good evening hollison uh welcome to the May 23rd 2024 meeting of the hollon school committee uh we welcome three new members uh to to the committee this evening um if you guys want to take a quick second to introduce yourselves before we get started there will be time for individual comment but I thought we just get it right to you I so I'm sorry I should have warned you we can do later too do all right Frank you want you want to start sure Frank goora uh happy to be part of the committee looking forward to it partnering and um serving our schools in our community Hillary bresnahan um also very excited to be part of this team Joe Peru very excited to be on the committee um ready to roll up my proverbial sleeves and get to work excellent so we've got three excited new members we're going to pull them at the end to see if that's they're shiny now um so tonight uh we're going to go to the consent agenda then we're going to pull something out of order so um for for the first I'd like to make entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda but pull the May 20th uh 2024 minutes uh out and we we'll take those up at at a separate time uh for new members since you weren't here you're more than welcome to abstain from that that's usually kind of what people do um so is there a motion move by Tom seconded by Cynthia all in favor all uh opposed obain St same okay so it passes for uh 03 um so with that I'd like to move and pull uh forward um from new business um the ratification of the 2024 to 2027 contract with the hollon Federation of teachers uh educating unit so uh we we have a a contract um the teachers earlier today ratified the contract and one second and so um we are now here to to vote on that ratification out s to vote on the school committee ratifying that contract so um this is really this is really exciting it's it's a culmination of s or eight months we met uh we've met with we met with the teachers for 14 sessions over 28 hours of of really productive uh communication shared a lot of ideas and uh back and forth um and the contract that we've come to is what I believe to be a very good contract it's good for the teachers it's good for our students and it's good for the residents of hollison but before I give some more details of the contract I do want to State up front that this contract is subject to uh the passage of an override later this year um I understand that that is going to give some people in the community some pause um and hopefully as we go forward over the next few months um we'll get a chance to educate everybody about exactly what this contract does for the community for the kids and for the teachers um I hope everyone can keep an an open mind because I as I said I do think that this is a a really good thing for for the town um this agreement is about far more than compensation it's about improving our students educational experience So to that end starting in the 2025 2026 school year assuming with the passage of of the override uh the student day will be lengthening by 15 minutes except at placentino where be uh extended by 10 minutes this equates to 45 hours of additional instructional time a year and 30 for all schools except for class unit where is 30 hours over the course of a student's K through 12 education it'll be 540 minutes of an increased educational time just to sort of level set that sort of the State uh standard for for time on for time on learning every year is 990 so over a k through 12 educations is more than a half a year of increased education for the students of hollison that is an incredibly meaningful amount um which I think that over time will will bear uh significant fruits for for for the town um additionally we've we've negotiated some some increased flexibility for for for planning time at the middle and high school um a committee to look at potential changes and schedules the of the middle of the high school um increased uh adult presence in the hallway between classes and a few other sort of minor things that uh are important but but but less impactful uh to to the day-to-day so um finally we've negotiated a significant but fair compensation package that both compensates teachers for the additional instructional time and increases our competitiveness with surrounding districts so looking at the terms we uh in the first year we be eliminating the most the sort of the bottom entry step pay pay rate for for teachers that will help us increase our our starting competitiveness with with other districts the contract itself is a 433 uh Cola over the 3 years so 4% 3% 3% it also adds a new step in year two of $1,500 above the current first step additionally there's a 233 Cola on stiens um given the town's strained financial position you know as we've obviously talked about numerously and we had uh discussion about a town meeting uh this contract as I mentioned is contingent on the passage of an override while we're so working on some final details uh we expect the override to be roughly 1 to$ 1.2 million or about $2 200ish dollar for the average household um we realize that's not insignificant but compared to what a lot of other districts are doing right now we also think that it's it's it's a reasonable amount uh in the uh coming days we're going to be speaking with the select board about holding a special town meeting in June and um then with a override vote in September on September 3rd on September 3rd which is the primary election so um those are the the um the basic outlines of the vote and now sort of we can open that up with the vote basic outlines of of the contract I forget anything okay um so does anyone in the committee have any that they'd like to talk about discuss um before we open it up to uh any public comment I guess before we advance towards public comment I just wanted to share um with everyone uh I know Amanda Bigalow had served on the negotiation team with us and she wrote a letter in support of this um she was with us um in the negotiations since November um so this is again from Amanda Bigalow um I'm writing to support the ratification of the contract between Holliston Federation of teachers and the Holliston school committee as a school Committee Member until yesterday's election um I served on the negotiating team for this contract attending dozens of hours of meetings going over the details of the contract in every possible Financial scenario both sides made compromises to get to this point and this truly is a fair deal that will benefit the teachers the town and most importantly the children of Holliston as a former member of the budget subcommittee I feel confident in saying that this contract represents the best financial option here although I will not be able to vote on this I offer my full support to both the hft and the HSC and to the signing of this contract um and so Amanda had off offered her thoughts on that um and I also just I I received an additional letter from Minnie um and Minnie grupet uh who also served with us for the last three years congratulations to the three new committee members and thank you for your unwavering commitment to serving our community my name is Minnie Gupta and I had the privilege of serving on the hollon school committee from May 2021 through May 2024 when my term ended this Tuesday if I were still on the school committee today I would vote yes to ratify a contract with our hollon teachers union new members please vote Yes in support of our students and teachers a lot of work has gone into getting to where we are today since November 2023 we have had regular executive session updates from the negotiation team assistant superintendent of Finance Keith Bay and Dr cusa I would like to note that we are also fortunate to have Dan Alfred who served on the hallston finance committee for 9 years and the immense experience of our assistant superintendent Keith budet who was a deep understanding of our finances as part of this negotiating team the teachers approach these negotiations with an open mind working with us for many hours over 6 months to reach this contract I'm incredibly grateful and confident about this contract and excited about the positive outcomes it will bring for our students hence based on my understanding of our budget the updates regarding negotiations over the last 6 months and the positive outcome for our school district I strongly support ratifying a contract with our teachers this contract if ratified would increase instructional time for our students by 30 to 45 um hours each year enhance monitoring by teachers of our students at the middle and the high school provide additional flexibility with planning time as requested by our administrators reduce substitute teacher expenses new members you are in the position I was in just last week if I were still on the committee I would vote a resounding yes to support this contract I request you earnestly to to support the teachers and students of hollon public school and vote Yes SAR I didn't help it write that um that's why we don't get thank thank you Min and Amanda for for uh submitting those and Don for reading them um any thank you Don for all the incredible amount of work that you've done on this contract in particular and you two Amanda yes countless hours absolutely I know this has been a a great deal of work for the entire administrative team as well as the negotiating team um I I am particularly excited about the opportunity to have more time on learning for our students um in the wake of the pandemic with um chronic absenteeism being an issue in particular I hope that this would help to kind of be a reset for students um you know we have a lot of there's still hurdles to get through to get this through but I I hope that the hftt looks at this as an opportunity for a reset with them that we support them that we want to move forward with them and you know and just see what happens and just you know Advocate the best we can to move forward with the contract so that they feel supported and that we are supporting our students um and doing what's best for them so yeah I just sorry good no in the coming days we're going to be communicating a lot more information just about the process and the timeline and what what needs to happen because it it will be quick um to some degree and then we we'll have the summer but um you know again I think that this is a really great thing um the timing of it is is sort of what it is I think there going to be a lot of questions about that and we can talk about it but um things don't always line up with the sort of the the town's calendar necessarily so [Music] um so should there be an override it would bounce to about 50 cents per day per household accepting any exemptions of seniors or correct okay and we also want to work with uh you know the select board to see if there are any additional ways that we can help uh offset the impact on on our seniors because you know these are a lot of people who have lived in town for years paid into the school system seen their kids go through schools you know we the last thing we're trying to do is is is put anybody into a financial position that they that is is untenable for them where they feel like they have to move out um and we're very cognizant of that because they a lot of those are the sort of the some of the heart and soul of this of this community and so um it's uh it's very important for us to to support them as well um and we recognize that at the same time we also think that this on over the long term will be a contract that will be beneficial to to everyone and not it's all about money even though it is for me um but no but it'll be beneficial to people's you know property taxes property values as well I think this kind this kind contract makes a ton of sense uh to sum it up it improves our child our kids educations it improves the community and it supports our teachers um there's nothing really glaring in here whatsoever after reviewing it the short time um that we were able to review um and everything is a long-term positive I believe at least for the course of the three years of the contract I agree and I'm excited with um you know similar to what Cynthia said kind the amount of time well 15 minutes doesn't sound like a lot per day the cumulative time as Dan outlined is really exciting in providing our kids with more access to standards or deeper access to standards throughout the year very good so we have seen that among other school districts contracts um such as Cambridge or hopkington where they've recently increased their instructional time but not as much right um we are increasing our instructional time more than hopkington but less than Cambridge in terms of the minutes yeah yeah anyone else is there any public comment Miss Lisa Kosen please uh State your uh your name address um I know I'm not supposed to move the microphone so I can student represent Lisa Coos 158 patri former school committee I'm here to speak in heartfelt support of the proposed teachers contract since Co we have endured an exceptionally difficult few years in the Holliston Schools students families administrators par professionals and all School staff have felt the impacts first of anxiety and isolation then of learning loss and uncertainty and more recently of economic insecurity with inflation making it ever more difficult to meet the rising needs of students teachers have been on the front lines through it all we saw headlines about teachers Nationwide leaving the profession postco and who could blame them we've asked more of teachers in recent years than ever before in the history of education I think public education is at an inflection point which is a topic for another day but for now I think it's safe to say we need committed hardworking teachers to meet the challenges ahead no one gets into teaching to get rich but we all know that making enough to live in or near Holliston is not easy particularly with inflation the reality is we compete with the towns around us Millis Ashlin Framingham Milford hopkington do Sherburn for teachers we must pay competitively to attract the next generation of capable dedicated teachers and we need to offer a fair wage to retain the teachers that have built this District I know override is a scary word for many and I've already heard discussions including some tonight about protecting seniors for some of the impact from some of the impact of taxing increases there are State programs and I'm sure you guys are going to talk a lot more about this in coming weeks but I also want to share some of what I've learned about overrides not just as a school committee member for nine years but before that as a reporter for the Boston Globe where for 13 years I regularly covered Public Schools all over the Greater Boston area inflation makes the need for an override pretty much inevitable if we want to maintain reasonable funding that's because the state which supplies only a small portion of funding for our schools requires that the tax levy outside of New Growth only increase 2.5% annually which is pretty frustrating when you factor in the many mandates that come from the state and that cost money 2.5% is a completely arbitrary number in my view particularly when you consider inflation and the overall education climate we're in it doesn't take into account the rising cost of utilities or the increase social emotional needs of students or the obligation to pay teachers appropriately districts around us regularly seek overrides for the exact same reasons we are not an outlier in fact managing within a tight budget for the fast past 14 years makes the hollison public schools the Envy of other districts I was on the budget subcomittee most of my nine years on the school committee this is a district that is exceedingly careful with money I joined the school committee as a reporter ready to ask a million annoying questions about where our money goes after 9 years I can honestly say there is no waste superintendent Dr Susan Kusa and Mr Keith Bud assistant superintendent for finance and operations deserve enormous credit for solid fiscal management while many school districts made Financial commitments during covid they couldn't maintain once federal funds dried up Holliston was prudent with short-term additional Federal funding so that we didn't have a fiscal cliff requiring massive layoffs right after covid a lot of districts did in addition because Mr budet is a seasoned fiscal manager the district has benefited from years of careful choices for example Keith has long managed the school choice program so that we don't increase class sizes but do get needed Revenue years ago when I was just coming on the board we negotiated a deal with ever Source Chang in the type of light bulbs we use and installing motion sensors to reduce energy costs we have benefited from efforts to bid and lock in favorable oil and natural gas prices over the last many years we have created and improved special education programs to keep more children in District which saves money but even more importantly keeps students in their own communities there are plenty of other examples but I'm going to stop there compared to teacher contracts around us this proposed contract offers pay increases that are in line with the market but unlike many new contracts we are getting back improvements for students this contract includes more instructional time for our children almost an additional hour a week at placentino and over an hour weekly at Miller Rams in the high school for anyone worried about academic rigor and performance or rankings this is a valuable Advance the contract also includes flexibility needed for schedule changes that could dramatically improve the high school experience to parents I hope for parents this is an easy sell the average annual tax bill doesn't cover the cost of educating even one student and this small increase will not change that Massachusetts has some of the best schools in the country and Holliston ranks well compared to schools Statewide your children are getting an excellent education to homeowners Happy Teachers make for strong schools and strong schools Drive property values ask any real estate agent to Hillary Franken Joe welcome to the school committee I know you're coming on board at a slightly tumultuous time please vote for this contract and I'm hearing support so I'm really happy for context our last override in 2010 almost exactly 14 years ago passed very narrowly by a vote of 2,123 to 25 w a margin of 72 votes your support matters if you were on the fence it will put community members on the fence and our schools can't afford a failed override teacher morale has not been great in recent years and a loss like this would be devastating to the community this override to fully fund the teacher contract will amount to a modest increase over the course of the year the daily cost for the average homeowner literally works out to pocket change that's that roughly 50 cents you were talking about to everyone play out the alternative to a failed override we just got out of a long contract dispute seems like 5 minutes ago if this contract fails if the override fails we're likely starting from scratch at the bargaining Table after months or years of fighting you might save taxpayers a few bucks and here I truly am talking about pennies per day and at what cost in that scenario I see another bloated teacher morale that would cause real lasting damage to our school district none of us wants to see that please support our teachers our schools our students thank you thank you L you went a little over time a few but thank you very much good evening so I didn't prepare a statement but I just wanted to add my um affirmative to this contract I don't have a vote but I am very um optimistic and positive about the contract that we were able to um collaboratively tively agree with the teachers so that's exciting news um if you think that this is the end getting to the end of my fourth year here and I spent the first two years of my career entering the district under Co and everything else but also in mediation and then this full year in collective bargaining so three out of four years so that certainly leads to challenges when you're trying to build morale and Trust and this would be an in addition to the wonderful opportunity for our students to be able to gain more instructional time and for our teachers to have a fair contract and fair wages it's just an opportunity for all of us to reset and rebuild the relationships together and I'm really optimistic this needs to happen for our students for our teachers for our community it's a step in the right direction so I just wanted to affirm how important this is and um I'm wholeheartedly behind this and I believe I know Mr bud and Dr manard as well I don't know if they had anything to add but it's it's really a positive message and I think if we can really reaffirm the relationships that established between teachers union and school committee and administration that's been strained for the challenges that we've had and last few years this is really a positive move for all of us and I know it's not going to happen right away but I think if we all stand behind it and rally together we will do the right thing for our teachers thank you thank you anyone else um I'll just speak real quickly I wanted to thank um the all the the union members that were collaborating