics project revamp um Rams sat curriculum map Miller Eureka Mass squared monory crosswalk of curriculum placentino Eureka m curriculum documentation grades 3 through 5 writing scope and sequence development prek through 2 El uh map and update of scope and sequence and then Mr McLoud can talk about some curriculum work he was able to complete uh yes so we we continue the project of migrating our Google sites mainly Google sites to our final site platform which is translatable so we're still trying to do that uh we we did a extended day and sorry I'm draw no some high school sites U I believe we did uh Global Citizens but I can't be positive on that anyway we contined that work the main thing was we developed uh documentation for the new devices our staff receiv received um over the summer so our staff developed training videos and documentation to help teachers um navigate the new device and just speedy and Jerry ver were also able to have curriculum summer work done for both of them and I'm not sure I do not know the details but kind of busy work over the summer right we're still getting some of those devices out but just quickly the all teachers will have a new device and all administrators correct it said the teachers administrators and counselors all have new devices did not include uh PA professionals and front office staff they're not in this refresh so there's different people are a little confused but that's that's how we do our refreshment Cycles but they will have access they still have access to Compu not the new definitely yeah they just don't have the newer new devices I just wanted to add one thing that one thing we left out was with the production of those books um we gone out Dan had gone out and gotten a couple of quotes from from printing vendors around thank you mid-30s is what they were talking about per year per year per year for every year we were able to acquire the copy or that did those books for 19,000 so between toner and and paper we're still looking at less than 25,000 easily and that's you know and that 19,000 of that 25 goes away in years 2 3 four five and six so um it's going to be in the long run big savings for the district you can see they came out very professional so if you your central office in the next few days you'll see when Mr bdet found out that that much larger than life cost copier was coming and we had no place to put it we had to come up with a quick plan so you you're going to see that um we not just for that reason but that actually made us move a lot quicker so um many of us are moving our offices to try to create efficiencies with departments there's a lot of reasons behind our moves but um and Dr Jordan come up at different things but that copy forced us to do it sooner than later so um I moved all of my office um I know in Mr mccloud's office he's going to be in Mr B's former office but we'll get you the locations when you're up there just be prepared that you're not going to find people in the same places moving forward but the copy of fourar hands a little quicker than expected and 113 in wide it's very biggest copy I've ever seen you get it in there I know right careful we didn't get it in they connect it once it's in three pieces so wow okay all right so uh Dr Mar apologize but is that uh that's it you're good okay thank you that was Keith okay good all right uh subcommittees uh Communications um can we have a couple meetings over mostly working on theq but I posted on the um website I know we've got a couple things we'll try and out over the next meeting okay um so we'll we'll be adding some additional information B like based on these conversations and put the um the link to the interview as well had a lot of good information okay uh policy well we not La by but we'll schedule me in the next couple weeks this was kind of out of order just try to get that one sure handbook piece done makes sense and budet anticipates having a meeting before our next school committee the Ed to reach out and discuss everyone's availity I don't have a date I know I I know September 11 we can talk about that um and superent evaluation same schedule something this month okay um one thing I was also say just about I did talk or sort of exchange messages with the Town Administrator and some of the pon members just about ensuring that we answer any questions that they have we did provide the select board and the finance comme with a with a uh um a write up of of our projections that that that Keith uh and uh Dr Jordan and I worked on um in come is has chosen not to meet again before the override take a position on it certainly they haven't um I know some members of the community have been asking them to um but I think that if any of way personally they may do that but uh it will not be meeing to discuss it can you share that with the committee please oh it's it's on the town website oh okay [Music] yep it say it's from the chair so okay um share s it was it was shared with this Le officially on Monday yeah but it was a few weeks prior to that all right um so old business I don't know why I put it under old business um but uh just a discussion sort of school openings some challenges uh anything that um we just talk about just to sort of this is more like just to sort of provide information to the community that may not have have uh seen some of it and uh you know explain what we're doing to uh remedy those those those challenges so Mr B worked with um his Department um helping to get Transportation up and running this summer so I've asked him to give you an update on some things that occurred even though he's to communicated some of this already sure the the um as as many of you know last year was our first year with this new software package so the end of that is is the turnover process of the students and the roots to the next year um we're dealing with a veteran project manager from from the company