e e e I pled Ali to of the United States of America and to the Republic for which stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all all right everybody so the first item um of business is to enter into uh executive session so that the public knows we will be returning to regular session at the conclusion of that approximately around 6:30 p.m. although we can never be quite sure of the exact time so um perhaps I can turn to got me I know we're going to look for a motion to enter into executive session trusty secretary is um Madam chairman I would move to enter into executive session at 5:32 p.m. pursuing to master laws chapter 38 section 21 set paragraph A2 conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with non-unique personnel cond conduct collective bargaining sessions or contract negotiations with non-unit Personnel un a grievance executive sessions include school committee uh the school committee superintendent Kirk Downing uh Amry ster Kevin key uh Leia R Jennifer mccrew Victor Rosado and James Kobe committee will reconvene an open session and I do so declare so I will second that um any discussion there is some discussion on my um I would only ask during the executive sessions of the chair uh a lot of people are going to be here just make sure they identify themselves when they speak and that they identify everyone as they come in so I just want everyone to include ididentification every wa for the minutes so thank you any further discussion I uh so we'll do the roll call vote uh we'll start with Dana yes K yes anyy vessels yes Joe yes myself yes Sharon yes and Shan yes and yes and Mike we are just moving to enter into executive session great and so my Kish votes yes so thank you very much we will um contact nikk afterward e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e now um we are moving on to Citizens comments and I would actually like to just hold on one second to make sure that there are no citizens in the hallway or even admin graders uh right right y or student representative I by the way just got all of your texts about traffic oh we all texted you anyone was so weird there's like Ace a police thought this was typical Rush Hour was it not typ this is worse this is much worse before we start the traffic a little warm on Monday night that's on the couple of police cars in a tow trucking over you look like you taking things CU it was so damn hot aw it was unbearable you these items are not on the agenda we're all on camera I know these these items are not on the agenda is the broken over there Shar sry found those the first s look at all the people you were trying to so are there any citizens in the gallery who would like to speak comments so we're gon to move beyond that in our agenda here um and we're going to go over to approving the consent agenda I'll turn to Joe for a motion thank you m chairman i' move to approve the consent agenda of May 8 2024 contain the draft meeting minutes of April 24th 2024 and the warrants of May 10 2024 I'll second that motion is there any discussion about the consent agenda see none all those in favor raise your hand looks unanimous are any extensions any post okay so Mike obst um so moving on to the school committee chairperson update I don't have anything that is uh already in the agenda so let's keep on moving on uh to our student representative you have three announcements that's the chair was going to do that now okay so he tells me how to do my job thanks so uh I was going to do it at a different time but there's no time like the present so uh let me present to our student representative to hansy hansy I am going to struggle to get to you can you get to me come on up girl come get your present this is in celebration of service to the Nisha Regional Public [Applause] Schools she's camera shot oh the camera lovese cute thank you yeah know thank you so hansy we're so grateful uh to your service you have been an amazing not only representative but also role model um and kind of helping us understand what's happening in our high school and really helping us keep close to the student body so thank you very very much thank you all for having me the past two years as well I would turn it up to the committee as well anybody wants to say anything or did I cover it I would love to go ahead H you've been amazing not just in our meetings but also at school and you've been a great connection for me to the student body through stuco through your administrators and teachers you did a wonderful job thank you so much thank you for all you've done thank you yeah so um we're going to hear from you though but let's have your student report what's going on ladies so a few weeks ago our junior class took a field trip to Providence where we saw the play fences and over 180 staff and students went we took up the whole theater um and it was a book that was read in all the English classes this Saturday is the junior prom at mechanics Hall in wiester and next Saturday is the Relay for Life all proceeds will go to the American Cancer Society we would also like to extend our congratulations to senior Tyler Mano for and earning a position on the Massachusetts Scholastics press as 2024 All State High School journalism staff we have some exciting things planned for the seniors on the 22nd we have a senior Sunset and an outdoor movie night raisin canes and sandies will be providing the food and then on the 28th is our annual senior breakfast this year followed by long games with a slip and slide a dunk tank and an ice cream truck and then on June 6th a senior banquet at Devon Commons with graduation 9th nooba DEA competed at the international Career Development conference last week in Anaheim California n would ever students attending Winston and Brennan two of our Juniors competed in the franchise business plan category reaching the finals which earned them a top 20 finish in the world this is the third consecutive trip to ICDC for both Winston and Brennan as a team a new school record also reaching the finals were Lily St Martin hospitality and tourism operations your category that's all tonight that's quite a bit so thanks guys and hansy it's been our absolute pleasure Ava we are so grateful that you are hopefully going to carry the torch uh Beyond and continue to be a men also so we wish you the very very best of luck and maybe you can keep us updated on what's going on as you head down to the big city definitely thank you all again all right so you guys are free to go if you'd like thank you okay you all right guys so now we're going to go on to the superintendent's report I'll turn it over to Kirk thank you for the rec Madam chair and thank you to the committee for our today um including your meeting materials we have a few announcements and then the Strategic update is the uh superintendent's uh some of evaluation so uh the preschool uh director position if you will hearken back to January 17th at the presentation of the budget we prescribe the preschool model with the passing of the budget from the town of Bolton and the town of Lancaster uh we know that successful passage of the budget by two of our towns puts us into a position where we can do actual planning for next year so uh while the voting of the budget by this committee uh essentially endorsed that position I think it's prudent to provide you with that job description to also uh you know redo that again next week as we come forward so that's all part of um the preschool director um uh process we talked about in the project season and this is preschool director will function very much like a principal in terms of supervision supervision and evaluation of Staff of uh managing the budget and forecasting enrollments and and Staffing and all those needs so um it very much is is a parallel position there in the form of a preschool director um next is uh it's a annual time where we approv the district physician contract so that's provided to you I engaged with Dr Coleman earlier this week he's very satisfied that uh we continue to have that contract on an annual uh fee of $5,000 so thank you to Dr Coleman for that and will be bringing that forward for a vote as well and the last announcement I want to turn it over to Ross mcaren our Director of Finance and operations to give you an RFP update for food service and thank you uh for the opportunity to provide the school committee with an update on the RFP for food services this evening uh again this is a director position only uh the district received three proposals from reputable companies uh prior to submission all three companies attended a mandatory pre-proposal conference completed site tours of our kitchens and submitted any questions for clarification and their preparation for proposals uh last Thursday the uh Team tasked with evaluating rfps met to review the technical or non-price proposals we still have work to do in our evaluations before moving on to reviewing the price proposals uh as a reminder this shift uh to our district employe uh will not impact our district employee kitchen staff and we thank the kitchen managers uh in addition to our office coordinator and parent representative who have been able to serve on the evaluation team and we'll continue to do so as we make our decision uh we'll provide a further update and a contract for approval at the May 22nd uh school committee meeting um and then lastly just just a quick add-on uh with regards to Food Services we've been having an agenda item with regards to Food Service rates for fy2 continue to shift on the agendas um so I've done some research with Desy and other districts just as a a heads up for the next meeting we would only be approving meal pricing that would impact uh when students buy second meals and the pricing for adult meals which is applicable when a staff member purchases a meal as a reminder the first meal for any student is provided under the universal schools meals policy set by the state and supported through the state budget uh we'll have proposed rates for approval at the next school committee meeting uh I did consider having our schoolc me our food service director position filled um prior to talking about this uh and thinking about doing a cost analysis um with them however I think it's prudent to do an approval and then they feel like something needs to be changed during the next school year we can do so otherwise we'd look at our ex change for FY 26 looks like that's it for the superintendent report I have a quick question for you guys and it's on the Food Service rates did you say that you're going to bring that proposal to us on the 22nd correct and then we're going to vote on that at the June 5th meeting correct y okay any have any questions on the superintendent report all right that's fantastic um so let's keep going on the agenda next is new business we're going to head over to we have quite a bit of new business here my friends um not grades 9 through 12 science curriculum review report is going to be shared and at this point I want to recognize assistant superintendent Laur friend to introduce the team okay so I would like to welcome CIS MCC and Dr K to the table to help present going out of my this is a PDF format so I have I have a slideshow if you want me to drive in do you want to what did you get perfect okay connected again thank you um I just like to you know compliment um this Miss MC actually it'sit MC our director for Math and Science and has been working really really hard this year with our math and uh and science Educators and been working in tandem with Linda Pier who is our high school science department head and I'd like to thank both of you for all of your work so far today with phase one of our curriculum review cycle this is a new process uh for the high school in particular shifting our practice from thinking about just replacing textbooks to shifting our thinking about instructional vision for the kinds of learning experience we want for students in the classroom thinking about what's working and where potential areas for improvement and I continue to to um give kudos to miss Pier for saying she's the tip of the spear for the high school in Le work so thank you and thank you for being here tonight you have and so again just a review of our curriculum review process we're going to share with you the action steps that we have just about completed for phase one and um and what the department is recommending for phase two and then we'll um open it up to any questions that the committee may have as a reminder uh our curriculum review cycle and our curriculum review process is tightly interwoven into our strategic plan as a reminder of that connection we've created this slide for you