with us it was a long process but it was a very collaborative one that I think ended up in something very successful so I want to thank for everyone for the time that they put into all the meetings great thank you um anything else anyone wants to say do we know how much they ratified to BU we a strong majority but I don't have specific numbers so with that we'll move to a vote TR you want to come up or and we'll do this by roll call just because it's a just explain to the folks while why Travis is coming oh so yeah so uh as as T administrator Travis Hearn steps up he uh for/ student representative have to get him a sign I guess representing students um he he has a through our bylaws has the eighth vote on on any contract that we uh or Union contract that that we ratify so um I would say a word on where I'm going to vote if you want me to do that before you no go ahead and um just wanted to mention a couple things here so I look forward to um uh one of the select board members Ben Sparrow's in the room as well obviously we'll have a discussion on Tuesday night I look forward to working with the school committee uh as the chair mentioned the need for override and ballot questions uh as we get into that um obviously you're all aware but I'd strongly encourage you uh to as yourselves but also to work with the myself and the select board on a robust communication program obviously explaining the value that you you explained tonight is very important for the community um and and really explaining it to those who don't educate professionally uh the value of that time on learning so we're happy to work with you on that as we move forward um and where I explaining what my vote will be which is to abstain this evening it's not because I don't support this contract um certainly I the value of public education uh especially as compared to to private education I think you know as as the numbers that were mentioned before I think the value is explained within where we are at the moment um but simply where I am on the town side and and with contracts and what we're able to do on the town side it wouldn't be appropriate necessarily for me to vote in favor but that does not mean that I'm opposed um so thank you for allowing me to do that and I appreciate the collaboration and look forward to working with you all as we move forward thank you very much CH so with that uh we'll we'll do a roll call vote um we'll start with Frank yes Hillary yes um Joe yes Sarah yes Cynthia yes Don yes Jen I'm a yes Travis abstain so we are [Applause] ratified and again as I said look for more communication uh coming from us we uh planed putting out joint statement with the the the hft and there will be lots and lots and lots of communication um and also feel free to reach out to us especially with three new members um with any questions that you may have um I believe their emails are are live and are up on the website so uh you know please please reach out to them first um do they even have logins yet though they do oh yeah oh yes made sure of it going to Plus each one of those was that plus you in on each one of those usually sure sure yeah um so anyway it's great thank you very much everyone this is uh this is really good news I'm I'm I'm excited for this obviously there's a lot more work to be done but this is the the first real step in in in in that direction toward a really good outcome so right and a save the date for Tuesday September 3rd the primary election where you could expect to see this um to to come uh to vote on the ballot and please tune in or or show up on uh uh this Tuesday at the select board meeting uh where we'll be uh discussing uh more details of this with with the select word um so with that where are we we haven't really gotten very far we do not have student repr in tonight actually SE we've gotten very far but just not in the agenda um so uh with that uh we move to school commit individual comment yeah Joe no Sarah um just a couple things it's you know the end of the year so there's lots lots of good stuff going on um we've got the National Honor Society induction was on Tuesday so lots of amazing students there um there's the monor Showcase last week or just a couple days ago losing track of time next week There's the um I believe it's next week the preschool and kindergarten Carnival which is fantastic for you guys when your kids get there it's super cute um senior scholarship night will be on the 29th so just lots of good ways to celebrate some big achievements so um I'll just add to that that um Service Learning Community celebration is on Tuesday May 28th at 700 p.m. usually it's here yes um yes it is here um from 7 to8 it's really interesting to see what kind of projects those students have been working on my one of my kids has been in that class previous ly so I encourage folks to come out and see it it's very exciting um opportunities that those kids have um and then we're not going to be meeting until and I just don't want to forget so congratulations to the class of 2024 because we won't be meeting until after graduation right that's the plan not meeting again so anyway yes sorry wish them luck um and nothing additional beyond that anything from you nope no okay and I'm I I'm good too yes sorry um is there any more public comment seeing only our our principles and and thank you thank you all for for being postponed slightly um I think we we'll move on to the uh District Improvement plans uh part of our presentation SL School Improvement plans and I'll I'll hand that over to Dr kusan her sure come on up team come join us welcome so as we do each year we are presenting our district School Improvement plans for 2324 going to be our updates we are not going to have a huge amount of change because we did present midyear updates as well the last two years we've started doing a midyear and an in of year because it's there's just so much to share so want any wonderful things happening here all public schools so we'll be sharing what's happened since we met in January to have this discussion I have our four principles here but I'm going to start with our district portion of the goals so I'm just going to ground us again the last this is our second full year of our strategic Plan Building Bridges together is our theme with our mission to collaboratively create a safe inclusive environment that empowers all Learners through Innovative teaching and learning to be lifelong active Global Citizens and our very simple but I think strong message for our vision is embark on your journey personal local Global and it is a journey that we take with our students and our educators and our administrators and we have four archers and we focus all our work around we'll be starting year three of the Strategic plan I can't believe it already next year it seems like we just wrote it um with our support from our facilitators a couple of years ago so at the district Level under Arch one communication practices I won't read all of that but I will highlight some of the things that we've accomplished this year we have shared with you earlier in the year that we have started to add our dibles reporting our star and I reports we're sending reports out to families we're using dibles and we'll talk about this more when they get to the elementary level but we're sharing this data out with parents we have used this data before but it was in inh house that we're using the data and using it to inform instruction but now we're sharing it with our parents so that they can too understand that and when they have um conferences and things with with families then teachers can also help understand this um data with our parents and where what it means for our students we have been working on our website around communication and one of the areas that we've migrated over recently is extended day they had an external website and as we've tried to increase and enhance our website one of the biggest things for communication is to make sure that all of our families and Community stakeholders have access to our our website when we had external websites or PDFs on the website they cannot be translated so when we have everything into our own website and Mr ml can speak to this as well if you have questions about it it allows families to translate to any language that they need and allows Equitable access to our communication online and just to add so the big Advantage is you can't search unless it's part of our main website so if you go to search for extended day you're not going to find it unless it's part of our platform so the two big sites we've migrated our extended day and then the program of studies here at the high school we still have more work to do for sure so we've made a lot of progress it does take time it's a lot of there's a lot of information coming in but really the our goal it really aligns with our our um initi especially with Equitable access for students and families and also I know I think actually Mr Alfred you suggested that we try to come out with some more community outreach to our website and twice a year Mr McLoud and his team reach out and see if stakeholders would like to be added to our community news um information they don't get every single email that goes out but any Community thing that comes out on the district level I I click so that I add any Community person anything that really wants to be shared out goes to the additional 187 Community stakeholders that ask to be added and then Mr McLoud reaches out and twice a year anyone else can be added as well again in in an effort to make sure that we're having Equitable excuse me Equitable access our Zoom meetings are now having translated captions for people as well we've been able to translate our family resources into Spanish Portuguese and English we've made substantial progress with our stage one and then we're also adding stage two documents for our curriculum portion of the website community events bulletin board board uh a big big part of Mr mccloud's initiatives the last couple years has been moving forward with cyber security training and multifactor authentication I'm sure many of you know how many hack hacking situations we get in I can't tell you Mr McLoud may know how many times an email has come from me to our staff saying that I'm selling them a piano or um please click this link and we'll give you the world um because our staff has had training most times they're able to realize that that spum and they delete it if they don't that could cause us significant problems if they get into especially if you get it something into the you know the main part of the website you I'm just our our whole system so much could happen and it could cost us a lot of money and confidentiality breaches as well that's a huge initiative and then we've also been working to Pilot new content filtering classroom manage Management Solutions last week uh Mr ber was here and he presented a a very l the informed discussion on safe and support of schools which falls under Arch 2 social and emot emotional well-being he talked about a lot of this so I'll just share some of the highlights and then I know um he's not here tonight but a lot of your questions were probably answered last week I'm sorry for those of you that were not here but we I think we have that up on the website Mr McLoud that do you know if we have that on the website the last week's presentation we will double check but I'll make sure you can have access to that so Metro West survey is something that we've been really working on the last few years taking the data that we get and and really triangulating it and making sure that we're sharing information with staff it helps us inform our social emotional needs of our students and Trauma needs that we can help work with them in the schools we have ruled out ruler and Mr Benet talked about this quite a bit and I know the other principles will talk about this as well but it's professional development K to8 that all of our teachers are working under seal we initiated last fall the Sandy Hook Anonymous report Reporting System it took us about a year and a half Cy Hook is a nonprofit reporting system and we had to wait a year and a half to get access to it because so many people are taking advantage of this system but it's another anonymous system that people can go on our website and log in to see any hook and we actually have prevented some what could have been serious incidents for well-being of students they were able to report outside of school hours if it's a serious thing that might seem to be an emergency for someone's well-being it would go right to the police department and and it would also go to one of our principles so we haven't had a huge number but we've had a few incidents where things were able to be um proactively dealt with before school was in session even though it happened outside of school a big thing which is going to really help us as we triangulate all our data we're moving forward with the data dashboard it's pretty well ready to go but all of the information is getting up there so not only will we be able to access all of our academic data it'll be all of the you know I mentioned earlier the star sbles I ready uh we get mcast data but it will also have this Metro West data it will have any social emotional kind of survey results and things like that and to have that all in one place we can look at demographics we can look at whether certain um special education and certain demographics are having more impacts attendance is going to be a big part of that being able to run reports so that we can get information out to parents about trying to make sure their kids are being uh coming to school as much as possible and being on time so that's going to be just having that really quick access to that in the winter we presented a whole night of data assessment and rankings and we had spent hours and hours getting the information we'll have this at our our fingertips and be able to get that information out much more quickly we've also been working with care Solace prior to that we had another program that we work with but care Solace is an amazing opportunity that anybody in the system can access you can call care Solace if you're having struggles and need some mental Health supports and looking for a professional to work with and they will get back to whether it's a family member Community member they will get back to you and help you find that professional treatment it's so hard to access in this day and age we've been very successful having that in place cartwheel is another program that Mr vet talked about last week and it's a program that also will do face-to-face referrals during through tahal and we had 19 referrals as of May 16th and actually when I was at a training out in Chicago recently I spoke with the women that are in charge of that program for our area and they're going to be partnering with with us further and making sure that if we have students that we can refer this would come from our own clinicians in school they would go to a family and say I think I have a program for your child and for families especially if they cannot have a clinician or get to a clinician outside of school to have that teleah Health option is an additional opportunity to give support to students outside of school I already mentioned the data dashboard um Mr also highlighted that and I actually attended their little graduation but 16 of our Educators went through four courses of training on trauma and learning the courses were provided inhouse through our district through Leslie Leslie University and I think they went the last two years of taking these four courses that means we have more than this that took the courses but not all of them but to have 16 that's stuck through for all four courses and they presented their um presentations just recently and they graduated and now we have that wealth of information throughout the district and they can actually help support our students and bring some of this work forward and be help enforce the learn you know the learn the learn model um you know having that opportunity for them to support other teachers with the training that we need we are working on peer leadership opportunities and Mr veneet will be sharing out with his team on June 6th the equity steering preliminary report we had the equity audit done last year we had the report shared with us in October or November and he's been meeting with his team a robust team including Mr Kim and they'll have their preliminary results to you for June 6th teaching and learning again this is another presentation that we'll be having on June 6th Dr manard and her curriculum team will be here to present to you some of the work that we've done this year a ton of work has happened we were well behind on our curriculum review process for those of you who've heard us talk about this before it had been since 2011 or 12 that we had purchased any new math resources so we're excited that we've had our prek-12 bath and our secondary Ela curriculum review this year and we are ready to move forward we had our capital budget approved so we will be purchasing new math materials districtwide which is so exciting for our teachers and for our students so that's going to take a ton of our PD time next year to help support the teachers with that training as well we're also Midway through science and we're beginning primary Ela social studies is on pause because they are putting forward a desie a new Civic requirement to the standards so we're going to pause that for now instead of making the teachers relearn that when that comes out we're really working hard it's a huge part of our Arch three is addressing our vertical alignment in the district and also aligning with our state standards and making sure that we're looking at buys and equity and all the work that we're doing uh I think it was two meetings ago where Jess Bey presented our student services director on all the criteria that we're working on for entrance and exit criteria for basis Network and Pathways the ssas and SSD have done a ton of work with the counselors and our special ed staff to make sure that we're really making sure that students have the appropriate access and the least restrictive environment for all of these programs so they've done a ton of work in that she presented a lot of information on that it's been wonderful to see the progress they made in the last two years we're also working on our language based program in grades four and five Rams is also working on theirs in grades six it's fully launched districtwide we've had a ton of training I think this is year three now for Orton Gillingham and so we will have 30 Educators trained throughout the district on Orton Gillingham for those of you who don't understand Orton Gillingham it is a multi multisensory approach to reading so when students are struggling we have programs like Wilson Maron Gillingham and Wilson are are connected and to be able to have 30 of our in-house staff being able to help support their own students so our special educators will be having small groups with their students they're already doing it but to have this many people trained in a short amount of time is just phenomenal and continue to grow our literacy program districtwide contining with our curriculum review processes and also um Mr McLoud had an AI steering committee this year and they proposed a new AUP and are waiting for they shared out with faculty the feedback and we'll be moving forward with that in the fall as well correct Mr McLoud yes with school committee approval yes we will be getting approval possibly next month I think we have it on for policy to have it approved correct and we're continuing our vision of a graduate work districtwide and it will be tied into our data dashboard as well under Arch four we've really working hard on both attracting and retaining staff that's been a real strong goal and our retention rate did improve this year which is good news one of the things we really found what our most turnover in recent years has been with our par professionals so I'm very excited that we were able to negotiate a really strong contract for our Paris earlier this year but in addition to that prior to that we came up with a new role a building liaison role we were seeing so much turnover in our PA professionals our salaries were not competitive enough they are more competitive now and we put a lot of uh work into the collective bargaining for that but in addition having people coming in and out through the year creates challenges for our students and for our staff so we put in a building in the azone role last last fall and that has one person in the building so that if someone enters new throughout the year the principles do meet with them but to have someone that a go-to person that can answer questions and be a support for them has really been helpful and they work very closely with our student services director Jess Bey and she works to make sure we're providing appropriate training for them we also have put it online our recorded training so that all new teachers have reference to some of the trainings they might have if they're on boarding later in the year along with new param module training just recently we're able to get our um capital budget approv for new staff laptops so Mr B day and Mr McLoud are in the process