the company's transfinder and she laid out a plan that I would have thought we would have done exactly kind of what we did when we started which is start with all new people all new everything and plow forward she said you don't want to do that we never do that anywhere we just roll things over and okay roll things over you know I donate your product um there's a couple unfortunate um byproducts of rolling it over um we as a district do something that many and I'll maybe even say most District don't do which is allow people to kind of have multiple places they get off the bus um in a given in a given week um it's something that that she didn't take account for um it created some data issues when the roots got mapped out the first time um because literally we had children going to the wrong stops parents didn't request a new stop but was I was still sending them to the original stop because that's what was there cuz it did the old stops did not get cleared out so nor did they which I guess I don't know if they can do we're going to have to find that out going forward nor did they get restated to at least their home stop you know so we had parents who literally wanted to have their children picked up their home and that's not what we produced because again the software predetermined that they wanted to go to this new stop that did not get cleared out by the company so that was the first challenge um going down the path so we got a late start on our rooting there secondarily on on the ongoing basis of you know parents are the July 15th around that date we usually pick a Friday or no we yeah we pick a Friday to give people through the Monday should say that out loud um we used to pick a Friday um uh as the cut off date they don't pay attention to it more people than ever handed things in late which again throws us behind and as much as we want to set a hard and fast date you know when you have a child that needs a bus that may be of a certain age where we can't have them walk a half a mile to a bus stop um we have to start adding stops possibly moving routes and that you know again you set up one plan and literally today we actually turned around an entire route today um you know because of changes that have happened and challenges we've had with with the third problem that happened late which was um unfortunately the the bus company um had two drivers that that resigned they knew they they knew that one was going to probably leave one left unexpectedly so we ended up having to pull a high school route or they did from the from the from where we had routed it um they pulled a high school route on Monday last week and a uh they tried doing a middle school rout they couldn't get that in they pulled a placentino run route excuse me on uh either late Monday or early Tuesday so again we had to reproduce the passes again and so um we just got it just all these things kept combine you know combining to the to the problems of that we had that stretched it out further and further um one of the unfortunate things that they didn't tell us was that a Miller school bus was going to run we have two we now only have two buses that do uh runs that are that do the high school runs that don't do elementary runs um they had one of the Elementary buses do one of those runs which unfortunately that means they got a late start cuz the two longer runs we could start them as early as we want cuz there's no run before so that again compounded that run to a really bad fashion in all honesty and it's something we didn't know about I mean I I can't you know you know David was at the at down there and it's like every saying where's Bus 15 it's like what do you mean where's Bus 15 you know and we found out that diff that bus 15 would had in the morning run the Miller run had driven thei bus 7 and now was doing 15 which is like you know so we've been chasing our taals a little bit to say the least um and still with the ongoing thing of people bringing bus you know making bus requests today I'm not I produced another 11 or 12 passes today for people who requested passes today it this is you know I'm not sure recommendation wise going forward um I'm not sure I'm not sure do we the questions are going to be do we continue to allow multiple stops it creates a complicating factor that while the software can handle it's still it's still taking multiple seats on a bus especially going to the potential of next year of changing making a major change to our bus runs um you know how hard and fast do we make that date I mean you know that's that's a big thing the other thing that I am going to strongly recommend though is that um some I don't know was anybody on the committee Cynthia were you on the committee before we had bus fees or not um no okay before we had bus fees it's actually in the polic before we had bus fees we had mileage um requirements we wouldn't transport children from certain miles because again it should be a walk it should be a a safe route to school or whatever you want to say um we have a great number great number is a big exaggeration we have a number a non insignificant number of students that are one step from getting driven across the street and you know it it adds stops times you know for things that don't need to happen and then by the springtime those children are walking anyway you know and so it's it's it's doing things that are harming our to root efficiently and effectively um by having these one-offs and unfortunately there's a lot of one-offs so um it's been a discouraging start um we're working through it I mean it's you know people can certainly and the office can certainly attest to the amount that we're working through it I mean on Monday night I mean you you you you reminded me that I agreed to uh zoom into the meeting and I literally just left the office at whatever time you hit me ate something um you know and Kim who works for me