here curriculum review process is is constructed in U five phases we've reviewed this with the committee so this slide is really just a reminder of that process and we've LED linked the whole curriculum development and review process in schedule which we continue to work to update uh in the presentation for you as well I'm going to turn it over to our curriculum director Miss MCB who is going to provide an overview of the timeline what what the team has been doing uh to date and I believe um Miss Pi is going to speak to our student feedback component and Dr Boon is going to speak to our family feedback component and then it's going to come back around to miss MC who's going to and this who we're going to talk about next up perfect thank you um so this year we've conducted phase one of the curriculum review in the fall we built knowledge as a department of deeper learning and deeper assessment we collaborated on where the curriculum um currently is and we developed a draft for our vision for the future over the winter we analyzed the current state of the curriculum and courses we solicited feedback from students via a survey that they took in science class and from families with a combined survey and thought exchange that was emailed to high school families we reviewed the feedback saw how it aligned with the instructional practice uh priorities and determined areas for a focus for refinement and then we also continue to review and refine work that has been done next year we're going to enter phase two and that in which we will analyze and refine core sequencing and offerings as well as um talk about the better communication of this review what high quality instructional materials are out there uh using curate and Ed reports uh the department will also conduct site visits continue to work on curriculum writing and refinement select materials needed to meet the vision and prepare for implementation and then in school year 2025 2026 is when we will enter phase three and Implement uh new next curricular materials new curricular materials um so as I said phase one we've been spending our time trying to answer these two questions how do our current instructional practices curricula and materials support student learning and what is our instructional Vision um so as you can see there's been a wide variety of work in this phase including de departmental based work professional development site visits and Gathering of student and family feedback the department has adopted a goal around engagement and members have participated in des's Kaleidoscope deeper learning initiative and then here's a copy of our vision that was developed um our vision highlights the types of student learning experiences that we hope to strengthen and create um in supporting our students in the area of science now and Beyond the chopa there's a hyperlink on that slide if anyone wanted to look at a larger version I know I have a hard time reading that yes that was AIT of the doc U so these are the three areas of work that we've been focused on during this phase and you can see that there's been substantial work around curriculum review and professional development to support that as well as feedback gathered from our students and families so I'll now turn it over to our awesome department head Linda Pier to talk to you about the student survey thank you all right so as you can see we look at the student survey results here this first slide's nice and easy the reason we put it in there as you can see we had almost 600 students that took the survey which is a huge number um and we wanted a good representation we had every science teacher um have students taking class so that was we're happy about those numbers really great number and then of course the second one you can see the um the following students in certain grades if you do notice the only one that kind of stands out if you look at grade 12 there's um 18% uh keep in mind that science is required for 3 years which you guys AR know so not every senior takes a science class and then some double up so they've taken it in you know one class and not the other so and we provided a hyperlink to the student survey um so you could see the the types of questions that were asked all right so if we take a look at this you can see here these are sort of the important elements from a student perspective so when they walk in the sign class this is what they want to see and there are quite a few here uh the top three uh hand on which is great cuz we do Labs all the time so it aligns perfectly with what we're doing what we're going to continue to do um real world schools relevancy um you know those kinds of things so making sure they can make these connections to what's really happening why does this matter to me um so we're trying to work on that a lot and of course critical thinking right can you get a problem in front of you and work through it and not just give up or not know how to figure it out and there are many many others as you can see but those are sort of the top three which is what um Candace when you going to go through the next slide you'll see have been pulled out so when you look at this this um gives us an idea of the percentage of students that answered often or sometimes for these top um important elements you can read the numbers but we've got you know 94 is for um the Hands-On opportunities 76 is for the uh real life authentic experiences almost 90% CH science classes have challenged we to build critical thinking skills excuse me and we have about 83% sparking interest um in how things work and interact which is great because that's what's the point of science is um so pretty happy about that and then these three um sort of Engagement looks like these topics kept coming up and it's the Hands-On not just even Labs but doing some sort of work Hands-On um discourse and then of course the lab experience and there's an appendix attached at the end so you can get a better um idea we have actually specific Labs that students mentioned um that they had had in the past so you can see specific ones and if you take a look at it I was pretty happy with the results because uh all classes are represented Anatomy came up biology came up chemistry and physics and they weren't told to pick oh what's a biology lab that you remembered it was just what's a lab you remembered so it was nice that we got a mix it wasn't just focused on oh just biology came up so we were happy with those results um these there a few quotes from the students here I won't read them out but you can take a look at them and what I like about this more than anything else is it shows how much students put into their answers this wasn't just like I like K na you know they really thought about it and really put some time into these answers and when you read them you know as as a teacher I kind of look and go yeah you know what I I mean they they know what's going on here um so I was thrilled about how serious they took this and as candid can attest to this is only three students I mean these kids wrote like we looked through really look through the data it was amazing these kids had paragraphs so it was great that they really took this this survey seriously especially because we talk about survey fatigue all the time you know we're getting surveys all the time for so for them to sit down and do this and take it seriously was really wonderful so very happy about that and an appendix as well with additional information all right so the priority areas in students perspective so this is if you look at again this Hands-On learning real world development of critical thinking skills these are going to be the ones we're really going to focus on um and you can see to incorporate more Hands-On um labs and activities that allow students to apply Concepts practically and more collaboratively um enhanced modes of instruction in each unit so changing it up a little a little bit we're still you know we're working on the curriculum now and moving away from that typical oh let's have a lecture and then we'll quiz and then we'll do a lab and then we'll test we're trying to uh really mix it up a little bit and do some different instruction uh real world application skills so continue to strengthen real world connections and relevance by relating Concepts to careers current events or everyday application everyday application needs think that's supposed to say for students y um um and then consider incorporating Project based challenges that allow students to design their own experiments or solutions to real world problems promoting creativity and application of knowledge and finally critical thinking skills work to assess Clarity of instructions and guidance for labs and activities but also include open-ended elements that encourage critical thinking and problem solving and then continue to strengthen learning environment that encourages students to share ideas ask questions participate discussions and collaborate and again this is all from the students like when you read this that just stuns me that they it just beautifully written maybe word SMI a little bit but did a great job thank you some some solid feedback yes absolutely with constructive feedback um both validating and constructive from the from the students also reinforced um by the feedback we receive from our families which Dr Boon is going to speak to thank you Linda um so parents uh voices were um and thoughts were accessed through the platform thought exchange um there was healthy participation um and 73 sort of thought conversations and thought exchange um I have um not a lot of experience with it but it um allows for free exchange of ideas where you can respond um to one another um if you share a thought you can respond to a thought um so we had 125 participants most from Bolton 50 participants uh 41 and 26 from from Lancaster um and then they um shared uh the number of children who are currently attending or have attended n Regional High School and have participated in the high school science program and most families um have one student participating um or had participated in the high school um science program and there's a link hyperlink to the results um highlights if you can see a little bit more in depth of some of the um the comments and the Chang um what we really kind of valued from this is that the priorities for families were the same as the priorities for students in a slightly different order but the top three priorities for families for their Vision in science was also Real World um experiences Hands-On and critical thinking so there's alignment there between um what parents and caregivers are are thinking about their their children science and what their children are thinking about their science experience and we found that really quite valuable um summary of the family responses um one example there is how important um is it to you that the department offer a variety of electives that was highly important um to families 84% of families answered very important or important for a variety and a rich array of electives and then suggested electives um from the family side of things were environmental science biotechnology computer science and other related fields like marine biology and astronomy and then some of the best feedback they've heard from their children on any of the science related courses so far again positive feedback hearing that there are Hands-On learning experiences um enging teachers as well as inclusivity and support and you can see the world the um the word cloud there that um that shares the the responses um thought exchange question M Regional High School is planned for the future of science at MOBA through the curriculum review cycle um we assessing our current practice and making decisions about next steps and want to hear from our families what would you like to see so this is the question what would you like to see in a highly engaged Future Ready science class as we strive to prepare our students for the future um so a really important question then um and overview through thought exchange um responses indicated a really strong desire for Future Ready science curriculum uh engaging practical and relevant are um the three strong adjectives there and um Family respondents emphasiz the importance of open-minded and motivated teachers who promote critical thinking and curiosity they suggested that curriculum should include real world applications connections to Future careers and understanding AI as a tool and The Mending uh a perhaps looking at a change in order of the Sciences updating experiments um and examples to reflect recent scientific developments um ensuring equipment and Technology are all