of ordering those so we can get those deployed to staff before the school year is out so that they have those to learn on some of the new tools with those over the summer we have ongoing weekly reports for cyber security going to W our it on this town and the schools in April we re applied for a new statement of interest for hopefully a new high school at some point we'll hear about that in late fall and I'm hopeful that this could be our year and we'll be talking about a new high school at some point in addition we're in the process of with our again with our Capital funds purchasing curricular materials and PD and planning for next school year I put together a whole new proposal of how our curriculum positions could be used more beneficially for all staff we had hired three curriculum coordinators pre- to 12 plus and they were shared in all four buildings I'm very excited that while those roles were wonderful it was challenging being in all four buildings so we put together a plan this year that we are now going to have two roles in all four buildings we will have a prek 2 35 68 912 both a stem and Humanities process in each building full-time they will be half curriculum half interventionist so that dual role of helping to support staff with teaching and learning but also be able to intervene with students that are struggling particularly as we move towards alge one in grade eight I think these will be really beneficial roles because they'll work directly with the staff and then also be able to support staff that need tier two or tier three supports for students and then we also um have had a lot of training as leaders in the district as well some of the work that that I've been involved with both Mr V and myself completed State training on the ready team at the state level this was provided free through um the mass superintendent on racial Equity diversity in inclusion as a team and then also um I went with Mr list on we spent a couple of days over a weekend doing training with miia and Mr Baker and that training is also anti-bias training that we'll be bringing into the district that's to really try to rule out some of the bias that we see particular in sports we've seen a lot of this in the in social media in the news about some of the challenges we see when when children are playing sports and their adrenaline is up and sometimes the aggressiveness comes out and sometimes in inappropriate things come out of mouths so how do we prevent that from happening and be proactive so this is the work that we're doing as a team at the high school and we'll bring that training to all of our coaches this fall and congratulations goes to Dr manard and Mr V they both completed influence 100 last Friday I went to their graduation um and I did tweet out about that they have spent the last two years with this very rig rigorous training it's also on Equitable opportunities for students and anti-bias training and how to become even stronger leaders so both of them completed that work um after two years and it was a wonderful celebration for them on last Friday how would you like to handle questions do you want to do it segment by segment I think maybe if you have quick questions here and then when they speak at the the end of each of their that's probably the best way does anyone have any questions for this portion um well I mean you're going to talk about it again in terms of the data dashboard stuff but I just feel like when we get into you're not going to be able to do this for June but in the fall I would really love to see like how does that work in you know really take like here's a student and here's what we can see so that we can really show the community what that means because I feel like we say data dashboard and I don't know that folks really understand what it means and how it will be impacting students and impacting teaching and learning so yes and Mr McLoud will be happy to put together some slides on that and show you I mean it's really going to be very interactive and um I like for me the biggest thing when you showed us how we can access just absenteeism and get reports out to families that's huge just so people don't always realize until they see it on paper sometimes and then to have it tying with all our um social emotional learning all of our academic it's going to really be helpful I think it's going to really move us in a positive direction and then we'll be able to provide you another data assessment and and rankings presentation and and how that all connects as well once we have that data dashboard in place but is there a way that without obviously getting into children specifically that we could see and actually sort of ask to change the certain things we were sort of the stuff that you showed last week sort of seemed like you could make some changes and it would be at a higher level so it wouldn't be showing student specific information we should have like a sort of a public faing sort of dashboard yes so that would be are you asking to see a little bit more at the June 6th meeting or you just asking if in the fall whenever whenever I mean I don't you know how long it takes for you to build it and do all I mean yeah we June 6th no that's I didn't know if you wanted more like just how it works more but you're going to be adding more stuff to it over the over the summer you know I think in the fall would be would be great yeah but I'd like to be able to see it would be nice to be to say like a Holliston student like your average Holliston student and have that facing for maybe maybe some snapshots generic you can do that with a generic sort of thing or or blacking out names or whatever sure and it's going to be um it's going to be a work in progress so we're going to bring you sort of the first blush sure tell us excited about that you know what you're the company is great to work with so they're more than willing to accommodate in year one it's going to be available for our administrators to be able to access this data and then we'll eventually want to get it handed off to teach and we just don't want to add one more thing to in place for for them to be able to access that during plc's when they planning a tier 2 and tier three intervention that's really going to it's going to really be um effective in in moving the district forward as well any other questions right I a question going back to Arch one what are the system constraints uh that limited to uh the website to being only updated twice per year and how many people typically sign up well I'll let Dan answer that but the twice the year is just a capacity thing because if they were offering it all the time they'd have to check that and and you know we don't have so many people logging on that it that was where Dan felt he could manage with his team sure sure so it's a uh we just open up the form in August and January those are the two opportunities we give folks um probably like a month to sign up and then um it was just the decision do we want to do this you know monthly you know looking back on it we could probably increase the frequency of it because it's it's not as uh much of a lift it's it's basically you have to the form is filled out on the spread on the website and then you have to import it into our systems that are integrated with our school and that's how the messages get sent out so it's possible can move it to quarterly at this point you're not getting you're not getting the volume we getting it first because the initial the first year was when we just how many people signed up in the what January or last open it was great question we have 187 total uh I can I can get that there just a couple handful right um it was about 30 if I remember 30 addition ones but no one's unsubscribed we also give people in unsubscribe op and not a single user has removed himself from it they just love our newsletters so maybe not move to monthly but every other month but keep the form open right cuz I think there the issue was if you keep it only open twice a year you missed that you've missed it so allowing to sign up and then stating in there hey we're only going to look at this once a quarter maybe but at least they put their information in I think that was the piece the feedback that we heard from the community sure that makes sense we can certainly accommodate so once every quarter is that would I think I think we just have to look at the numbers we don't want to overburden you know the team but uh at the same time I think it's more about access to apply versus when they get on sure yes so we'll look into that further and see if um if that's reasonable to do we will move in that direction any a quick question about the the M Mia AA TR training is that um so that's something that coaches will get so it's so it's through the north eer northeastern Center for sports and Society uh partnered with MIAA um because of incidents that were occurring on Sports fields and courts um so they offer training to districts to to come in uh to work with north northeastern Center for sports Society uh to do anti-bias training to see what they could offer coaches uh Matt Baker is working with the group my big are working with the group to bring that in for coaches and they'll start in the fall so that they'll be able to recognize and respond because a lot of times coaches are they are teachers a lot of times but also sometimes they're not teachers uh and so we found it important to uh go through the training ourselves um with Dr Kusa and Mr Baker and then it was a great training and then bring that in for our start with our uh fall Sports uh coaches how long is the train train will it be training two-day training one that we attended was a two-day the one that we'll be doing in house one day one day sorry yeah Does it include a component about like social media and um I mean it talk I mean it goes through everything for the coaches but it's it's to help recognize how to respond to players um how to talk to players um specifically it um when it comes to uh to race when it comes to um uh some of the social emotional Wellness pieces that happen with sports and anxiety and depression and um healthy lifestyle and all of that sort of encompasses all of that um it's really more of a preventative program than anything um it doesn't specifically address the social media it's more about what what can we do before we even have an issue on the field okay that's great thank you so we're going to move on to the high school I will just point out you'll see that we have Linked In This document as well although you have it in your folder link to this presentation we each have our our um more specific to each Arch you'll see a lot more information that you can look at as well we just put some of the highlights in our presentation for tonight so I will turn it over to Mr list thank you uh welcome to the new members uh so you're going to see in this uh presentation Nas a lot uh Nas is the organization that accredits uh both public and private high schools um throughout the Northeast uh we're in our will be our 10 year it's every 10 years uh you go for accreditation we just had our eight-year visit uh they come in they do a uh you provide them with a comprehensive report about the school they then bring folks in um meet with Administration meet with teachers meet with students uh meet with families um walk around the building observe classes uh and they provide us feedback um and some guidance on um areas of growth that we need to look for um to meet meet uh the accreditation standards uh so we just went through that visit and we would have our decennial visit uh in right around October November of 25 so that's what you you'll see there um referenced and if you go back in I don't know um school committee probably in was it December or January um I made a a pres gave a presentation on what the recommendations um for uh Nas so that's what that is when you see it uh throughout the presentation just for you guys you can go back into your folders and look back and see pull that up later your I only said it's it's helpful in understanding the the a lot of the work that uh will be uh going on moving forward so um so uh my first year I'm almost finishing up my first year here and I as I said the first time and middle of the year and now uh communication communication communication was all I heard uh so we spent a lot of time working on that in the The High School uh um making sure there was a Weekly Newsletter um we had a student intern help us with Tik Tok and Instagram and and Twitter um doing some of that work um really to make sure that uh both parents and students knew what was happening in the high school um and knew what was going on with their students uh we updated our program of studies and scheduling website including videos for families to make it more accessible um for our students who whose first language was not English and so they have the opportunity to watch How to you know pick classes get on and do some of that work um and so we really tried hard all year to to make sure that families knew what what was happening um and and I think that we've been successful in that and we we'll continue to work through that um moving forward um we learned to the nas process again that's where family feedback shared um through uh their report that was an area of growth for us and so um based on the neas standards I think we're in a good place moving forward in our accreditation process there I just point out the picture of nugget there just nugget is our mascot maybe second mascot high school but um I just want to point out because live presented about trauma and learning that our teachers the 16 graduates and three of the teachers um presented their program for social emotional well-being at the high school and nug nugget is a big part of that with our adjustment counselor so that's a great opportunity for students we also have um our B counselor and placentino also has some I'm sure that's on your list so I won't feel your thunder there but I just think this these are some opportunities that we're so fortunate that our staff have invested these are their own dogs and they're bringing them to school they're insured and safe and our students really benefit from the wellbeing they provide and nugget was a big part of that and we had our uh the folks who went through that training just surveyed our um staff um and students um based on uh their training and are going to be presenting um the results to our staff um and just about trauma inform instruction there um it was year two of partnering with the mental health Academy um to really focus in our work on um trauma inform instruction with our our staff um we worked with um uh Sarah cun um and Taran Lang and Taran Lang two of our teachers to uh restructure The Advisory program um and we have student advisory leaders um who were provided training uh in partnership with uh hdac uh through holl Ethan family hdac is the hollon drug drug and alcohol awareness Coalition um and so we partner with them to bring in training for our students there um that they could then bring on to their advisory um we worked on relationship mapping with our school to really understand um one of the highlights of hollison high school is the relationship that teachers and students have but we wanted to make sure the students weren't falling through the crack and so uh we worked as a school to um identify students who might not have relationships with trusted adults uh and to do Outreach to those students um we worked uh with the challenge day program to do some of that work in in engaging with students on on a deeper level in that way to build relationships with adults um and to really help understand the experience of others in the school uh that was a an amazing program we partnered with hdac um to bring in the think fast program uh which uh for our 9th through 12th graders which raised awareness of it's really uh if you go back and think about uh it's it's a fast interactive game show but it about drug and alcohol awareness um and and uh Vapes and which is a problem that we face for for teens at the high school um we had uh Lees um School uh psychologist uh reimagined and uh redeveloped our Intervention Program to help us identify students either whether it be attendance issues um or struggling uh for multiple reasons and having uh a way for staff to identify those students and bring them forward um and that was very successful this year um and then we'll be working with Jerry Al ver to administer uh student staff and climate surveys um and in this area we did very well with nas um because as I said one of the highlights of hollon high school is the relationships that students have um with the adults in the building um and so so Nas was um very complimentary of the work that we have ongoing there David do you recall what the percentage of students was like over 80% of them felt connected to an adult yeah when we did the work it yeah it was about 85% students felt had a a trusted adult um the building um when we looked at the teacher side when we did the relationship mapping piece um I mean it was early on in the year so freshman if you take out the Freshman piece because they were brand new to the school um but that also number hit I think it was 84 or 83% um uh of students were identif teachers identified as having um a relationship with that student Beyond just knowing their name or some sort of the peripheral information about them so um it was it was pretty amazing to see um that that process there may I ask um on the ARs you just set up in terms of um advisory so what were some of the changes that you implemented this year do you feel like um it's I guess what are the pros and cons what what do you anticipate may do you have anything in mind to change for next year so I think it was most powerful for our youngest students um working with our 11th graders um I think we saw that was clear I think there was more benefit there for nth and 10th graders and maybe for our 11th graders um we really focus on uh what they do is they just take different activities throughout um one of the areas we have to work on is sort of the continuity of the what's happening with those students again we have to find I think Dr kuska talked about it the training for our student advisory leaders I mean they're getting up in front and teaching um and so we had one training session for them um and so we need to find ways to engage more there um next year um we're going to sort of tighten it up with the amount of advisory I was going to talk a little bit about about that in the next slide but we're going to be instead of it being like advisor every Friday our counselors um had a lot of success this year with small group sessions for some of our kids so um they're working right now to develop for next year but there will be small group scheduled sessions when it would have been advisory so like right now advisory is like every Friday but so you might have advisory once a month but the other times the counselors will be working with students with their students in small groups um on on different topics whether it be you know 11th graders in the college application process um n9th grade about study skills um welcome to high school those pieces uh 12th graders again that that process and they'll meet with them and do the the college application process there 10th grade um working on remember back in the day like the uh the profiles like the the profiles of like what you might be interested in studying what you might want to do for a job later all of those start to like understand what the students needs are and and how they feel uh about their future um so that they can then get data there to then support them uh moving forward uh because right now we don't have that piece um the counselors went through training uh myap which is a state's program um that gives uh counselors an ability to really help students uh it's open to families too um but it's really a College and Career counseling program that was created for students in this in Boston um and now it's offered Statewide um and available and so our counselors went through training there to to bring that support to students so some of those pieces that College counselors offer for thousands of dollars students will have access to as well um just oh sorry one more thing on theal piece our school council just finalize and I'll share it out with our students because they'll be so happy uh some new phone rules [Music] uh we did our some of our staff did a some some reading on the effects of the cell phone usage and uh that and uh they're they're very much behind um some cell phone rules so that'll be rolling out next year for the students who are watching school committee and I'm excited to now hear that on their phon all right we'll be talking soon uh teaching and learning as as Dr Kusa said looking at um the curriculum reviews um our Wellness department has new state Frameworks they're working on and so they're updating all their curricular resources um to to provide a a more sort of Modern Health classroom uh for students uh the uh math curriculum review the the been going through trainings to bring in the reveal math curriculum um as I talked about the school counselors um we finalized our rubric so when we talked about the vision of the graduates how do we know that they have