um was still there she left around nine it was later than that yeah but I'm saying is that this is this is you know again we're working the problem there's there there's no nobody in in in in now our organization that is is Shing their Duty or taking this lightly I mean it's just not the case so um you know but you know again we're we're working it and do doing the best to grind through it so I do I do think we're going to have to think about I I had not heard of um ever being allowed multiple stops as a parent to in my own Community or even on the districts I've worked I it's very complicated I think the margin for error and then just the things that we're going to be looking at moving pool we may not it would be my recommendation that we wouldn't be able to do that moving pool because it just creates more complications to you know already very challenged um transportation system it's tough on the driver too I mean the driver is it Tuesday where is this the day I pick this child up from here or they not are they not with me I mean it is literally and we've had requests to have three different stops on a given morning or afternoon three different stops depending on the day of the week and it's you know I we don't do that that that we refuse you know is there I mean I think we should get some feedback from from the community but then also is it if people want that are they willing to to to pay for it well I well they do we do we do charge an extra $100 there is a fee but it's just what some of it some of it's Child Care some of it is parents who who don't live in the same household um you know I mean there's a lot of mitigating factors some of it's that some days they go to my grand my parents house their grandparents house it's I there's all sorts of reasons but at some level we can only do so much I think much but at the same time if they're going to two houses because they live in two different houses you know sort of I understand but they manage it on Saturdays I I just I I'm just saying I it's it's expectations have to be set differently if you know think about see if there's a way to sort of you know incentivize certain Behavior or disincentivize certain Behavior I think I certainly think that we should look at you know you sign up by this date and you get this is your bus Fe you sign up you know late you yeah the $25 is they no me I'm just saying it hasn't been a that hasn't been a disincentive is there a cut off date at all yes yeah yeah okay it's say sometime around the midle of mid July July and and again like I says we usually try to make it a Friday to give mail the opportunity to get to us on on a Monday you know and that was the other problem too I mean we mailed out passes on Wednesday Tuesday Wednesday Wednesday and Thursday Wednesday and Thursday Wednesday and Thursday but things were not getting there even by Monday forever I and I understand they took out equipment with the previous regime in the White House I get that but still it's you know yeah so I think you know there's there are things that we're going to review and um the trans we'll do differently going into next year but we just had an an unusual layer of events that compounded things so so the only the only com I'll make about all of this is I just think more communication we can do like as soon as we recognize there's going to be an issue it's just I felt like there was a lot of stress for families who were waiting for those passes and even if it's just like they're coming don't worry about it get on a bus just just so people are aware down the schedules right because I think people understand these kind of glitches it's just if they're told right one thing one thing I don't disagree one thing we did do that's different is that we Jody Renee was able to create a form um in power school that made it to the parent portal that we were able to take the the data from the bus pass and and propagated it up there so as we were working this problem she went off in a different direction cuz she couldn't do the the routing stuff but she went off in a different direction to put that together so we actually do have a new feature so but that's last week right right right right well I'm say it's it's being needed before so no no but so so going forward at least parents will be able to get the schedule to win because obviously you can just say you know what if you don't have the pass for the first week we'll we'll we'll wave that here's your here's your here's your stop time and then the challenge with that and something Susan brought up and we almost were going to go down that path except then Jody Rene came with this other solution the problem with that is especially at the high school middle school run in the Queens I've got at least three full her buses um and a fourth that dabbles in there that's full my neighborhood brettwood is full you know I it's if you say oh yeah you don't need a pass for the first week what happens when 78 kids try to get onto a 77 passenger bus I mean there's 26 there's 26 benches each bench holds well 27 25 of the 26 holds three one holds two there was a bus that posted online that they have the list of of of kids right so so you know you don't need to pass but you need to be on I mean well again you're talking about time then too though I again there is no perfect answer is is my point there is no you know cuz if the buser has to look up your name on the list every time you know that's going to be a little bit of a a drag on the process so if I can hop in for a second to your point the communication like by putting all of this or more of this in power school we're going to leverage all of the communication tools from power school that's great cuz it's better even to have all of that stuff in one place all of the stuff like so the parents know this is where I go for information about buses and other so I think that's great so in summary no