current I think with a new building project that is something that we ree toward as well um two sides there some are the highest most rated thoughts generated from the thought exchange highest rated Thoughts From The participants generally revolved around the importance of Hands-On learning so again this keeps coming up as a theme real world applications and integration of technology in sence um education you see a quote there um and then on the on the other hand lowest rated thoughts um were often either less specific or expressed uncertainty as an example there one participant simply responded unsure um and it was 2p2 uh another low rate thought was um see previous responses so those low rated responses suggest that a participant either didn't um have a clear idea of what they wanted to see in or did not provide enough detail um to get a higher rating in the thought Exchange um again priority areas and family perspective Hands-On learning um one participant proposed Hands-On exploratory learning opportunities that allow students to take chances and make mistakes without fear that that will impact their final gr um in terms of action steps potentially incorporating more Hands-On learning experiences analyze and develop grade level skill progression and criteria for success that's communicated out to students and families um in real world application of skills feedback there there was participants um frequently mentioned the Need For Real World application and connections to Future careers um one participant suggested that Labs that address real world problems or scenarios to help students understand the practical application of their knowledge so they can see where science is happening in the real world um and perhaps explore um you know future careers uh action in that in that category to continue to make connections stronger between Hands-On activities and real life relevance explore areas of enhancement during curricular work and then in the development of critical thinking skills and the feedback there many participants emphasized the importance of critical thinking problem solving and one suggestion was um ideation and problem solving brainstorming sessions come up with proposals to tackle problems whe whether it be um something that's um you know seen locally within the nooba community or out um I know Global a global issue and action there is to to explore the current HQ for high school science and investigate curricular options that support inquiry and priorities laid out in the instructional Vision so while we Rec sorry while we recognize that there is a lot of great work happening we also um recognize that we are always in a state of continued Improvement um and so to that end here are some of our next steps as a department we're going to explore the current um high quality instructional material SK that are out there for high school science investigate curricular options that support inquiry real world and Hands-On learning and we will also consider and Implement action steps identified on the previous slides that came from student and family feedback all right last four further Explorer science elective offerings um so we're going to be taking a look at that we're doing that with our curriculum now uh strengthening communication of course offerings and course sequencing um just a little aside I wanted to point this one out because what interesting is if you look at the parent um survey with the electives question parents mention two um El do offer so we're wondering where's the communication gap why isn't it that PE parents don't know you know we have it the program store but maybe that's not enough so we want to make sure we're communicating what what is actually being offered and what do that look like to parents so I just want to point that out because that's one that stood out really stood out to me that maybe the parents don't know everything that's happening so I just want to put the side that one um develop recommendations and potential requests for purchase of new curriculum and our resources to support structural Vision Kate had mentioned the new building I think that's going to kind of help that along um and then engage Insight visits were appropriate to other high schools as well as the showa middle schools um Candace I have started that a little bit I visited the um Middle School twice this year so I we're going to try to continue that and maybe get some of our freshman teachers to come down as well well and maybe even have some of the eighth grade teachers come up um so then we have a better view of what you know when the kids come to us we have you know a better view of where they're coming from and what we can do to you know and I know you had the the privilege of observing an open sight I did that phenomen based instruction I think that's it thank you science team and principal Buon uh do you guys have any questions on the presentation here for curriculum review I do um so once again I am so impressed by um the information but specifically about what our children are able to say and how insightful they are um and I'm wondering if there's going to be an opportunity for the students to um see some of this slide um presentation and the reason that I asked is because I had a conversation with my daughter not too long ago about um you know teachers are asking us they're we're taking a survey or they're asking us for information about this they're asking our opinions in lots of different ways and she said but we never hear back um you know what's happening with that information and I think that um they would be that would be really really validating for them to hear how their in their input impacts what you're doing great idea I'm writing it down writing down any comments or questions um yes so I noticed in the sort of detailed thought exchange from the parents that there were a number of comments about the sequence of the science classes and um I'm maybe reading into their comments a little bit but I I'm wondering do you think it's clearly articulated like why the sequence is what it is do you think the parents that are writing this I are reflecting on their Science Education or communication thing this is what I'm talking about because well what happened now I've been department head forever um so we had you know environmental science for years when I started here and then we switched over to physics but now we really do physical science so there's been this this this change but I don't think we've communicated it clearly enough because what another thing that keeps coming up is this the even students will say this well wait I took physics freshman year note you took physical science freshman year not physics so we even have to we have to kind of explain that better even to the students and then to the parents par as well because you know they are sending their school their kids to school here they have every right to know why did we pick why is it that we picked physics first and we chose physical science we actually had a teacher who did some doctorate work on it and then we looked at we looked at our whole curriculum and we decided that oh this helps kids with skills for every other science class they'll take so they learn about graphing and they um you know dipstick a little bit with chemistry and then they're doing critical thinking skills so there was a reasoning behind but I don't think we got that message out clearly enough so I think that's where that comes from part of the work moving forward yeah absolutely I wonder they you take the bio mcast sophomore year or freshman year sopore sophomore year so is that also part of the reason why you have bio in the 10th grade it's I know it's been that way since mcast started and we've always had bio in the 10th grade and I that's I think part of it I wouldn't say that's the only reason um and again when I came here environmental science had been it was here forever um and not good or bad I'm just saying I think it was one of those things we were yeah we were kind of like stuck there as a freshman course and then when that teacher retired we that's when we kind of like oh this is a good time we kind let's take a look at this and then we really just looked at that freshman year and then we we like the I say we science department um like the idea of having a science course that helps prep for everything else which is why we went with more that physical science um so I think it's maybe convenient that the mcast is that's off year but I don't think that's we're saying it has to be done that year do you understand what I mean I do I think though that in watching two of my kids do physics and freshman year it does feel like physics to and so I there are a lot of there's a lot of commentary on like the advanced math that the kids sometimes need to already have in that freshman science class can for a kid who's not mathematically inclined especially yeah which maybe there are many of them um but I happen to know one um so you know it I know that the strain the calculus that gets inserted into the physics laats in the freshman year I just wonder if it's worth look if you guys are considering resequencing or you want to speak to I just want to say that it it absolutely is worth a look at you know as we consider our programming moving forward um looking at the um our vision for learning U not only put with our building visioning process and I think it it's just naturally part of the curriculum cycle that we're in to be taking a look at that course sequencing um kind of globally and making sure that it makes sense for the the current students that we have and looking future forward there a lot of things that go into it go ahead yeah I was just thinking I know like at our school they opened up bio to senior like they started pushing more cuz kids may not always know in sophomore year like at least for my daughter that was true like I'm a s I can be a science kid so it's like we've had a lot more kids taking it actually as seniors now um is that something that's kind of communicated to kids that you don't necessarily have to follow that that particular road map that you have to take it are you seeing um you're talking about AP I am I am okay yeah that's something I will tell you that that's gone back and forth and something we we will look at so that's this isn't the first time that's come up so yeah well it's a great opportunity for you guys to give it a great luck and we have some great people to do it so thanks uh Mike um just a couple of questions and I think we're both sort of um kind of centered around like reference tools um of course with a curriculum review you have a chance to align your standards both with the middle school and um with um national standards and I wonder my first question is is there space to include um Next Generation science standards in um the content standards of the science curriculum at aoba yes somewhat yeah I think so it's included but I will tell you we look more at the state standards now I'm also full disclosure here I'm mostly biology so that's my you know what I mean we have the biology mcast where our other courses chemistry physics we have a little bit it's a little looser um so there are standards that are embedded could we look at it more absolutely no question about it and again that's why doing this work allows us that actual time to do that as well yeah cuz the problem is the collaboration right the time to collaborate so yeah so the ngss does kind of connect with state standards as well absolutely um and then the other question is sort of similar um uh a few years ago the um uh NRC put out these um science and engineering practices these eight really critical practices using models computational thinking asking questions that kind of thing and I and realizing that you have a number of bullets in Your Vision I wonder if there's a place to infuse some of those as well into this Revisited curriculum we can look at it I mean it's definitely being practiced P to 12 it's in like all of The Curriculum maps those science practices for that have been developed so far um but yeah I think it goes hand in hand too with the Hands-On and the discourse so we can look at making it even more clear in the vision we going back to communication right get it in there and show that it's being done okay all right everybody thanks so much a lot of work good work everybody moving on uh I think K get stay two more time okay so we're going to be looking next at the nooba Regional High School student handbook uh for 2425 this sort of a thing does not need um our vote it's just some or you do want to vote I thought the high school handook did or school council vote do you