actually met what we believe a graduate should have when they leave High School um and so our our Department's worked on uh rubrics um that'll be rolling out next year they finalized those and so we'll be able a student will be able to um not it's not only about a grade in a classroom but what that unit they worked on or the project they did how is that connected uh to the vision of the graduate which eventually leads to uh portfolio presentations for students on how they have met those standards as well um we finished year three of star implementation and that is moving on now tol uml um is a uh it's tier one support for students uh in the classroom they can work on um it's being used throughout our classrooms now um for Math and Ela uh to support our students um and uh We've finalized our we signed J the drar with the pltw we could on yeah so Project Lead the Way which is uh is falls into the high quality instructional material um um for um some of our electives for students who are more interested in in the uh some stem areas so um engineering um so it really uh brings together the curriculum for that so that students have a pathway of growth through out high school so if you're really interested in computer programming biomed Innovation and Engineering engineering civil engineering and architecture you can come in in ninth grade start taking those classes and build your way up as you go um eventually ending in uh an intern ship in those areas uh and so really uh some of the amazing electors we have kind of connecting all of those so that students can really uh go after something that they enjoy in high school when did you hear about that Grant so they changed the grant timeline um on us because the state can do that so we we have it actually just sitting in a folder ready to right go okay um I have a meeting um well I'm not going to it because I have graduation rehearsal but May 29th um they they release but we'll be apping um for a planning Grant um now they've moved it to September so you have a half year to plan uh and then you roll it out then you have to part A and then Part B but they it used to be you plan for part A now uh planning now but they' moved it to a one-year planning cycle um so we'll be applying for that um but we have all the pieces in place um by bringing in um because they we have to have um high quality instruction materials we have to have uh colle col basically college level uh programs available to students to take throughout so pltw helps us achieve that um for our students awesome just in addition as you know the last couple years we added the global citizen endorsement and the computer science endorsement so I just I mean this is what students have been asking for and teachers have been asking for I hope they're able to move it forward because it just will just enhance the offerings we have at the high school uh and then just the last piece on Eng learning is part of the curriculum reviews that uh we shift it over uh next year they uh we'll have our 12th grade English curriculum um completely revamped along with with the math um and our our folks are working on ways to uh sort of build those those tier one interventions into the classroom uh moving forward and that'll be a lot of our work uh next year so and there four talented resources um you know we've been working hard uh we have a lot of young staff um and so having our department leaders work closely with them coaching um and support them throughout um using the evaluation system uh to provide feedback but also just time in the classroom to do that um and we'll be working with our department leaders um moving forward to help support those new teachers uh we want to make sure they stay in District and feel supported um and so they're as of now they're all want to stay so it's good so no it's been it's been great um and so again welcome to yall and uh thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you D questions questions um so I'm hearing that social tional learning was a big commitment for the high school last year a lot of initiatives invested in that area so I'm wondering if you can share with us um what what are some of the impacts that you're seeing rather around engagement Student Learning Community attendance so I think the the piece that we see is we were trying to find the kids so as I said relationships are huge here with our teachers and so one of our goals was to find those kids who fall through the cracks of that um and so by connecting that with our Intervention Program and having a space for teachers to be able to identify students who they may not know or uh that have attendance issues was huge for us because we didn't have a mechanism before that um for identifying those students uh we actually used um we worked a lot with um our attendance secretary and the ad uh to work with students who were missing school a lot and showing up to sports uh because that's not actually allowed um but uh that was able to help us actually Identify some some students in in in a in a critical area in a space where they feel safe right they want to come to their Sports they want to be there uh but they weren't actually showing up to school um and so uh we were able to um identify students there and work with them through coaches um and their school counselors uh to support a lot of work um I think moving forward what we have to do do is just educate more of our staff and our coaches really um all those trusted to be able to identify uh more the students I'm blanking on what it's called Jerry L's thing that he rolled out um student Handle With Care Handle With Care thank you um Jerry rolled out the Handle With Care where they we have information about students that we just need something's going on um and so he's able to make us aware of that whether it be through the community Through the police department or whatever it is um and we get no ifications of that to be able to support the students so and I think the big point with that is keeping the confidentiality of the student but just saying just this child might need a little TLC right now you don't need to know the details but just tune into to them and pay attention and that's really what that's about so that's important and I'm really curious to see the data when we put these cell phone rules in place to see what happens there and see the engagement piece to see if that goes up so but not every will be on board with that we just a question the administration of the district students um and staff climate and culture surveys when did that occur so it's going out so that's going to that's going out got jerryl um was working on that with me so and will we see results on the website for kind of parents or at some point well at some point Dr have to give results when we get all the Metro West is released too so when that becomes released in the fall or winter of next year when we isn't it in the fall when we get those results and I think Jerry them in the fall when do we'll get I mean so principles will get we'll get preliminary results over the summer and then you get like the the data analysis that Metro satal and Survey folks do um in the fall okay and then will that be added to the dashboard as well that was one we're trying to get into the dashboard as well okay but would we expect that the student and staff climate and culture surveys the information that you get from that by the end of this year that that might inform some um early uh initiatives for next year that will be presented with the data but also plan okay just real quick um I know earlier in the year maybe kind of Midway through you had kind of going along with attendance you were working on improving um our tardy numbers I wonder did has that gone well it's gone really well a little bit of accountability goes a long way um just a little bit uh so yeah so um really a credit uh to the assistant principles uh Mr St and Mr Taylor like I I take no credit for that that is something that they spend a lot of time on daily um they did in the mid year when we rolled that out um we were seeing lines out the door every morning um we talking about like 75 80 90 100 kids sometimes who were Target at school Target to class um and I I will admit this past week hasn't been great uh with the weather but uh uh but no I mean I mean you come in in the morning and it's down to maybe like 20 kids 15 20 kids who who are on a regular day um that are showing up tardy so it was really it was a piece of just it's and when I say accountability it's not about like discipline accountability it's like talking to the kids and engaging with them and encouraging them and um reaching out to families um when it came to tardi so that's been huge success for us so we've seen I totally forgot about it cuz it's been working so it's like I just we're talking about extra time online and you know that's a big that's something that's already here we just need we're seeing some great Chang already with our new team at the high school and just um for those of you who may not remember actually Mr stbridge is with us just for this year as interum so I did send out that um we have a new assistant principal to add to Mr list team I don't know if she'll be able to come to the June 6th meeting but you might want to ask if she could come and be invited I mean to be um introduced if not you'll get to meet her later for the summer into the school year does she start on July 1st July yes so she'll be able to attend our Retreat which is great cuz you know sometimes that doesn't work out and they miss that that's a really the three days that we work together preparing for the school year at the end of July are really helpful for us to the team anything else for Mr to list thank you Dr Jordan um I guess first like you know I I thank you uh Mr list um for indicating that as far as attendance I think you know living a little bit on the the margins in education can have like a profound impact so I'm also really excited about the extra minutes uh time on learning while that uh seems like a small number when you quantify it across the the entire year uh and then you then you add that uh over 3 years or you add that over 10 years and the number uh of minutes um on learning uh that students have can can and will have a profound impact so thank you for that um I'm also um very grateful uh to you all for for finalizing and ratifying the contract um and we go into we end this school year we go into the next year and know knowing that um our teachers um don't need to start the year with that that stress or that anxiety um again talk pending the it's going to happen um but uh you know you can't um overstate uh the impact that morale or stress or anxiety in a in a teacher can have or impact the student learning of a child that's in one of those classes um as well so thank you for that um to kind of dawn to segue what um you indicated as far as the the parent student um and teacher uh culture and climate surveys um we're similarly uh we'll have those uh working with Mr F we've been administrating administering them over the course of the year we um have had some small um um parent uh participation and that might beond some of our communication uh of that um but we're hoping with this last push to to really kind of ramp up kind of our parent communication on that um a lot of that survey data uh for us at the middle school has been in partnership with the social emotional behavioral Academy um at the University of Connecticut uh that's the group that's been helping us um with um PBIS our roll out of PBIS um and how we've been working with families on that uh our data that we're collecting when we speak to that um currently we have a peer group of students uh and staff that are analyzing the data that we currently have uh and we'll have uh a summer group of uh parents students um and staff analyzing kind of our end of thee data that may may hopefully depending on when that released some of the preliminary Metro West adolescent Health survey data as well to inform some of those steps um that we that we'll have um this is the uh sebb or the social emotional behavioral Academy um does a Fidelity inventory solution Matrix um based off of the data that they've collected and their own observations of us uh and that's something that um will you know we don't have a problem releasing to to families to understand what we're trying to work on um in that area um we have seen uh an increase in community involvement as far as trying to really make a concered effort to bring family members into leadership and participation in on our bu building uh whether that's through our instructional leadership team or through kind of data data analysis times um that we have um additionally uh we are our um organizations um are really pushing out to get involved in the community so uh for the first time in a long time we've had some great participation in celebrate hollison uh from a lot of our students as well um and then we have a revised revisualization [Music] [Music] well-being we're also thinking about the the behavior that our students uh with our implementation of PBIS uh with our tool kickboard tool um we have seen dramatic reductions in discipline suspensions and acts of hate um at the Middle School uh additionally if you walk our hallways or are in our cafeteria you're going to notice a calmer cafeteria um less students wandering the hallways um less graffiti in the bathrooms uh reductions in tardies uh as well um this is not because of some disciplinary measure that we have taken or some hard approach to students um um it is really we believe it's due to positive reinforcement um and our care um approach with PBIS which is compassion acceptance respect and effort uh and I believe that our students have really uh embraced that uh and so of our student our staff uh to date we're at 24,000 care points um that's an astronomical number we use kickboard as our online system as a parent if you have not gone on to your personal login to view your student you're missing out on some amazing comments on your individual child um and I would those who are listening and who those who are on the school committee I encourage you to do that um often times what is reported to you as a parent are grades whether you go into po power school or whether at report card time but also kickboard provides a lot of the soft skill feedback on your student on what they're doing in their classroom um also learning very something very specific like your child U picked up so and so's books when it were dropped on the ground they did an amazing job and you're learning learning how your sta student is engaging in character directly uh and not abstractly that they're showing respect uh but also what their actual action U was um within ruler uh we've completed uh the one through eight modules which we're happy um with as far as that completion and or looking to kind of uh identify what our strategies are over the summer um our per leadership um group that's run for by Mrs Peters and Mr conet uh has completed seven ADL lessons to our students meaning these are student L uh ADL lessons to our our student population as a whole whole um as well we have a new peer leadership group um for half the semester that uh has been participating in adaptive PE and supporting students 8ighth grade peer leaders supporting students in seventh grade um adaptive PE adaptive be is uh for students that are might be in a networker basis program um and may have uh varying abilities that may limit their their ability to access the uh traditional health or Wellness curriculum um the um also something I'm excited about as far as uh our social emotional uh development but also staff uh staff and teacher uh staff and uh parent involvement was in our challenge day um I know that uh Mr list had that as well um but uh we had some members in the school committee that participated and several family members um as well in the community that participated and it was a great opportunity to um discuss and participate in acknowledging uh various biases that exist um and it was a powerful day that I look forward to while it was a pilot this year I hope that uh it's something that we can expand um and continue um year to year uh as well all right uh teaching and learning uh we have been uh as Mr list indicated uh we also have been piloting ISL successfully over the year uh all of the goals that we set for ourselves this includes the student learning goals that our teachers wrote for themselves were all met um so every every pilot goal that we and all the hopes that we set forth um forl uh were met um the thing that we are most excited for that we found the greatest um the greatest impact uh was the tiered support action plan uh this is more of like an individualized learning plan for every single student um regardless of ability on what their target goals would be so you could be an excellent and excelling student at the very absolute highest level uh and there is an individualized uh growth plan for you uh within Uhl uh and you could be a student with significant gaps in is uh and there is a a um tiered support action plan for you um as well um we are in our math curriculum review uh we have um we are pursuing reveal as the as the um resource uh we are also partnering with uh all Learners Network um as a group to look at like how we roll out reveal uh meaning the actual like changes or adjustments in instruction um one of the or not one of but the feedback that we received from we did a staff feedback protocol but also written within our um PD uh staff feedback uh is the need for professional development on differentiation inclusion and Universal Design learning uh specifically how do we work with like significantly struggling students in an inclusion environment uh and receiving professional development on that um aln is a group that is able to kind of partner with that um with math as well um I'm also super excited to say our Wellness 2 program which was all students can access by the end of the year we ended up at about 200 students um that participate or uh in Wellness 2 which is a course that's offered at the middle school um on average um that cluster or that cohort of 200 students uh demonstrated academic Improvement um as a result say whether it's as a result uh but a correlation to students that were in Wellness 2 um there was a significant Improvement in academic uh performance in a group that historically or typically um struggles um academically um as a part of the equity audit followup uh we've been exploring kind of the impact like of the structures that exist in our school that may impact Equity um for that uh we've been looking at like our class structures and I know this this um we've been way to how do we graphically look at our course offerings and the impacts of placements of students um you know there there's the if we took our entire student population and heterogeneously grouped them across and didn't take any account of resources the need for different services and clustering that we have for students you would see the top graphic would be more or less our class uh our course Martin makeup um these are each little cluster uh is a course and and our court core teachers teach four classes so what you see above uh the these two Graphics our current sixth grade is below um is uh Ela the two the cards across the bottom are Ela Math Science Social Studies mies up team one uh Ela Math Science Social Studies mix up our team to in sixth grade and then Ela social studies combined and then math and science combined is our team three that's our current sixth grade um there are similarities to a peer headed genous grouping that is above uh but you notice that even though sixth grade is a heterogeneously grouped um we do need to we only have one elll teacher we only have two special Educators there ends up there end up um being still clustering or grouping that occurs um and inequities that exist um there we good the screen the screen was getting I'm talking too much is that what it is so uh uh you know as we as we look at what as we look at um you know as we look at increased special education costs um as we look at um greater numbers of outed District placements um and while we're also looking for greater inclusive environments uh and creating the least of restrictive environments that we can um we're also trying to make sure that the environments that we do create aren't setting students up for failure when they enter into the least restrictive environment um as well due to some of the high demands that are in that those spaces so people want the next one so this is our our current eth grade um this is um you know if you notice uh here the color uh and intentionally the color has moved down into below um our historically our uh black and brown non-asian students predominantly find themselves clustered together in courses that exist at the middle school um in those classes are are also students that are on IEPs heavy levels of IEPs our Ells 504s uh and all of our and predominantly all of our low-income students uh cluster into a small group of sections that exist at the at the middle school specifically in 8th grade um that is uh something that uh came up in our Equity audit and it's something that we tried to visually represent and really unpack to understand um understand that further we don't have