one's happy with how things went we all recognize we we can and and need to do better but there are multiple causes some of which were we out of control absolutely um anything else about the opening uh that was was challenging nothing that's come my way um and Mr list I spoke with you and I you haven't had any other um concerns brought to you yeah I mean we had some you know we had some issues with um Power School um with the initial release um of the schedules um working Mr McLoud Jody Ree and the aps um we asked power school to do something they did something completely different um and uh reran our whole schedule for us so we had to spend some time on August 14th through still now um finding some of those errors we we we put out a form to families to fill out um when they find um either gaps in the schedule or a missing class whatever we had 57 students um fill that out um out of the 800 schedules um but as I said nothing I mean it wasn't fun to try to fix we're still as I said we're still finding some of those errors in there um uh but we nothing has really come my way um regarding [Music] it any question okay um for those anyone watching still at 954 obviously if there if there are concerns please reach out to the uh to the administrators and make sure everyone's aware because if they're not aware of problems can't fix it okay so lastly uh is uh the ification of the 2024 2027 contract with the hall to cafeteria Association um I will uh own the fact that I I made a mistake usually a lot of times we going have executive session before we discuss contract to to get an update from the negotiating team about anything that may have happened in how the uh negotiations went I missed that didn't did not get that on on the uh the schedule um I think there's a there's definitely a benefit to voting on this tonight um makes it easier administratively gets people certainty who are in those jobs uh at the on the other hand I can understand how it's sort of being presented with something for the first time and not having really an opportunity to kind of ask full you know freely questions that may not be answerable uh publicly uh could be difficult so um I'm going to let Keith sort of uh give a overview and then we'll sort of take a consensus of whether people are are are ready to vote on it there I think the the we negotiated with for three sessions with um three right S I think so yeah for three sessions I it was four um with the uh with the unit um and and I I think while we had a an interesting start I think we got to a real good place um they understood some of our needs we understood some of their needs and and it didn't require a lot of changes um but again I'll quickly go over them um we codified the the the sick Leaf piece where they could use five of their 10 sick days for a family member and and asked for them to uh provide a doctor's note after day three so from day four on if they're out that many consecutive days um and that that that second piece is a is the change there a big change we were able to eliminate the the next the next Clause because that's how got that was embedded now into the sick Leaf Clause so that um provision did that um the we raised the pay the the C ceria um has kind of levels of employees the cook manager kind of runs that kitchen um when they're out sick or at a conference or something like that somebody will fill in and do those duties of making sure lunches are out in a in a timely fashion and an appropriate fashion um that person used to get a $10 a day um in you know stien for for the doing that extra duty to increase it to 20 is completely appropriate I'll be honest I think it's been $10 for 24 years and I'm not exaggerating so um so that did that um the the number six one was one that we we really had to work through a lot um understanding that when somebody who's doesn't work for um well doesn't already work here sees a rate of pay that may have holiday paid holidays in there um they're not going to they don't care if they paid holidays or I make you know this much per hour um paid holidays traditionally have been used for for people who are true hourly people as a mechanism to increase their rate of pay um without necessarily showing it as a cola at this stage we want to make sure that we show that we're making that we're that they're making more money they would have Dunkin Donuts in all honesty and so we we embedded their 11 paid holidays into their salary into their rate and salary and you'll see look that computation further down um and and again we view this as something that's positive for them positive for us to be able to attract people for our vacancies so um this this was I think a big thing a good thing for both parties and this has come up in other contracts as well and we we really should not be adding holidays for people that aren't full year because again it goes back to we want it want people to see what's the highest hourly rate we can provide them and when you start watering it down by paying holidays and they don't know what that means to their annual salary it actually doesn't help us with the attraction exactly you're just starting with the lower rate so um they they made the request to unre recogniz um the position of cook manager from their unit um they were just not comfortable having a peer be their super their first line supervisor so they they asked that to be unrecognized we added the the secretary there um to to the to be we made the request to remove the secretary as well just because all those those the three cook managers and secretary all report directly to the director so it just felt weird to kind of have that dichotomy if you were taking out these direct reports to the director then to have that one it just didn't make sense and they agreed so we'll end up having to meet with those individuals yes yep that that's coming quickly um raise the raise the uh allowance