V uh we typically vote the high school hand yeah dismiss those teaches as well okay um all right so dcon we're going to do a little detour um and especially if there's no objection from the committee to do the um presentation on the future High School academic schedule first because we have some other very special guests in the gallery who are going to join Dron at the desk yes team and then we'll transition to the after that thank you very much Madam chair I'll just tell me next when when you're ready for You' like to introduce your team we'll do thank you so much thank you very very much um allowing us to the honor and privilege to be with you this evening to share our progress on the the work of um you working towards a new high school ademic schedule I joined um by Janine ble assistant principal I'm joined by Kate Norton business teacher uh Robin Herman's World Language French teacher and Mike toson science teacher um and so we're thred MERS of was it the same day one almost next and that was like a realization that well there's something going on here and um day one should be day ones um so that was like my own realization schedule um the second area where the schedule came up uh was during the school building visioning process as well as our strategic planning process at the district and the schedule came up districtwide as well um for elementary and middle but at high school um and um areas were to support students beyond the classroom emphasizing social emotional learning um allowing us to implement a more robust mtss process um and then the notion of flex block and or Wind Block many schools call it uh wind what I need now um that would allow us to potentially Implement some mtss or interventions as needed um and that common planning time and collaboration um it's been referenced in our Panorama survey uh the student survey the pace of the day and workload those have come up as themes from students over the last two years so those are um they're reinforcing what came through in my entry plan um so those over the last uh two years um in proactively anticipating that the schedule will come up on the equity audit imagining that it will and it has and I've seen stage one and stage two um it's alluded to in the equity audit so um anticipating that it it was prudent for us to to take a look um and examine the schedule and then um in our neas self-study so we're at 2027 uh cohort school and so our self-study will begin in the fall and um Nas the the schedule will come up in our Nas process without a doubt um in particular time for collaboration for teachers and that intervention time for students um those are foundational things for for nesk um and then finally as we uh engage in this curriculum renewal cycle and renew and revise our curriculum as well as our instructional strategies we we should be examining whether our schedule still meets the needs of our students um as we look to opportunities for deeper learning authentic learning experiences um we need to look at our new schedule so that's the why behind considering a new schedule turn it over to sure we um took a kind of senatorial approach to representation on our working group um so we had two members of each department join the working group find and Performing Arts uh business and applied artarts English social studies math special ed guidance wellness world langes science and administration um and we met uh monthly at minimum um I'd say that this structure did two things one it kind of elevated the discussion schoolwide around how a schedule really impacts teaching and learning so that the different disciplines could really hear um from one another on what how the schedule impacts their day and their teaching and what the students are telling them about what they're getting out Anders went back to their departments and either you know through formal discussions during department meetings talked about the work that was being done and and came back to to the working group and reported out formally because often our our departments had Lun together um and so there was a lot of continuous discussion about the different schedules that we were looking at Etc as we work through the process turn it over to Kate and to so in June we we talked we got together as a group um just kind of talking about what we should be doing setting Norms discussing the pros and cons of our current schedule and also our priorities and our values around the schedule um going through just kind of the steps and actions and then later on we created a Google Classroom where we were able to over the summer just kind of post articles and thoughts just sort of stay connected we had one zo meeting during I believe August where we just kind of got together and discussed what we've learned over the summer and then once we got into the group of things during the school year we were meeting about twice a week so September and October we created surveys and administered them we had some site visits um I know Janina will talk more about that with the that we created the questions that we're asking not only the students but also the faculty at those schools and then in November and December we kind of revised our priority areas and looking for at the possibility for a new schedule um during the first several months of this process we definitely talked a lot about our why and I think it really comes down to creating a new schedule that will be the best for our students as our mod at show by being your best self with giving the students the schedule for them to be their best selves and prioritize their learning and then in January we just kind of continued meaning roughly once a week just kind of figuring out what model would work best the pros and cons for each and then beginning to draft up the sample models that we'll talk about later on so I'll I'll jump in here the this is our summary so in February we shared an update with the staff uh we came to work work to come to consensus on alternative schedule um and alongside our current schedule we did brainstorm all considerations we anticipated some questions and feedback and uh continued though to get feedback from our colleagues in our department and then March uh just last month we finalized our alternative schedule in preparation it was our we got it yay we voted hands up we've got it and we prepare for the staff meeting and and we're continuing to get feedback from uh within the Departments and may here we are we're to be presented to the faculty and staff and school committee here we are so for the future I think we're going to discuss these last screen Parts here or should I go ahead and yeah in in green are our steps to be still still to be taken yes we will be putting together Planning Group Flex is this famous Flex block uh we have many many ideas we're going to put together a group to U map out the six Flex that will still take place during our pilot we are running in October a 3-we pilot to propose this new schedule we're going to have go through two full day rotations okay with our six Flex blocks you'll see in a moment how this is laid out and then we're going to do a survey and a poll uh to our students and staff see how that's rolling they're going to love it and then October we're going to convene again our scheduling committee and vote and as you see the last step is to implement the schedule not this year but the following year the 25 25 26 and if I may jump in the the schedule committee is different than the working group The working group um of 22 uh is is um non voting if you will um and the committee is um a group that is um assembled uh on the unit aide by um Kevin keany the um n president and um it's outlined in the contract that there's equal members of administration and the unit a and that's the voting the voting group so this is all pre-work in preparation to bring the schedule to the the the committee which is the voting group just there a number of schedules that we looked at in terms of research along with you know the the articles that we read over the summer on the impact of schedule um um no you know we did a site visit to lunenberg uh to watch uset and to Sutton and those were really informative lunenberg and watchus both had a rotating schedule that did a drop period and both of them also had um a flex blog sometimes they called it an activity block that they held on Tuesdays and Thursdays so we were paying attention to that we really um were struck by sut's structure for their Flex block um we met at all these schools we spoke with Administration and teachers and students about how they felt about the schedule schedule Sutton's structure of this Flex block was really well organized and it was really um meant to impact teaching and learning in that it had specific collaboration for teachers for common planning and data teams um and it had specific mtss interventions so stud students were organized to go for extra help for different subjects depending on where their grades were in that subject and so it was a really well thought out Flex block um and so we kind of took that back and we're we're pretty inspired by that one turn it over to Mike all right so we we consider a whole different stuff just uh to just make sure everyone's aware of our current schedule is is uh seven um each student can take up to seven classes seven periods per day root dates nothing's Dro so student is in their class every single day unless right yeah it's 8 day rotation that's more or less even keep tracks so even and odds um that way so we looked at a whole bunch of different things status quo being one of them looking at um six period type days um and actually a number of the schedules that Janine just mentioned uh fill uh cover those um I mean we've always been fixated that we're going to keep students taking seven classes and then you know how do we how do we work in the priorities that um that were the three big priorities that were um agreed to by essentially the faculty and the um um scheduling working group so the big three they were on the slides but I want to emphasize them was more time to teach um having that collaboration time which we essenti have today um and then finally that that multi-tier support system for U students so that so they can get help during the day instead of you know can they find a ride after school to stay for extra Health type type deals and so these these you know we we weigh the pros and cons of all these different type of things to try to come up with those so we ended up with block we thought much um we have currently four lunches We Believe especially with the new building that we can Whittle that down to three um our current schedule was 46 minutes for every class um except for our long block which we have a long block because we have four lunches uh and that's like 72 minutes um and so when we went to design the schedule we we tried to marry everything that was on our priority list um and and one of the one of the things that the faculty and we we collaborate very tightly with the faculty we' all go back to our departments um ask their opinions feedback to the group um one very strong desire that people wanted to avoid and I know some people are familiar with this type of schedule was a drop two um and so uh because teachers want to see their kids more often than not um and so we didn't want to skip two classes um and not see those those kids so what we ended up with is a variation of a seven drop one schedule that in produces a flex block on Tuesdays and Thursdays so instead of having it every day because one of the big things and one of our future things that we really need to work on to make the pilot work is to figure out Flex block we want it to to we want to know where every kid is going to be we want that every every student to have um um have a use for that Flex Block it's not intended to be a overall study Block it's intended to help our students and so that's going to require acquire a bit of planning we we recognize that and and that's going to be one of our um big things that we're going to look at when we do the pilot um in October so what's on the screen is because it's seven periods and this is actually common for most high schools it's typically a 7 Day rotation uh and so we have so there's a complexity to this rotation and I think if we go to the next slide it might be easier to read so this is actually the beginning of the pilot but the numbers are bigger so uh what you see is on on this screen it's it's the gold days those are the Monday Wednesday Fridays those are the days without the flex block this is where we achieve our goal of having more class time for class so it's 58 minutes versus the 46 that we have now