Solutions to this this obstacle uh but it's important to be transparent um that it is there uh and um uh is something that we should be working to identify what Solutions we should have to that um this is why we look at and our staff discusses and they've seen this uh look at a big a significant approach next year to um differentiation professional development uh and looking at our curriculum through a universally designed uh learning um system and then our interventionist will be both in stem and in Humanities and similarly which I I'm appreciative of um uh Casey conahan uh will uh move into the humanities uh role and will be kind of your Humanities stem b or Humanities intervention based role and then we'll have a stem um curriculum uh specialist interventionist and their ability to kind of help us assist with these groupings and look at this and what Solutions that we can pursue um will um well is it's a a pleasant uh Pleasant um solution that we're looking so is the goal are you trying to get these more I see a lot of color at the bottom of the screen the issue is are you trying to spread this out glob is not even to say what the solution would be to it it's that like our structure this is what's happening MH so this is the current structures we have um are this um and this that's just by how you are putting the the classes together yes so we when you have say a student on um so if you have a limited number of special Educators or you have two special Educators you cluster them together or you have like um students together so you might have a group of like three or four students put into one one section um that becomes a constraint that you add to your to your schedule we have one elll student one elll teacher um we might have two to three to four level ones or level twos um they need to be clustered together um as well you have pair professionals that need to be leaked to certain students though some of those par depending on how the IEP is written might be one to one um so you may have a handful of adults that are in those spaces but again they're clustered into one space the thing is on the bottom on the like so you've got team on the left and that bottom row of those four classes they might have Paras and special Educators and they do so all those bottom classes so that's why you have more of those students yeah together yes so that they can get those supports because that person might not be for just one might be supporting a number of children in that correct just trying to understand it's this is created with good intentions um yield this outcome but then when you glance at it um as the impact of multiple good intentions can have can have negative impact and it's worth sometimes looking at the system as a whole um and thinking about what is a solution or Solutions or series of variables that can be modified in order to address that um I don't think there are Simple Solutions to this I'm not coming here prepared to offer a solution to it um other than Solutions I'm just understand how and why like what you're showing us so like those the top the top row have very few of you know IEPs or anything they're they're just kids to yeah yeah those are historically in eth grade are our algebra courses and then algebra that when that cluster moves where they go so like yeah because we're small enough school when they leave they can't they can't mix with a bunch of other students for their social studies and science classes so they travel as a cohort to the next class so you create an algebra course you also have they also go to their English course their science course and their I have two quick questions about this but I appreciate the transparency first of all like this is really Visual and helpful I think um to look at um so one is if I'm understanding what you said the algebra courses are primarily enrolled enrolling white and Asian students did I understand that yes okay um and then second I know that you're still exploring Solutions but this is the time where we're making classes for next year so are there any ideas or or how are you thinking about uh Court uh course enrollments differently for next year um I think we're kind of in the midst of just trying to unpack this I mean this having this graphic is new it's something that like we're trying to work as a whole staff to understand this fully um it's something I think some have known like in their heads and have not figured out a way to kind of visualize it um and and look for Solutions because I think unfortunately some solutions just generate greater problems I think there's there's and I and I want to represent this as well is this isn't about like whether you level or D so you when you create a level um you provide certain opportunities um for some students when you Del you provide opportunities for certain sums groups of students both have consequences um so it's not a binary uh argument or conversation it's it's really a a um um both and conversation is how do we how do we just be transparent about what is occurring and then understand um what small changes or adjustments we can make this is why you know why a lot of like special education law like a lot of special education um strategy looks for the least um uh uh least restrictive environment why it looks at inclusion udl and and the challenge with that is it's it's provide or provide the the appropriate professional development to teachers to be able to to do that well it's one thing to make a highle decision on that it's another thing to to prepare student or prepare teachers to be able to do that well and I think that's a really a big part of what we talked about Joanie and I will be presenting on June 6th about how we're going to transition to a more um Equitable opportunity for students in grade 8 for alra one and that's why we need to do this well next year doesn't mean we're going to fix it overnight but to have better access points and better opportuni so that more students can access it and we really need to plan that out well next year and that's you know kind of the whole why we're aligning the interventionist roles we're we're going to the new curriculum I mean all of this is really moving in the right direction it's just it's not going to be fixed overnight and there's no easy answers as well but I think it's it's just something we really need to look at more especially where it's been you know pointed out even more so so with our Equity audit we can't ignore it um it doesn't mean we're going to solve it necessarily but are we at least creating more opportunities for students to access different um programs as well yeah I would argue so the equity audit when it it came out just it said to eliminate levels at the middle school but that's a solution it's not understanding the problem and I I think that that's it's important to not focus on a solution as much as focus on making it very clear and transparent what the what why they came to that um as an idea and understanding kind of um the overarching view the actual impact these are our actual students uh that are in these classes this is not a hypothetical model this is the actual model I wouldn't might be my optic on a single solution there might be a few yeah and I think that every solution will also have consequences too you got to balance those out and what is the best solution we can manage right that's what it comes down to and is part of it am I to understand one thing that would be helpful is also additional Staffing to better support students and give you more flexibility with the schedule right is that part of what we change that looks like there's Staffing but I I I would say the the greatest piece is is training the current staff that we have um and I think that there could be a more concerted effort on that on providing training on inclusion on how to appropriately differentiate uh in the various coures that we have um if you don't if as a teacher the teacher experience and I want to validate the feelings of a teacher who is presented with um students on a broad spectrum of ability in one space uh if you're not equipped and properly trained to be able to do that uh it's going to we that's why we default into these places that we have this is this is with the well intention of you know let's let's have a class with a lot of supports in it but in doing that in that high support class you end up with all of your students of predominantly all of your students of color non- Asian um your low income students uh your students on 504s um and the prominer students on IEPs and regardless of the level of support um you're you're in a incredibly challenging environment that's often times where um I I'll cringe when I'm doing my walkthroughs with Dr kusco will go into space there might be like five adults in that space and it's still the teachers complaining that's a really challenging space because you're bringing in a lot of challenges into that space and it's also hard for students that are in that um it's traumatic to be in that space it's hard for that student to be successful um so if you're bringing a student that has um you want to challenge them to be in a less restrictive environment but you're also maybe setting them up for failure by bringing them to into that environment yeah I think the real the real work is the tier one right I mean that's that's that's really what Mr Dr Jon is pointing out and this is something that I mean it's it's good teaching practices but we need to constantly support our teachers because the needs of students have changed and that's why we're providing some additional training specific to this area this is really Dei work at its best people think when we treat diversity equity and inclusion it's it's it's about all Learners right and that differentiation in peace and try to meet the needs of all Learners in the classroom setting and our teachers you know they are navigating a lot more challenges now so that's the the training that's coming in I think will really help and so in in addition to that too um and I was so glad to hear you talk about the increased instructional time and how that can be helpful um we have a late bus with the middle school and I want to I want to see us move into a place where we have um what we can convert some of that to additional instruction time instructional time like through tutoring services or other other you know I want an ongoing conversation so that when we look at this um hopefully next year or or definitely in the years to come that it looks different but do you see a place for that um you know 40 50 minutes of tutoring 3 four five times a week and Avail ourselves of the late bus cuz you had that on a slide how we um so we currently have uh math tutoring uh after school every day or or uh it's we have it the tutoring is I think it's it's once a week it's uh uh Mr venian um he's received that typ uh stiping for that um we also have homework club every single day um other than Fridays because we just don't run our late bus or have anything after school on Fridays um attendance is low on that um I think that and and always the challenge is the students who come to after school homework club or even math support um are often times not the students who critically need it um and because it's an extracurricular or an after school activity it's it's hard to force or enforce making sure the students who need to be there um are there um and then we also are very thoughtful as far as the intervention that we build into our school day uh about what when we give intervention say during a unified Arts block are we also limiting their ability to access an art class or music class that U may give um as well it's a it's a complicated um complicated thing how are we encouraging though uh kids to come to homework CL and take advantage of those like are we uh just continuing to put it out there and and let folks know I we have we have really good attendance of of students that attend after school um it's just more like the kids try hard right yeah it's we've got uh our our late buses are pretty full um and it's a good percentage a good number of students that stay after and I try to at every like fifth grade parent night for sixth grade say like it's free it's free busing back to your house uh it's free babysitting where we can hold your child for another hour so you can work a little bit longer and come a little bit later home utilize it your kid comes home they've done all their homework they're done for the night um please leave your kid with us for an extra hour so yeah it seems like other activities that they're giving up for that that's the challeng [Music] Y um you know our our PD surveys and um our our um our kind of feedback protocols that we've done have really spoken to the need to kind of pedagogical and instructional support around struggling students and and um how do we do that so trying to really get away from like abstract professional development and really looking at um Equity from the lens of like struggling students and whoever those are and how do we how do we structure our classrooms to uh to support these types of students that are in front of us um I'm also just you know really excited to to have the stem uh curcum specialist and intervention interventionist that is there um and uh you know I think that that's going to bring some a lot of assistance with this area do you know who that's going to be I it needs to kind of get finalized and pass through we've done our interviews um so hopefully hopefully we can announce something here soon you have anything else on AR thank you thank Mr time and Dr slany do you want to shift for us shift Mr come you weren't really happing were [Music] you hi everybody uh welcome um new members uh excited to have you on board uh going to try and go through M um under our communication practices um we're trying to communicate better with families and sometimes it's our multilingual families that we're not able to reach sometimes and so we may have family members come in and try and communicate with our nurses or our counselors or things like that and we really didn't have uh something in place so this year um we looked at the Lexi translation interpretation service and they help us communicate with families um when we have a barrier uh that's happening there another way we we tried to reach out to families this year we did a zoom webinar uh to present our cult culture and climate survey um we had eight people but it was a start uh in our first one um but Ally curlyy and Brenda Morrow um they were trying to reach more families during that so Ally was on there as our Tech integration person she was working the closed caption piece of it um and what Zoom did not have at that time was a translation piece to the caption but since then Dan has worked with zoom or got they now do have that capability so now we do have that capability to translate the Clos actions uh that are there um we also when we did our parent climate survey uh last year we had 60 participants this year we had over 200 participants um the the survey is through um PBIS so it's it's a survey that we get and so it was only in English and Spanish so we had it translated into Portuguese and we sent paper copies out to families we knew that was their primary language and we did get some results back from those families so we're we're excited about how we're trying to make gains uh in that area can I just add something and I had forgot to mention this earlier on our slides something that we also tried this year and this was with all four principles myself we've done um parent Coffee hours we've had two in person and it's the the full principles of myself prek to 12 to try to give an opportunity to have that Artic articulation piece in that component and we also offered a zoom one and we're supposed to add one for June so I stay tuned I'll be reaching out we'll have one more by Zoom for parents again trying to make sure that parents if they can't come during the school day they can access us innight as well so I felt like we got really we have more people yeah all right social emotional wellbeing we did our climate surveys with our students and pretty much we get all of our students because we do it in our engineering classes so we get participation there um you heard about our uh parent survey we also do at a staff meeting our staff uh climate culture we were able to unpack those in uh each one of those settings we have a student student advisory uh group and we were able to unpack the Stu student survey with them and you know these surveys are one out of four uh and so we really look at three and above as an accomplishment and then we ask the students if it's below three what's going on uh in in that area uh when we did our parent survey we were concerned um that under interpersonal relationships uh with our subgroup of multi-racial families five out of the seven categories were under three um they were average 2.8 but there's an area where we want to figure out why um families are feeling that way and so we're we're we're trying to take a look at our different um um groups that we have across uh the building and see how we can do a better job uh at that um some of the things we found is you know families weren't hearing that their their child was a rise student or something like that so now what is done is not only is it on Facebook but an individual email is sent out to the families of a child who may be a rise uh student uh of the week um we are really trying to strengthen our tier um one curriculum in instruction and we're really trying to focus on uh Behavior social emotional um learning academics and we're throwing in their attendance I know we heard attendance uh under high school and middle school it's a it's an issue in our schools too we have 62 students who have been out 10% or more of the year uh and so that's like 16 days um we have 43 students who are 80 18 plus out of those 18 plus so 11 of them haven't been absent in May and so we're tracking these students we're communicating with families we're trying to find out whether it's they've been out sick because you know pneumonia strep everything's going around or is it vacation or is it they don't want to come to school so we are trying to do a better job at figuring that out and those students come to our student assistant team that we have every week with our guidance uh and administrators do you have that breakdown what's that you mentioned a number of example reasons do you have a breakdown is there primary reason or is there's no real you know reason um you know and and those are the things that we want to focus on um because it is an area if you look at how the state evaluates us our attendance is something they evaluate us on and we you know didn't make the the the grades we needed to Great lack of better words um and so it has been a huge focus of ours um this year to try and figure that out is there a specific group of students that are doing this we haven't identified that yet um and I think with the data dashboard that Dan talked about I think that's going to be an area where we will be able to because power school does does it make it easy to look at a subgroup uh as a data dashboard will uh when we're able to do that we can't triangulate it so everything is done manually yeah which is not easy and Brenda Moro right now is doing it all manually and so um I a big plug for that um and so this visual is is pretty much how we're looking at our professional development we really want to focus um on these areas in the school and like I said we've thrown attendance in there as well because we feel like students not being in school they're not learning and and how do we how do we how do we do better with that um our Ru we've got a ruler implementation team in place in our uh February and March PD we did ruler training with our staff we did not roll this out with our students this year we rolled it out with our staff and in slide four I'll show we created a a staff Charter and how staff wants to feel in the building and so we have a group that's going to be working this summer to look at how do we roll this out with the students and so we we're going to have dates and and things for teachers to do their lessons uh next year uh but that's summer work that's going to be uh created uh jeriel um has found some fun uh funding for us to take a look at you know our PBIS our ruler and um some of our that I'm just um trauma informed and you know our our climate uh study group um and then I've already talked about the the charter if we'll go on to the next one um in math we are adopting uh Eureka squared as as our new math curriculum uh pre or grade prek through grade five uh this is after probably a year to have uh study and then a pilot in what best aligned uh with the state and um the state standards uh so we're excited about that we've already started training with staff um to PD at our PD day and previous to that at one of our curriculum meetings our science we did do a roll out of uh science in the classroom in grade three and four I think you heard me present in December or January regarding that and that has been going along fine uh the teachers are switching every uh 2 weeks uh with their classroom with all the days off we had there was a little slow start to it but teachers are now in a routine of of uh doing that switching um we're continuing