for retire um you know again that that comes up from every few years Cynthia knows that firsthand so um you know that again to a reasonable level um and the salary schedule um we we we we agree not we agree we propose to them to um basically drop a step um just again raise the bot raise the floor which again in this in this market you need to do um so we we dropped a step rumed the step so if you were on two you know you're still on two but and we so we did the math we just demonstrated the math for them dropped a step uh 5% Cola and built in the 11 days so um that changes the the new starting rate for a a general worker um you know up to 1879 now um for for this coming year so that's I think a good rate with regards to at least making us competitive to similarly similar industry say type jobs whether it be a Dunkin Donuts or something of that nature without having to deal with people throwing money at you or complaining their coffee is too cold or things like that so it's I mean it's a much better environment to work here you're you're working with children I mean you know feeding children so it's you know I think it's no question about that um you know and we did the same with the uh with the part-time people who only got one thing only get one paid holiday so we built that in and then uh the The Substitute rate um has always been the the lowest step on the part-time people's rate so um so again this is something that Sarah participated in I don't know if I don't I don't know if your feelings are with with happened obviously Susan and I um were there um and uh the cafeteria workers did vote we have a signed ratified copy by them so so if you have any questions comments how many aprons it's part of the attire just part of attire now we provide the aprons no I know that they however many go through the washing machine I don't know how many aprons do you wear in a day I work as a I'm comfortable anyone I mean it's obviously a much shorter contract than thank you thank you so uh with that three meetings is pretty good almost 10 had to hear a lot of complaints did so I will entertain a motion to ratify uh the contract for the 20 for the 2024 202 to 2027 contract with the hwon cafeteria Association mve by John second by all in favor I actually let's just do a roll call vote for for Sarah yeah Frank Hillary yes Joe yes Cynthia yes Don yes Dan I'm I'm a yes as well um and then um so that brings us to the end of our agenda though I do want to just go back quickly just to the sort of the school opening and just see if can we get an update on where we stand Staffing wise and and openings yes I can get you that for the next meeting but I mean we are very well staff with teachers unfortunately we just had a resignation today um sadly um but for teachers but I I think we still do have a a handful of PA profs or maybe do we have any sense where we are like I know at one point it was pretty I don't have the current I know that that we've hired a few in the last couple of days so I don't have the current number because I was literally just signing paperwork so I don't know that LE has updated it I can send that to you so you'll know ahead of time and then I can talk about it at the next meeting and do we think that we're we're I mean I I despite they were down I mean do we think they were're in a pretty decent position to be able to you know ensure they we're we're yeah I mean we still have I wouldn't suggest that we're ever going to be out of compliance because we'll make sure that we are in compliance um but that we're that we're able to to utilize the staff that we have and not need to necessarily yes it may require some shifting in the next couple weeks as we have to try to fill some of those gaps I will say that we were very happy um to be able to F you had asked me about the chorus position and I did just meet with our new um High School chorus teacher and also um I met with trying to think what subjects I just the two positions that I was worried about at the high school are filled and then unfortunately we did have one resignation at the high school as we so we were we would have been all staff for teachers at the high school I think we're staff for everybody else but maybe one special educator at placentino I think is still open yeah I mean we're we're we're in better shape than we were were last year um and as far as in our license positions definitely and it's still less less openings than we had in our pair professionals and that's where yeah I think we're we're probably less than half of what the we had I think at this time last year we were looking at about 28 par professional openings which was very concerning I think we're about half of that or less at this point cuz we just hired a few more but I'll get you a number so needs with our with our own staff at this time we are yes yes we are not looking hire a chus teacher at the high school yes we did we also have one from the middle school so if you recall we did the um combined three through eight we took the positions from Miller and um middle school and I'm hearing it's going I actually talked with Karen yesterday and it's going very well so that the band teacher is Shifting to Miller and Rams and similarly the chors teacher is working and it's it's really going to help build our program which as we talked about I think Joanie at the end of last year as well great thank you thank you very much anything uh else from the committee all right with that our uh our next meeting is September 12th um there's important day in between now and then um what day is it uh September 10th yes um so so please mark that on your calendars and and just make sure to vote um with that I will entertain a motion to adjourn as we do not have executive session it's just a straight adjournment move by Dawn second by all in favor I carries unanimously 7 to nothing uh with that we are adjourned good night