uh and then what we did is we to get the flex block only two days a week but still meet the faculty's desire to not have a drop two um we're we have six classes on T well six classes every day the difference on Tuesday and Thursday which are the green days is the addition of a flex block so be by going to a three period uh or three lunches that uh we go from 46 to 48 minutes so it's essentially a very similar schedule to what we have today on those Tuesdays and Thursdays um so so like I said we were trying to marry a bunch of goals um and this is where we ended up coming to consensus on think it Nails it and then it just runs through the full calendar weeks but two full and I guess one thing I'll note about why is it three weeks because it allows us that that the holiday works right and so it allows us to do a full two cycles so 14 actual days of testing and out um because the faculty really felt strongly about we you know before we adopt something let's actually test it out and see how it works thank you Mike and I would I would Echo that the Friday at the last the last day of the of the pilot is also an early release so we would see what this schedule looks like during an early release um during an early this day um I'm going to finish up uh by sharing that um those of us who live high school schedules know that there no schedule is perfect there are um costs and benefits to to each schedule and as you heard Mike say there were priorities that were identified um and we attempted to um craft a a schedule um that um that allowed us to um meet those those priority areas so there will be benefits and trade-offs um sort of with any schedule adoption um we we know that any new schedule must meet the requirements of 25% un assigned time within our contract um and in Consulting with Mike the schedule absolutely does that um it meets time on learning as well um um trade-offs with any new schedule should not be a reason uh to keep our current schedule if a new schedule can achieve our main goals um longer um blocks for learning Flex collaboration and common planning time um internships is there that um elevated as a priority um a waterfall can be challenging with internships but there are programmatic um solutions to that um that allow for internships in particular with our pathway so we have about 3 years to um develop that to support internships which is a priority for us as well um a b a bell schedule cannot fix everything we know this and some changes will need to be programmatic in nature and those are conversations that we're engaging in um right now and you know one example of this is taking a look what what are our Labs look like in this new schedule and what um what do electives what does PE what does Health look like um in in this new schedule and those are programmatic conversations that we're having right now um which is also uh last bullet point um that will have time to plan and prepare for any uh any changes and any programmatic shifts during the 2425 school year um that I would thank you for um allowing us to present today and open up for any questions thank you thank you team appreciate all of your hard work so amhe yeah so I I actually had a question about the flex block um so with that schedule then kids would only be able to see two teachers out of the seven is that right for week for like extra help I guess that would be my concern if it was only two days since they have seven classes and that like or like would they be able to go to two teachers like because there's there's such I think in the in the in the creation of a flex block I'm going to give Sutton as an example so students um whose grades fell below 75 in a a class were then they were actually assigned to go see a teacher but I also Imagine um um I have U some colleagues are in schools where students can self- select and there are are apps and and platforms that allow for that where um if a student is not you know they're doing okay they they've got a be but they've got a major test coming up or or a project they're working on um they can sign up to go see a teacher or or two so in that case um you know if a student's uh grades are dropping they would be assigned to to a place as an intervention but they would have the ability to also in another um capacity to to go see a teacher if they needed to see a teacher right they have that choice so it's um flexible means if you will we're using some udl language so flexible means and that is on us to um bring those Design Elements um to the six trial flexbox during our um during our pilot um to allow um for that experience for students I I guess I just want to make sure I understand so for students that aren't assigned to extra help and I know you're still working on this but or don't have a big test coming up it wouldn't be just default to a study hall there would be something else that those kids would be assigned to do or maybe there's some options they have to pick something to go do they can't just go yes and one of our next steps is to um bring together a flex block design um and start to flush out all the options and the logistics of that and one other question um would teachers still um offer after school extra help be or whatever whatever yeah not in place of in addition to okay thank you can you just address really quickly Kate the issue of the directed study in the study halls and can you help us understand how because that was identifi by Desi as a problem in our schedule so are those being eliminated study halls uh unfortunately can't be eliminated completely um they can be and will be reduced because of the drop the drop one so there'll be fewer with the with fewer periods um it it naturally kind of constricts um the the study halls this schedule does not eliminate them completely um right now the way that we are organizing um and structuring study hall um it's directed um it's not independent and therefore it does count as time on learning as do Flex blocks Desi is quite supportive of your flex and Wind Block structures um because of the mtss um opportunity and um in a professional learning um community structure as well flex and win offer opportunities for extensions of learning too um so it's a slightly different organization than your directed studies um again we would love to eliminate directed studies Al together this schedule does not do that completely but it does reduce them so the only problem with directed study is that it's not an opportunity for all kids to reach all Educators because they're you know study halls are at different points in time during the day they're probably things that we experienced when we were in high school study hall um so we have made great strides in making them directed studies um and I was under the impression that this was going to try to eliminate them because they were identified as a problem because I know that they're directed studies but um they still present limitation as to how kids can access teachers because teachers should not be bothered during their preps by kids knocking on their door and saying can you help me this is the only chance I have you know we have the two Flex box for trying to work in which is a great advancement um so that's my only question Mar and it's not necessarily a concern it's just a question something we're going to be looking at too okay for sure just in looking at all of the different schedule iterations there weren't really any that eliminated study halls and then allowed us as well to have the flex period so I think um you know we're we've designed something that we looked at our our needs and our um as well as our our values and what we wanted um I I feel pretty confident that this schedule does that um and yet we still we will still be looking at what study halls you know the exper that student as well I team do you want to well I mean there are other reasons why study hall exists and part of that is the number of required credits that a student has to take so a schedule doesn't necessarily fix what's what's what the requirement for what students take the student is taking the 20 2 they have a study hall every other day but we're talking about you know 28 technically if you want them in every every class every period yeah I guess I'm just considering that if you just take it off the table then that does cure the problem where I know that in Hudson we don't have study halls kids take seven classes and so it just built in more electives frankly it gives kids opportunity to explore interests um and takes off off the table this Spectre of desie at you know Drilling in one day and saying you know this is a concern for us and and kind of blowing it all up again so again it's not a concern CU I know you guys fixed the problem and you made it a directed study and you have it much more structured but it's still just a question mark in my mind right so I I think um you know as we continue our our our work in curriculum and and programming um certainly a conversation especially as we we drow to different um learning modalities um we should be having the conversation about credits in the number of of classes that students are signed up for as well uh I think that is an absolutely healthy and fair uh exploration to continue to engage in um and if students are um more fully enrolled um at the 28 credit then there are no study halls and then there's flexes built in however um i' i' want to caution us right now with our current learning modalities um in place with that I think that might be too much for for stud wec students who are fully enrolled and there's a high level of stress so we're working to shift those learning modalities to create some balance um and then I think it's something that our our uh School Community needs to continue to look at I'm just curious did the working group think about the timing of piloting in October knowing that you have a freshman class that will have one month under their belt we did actually it was very intentional um the spring is too crazy to implement any kind of pilot and um the intentionality around the the launch of the pilot was to allow our freshmen to have um almost a full quarter under their belts if you half a quarter under their belts to get used to the high school to acclimate so that they will have experienced the bell schedule and then have the opportunity to experience the new proposed bell schedule to be able to provide some informed feedback um so it was it was intentional so to not roll it out at the launch of school um but to have something to compare it to all right so what an ambitious task uh Dana one more question I'm just so like shocked to hear about the study hall being removed is that that's from desie cuz that was huge when I was in high school and I built it in because that was providing me the ability to handle my workload and work after school which was a big factor so I'm curious what the students think of that the approves of and counts directed study which is what we have um implemented we essentially had it but we needed to provide a little bit more structure and desie counts directed study as time on learning currently so being in a classroom with a teacher versus being in the cafeteria indepently correct Miss if I M Miss it's part of the Des requirements of 990 instructional minutes over the course of 180 days so directive study counts towards that open study hope is not all right everybody so we're going to thank the Team One More Time awesome job than you for pushing through all that work it's huge apprciate thank you very much and a truly invaluable experience in my mind just that's great good luck thanks to my team all right guys we're going to move on to the next item here I know that if you're um like here wondering how are we doing with the clock we're not doing great so we're going to try to no it's not your fault it's holding hours um so we're going to try to do these next few things kind of Sly if we don't uh if you guys don't mind so let's move next to the high school um handbook what do you have for us Dr way okay uh so last year uh if you recall we had one of the most complete overhauls of the handbook ever that I've experienced through the coordinated review process from desie so this year um we focused on two SE sections for review and um the first section is attendance and that one um was something that my school council um has been working on for um for two years now so just taking a look at attendance perhaps some more kid-friendly language we'll see we we crafted a sort of an attendance vision statement and then the the group decided that that really should be more in communication and not go in a handbook so I have a a a lovely this we believe uh about attendance