with our writing curriculum and Maps um we started that last year uh and then this year we're continuing on scope open SE sequence Elsa um uh O'Brien uh has been helping the grades with that uh we are refining our win block our win is what I need block um in each grade has a 30 minute chunk every day um one of the things that's been very helpful is the I ready diagnostic uh we piloted this in some of the classrooms uh and we saw some significant gains and I shared that with you at our midyear update of this the classrooms who were doing I ready versus star and then having the interventions in between and that's why we put forward that this is something uh through the budget process that we wanted for all of our students what became accessible for all of the students after that midye was all the teachers could use the I ready if they wanted to as an intervention Tool uh to to help uh their students um and we are also exploring the AI and assist of Technology uh in in some of the tools uh that our our our teachers are using is there anything specific there you're looking at or just more of assessing what's out there just assessing what's out there uh and playing around get teachers to play around with it and and having you know uh students have some access to it uh a lied in in what we want them to at our age level uh because we are grade 3 through 5 um and then lastly um here is our staff Charter you know through you know probably curriculum staff PD days um we really wanted teachers to identify how they wanted to feel in school and so you know from a list of you know eight or nine we narrowed it down to four and we're able to put you know uh statements that go along with each one I won't read each statement but teachers want to feel respected they want to feel supported they want to feel connected and they want to be safe uh and so those were big uh items that they uh wanted and so we want to bring this Charter to the students next year and how we roll this out with the students uh and how they are feeling um a lot of work has gone into our um School climate and and our our school climate committee um we've got a group uh Katie Anderson Briel Chazzy Ali Curley Ashley Dy Wendy Krauss Brenda Morrow and Brendan oconnell have really focused in on you know how do we distribute the leadership uh across the building you know David Jordan will often say Collective efficacy uh and so once we get get um you know more people involved they can get more people involved instead of administration trying to get more people involved um and so you know one of the things they've looked at is how do we Rebrand Miller uh and so one of the things that's out there that we're working with is welcome in expect greatness and so we're we're just looking at how we can get kids students to um W to be at the Miller school and we're trying to do more with the PTO we've had some of the biggest PTO meetings we've had in in a lot of years prior to co uh you know we've had 15 to 20 parents uh at some of our PTO meetings they've helped out with you know our readathon our mattha palooza and we're having an nice cream social between placentino and Miller on June 7th uh so come on out uh 6:00 to 7:30 that's what I have questions for [Music] Mr can you talk a little bit about more about the the Wind Block so I'm curious about it sounds like you're using the I already data to uh in some of the classrooms CU not all of them have it uh so they're also using uh the dibles that they do three times a year they're also using you know um uh some other fluency measures that they they may use but their progress mon monitoring they're working with ilsa to identify the areas of weakness it might be word study uh that they're doing in that time to really looking at where a student might be struggling or an area because if a kid is excelling in an area it's an area where they can work on or expand in their math or their their writing or anything in literacy and how long are those 30 minutes I'm sorry the cycle that kids go through um it's really it it's it's not not they're not necessarily going to the reading tutor it's in the classroom uh but we are looking at a 6 to 8 weeks uh in those periods okay thank you y any other questions from Mr K all [Music] right I feel like they already presented for me and I can just ask any questions and we can go forward um it's your time thank you I put pictures of lots of cute kids in here wake us up um so we really have been using social media to tell our story really looking at today's parent and how we can give you into our building to see what we're doing where I as a working parent um I'm not able well I have middle schoolers they don't want me there but I'm not able to get into the school as much so looking at opportunities for our families to be able to see into our school and using social media for that um in being able to see some events that might not seem like they would be positive so we had um safety drills at placentino this year and where that um is something I wish our world didn't require that we did um that picture on the left is Officer Woods in a preschool classroom with a student so making sure that they see community helpers and that um their only job is to stop look and listen that's what we tell our students you just look towards an adults you stop look and listen and they'll tell you what to do and they'll keep you safe um that next picture we're trying to celebrate what we're doing in our buildings these were our art teachers from last year who did um a Elementary complex wide mural for all of our students K to five so each student and adult created their own little picture and um that is in our connector hallway between placentino and Miller That's displayed now so they can see themselves you should see the pictures walk by actually you can see them kind of pointing up themselves it's really cool yeah that's really NE it's so cool so cool we're looking at ways to bring um family members community members in We have lots of classrooms who have families that come in and they are teaching a lesson or they're sharing something they do and the teacher is able to show out through that classroom but we wanted to show something that um we did through the community so we have a teacher whose husband works for um Boston Dynamics and they brought spot in now I had to break some hearts to say we didn't have an extra $300,000 hanging around for spot to you know roam our hallways but they learned about coding um we were able to do that K to to and share that with our families and thank you for not putting that your priority need no no no it was a capital request that Mr M totally wiped out for me but um we we we do something called March mail so it's the way that we celebrate and help promote writing across our school it also inter um ties care so students write to each other across the school they learn about our second graders become the mail carriers they learn about that Community Helper but then they learn about how to address an envelope we have stamps um they get delivered they get sent back they're very they're sticklers for the address they get sent back if they're not um and that is a whole month wide process that you know we wanted to share with families that our students are not only loving but really engaging in Hands-On learning um well the eclipse was the biggest hit um I thank Dr Kusa and Mr bdet for allowing us to we were one of the only schools who were actually in school during the eclipse so we were able to get Eclipse classes and have that science I mean that not once in probably their lifetime but you know in a long part of their lifetime that they would be able to experience that and they were able to experience it schoolwide so that was pretty amazing um the next slide please we've been using s'more as a platform more and more um it's helping us be able to track if people are actually Opening Our newsletters you know we know we're sending them out we know that we're sharing it's helping us actually um see if they're reading them and they are well at least they're opening of them I can't tell if they're reading that we not but they might be scanning and what we're really trying to do is utilize you know advertising strategies of getting people to be able to scan really quickly maybe of what they want to do we use things like new important you know and highlight it so people can kind of look at that um we use seesaw where the rest of the district it's um uses Google Classroom um so seesaw is a digital learning portfolio that we use at placentino as a means to communicate but also to give a glimpse uh an adult a glimpse into their child's learning so students post their own work there's digital portfolios there's recordings and um there's also um teachers are able to create lessons on there as as well so parents are able to comment they're able to um give their student feedback as well and see what's happening in the classroom next slide please so we are also in year three of um the PBIS Academy it's something that has really um shifted over the three years of looking at moving from just care cards where I think it was probably um about 5 years ago which was really exciting for kids kids but really how do we look at data to be able to improve um to have less unexpected behaviors and to increase our expected behaviors so being able to have care Norms that are across the different aspects of our school so on the right there's that um we have posters all over our school um that our students get lessons specifically in each area so that those are our Norms in the classroom we have Norms on the bus we have Norms in the hallway we have Norms in the lunchroom and um of course we have to celebrate their success so um we do different challenges throughout the year the first one was individual challenges of how many care card students actually were able to get collectively they voted we had um a care dance party you haven't lived until you've danced with 700 prek to second graders um one student said Woo Dr slany you got moves and I was like oh that such confidence after living with two middle school girls I didn't feel very like that at home um we also have been as Mr list talked about um Handle With Care is something really that um has helped we've always had a very strong relationship with the police department um and in different organizations around town but this is a way that we can have a as Dr kusus said not an intrusive um lens into what has happened but more that this is a student that just needs Handle With Care and we're able to all of our staff knows about it so we're able to share that out with every adult that that child interacts with so that they know there might have been something that we just have to have a little um extra TLC um we have also um been using the culture and climate surveys which is by the way through PBIS that we're using across the district we had our staff survey and as Mr Kim said your goal is to get higher than three we are at 3.26 collectively across all measures so that was great our families we are at 3.39 it's not normed for preis 2 students so we've created our own um it's not out of a three it's thumbs up thumbs down you know that piece because we're giving it to our K to2 students and very exciting our prek teachers wanted to give it to our older preschool students so they're giving that as well we're currently doing that so we don't have that data yet but we will on the next slide please we are also implementing ruler and like Mr Kim said um we and Miss Dr Jordan we have gone through all of the adult modules so the goal um that ruler really recommends is the first year is for adults to learn about their emotional intelligence for adults to learn about being able to identify those um emotions we have a joke at our school that it's no longer okay for you to say fine to the answer of how are you we all kind of look at each other and you know take a deep breath it's really hard to label those emotions um I challenge you to not use the word fine or okay when someone asks you that question and if it's hard for us as adults imagine how it is for students they don't have that emotional vocabulary and that's what we want to start um our youngest Learners and we'll be doing that um rolling it out for next year we've been looking at how we can really merge and triangulate these different initiatives of PBIS our trauma informed instruction we're really proud of our placentino staff we have the most staff who's enrolled in our trauma courses ruler and culturally responsive education so um for the final project for many of our teachers who are in the trauma 4 class they actually chose ruler and they have been using the mood meter which is over on the left which is where students are identifying how they're feeling and using that to help um take a a temperature of the classroom and they presented that data as their final project we also had a group um finished the uh cultur responsive education year one academy and our culminating um project was around how to bring more um Windows mirrors sliding glass doors into our curriculum and you know we we are really hard on ourselves and we had a coach who said you have to start somewhere right and um we presented and it was um really great our team um led by Adrien Beaver for this was able to show our monthly schoolwide read alouds um to be able to show that we have digital bookshelves to show that we've been able to increase our number of books in our library for our students whom English is not their first language so we've been able to really purchase more Portuguese um books for our library Portuguese is the um the highest spoken language other than English in our school and that's been really um changing for students to be able to take a book home to their family that their family can read to them we also learned that some of our kids can read in Portuguese and we would never have known that otherwise if they didn't have a book at their level to be able to read so that's a goal of ours to be able to increase that um not only for our Portuguese students but maybe for our English speaking students who want to be able to do that as well um the next slide please so teaching and learning um I talked a little bit about the culturally responsive education I think you've heard about our curriculum reviews we've been working really hard to create a cohesive um multi-tiered system of supports it is a work in progress and it's something that we're going to continue to work on um that being said we are having um an increase and change in our population in Holliston and I think it's really important for us to um embrace it um but no and I think something that we need to work on for next year is to be able to help our students be able to meet the needs of um all Learners including our multi- lingual language Learners that used to be English English language Learners English language Learners and now we now it's MLL um to give you an idea we've had 14 new students um not in preschool because we always have new preschoolers come in at the integrated preschool 14 new students join placentino since September half of them have um been Portuguese is their first language and of that half um all of them were level one or two so that is a a blessing and an amazing for our students in our community and our teachers need to be able to have the tools to be able to support all Learners um specifically these Learners so that's something that we've started to look at and that we're going to dive more into next year we've really been looking at um as I've talked about a lot with you is around the new dyslexia guidelines um placentino has really embraced um this and I think that we um I'm really proud of the work really led by Jenny man um that we've been doing so we've had multiple PD for our staff around understanding dyslexia and structured literacy being able to rethink what they thought they knew about dyslexia and now what they know about dyslexia redesigning instruction so it's multi sensory using you asked about like what what are some of the examples of AI um they had a really exciting AI PD in January and they're like we want to know more we're like yes but we have to do phonics and fluency so we merged it how to use AI to help Advance their phonics and fluency instruction so that was one of the professional developments that we did um as you've heard us talk about we really have been using um looking at our Universal screenings um specifically Dibbles across um k 2 um now more diving into um epel is our French Dibbles um being able to look at that data and correlate it with the English data um being able to share very transparently with families but also having teachers actually be the ones who administer the Dibbles which is a shift for them they um before it was our reading team only who did it and you have a little bit more ownership over an assessment when you give it yourself we also um adopted amplify which is the electronic piece of dibles and we've been using progress monitoring tools um if you go to the next page um you'll see that this is a graph of what our progress monitoring report looks like that our families get so every month any student who um falls in the yellow or red will get a progress monitoring measure so that we can make sure that they are following that aim line that we are meeting their needs and um Hillary you asked about like how long we look at six weeks but we look at that actually it's you can see it's monthly that we're actually monitoring and we have to change our instruction if we K see kids falling off that aim line and we do that through our SAT process we've had more and more students that we talking about of okay we have to bring this student up because they are not making effective progress what do we need to do differently let's start with the tier 2 instruction how do we shift it if that's not working do we need to move to evaluation so we're doing that quicker um thinking about tier one instruction you can look at the top we've been um doing a lot of work I believe the middle school is with landmark and we've been using landmarks um teaching principles about how to create access for our students and looking at how much repetition a student needs so instead of us I think we do a pretty good job of for our tier one students providing that um you know 4 to 14 is probably more like 4 to 30 um exposures to a concept and then I think we do a pretty good job for struggling students what we're working on is our students who are actually um above grade level um we don't have the title gifted but how do we expose them to a concept but be able to then extend them so they don't have to kind of sit in something for that whole time um and then they can you know maybe get bored or maybe there's unexpected behaviors and where can we actually make use of their learning time so that's a shift that we're really thinking about for next year as well um we've been working on family engagement Jess spey um and Lisa Robinson um Jenny man myself um Kathleen pistori she was our inum assistant principal when Mrs Cordo had her baby and we just keep her around and she does presentations with us she's a literacy specialist as well and we did two presentations through CPAC this year um again demistifying dyslexia and then digging into the supports and then I'm really excited on June 5th um sponsored from Title One we're going to have an evening open to all parents around how to support your child um child's literacy the summer so we can keep that um kind of train moving and then finally arch for talent and resources um you heard a lot about our profession par professional liaison you heard a little bit about the evaluation um work that Dr kusco has done for us and I think that I really want to talk about our culture and climate as you saw from last year we were maybe a high two for culture and climate with our staff and now we are are I think a 3.25 which um really feels like strong growth um much like Mr Kim talked about we have a culture and climate committee that's run really in spearheaded by teachers there's a difference when they send out an idea and I send out an idea so you know that actually has been working in bringing our community together um they've started uh monthly um snack carts where different teams are walking around the school with snacks that they're providing and it's just like a waitting get into each other's classroom education can be really isolating especially in elementary school you're with your kids all day long and being able to get in um I think one of my favorite um activities is they made they had us do a rock paper scissor challenge where um we had beads and you had to rock paper scissor and you won the beads the kids loved it they were like where are your beads and I lost the first time someone challenged me so that's a little bit about what we're doing at placentino great questions I have one sorry no so um thinking about like the kids that between both of your buildings and as they walk from placentino down the ramp to Miller they're still learning to be readers as they go into third grade so I'm wondering about like all that work that you just described around supporting students um reading skills how are you kind of working together to kind of transition and kind of keep that coherent to third grade mhm you ready to go sure start so we are both using I think for the first time we're more coherent in the measures that we're using and um you know Mr K mentioned progress monitoring as well um we might be doing it at a little bit higher frequency at placentino I think that's just because of the systems and structures that we have at placentino and being able to work like right now um we are starting our placement meetings um it is not as easy as one might think and we do a lot of looking at groupings and how do we group students so that we can have a um we don't end up in a situation like um Dr Jordan was talking about but at the same time be able to have um a classroom where students have a light group together so the teacher is able to give them what they need and we've been working a lot with um Dr lurry Who is a student service director at Miller to be able to provide that I think the other piece is around um Elsa O'Brien works very closely with Jenny man as well where we're all looking at the same data we're now all going to be using um IR ready which is the same learning pathway so that's going to carry as well I think in general our communication has really increased it is going to look different they're they um they're still learning to read and now they're in third grade um some of the pieces that we're using for instance we've adopted um heg which is aimic awareness um approach and Miller does that as well too they do the jumpstart piece or I forget the name of it but it's for kids who still need intervention so we send that information with them as well and I have special education teachers and Dr Lori and our um adjustment counselors and kind of our our Continuum teachers that will go over to transition meeting uh that will help uh in um us knowing them earlier and KN the parents earlier uh as they move move across and and Mrs man and um Mrs O'Brien meet together to talk about these are kids who've had support we're trying really hard so it's not a cliff right that so it's not that they're so supported at placentino and then they're not because of our different structures and I think the other thing that we have really worked hard on at antino is identifying students earlier um and not kind of having that waiting approach and that's really come from looking at our progress monitoring data and really you know better you do better I'm going just add in that that also that transition also happen from Miller to from Miller to the middle school as well I think that's been helpful as for the relationship of CAS conahan um our intervention is there as far as the continuity of the information data and how we're tracking it on whether it's whether it's on a tier 3 level but also on just a tier two level where students are in their literacy um and how that continuity uh goes from Classico to Miller uh to the middle school so that whatever that intervention or wherever that Gap is um we're continuing with that work um as a transitions yeah I think I mean hopefully you'll see I know we talked a little bit long-winded tonight but it's hard not to to celebrate all of the wonderful things that are happening and I'm not going to sit here and say everything's great and we're we're doing everything perfectly but what I will say is we are working in incredibly hard as with our teachers our parents all of our support staff our administrators the thing that I'm most proud of is the work this team has done together we have really done what we set out to do after we wrote the Strategic plan we came out of Co where we've actually done what we set out to do is have that alignment pre- 12 plus and that's one of the reasons you know talking about that transition piece for us re-evaluating the curriculum roles to have those same two roles at all four buildings I think that's going to be a huge transition and Dr manad will oversee those four eight people and four roles I mean everything we've done we constantly are re-evaluating and you'll see the carryover with the work that they're doing so I'm I personally am just so proud of this team and the work that they've done together and it's a kudos to all of our teachers and and staff throughout the district as well and just one more thing on transition some of our friends in second grade their um teachers or the the adult working with them will walk them over you know starting in May getting used to seeing you know where they may be working next year uh and then the same thing with some of our fifth graders uh going over to Middle School we've started you know some individual walks over uh so the students know you know what to expect we do a whole school where we meet and and talk with and they go go to the classroom rooms both second and third and fifth and sixth but there are some of those individual um friends that that make those um visit earlier more frequently this a question for all four that we're complete what's the one area one area by the way top area where you think you need help to find help that we need the most gross on or okay so opportunity area opportunity area I I mean I think for placentino i' remiss IFI didn't say that teaching and learning and we need to continue to keep growing um you know we have done such a shift in our instruction over the past two years especially in literacy and now um we have a new math program coming in and it's really important um that we look at that as curriculum materials and that we're not looking that as um the curriculum so that tier one instruction in supporting our teachers to be able to create access in inroads no matter where a student is um we've done a lot of work there but that's a road that we have to continue to do it well is a lot of work yeah yeah yeah well and and we had a whole districtwide meeting yesterday and where do we want to focus our PE you you know our PD next year it's really looking at tier one instruction and you know how are we meeting uh the kids needs in tier one uh if we're we're doing a really good job there we may need less support in tier two and three so it's looking at you know how do we roll that out how do we roll out the new math instruction uh so that you know it's it's engaging the students uh in the classroom um so those those are some areas that we taking what are the best teaching practices yeah he's talking about yesterday we had our monthly full admin team at Miller we weet at Miller monthly already for next year um I I would say I know right you meet Dr Jordan's day just to be able to come back to the big day um I I think having a strategic um approach to the through line of the continuity of the Journey of the child from prek through 12th grade uh that every every variable everything and how do we connect those to each other um sometimes we focus in silos of whether that is classentino as Silo Miller Silo Middle School silo or the high school silo or this teacher's class ASO that teacher classo or math being a silo not connected to English and how how are all the matric um of these different things in inter connectedness um we talk about the middle school and I appreciate Jamie for saying that um language matters literacy why it's such an essential piece is also the words and language that we're using with children um and how that transcends multiple subjects and multiple grades um and um One Challenge we at the middle school that we're looking to we're continuing to overcome um and I imagine that across multiple schools is we may say that exact same thing more or less in nine different ways uh in 15 different classes uh and the in the experience of a child with a limited executive function skill is that that was 30 different things different things that that they just experience but if if it's an adult they think they all said the same thing the thing for the high school it's two different areas it's really being able to identify student need so the data dashboard is going to be huge for us um and then using that to support teachers with tier one intervention supports and and as we said before uh if we can really solidify those we can then um limit the amount of Need for uh tier 2 and tier three supports um additionally it's really focusing on the equity of experience for kids making sure that um what is happening for a sort of like a nth grader coming in their English their math their their his social studies um that that experience no matter who they have as a teacher um no matter what's going on in that classroom that that um that it is focused in the same areas um and a lot of work there will be done uh focusing on the schedule um next year thank you so much very much appreciate thank you thank you I feel like they need a movement break I think um so it is uh 9:30 we are an hour and 10 minutes late um no that was that was a great presentation thank you to our principles uh and uh so but we have now arrived at our central office administrator update so like t uh just a couple quick things uh I mentioned influence 100 already but um last night we had our third um hollison Coalition against haon bias meeting and given the the time of year we did not have as much turnout as we had in the past that being said um we brought in Carlos Hoy who's going to help facilitate some of this work with us and we we are starting to map out what the work's going to look like and over the summer I'm going to work with um Travis a and the Town Administrator and our assistant Town Administrator and Jim Barrett from the police force and then also um Jackie wner from hollon Youth and Family Services um actually Dr Jordan is one of our members and he was there last night so we really started to map out what is the work's going to look like in the journey moving forward to sustain some of this work in the community and I'll be planning with them over the summer there'll be some communication going out to talk about what we did last night and then kind of the road map going forward but we'll need time over the summer and we'll share that out in the F we'll we'll schedule some meetings for the fall and throughout the school year for that Community work to happen um I did want to also mention that we have our Equity discussion as well as our curriculum discussion on uh June 6th at the meeting and then uh last night I wanted to point out we had was it just last night or two nights ago now think it was two nights ago National Honor Society uh I was here at the high school for that always a wonderful thing and kudos to Mr kod who does an awesome job with our national hon Society hundreds of students at this point go through the program um Service Learning I think someone mentioned is on May 28th the Global Citizens pres presentations are on May 30th and I think I'll start job there at this point so thank you sure uh Dr Bernard I'm going to pass down so you guys can see it I shared with teachers today um a teaching and learning survey and I'll share the data with you on during our June 6 presentation um other than that I'll wait until the June 6 presentation this is something that we talked about earlier in the year when when we talk about um the curriculum work that people were doing if but trying to get some feedback from teachers that we plan for next year and try to roll out St as well um dat I got a number of items I'll do them as quickly as I can for you um the um the auditorium wall work has started um the material showed up we've gone through the vetting process with regards to um the cories and safes for their fingerprinting um and uh while you know maybe not the original schedule we' hoped for at least it's moving forward now so that's happening James ke is obviously overseeing the project um there been a lot of chatter about the playgrounds um we have a we have a number of things that are going on with them some of them been going on for a little while now the I'll start at the Miller one CU that's the easiest um most of its Aesthetics with regards to the issues um we do have one quote for replacing the surface which is not a great quote pricewise but it's also what has to be now um James is actually getting two more quotes on that um we went to our original vendor um who I I've worked with in the past and um got the initial quote so because the price that came in on we have to get two other quotes on it so um the placentino playground is probably the next simplest thing that's going on um there was an element that was viewed as as potentially a safety issue we took that element out of uh that piece of the element out of the larger element um have boarded up the sides of it to prevent students from you know getting harmed in that way so while the element will be less interesting at this stage until we can come up with a suitable solution it's now no longer there and the more difficult one is the playground that's in the back the first and second grade classroom um you know we ended up reuling the area which is normally a summer project for us but with the rains that we had this winter as opposed to snow um you know we've had an ongoing issue there with mulch leaving the area it's just topographically it's not in a great place um we we've added small retaining walls over the years we've tried to we at one point we had um a volunteer from a local company come and regrade the whole land as much as they could um so part of that area is kind of closer part of the wastewater treatment plan plant I should say so that you know we can't either go down too far and move too many things it's it's it's a challenging space and unfortunately with the schools and and the amount of land we have we don't have a lot of excess land so um we're working with a number of Solutions we did have a local landscaper come in and and give us their ideas um James and I are probably working on that space last just because it is the it is the toughest solution I'll say um because it's not just a simple like fix or PID or repair or something so um you know that that has to be that one has to be a summer project at best if not something more significant so um we're working through all that um then one other uh uh facilities update um we we instituted uh last month um the dude Solutions uh for for doing our work order tracking for both uh technology and for facilities um there's currently as we started what about mid Monon in April something like that mid to late April April Break um there's I just took a quick look there's 185 work orders that are in there some of them are test ones so we haven't figured I haven't figured out how to delete them out can't seem to delete them um so um there's 185 work orders 108 of them have been cleared completed so um but some of the completed ones truthfully are the test ones so um again but again we we we have work orders going through there um we have a good tracking system for that and we're working through some of the glitches right now some of the technology glitches and we're moving forward with that and the staff have the ability to yes everybody everybody except for our M guys has the ability to use it we have figure out how to use the the the compan not figured out what to do with apostrophes and names so um so there's a slight issue with that so but it's good cuz I I even can go in there and Mr bday and we can actually see which tickets have been closed out already so it's going to really help expedite our you know being prioritizing the needs and having access and actually I think the biggest the biggest advantage or the help is going to be when somebody's out so that there's other people can more easily pick up the work as opposed to trying to you know say hey I I got my these six things done let me see what's going on over there with one of my maintenance mechanics so it's it's you know I think that's where it's going to allow us to use our utilize our resources more efficiently across buildings as opposed to just being attached to a building so um so that's those are the those are the easy ones now the hard one um the try to do this for you quickly the is it not here though school choice yes we're doing the school choice no I don't want to I'm doing is a different thing I'm doing first okay you're going to share yeah yeah I'll do it I went away from it I don't I don't know about this I'm a little wor why I just don't know what you're doing oh um for those people who've been on the committee for a while both of you um um I'm going to just quickly rise through this because I know we don't want to take time to time on this um I I normally do a presentation on school trp it kind of explains the process the newer members well you may have an inkling about what it is um you know this is just a a quick little thing and actually of the districts have fuse this um so the school choice program uh school choice laws massachus general laws chapter 76 section 12b um and basically what that requires is that schools are assumed to participate in the school choice program unless the school commy votes to not participate that doesn't do anything to the existing students just means you're not going to accept any new ones so but again it has has to be an annual vote this year this vot is coming a little later just because of complications with the budget complications with the teachers contract etc etc and I mean there's still some ongoing complications obviously because again needing a override vote um I work with the principles on coming up with I believe is is at least a reasonable Approach at this time that we don't think is going to be negative to our class size class sizes Keith is that just based on receiving or also we have no control over who leaves okay um you know again this is the school choice program is one that's driven by the families of of you know with children and if they're if there something that whether they don't like the district they're in a lot of districts offer uh staff members the ability to go to attend school where they work they use the school choice program will I say illegally nobody's really watching at 9:40 at night illegally um it's you you you have you can't create seats for a staff member without making it available to everyone okay but you know am I whining about that no um School Comm votes to open seats uh they can be very specific to openings or very general what I mean by that is us having uh uh programs in our in placentino for French emersion monore you can open up a you know a third grade French emergency as opposed to just a third grade seat so you can be specific and we have been in the past um preferences only be given to siblings of current students this is where they break the law so if we have a current student um in school who has a sibling who wants to come here that would be the first cut and you'll see that we actually have one in kindergarten this year who's a sibling of a current student so and we've always tried to keep that we try to keep families together it's something about keep some families together that seems like a school thing to do um the child must be a non-resident and and what I mean by that is we very often get request from people well I'm thinking about moving if if I can keep my kids in school here I can't offer a seat to someone who lives here because they're not they don't I mean they live here they're entitled to education here so um transportation responsibility of the parent while while we have policy that um allows us to transport now we didn't used to um thank you Cynthia um the the by law of Transport is still their responsibility unless we want unless we offer to provide it and over the years occasion when a when a route has worked out um I mean we're not driving into the middle of Milford or over to Upton or something to go get a j space available on an outer route you know around the outer limits of the town that a that a family would bring their child to so again it's happened occasionally it's not a regular occurrence um one child once a child is enrolled they get to stay here and as long as they're a resident of Massachusetts if because the the Billing System the way the billing system works is they do it through the chapter through chapter 78 so um or actually gener to the town but what they what they do is so if a child comes here from pick your town um pick your town then loses $5,000 in Aid and we get and we as the schools get um $5,000 in revenue for that so it's it's you know they they steal from the town and give to the schools and the perp that was the purpose of the program because they wanted schools to be able to improve at that time um when when you know when Ed reform came into place and and the school choice laws came in slightly actually before that it was it was trying to encourage towns to support their schools so if you were losing money and losing enough money you would say hey maybe I should do something here or why are they leaving um our school TR history I have a thing on I have a thing in the packet on that so we skip over that rationale I have something in the packet on that we'll skip over that so I don't have to repeat myself uh the process um I mean the principles go throughout the budget process determine available seats that's happened very recently because of that we advertise in local paper to generate interest which we have already done two and a half months ago um polls will we made to to school Community CR seats what I'm doing tonight um again the school commit votes to open the seats um we collect the applications hold the lottery which we've done we