um vision statement from school council um that'll be separate in messaging um so the attendance um was one section that we focused on and it's been a goal of the high school as well to improve our um overall student attendance um and there's some language in there that hopefully will Elevate that that work and then the eligibility section as well um so in talking with Tanya our athletic director um the eligibility section was a little bit confusing it was a little bit redundant and um we were not quite in line with the MIAA we had um we had criteria for eligibility that went above and beyond the MIAA and um we have scaled that back rightly so and brought us in line with the MIAA um so um in attendance um I we we put in reference to the mass regulations for attendance um we made some slight adjustments to makeup work um we changed um so Desi allows for a certain number of of absences and then when when schools sort of get into um going into loss of credit for classes um we shifted that from 14 to 18 which brings us to um 18 is considered um chronically absent and so when we're looking at at making a a significant step in removing credit from a student for for for being absent we want to make sure that um that there's I guess weight to that um and and so 18 um seem to be uh because that's the the point where a students is chronically absent from school that we would begin to explore possibly losing credit with obviously the opportunity to buy that back um never taking that that step lightly in any way shape or form right now how our attendance is um attendance policy is written students are allowed up to 21 absences because they have the 14 plus an additional seven that parents can excuse um and that is well above the 18 um absences that lead to um a student being considered chronically absent um so we needed to tighten some things up so we have our Desi language um that that allows for a certain number and then when we get delve into possibly losing credits we allowed for 18 um and with the possibility for BuyBacks um removing unexcused tardies and um adding that up to an absence um so that was something that's hard to manage and and track with our current system um that bullet uh or item number five is one that I want to spend a little bit of time talking about about um we chose to remove the language allowing parents to excuse up to seven absences and the reason is that when the state looks at our absence codes a parent excused does counts as an absence parents are not allowed to excuse absences um we need documentation to exempt an absence so we want parents to call in and Report their child absent if they have the stomach bug or if they have a headache or a fever um and then if the parent or Guardian makes the decision to bring the child to the doctor the doctor's note exempts the absence we have that as a code so we're looking and working with Cathy Leonardi as well to update our codes um the current language just is very confusing because it it it's not it's not accurate with what can actually happen with with reporting uh attendance and what counts and and what doesn't as an absence um we there was a whole section on physical education attendance uh whole subsection we removed that not needed um Coach Tucker is on my school council he's like Dr B I don't know why that was ever really in there so we're going to remove it um so it it's not as confusing um we changed the language in the appeal process um uh subsection to reflect the loss of uh absences limit um and we are you know I'm working with my administrative team to develop a robust process around that because we don't take lightly if we take a step to reduce credits for a student temporarily to help him get back on track we actually want to take interventions earlier than that so they don't reach that point um let's see changes in language um for um that is not needed and most of that is covered in the eligibility section and then uh the tardy to school subsection we removed most of it it was just language that didn't really need to be there um and then a tardy to school consequences protocol very similar to the other one it is Progressive in nature it is supportive we want to take um steps to create supports and interventions to um encourage students to attend school and then um the treny subsection we also cleaned up language there hopefully to make it cleaner um to tell you a little bit about the process my school council was involved uh heavily as well as um my entire administrative team including the two main office secretaries who are that this is their world with Slade in particular but also Marsha um Mara winter um they live it day in day out and so um they made some recommendations because this is the world that they live in and they want to to support their students and allow for um procedures that are um um a little more clear-cut clear in language and um and streamlined so and we intend to continue to go back U there's more work to be done but we had to we had to make a decision to cut it cut the work off um at this juncture but we're going to continue to go back and and refine um as needed and then in the elig eligibility um the the basic change in the language um is to match the MIAA wording um and then there was a lot of repetitive language so that was removed as well and the big thing for the MIAA is that um we were holding students to passing not only fourth quarter but also the year and the MIAA you just you need to pass the year um is what you need to pass so um it made sense for us to be um in line with MIAA all right any questions go ahead Dron um could you go back to number five and just explain that one to me I'm read I'm listening to you but I'm also reading number five over and over again and I'm interpreting it 15 different ways I mean one reading of this could be that it says here that you're removing the language allowing parents to excuse up to seven absences and it it I could read it one way that says that the child has been marked absent but then the parent who has is a 7-Day um you have seven days leeway here a parent could come in and say well I'm going to excuse that absence because of X Y and Z right that that's that's why I'm reading but I know you can read I'm going I'm going to go right to the language that's in the handbook itself actually and what our handbook currently says is that parent notes will excuse up to seven absences all other absences must be excused by formal documentation all absences that are to be considered excused meaning not counting towards the the count of absences have to have form documentation a parent note does not count and this is per um Massachusetts regulations and so we that has to be removed so a parent can call their student call the attendance line and say Kate's not coming in today she's not feeling well and that is a reported absence the the student's not Trent the parent has indicated to us that they're not coming in but Teresa can't go in there and say oh that's parent excused because it's not there's no there's no parent excuse in desie world and in Massachusetts I guess there's I can add a little color to this I'm drawing off my memory of the the statute on School attendance which is State Statute is quite dated as well they use the language excused absences but um it's 7 Days within a six-month period is how it's phrased in the law and it's simply or or unexcused it's simply those absences that are not documented for a medical or religious reason right so the the even the notion the idea of a parent excuses an absence it's not saying parents can't excuse absence it's it's saying it's just not relevant because the law is written to just days missed from school void of medical um documentation or religious documentation you I I'll I'll go back I I know you don't know this the uh site for for the regulations right okay I'll look at it but I I guess so how how does one document a religious exemption or excuse how do you do that well I'll tell you what it's as simple as this I'm out on Good Friday because we're honoring that holiday in our family it that's as far as the law goes and that that statute you should look it up um attorney gon there there is a fine to deter people from having extensive absences violation you could lose up to $20 if you were in violation of this law so that it does tell you how anrad the languag ism law but for for religious exemption you just have to say you just have to claim you're observing it for religious exemption the bement uh excuse absence fall under the religious I there yeah I would have to look at all the detail I just can't I can't remember all the detail thank there is a a bulleted list um of ab absences that are considered excused um and religious is one a health appointment um if there's a death in the family and obviously th those would be the parent or Guardian would report those for those specific reason what we have found at the high school is that so and so is going you know they're they're not here there are other reasons not the list of I guess legitimate excused absences that um other family you know we're going on vacation and these are the five days that we're using and and I'm using my parent excused you know that's an extreme example but families are are definitely using um excuse for different reasons other than that list of of legitimate reasons and it sets up I I think a false understanding of how many days a student can actually really be absent um from school you going over the number of days that are allowed right so just my notification um let's say the parent fails to properly document why their child is absent and the child is marked absent and I'm not advocating for this at all I'm just curious once the child is marked absent does the parent have any recourse to alter that absent Mark absolutely oh they do oh yeah absolutely yeah if if there if there is um they can reach out to their um assistant principal to the dean to the the main office secretaries turn in a note the next day or or even two days later or or or whatever or just a phone call to say here's here's the situation um so yes absolutely there's always recourse I have a question fori um so it says that if a student is absent for vacations um I'm sorry I'm on page 22 okay um label 22 on your document it says the very top um what I'm basically wanting to know is how to makeup work so let's assume that they're just home they're sick they don't have adoption they sore throat they're just home what is the rule around them being allowed to makeup work it says here something about them taking vacation or trips I think makeup work is in another section okay um and I haven't committed that section to memory I know I actually UD who cut classes will not be allowed to make up work so that's cut classes is um it's on page 27 there's a section on subsection on make makeup work thank you one day from their day of return to contact teachers regarding any missed work and set up a plan those teachers are super flexible but just contact the teacher to make up work and so the the deal is generally that if a kid is out sick let's see that something was due that day then following day when they come in they should have it ready I think that depends depends on why they were sick if they were really really sick like with covid or something probably not right so it's just really connect with the teacher when they return within one day of return connect with the teacher about any missed work or assignments not you know not able to be turned in okay I mean I my exp change we didn't change the makeup work I know I think that my experiences as a parent has been flexibility generally um but I think that this is actually sticking point that like I'm not talking about extended advances once in a great while you will run into some rigidity where oh you weren't here and the day you come back you don't have it and I have you know you should have it so I think that that I don't know if I I'm trying to read it quick my experiences is that this language was not sufficient to manage that scenario which I bet is pretty common in terms of the makeup work that's definitely a section that I could take up with my school counsel next year okay and and see and I think it would be interesting to to hear from my students Ava being one uh Winston another uh um school council members to hear what their experiences and if that's a section that they'd like for us to tackle yeah the stuff they miss when they're absent that's when you need an extra day but it's the stuff that they didn't pass in the day they were out is a due the next day it might seem small but no I think there's some inconsistency deal sure I think this is a great topic I know that we have some work to do this summer in looking at our engagement with the students at the high school level and in our um first visit to the stuco this fall why don't we work on this as a question so I think that's great I think that'd be a great part to get some student feedback on okay great any other questions for the h yeah yeah I actually have two second dependent the answer to the first one what is Massachusetts policy on what's their what what what's their constraints on attendance what does Massachusetts say on that cuz you're saying 18 I'm assuming Massachusetts at some point this this is where the regulations Mr pal aren't in line with the state statute the state statute is written to seven no more than seven absences over a six-month period and then the state by the Board of Education defines chronic absences as 18 or more absences over the course of the year they don't they're not aligned at all the so and if you you're absent more than 18 times you have to take class over again I mean you know what's the penalty so that's that's that's and and so there's complexities around that so so what past practice has been is in if it continues to be a problem and working with the family there's no resolution that you can take it to the court and and have plans put into place we get to very Draconian measures at that so you try to work with families along those ways through an example of how we've done that is in our um bridge program at the high school for school avoidance and working with students there so yeah cuz the reason I asked is you know it's not clear what the objective is right is the objective for students to learn in which case how much of a factor is absence in that learning I mean this has been a a source of tension in my household since I've had children in school my wife degree on this topic and so but the bottom line being if the student is learning all they need to learn even if they miss 50 days whatever it is in all their classes why is it relevant how how much they're in school well because by State Statute they have to be in school a social mechanism any other questions yeah I was just wondering the parts in the um proposed changes to the handbook there's a few like sections that aren't expanded upon is is that things that are going to be developed later or can you give me an yeah so I was specifically about the bridge program um on page 17 18 in the PD is there a handbook page yep page 17 oh um that is for um that will be for next year's y that was one that um we we weren't able to connect so the blue will be um when I when I create the when Marsh and I create the final this will remain as a copy with the blue as a note for us to continue and then that will be um slushed out for next year it had Antiquated language um of supports did not exist that we need to add in language around the Student Success Center in Bridge thank you thank you for that as if there are no other questions I'd like to move the agenda um so if you do however have any questions that you want addressed before the next meeting when we vote on this just me hi everybody thank you Dr Bo than you again thanks for having me here today free to take a cookie on your way the cookies all right guys we're going to move on to the appointment of a new member of the school building committee and I think it might be appropriate to ask Joe to take the lead on this or thank you madam chairman um uh several weeks ago we lost member from uh Stow Mr Chris Bucky was a member of the finance committee was very instrumental in bringing in the Stow vote back in September um but I want to thank the committee for detaching or unlocking our committee from the pre assignments and designations that we had for our original committee members so now we are free to just choose the best possible candidate regardless of the background so in this regard uh we have an individual step forward her name is Joanna brosman Miller she is a designer and developer and deliverer of training for the um faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University obviously a member of Stow she has children um younger children in the district who will obviously be able to take advantage of the high school when it's when it's finished so without further Ado I would move to appoint Joanna G Miller as member of the uh Shel Region High School building committee I'll second that um and I would just say that I endorse Joanna Miller as a candidate she's my neighbor and I speak very very highly of her she's very involved in the tab and I'm excited that she's willing to join any other discussions all right all those in favor that's unanimous thank you everybody um we're going to move on to the next item and that's the communication policy uh this is a first reading and so Kirk Has It projected there for you it's also meeting materials um this has been a labor of love all year long and I want to thank Kirk and Amy vessels for bringing this to us and Laura was a part of it as well Sean no the policy committee the the whole the the whole policy committee everybody really dug in on contributing ideas I'm sorry I thought you pointing to Laura I no so to the whole policy subcommittee uh for bringing this to us this something that we asked for um in September and you guys have been working on it consistently ever since so what I'd like to do is we're not taking a vote on this tonight so if you guys have any questions or concerns Amy's going to kind of jot down and then um this is going to come back to us the next time around because I know that Kirk is going to try to build in some professional development for our Educators so that we can see this implemented come September yes any questions or comments or concerns the the I do have a question course which is odd cuz I've seen this well not all it got modified yeah some of it um there's an explanation I am curious about the specific let me find it I'm so sorry reference to student photographs and the written consent so how is that ensured and monitored or like What mechanisms do we currently have in place that would protect students so just to give you some context to that question oh pardon um is that the work that we did as a subcommittee we took that work our last meeting was last Monday and I fed that out to council to District Council and District Council reviewed these policies and sent them back to us yesterday so what was updated in the meeting materials and the elements in red and the highlights you'll see JM and certain some certain words those are the recommendations to of council to add based upon other community ation policies that other school districts have enacted that tie together with important policies throughout so like for instance in posting pictures on web pages we want to make sure that at the beginning of the year when families have their annual documents that they pill up that if students have um you know no photo releases those are honored and that's a way to tie those policies together does that protect so for example when the common comes out and there's all these amazing photos yes would that also include like a teacher run Instagram account for example yes yes okay any other questions or uh I had a question about that um actually about the um publishing student work getting student permission um is that then is there already something in place in like the journalism classes where they're getting that assigned like the syllabus has that in it and parents are signing off of that on that because they're publishing student work all the time right so how is that you know what I'm trying to say how are they getting parent permission for the broadcast journalism stuff and the print journalism stuff can find out okay yeah we'll look at our our beginning of the year disclosure and see the details in there as well okay and I wonder if like the journalism the uh Regional is like different from teacher websites and just in a different category I know that maybe yours wasn't but yeah you've been publishing for years yeah I don't know we I always put it in my syllabus and then had parents sign off one in that way okay um yeah Karen I'm just I just have a question about the confidential information piece so um this is confidential information about a student being sent to the parents of that student correct we saying that that is not I didn't the confidential information so we were saying that caregiver communication so parent caregiver can't receive confidential information about their child via email is that what that means that's Ty uh yes well I understand that but I'm thinking about from from a special edlins and teams that are having meetings and sending reports trying to get them to teens to parents two days ahead of time it's almost always via email unless I'll take that question back to council okay and I'm also thinking about things like um and I don't know if this counts is confidential but um data progress monitoring data for kids that parents May request typically that's going to be sent they don't want to send that in the backpack they're going to send it electronically so just be curious about that on one say the second one uh like uh progress monitoring data on kids if parents request uh reports from on you know star assessments um things like that reading intervention data I think that falls under records request law Student Records request law it is not necessarily part of a Communications policy so it would be okay to send that those electronically is what I'm asking yeah you can send those electronically you can send IEPs electronically so I'll and like I said I'll in reports and things I'll get that from Council as well questions all right everybody if those questions come to you just send them to me and I can keep a running list to make sure that um if their lawyer specific cour can address them so thanks policy one more time that's awesome great questions too yeah um all right so moving on we are going to um engage in a very brief um summative evaluation presentation so might I drive um so this is something that if you have been on the committee for a while you've seen a version of it before and therefore we are going to move relatively quickly a lot of this is review um so I'm going to uh let Mike introduce it it's got an m on the slide yes go ahead Mike I don't know if those letters are updated from last year I think they are but I don't know that just means I'm used to it yeah I'm prepared so let me be the first to welcome you all to the sequel of the uh formative evaluation training from February almost exactly 3 months ago um you'll recall that the formative training um provides um some insight as to how uh during the midcycle the school committee can uh course correct and at this point uh or can help course correct and can help guide and at this point um it is about uh evaluating the um uh self- evaluation and preparing the summit of assessment um so again the self assessment um is our our destination but also is sort of the the beginning point of this cycle um superintendent obviously has been working on his uh let's see his student learning uh goal his professional practice goal and the four uh District goals um so they've been um kind of playing out over the past several months the formative assessment was bottom left in February and again here we are in May for the summit of evaluation so at this point uh the step five in other words before um uh before the cycle kind of continues uh the superintendent will provide the um updated evidence uh that sort of is more exhaustive than uh we received back in February and a self assessment through the uh desie rubric uh as a school committee our role is to Simply evaluate the progress um and provide some overall observations and it will ultimately lead to um a summative assessment um so how do we develop the composite evaluation um and we do that by each member of the committee completes um an individual evaluation the evaluation form is um exactly like the one that you look that you had the opportunity to look at that Kirk sent out earlier um the form is exactly the same um it assesses the goals that were set at the beginning of the year um let see so we'll be presented that tonight with his evidence filled into the form um and the rubric we're hoping that all um everyone on the committee will participate and send in that um individual evaluation by next week on Wednesday at which point I will send it to me please I will take all of that information I will collect it together and create a composite that is reflective of the thoughts of the entire committee um I will get that to you by the 20th of May so that everybody has an opportunity to look at it before our next