haven't done the Lotter we've collected applications town meeting votes couple weeks ago on the budget and if successful we offer the seats um if someone applies after the initial Lottery we create a subsequent list a a you know and it's just in a first come first serve basis and before November we conduct a second Lottery um to kind of re rework the deck chairs it usually means nothing because again we've already accepted all of our seats so um thank you um so uh from there beautiful presentation thank you thank you I appreciate that there I know you were enthralled um and used to watch it when you on fincom the way it jumped all over the place was just you know phenomenal well that's the way it should be you know it should be something that keeps you alive at 9:30 at night Dynamic 43 thank you cting what you say dynamic dynamic yeah so um next so I'm going to call up the uh thing that's in your packet the uh report that's in your packet under mandom y the M uh I got a share now it it does it does look like perhaps just perhaps there are 45 position seats listed totally you have 43 I'm going to skip down to um I skip down to the second page of it anyway except that that's not oh I sh the wrong thing this one so um but you look at here's school choice history way so I can [Music] zoom so you'll see historically still may not be able to see it historically we've been as high as 297 students back in 1995 um as low as where am I 1964 students a few years ago um we we've basically leveled out in this range of in the last few years between 100 and 110 um you know the challenge with school choice obviously if we raise the number way up and we can't come back in a few years when all those kids start graduating and we don't have the space behind them you know you'll end up with declining revenues which again you try not to do it's it's it's a great program for us we we've taken advantage of it you can see the monies we've received over the years in general around 600,000 now it's high is over a million dollars so it's been a good program for the for the town of hon and and for the school specifically but again you have to manage it you just can't leave it open because you can get in trouble class size and things of that nature I can say that I can at least talk about the last 20 24 years of this we've never hired a teacher for this so it's never been something that we've gotten in trouble um because again because we do it's um I don't know how many assistant superintendent ago he used to always call us empty seats on a plane you know if we have available space in a room we can we can collect $5,000 for that seat um and when people ask about special education yes there is a there we we we can't we can't discriminate about anything we can't ask about uh uh their IEPs um their primary language we can't ask about their discipline we SP ask about discipline can't ask about that anymore we can't be prejudicial in any way shape or form but if they are a special needs child we do get an added increment on that and our increment for this year is on the order of 20 $20,000 or something of that nature you get it literally it's it's based on the circuit breaker model without the circuit breaker so you don't have the 50,000 or so that we're eating at first it's literally from dollar one you know one minute of speech and language once a year and we'll get $12 type of thing you know and so and we claim everything it's not a question about that um so again here's here's the history so you can just see the history um something I've done I I call rationality it's basically if I took out all the school choice children and applied it to our current class sizes so what you would see there I always have the need to walk now um so the the column that says school choice enrollment that's where our that's our current enrollment for school choice students so the next column over average without school choice seat so that would be our average class size if I took all the school choice students out and left all the teachers the problem is we're generating approximately $660,000 this year so I've got a you know at a at a cost of um at about $60,000 a teacher I take 12 teachers out of our list so when I take the when I take I just a portion out 12 teachers from K to wherever got to grade 11 that would be 12 grades you'll see that our class size actually goes up because we use that Revenue to again July buy more teachers or keep the teachers we have here um you know uh uh employed yeah and you'll say it doesn't impact it doesn't negatively impact our class size cuz the actual is the 2020 the fourth column is the current students and if took the school choice the numbers do not change significantly so but we get that Revenue without significantly impacting class size so then the third sheet is from my recommendations on where the class size are going to be and it and it keeps all of our class sizes um within guidelines so the the adding the school choice seats is not negatively impacting class size beyond the guidelines we just have not done that I say ever but certainly my recollection so um going back to the first sheet not sure right though I must have written copied something wrong over so I I'll work from here CU it's 43 um my recommendation would be to add 11 open up 11 seats for kindergarten our current kindergarten enrollment um is at 120 now which for my tenure here would be the it's it's less than half of some of the classes that I started with here um right now we have 59 students slated for our four kindergarten classrooms in traditional so we have a little bit of space there I'd say so um we have we have 11 people who are interested and I I recommend taking all 11 including the one sibling um we have two students who are who are interested in uh French immersion uh kindergarten as you can see our French emerging kindergarten size is 25 students for two classrooms so again trying to keep that program alive as much as possible yes Don Keith can I just ask with the 11 that um are interested inad kindergarten are we doing Outreach to those families to see if they might have an interest in Monas to better I'm not Monas to French imersion to better balance that um the the not because we usually ask for the three preferences not one of them chose French as their second preference okay and when they're given the choice to you know check this check that or one 23 um do they get information about the program I me have we done Outreach for them to understand monu French like is there they had they will reach out themselves um to what we have uh marketing individual programs can be challenging sometimes because you don't necessarily want to show a preference one way or the other um you know I we're very careful when we do our own um you know kindergarten information nights at placentino just because we you know you don't want to put programs against each other we highlight the strengths of but right now we're not I mean so if you look at the class size we're not really pitting a program against it against each other we have full sort of kindergarten and and uh traditional kindergarten classes we we have many seats on the plane for frch immersion and still in traditional but I again we can we can certainly make that opportunity available to them don't can go back again we can when we offer them the seats we can ask them if they would be interested in in possibly choosing French or together but can we ask them if they want more information to understand it because if you're not from this community AR aware of some of the like what the program means they they just might not have the information that you might get from your neighbor understood understood uh we I we can do more and and we will do more once once you know once the seats are approved and we you know reach out to them so and is there a way to keep our kindergarten um school choice seats open longer they're open until truthfully until uh uh next June okay so um and if we got more interest I would come back and say hey can we you know can we create two or three more seats I mean we meet t a month normally and is there more we can do to try to generate more interest again I know we've gone back to we've done it again I know there's hesitation but it's just you know 13 and a 12 kids for in a class we exactly we've posted a flyer we we've you know again outside of running a banner across Washington Street for anybody who drives through town um you know you go in neighboring towns and supposed to sp there I don't think that that's going to do well amongst our peer District peer districts I mean we still have to meet up with these people every now and then and go to professional organizations and I'm not sure that they would necessarily appreciate s like a you problem it could be a me problem there's no question about it it's clearly getting close to 10 let's get moving these Facebook groups of course there you go so I have a question U you yeah say say if we approve these numbers and families resend their interest do do those numbers remain or do they yes you open up a seat I'm not opening up a seat for that child I'm opening up a seat in that grade got so if the first child turns it down we go to the second child we we do a lottery we move down that list until we exhaust it it's rare for us to get every seat that we create filled unless it's like eight kids and one seat type of thing um we we never we opened up a slew of uh uh High School seats last year and we filled about 2third of them um and we had a lot of children interested as well um this year again the number of having 91 people 91 families interested is last year we only had 49 students interested so I mean if you want to say that if people are thinking that poon is going down somewhere that's not the case at least from our neighboring communities so um for us to you know almost double our our interest this year um would tell you that they they still have a good strong respect for our schools out of curiosity do are you able to know what districts are coming from yes I do I I I mean I if people want to know I can certainly offer up like the top three just when I finish this I will do that okay just I I have to call another sheet I do have that available um so again my continue my recommendation I'd like to like to recommend opening up accepting opening up to seats in fourth grade 3 and 5ifth 2 and 6th 5 and 7th 3 and eth and a combined 15 in the high school it's the high school we like to be a little flexible we're allowed to be I put 10 and five here but it's 15 in the high school um I would hope that that that 15 would be able to use up all 29 and 12 41 sleeve slot slots so so just point out that there's a two rows for fifth grade and so it's it's three spots for opening grade you have twice on your memo that's oh that okay so it is 433 so Keith what do you think it accounts for the fact we have 91 requests this year whereas last year we only have 49 I think it's strong administrative leadership at the central office I believe it's a strong leadership chair I think I think we're getting back to more of our normal interest level because Co has MH died down I mean we know it's not gone like Co last year again um but people are isolating still within their own kind of I I think people are exactly are going further out there and it's just you know again they're they're getting back to more of a normal life and this is more like our typical interest our typical interest always be between say 75 and 100 and now in 91 this is Mark of triple interest okay so would anyone like to make a motion I have one more question the two sixth grade seats you're opening up um just again seeing the uh 91 application or 91 requests 49 um and the ones you recommended do we have additional requests for sixth grade I know it's somewhat of a smaller class if you look at the other column okay um I had five we have five requests right now um I didn't want to truly I didn't want to accept all five because I'm trying to be respectful of the fact that we eliminated two teaching positions there um we will not get we do not have enough interest or would we ever get enough interest to restore those two positions that we're never going to get 30 sixth graders if there were 15 and I'm not and again sixth graders has been an attrition year for us in general anyway and you know again if our attrition rate is higher than it I anticipated it to be that number could even be lower so okay thank you okay everyone good so I'd like to entertain a motion to open 43 school choice seats with the breakdown as presented in your packet and was presented by Mr P so moved second all in favor iOS the carries Lisa seven and Frank um uh do you want to know how many from each town or just the three highest towns three largest towns three largest late night I'm sorry late at night we don't even go I can add fast but uh Milford is our highest um framingham's our second highest and bellingham's our third okay um so uh is that are you actually one more question okay we voted already I know get enough ke I don't needan to revote it's more of a if there was an opportunity for us to open more seats would we consider doing that I would bring back a recommendation that's happened in the past I'm just asking benefit of all I'm not bashful about you know Gathering acorns especially if we're talking about other French verion or other Montas seats or something acorns on a plane we anything opening the seats are open Gathering ACN the money ACN is money the question all right uh three more minutes let's go you got three minutes all right good it's almost 10 that's it so so we we have to reorganize the subcommitte we don't actually have to do that tonight well we're going to but um so I would be in favor of reorganizing the second committees because I think we're going to have communications that we would like to we don't want to just pause everything for 2 weeks we may have communications we want to put out I know budget we met today but I could but have they been do they okay go ahead proceed thank you um so the only one I think we would have an update from do you have any policy update no okay um to me for policy negotiations is done how about budget um budget we had a meeting today we talked about um um uh you know going to the select board basically a motion for us to go to the select board on Tuesday and we'll get to that so we're not going to jump the agenda here but that's it we have no additional meeting scheduled but I would anticipate additional meetings before our next meeting um not before June 6th I think we might need a meeting before June more than your budget meeting or do you mean us no no I budget budget have fun so possibly yes um so with that just on the heels of of ratifying the contract and having things go forward we're we're going to um go to the select board on on Tuesday um and then I just I just want to um either have a discussion or just simply vote on sort of an official request for the select Court to hold a special town meeting to so the school committee is officially requesting to the special town meeting on about uh June uh 17th is there any discussion about that or any okay so I'll entertain a motion to approve that move by Don second there um along with that um I'd like um sorry a motion to Simply we we have a draft of a uh a letter a joint letter with the the hft to sort of uh give the committee's approval for for Don and me to sort of it without any sort of material changes and it's sort of in your packet we've got I can I'll send out a a few changes that I got uh this evening but they're not really material um do we we don't have newsletter in here though is that what that's supposed to be Comm or communication well it's part of the contract ratification similar like when you did the The Joint statement with the par on the PA contract so I have a motion for for that moved by Dawn second by Sarah carries unanimously um now to reorganize the subcommittee so I have a a recommendation and then we could discuss it and we can change things around um but so Don and I will stay on budget and um I think that Frank being in finance um and having a new member well not normal given that we have three new members um that was sort of my thought is for Budget policy Cynthia would you be willing to stay done we with policy chair can I just pause for a moment and just say um I think we should lay out kind of like are you thinking policy meetings would typically be in late afternoon lunchtime so it be kind of after working hours maybe more after 4:15 after 4:15 even 5:00 and then you typically would meet we meet monthly mon more often um and then with budget we have been many of our meetings have been during during the work day um at lunchtime or um in the afternoon because it's it's important for us to have both you know Dr Kusa Dr Bernard um Mr budet um usually two members of fincom uh come as well um but that is typically during you know Monday through Friday in the afternoon you're doing better job explaining I am 10:01 um so so yeah the the subcomittees do tend to meet more during the the day or or or evening just because the administration does participate and we try to keep them late as few times as possible I say that um Communications is a little bit more like you can made a little bit more it's more flexible as well as superintendent evaluation too but we can get it we don't have to decide superintendent eval right now but yeah but we we won't do superintendent let's do policy and Communications because I think I those are they'll have to express their interest so um since you want you you'll chair and Sarah would you chair Communications sure um and then so is there interest from the new members for uh policy or Sarah you want also be on policy I like policy well I mean but I'm thinking I'm thinking of sucession su nice for Sarah to stay on cuz she's you know she's I'm sorry you're you're so yes yeah but she can still she still needs to chair something so it would be no she chairing yeah great um I don't know with your background do you have interest in policy yeah I'd like to do this thank you very much great um and then for communications we need two more members Jo do it and then um do Communications to and Communications will often help us organize like office hours too and get a newsletter out which we try to do like quarterly you can do it more often you can do it more often but like put it on each other for if you C it we'll get it out usually really important during budget time course when there's other major things going on and then the last one that I would like to to do as part of this tonight is just uh point someone to be the Hugh negotiator negotiating liaison we it's our um administrative uh bargaining unit um I'll volunteer for that andless someone feels strongly to B need me out if I'm only on one what else am I going to go on well am going oh that's right okay that makes sense okay sorry I got lost for a second you want to do that no it is it Poss like if you did that is and one of the new members want to join with you we my only my only like why I'm thinking that is you know if we're successful with um you know we ratified the contract tonight it's a three-year agreement it's contingent on override but we did just close the par contract as well but it would give you some experience on the negotiating and you may want to I'm not sure the next time you'd have that opportunity so if you maybe want to do it with Dan too do I want to do that to do what Q the oh yeah yeah administrators princip because Sarah you are the cafeteria workers yeah um do we have any more than we need when does that mean we haven't decided maintenance we need to they still usually just they're supposed to send you something NSE has a fine right now um we and cafeteria cafeteria so we have Sarah on cafeteria or thoughts files okay and thoughts I was have thoughts soes does anyone want to work with me on Hugh and then someone want to Dos I'll work with you on Hugh those for the new you know but you can do minion words no I don't need okay have that training experience if we got it okay it's late can we just let's wrap it which one's harder mean you know okay so maintenance workers don't want think about it and come back to us uh next on the 6th uh so right now we've got budget chair Don member Dan and Frank policy chair Cynthia member Sarah Hillary Communications chair Sarah member Joe and Hillary uh H negotiations Dan and Frank j a motion to approve that move by Don second by Cynthia all in favor thank you very much okay with that we are right at the end of our uh meeting we will meet for executive session so at this time I'll entertain a motion to adjourn from Open Session to enter into executive session from which we will not return for the purpose of discussing strategy with Rel to collect bargaining if an open meeting may have AAL impact on bargaining on the bargaining position of the public body and the chair declares and this is again related to uh colletive bargaining with the hftt unit as well as to conduct strategy sessions and preparation for negotiations with non union Personnel or to cond collect bargain sessions or contract negotiations with non-un Personnel I'm move by S second by Don that requires a roll call vote Frank hi Hillary yes Joe yes Sarah yes um Cynthia yes Don yes Dan yes uh and with that uh we are are Jed