meeting um and then we will present it at the next meeting which is on May 22nd so on the individual evaluation it's that that same form um we're going to assess progress towards the goals um the performance ratings uh on each of the standards and focus indicators and then an overall performance um rating which will be submitted to desie here is again the goals everybody has access to this slideshow right so so it's not on the meeting materials guys which I apologize for so I'll have Al post it um both of us tomorrow so we've seen this many times but if you would like to see again in the slideshow and you'll see and again the standards with Focus indicators which we had seen before and on so guys we're going to email this to you um this is going to be the uh last year we asked that he used this as his self assessment tool and so what he's going to present to us in a minute here is um a mirror image of this and as you scroll down adapted adapted um but ours is blank right because it's just a template um but I have imported all of his goals in here for you so he has his professional practice goal student learning goal and his district Improvement goals and so what you then do is give him a rating on each one did not meet some prog whatever um and then you go down to the standards tried to color code it to make it obvious and I've included only the indicators that we just identified on the slide and so as we go here you will then need to highlight the overall rating well so you can say you could say to yourself you know he's exemplary in curriculum and proficient in assessment so it can be varied across the various rows but for every single piece of this you have to give them an over all rating on that particular standard and as you go down there's standard two and there's standard three and standard four um the best part is that we then provide based upon all that we saw up above we then are responsible for individually giving an overall summative rating commentary is very important because it helps the personel subcommittee and Sharon in particular build the composite to make sure that um as many voices are there as possible as a community in the past we've agreed that it wouldn't necessarily just be an average of all the scores Sharon is going to use her judgment to take into account everything that you highlight and everything that you comment to um she'll use her best judgment to create an evaluation composite that she thinks is representative of all and on the 22nd when we come back together you can say yay or nay um and we we would have to then um edit it in that meeting in front of Kirk which is always fun for Kirk I know it's a good time yep uh so that is going to be emailed to you it is a readon document you'll have to make a copy of it and then um if you want to just download it to a PDF you can send it off to Sharon or you can just share it with her um M this is you um yes these are this is just review from the from the formative training we can go over it but it's it's oh it is yeah yeah okay so we don't need to so these are the resources that you guys are going to need to do this work again I will email this out to you and we'll also put it into the materials so you'll have the stuff you guys only have seven days to take what Kirk is about to present to us and write your own individual valuation and we'll what you send to us include the missing hyperlink um on the evidence oh yeah yep so it is available in your email uh but I will hyperlink it for you all right and so that said I'm going to hand the driving wheil over to Kirk and we're going to move on to the superintendent's final evaluation presentation you know guys if this is the last time that Kirk will have a one-year cycle we will be on this by Des uh regulation he will be on a 2ear cycle thank you um so what I'm just going to go through the document with you all today sound the feedback on on the format and how this was done as you referenced was positive and so we'll work out through there and I've done my best to try to Streamlight for you particularly around the Strategic plan um so as we go through here uh this language is very much like the language from the formative just adapted for the current state there's three elements and Mike described those uh in his opening there so we'll just move into the first part one and that's the district Improvement goals and strategic objectives so this is around improving communication systems and protocols to strengthen cultural response of homeschool relationships a foster understanding and Community engagement and you can see that the activities uh that we worked on this year that were cited in the formative report address the Strategic initiatives listed here from the Strategic plan and uh the links here will provide there are two areas for links um that I tried to provide for you where it made sense just did a direct link right there in the activity so I took the planned activities column changed it to evidence to link that or just put it in there so it just walks over from the formative um presentation so as we walk down here there's lots of things in terms of communication that we as a school system were able to achieve this year the walk over uh to our new web page the building of the finance and operations transparency page uh the listening sessions with faculty and staff around on the PPS director search uh onboarding of our communication specialist um and finding an opportunity with somebody in house with with Miss brid Hanigan to do our Communications work and evidence of that is found in the press releases and social media links and feeds that are on our web page um and then uh there's also uh the communications of 8ighth grade students from En roll of nishoba Regional High School that link will take you to the activities that were done this year to show Improvement and how we can can educate our eighth graders going to 9th grade um and looking at the communication cycles for Universal screening data we had lots of discussions about this in school committee and that is is linked here as well what I will tell you is a walkover is the family University that is an area we didn't get much traction with we did begin some initial conversations with our joint uh PTO meeting that Mr mcaren and I had this year around the Concepts that we're talking about but energy wasn't put behind any of that yet that and including also um the notion of like a aova foundation it's they're both very just sort of tricky so we're going to move forward with that now that doesn't mean we didn't do have educational opportunities for our families Dr Epstein was a good example of that earlier this year um we just didn't get to the formalized steps of what that could look like in perpet to it okay and so there's some comments around those planned activities that you'll see in the superintendent comments and Analysis under the objective and so some of those links are the same links from above I just brought them down into the text there um one of the uh important things that we're doing and I have an activity this week to talk to our psychologists and team chairs around we're looking at special education Communications and streamlining that uh and so we decouple those positions this year we'll be gathering feedback this week about some of the impact that decision so I'm excited to learn more from our folks this week about that um and uh the other items I think I've I've already referred to from up above and then you'll see the additional links there one additional activity Nova and we were able to direct you one particular school committee meeting to the great gr podcast we're up to six episodes now so I would encourage you all to click on that link and listen to the the Great Road podcast because it gives insight into where some Innovative work um uh is being done nural system moving into strategic objective two this is our teaching learning and leading standard and this is a really dense area so I didn't put any links here in the evidence or what was before the planned activities because um as you would imagine when when composing the superintendent's evaluation we're I'm drawn from a thousand different places so this is really an aggregate of uh the teaching and learning Department the finance and operations the human resources department all make their contributions toward this because these are all the activities that are going on so I want to thank um um assistant superintendent Fran and the teaching and learning team for bringing some robust uh work to the school system this year that's highlighted in this section so as we look at our evidence to Pro uh to date these are things that have been brought to you in school committee agendas this year and as you know we organized the school committee report by our strategically by which objectives uh we're addressing in those presentations uh so we have the the personal development that's been conducted fa um uh presentations we'll turn you to in terms of the curriculum mapping these are some examples of curricular mapping is sort of a cross-section across the district that gives you a scope of a variety of activities these these are not perfect these are where we are today in various areas and I'll give you a sense I'll I'll jump down to US history on industrialization is one example of how last year if you remember as we were to building and developing these Cycles we know that through these cycles of curriculum development we want to get aligned with how the maps are constructed so you'll be able to see in these Maps the course grades unit of studies curriculum Frameworks the standards uh the practices are enduring understandings and essential questions as well as what are the transfer goals that are being identified in that area skills and Concepts and when we we scroll down our there's our portrait of a NOA graduate we get into key vocabulary and assessments you'll notice in blue for instance of here's materials and then we get into assessments we're not publishing our assessments publicly publishing the assessments would remove the Integrity of the assessment um so we put those there to say that's the work that these teams have worked on this year to build their common assessments so in this one um the rubber Baron captains of industry simulation activity is an assessment towards that work and so that's an example of where assessment work has been uh conducted so I encourage you to scroll through um the curriculum guides The Curriculum maps here to see some examples of that as you look towards that work and some familiar items too you saw the 9 to 12 science curriculum update tonight uh so that should be recent in your minds when thinking about this element as well as the curriculum review presentation and the updates that are coming and I know Miss friend will be updating the committee on that I think in the next meeting um so you're going to get that information uh uh prior to our wrap up there um an important part of what we were doing here as well is around our leadership and looking at uh how we analyze and look at teaching in the classroom for the purpose of supervision evaluation can't that understate this step that we've done this year all the principles and half of our high school department heads have completed successfully the analyzing teaching for student results course and uh the work that they're doing there is already being seen in our schools as they focus on enduring understandings and Mastery objectives in their courses and working with faculty and staff on the importance of having these uh elements uh within their courses and um it is part of our work to lift the learning uh across the district the remaining uh folks any new hired administrators and the other half of our department has are taking the course beginning in the fall so we will then go on through our two-year cycle um in order to do that as you would imagine we can't have everybody doing the course all in the same year because then you empty your entire district for six days of leaders that need to be in their schools leading the schools uh so that's why we've taken a staggered approach to this and I believe we also will have some assistant principles doing that course next year as well um I think by now you're familiar with the Innovation Pathways if I'm clear because we've presented on the Innovation Pathways I think the last four meetings in a row um which has been a major step in in initiative number two in advancing um our teaching and learning so moving on into our community connections objective uh the equity audit you've seen reports one and two and we've been able to conduct the the professional development with our leadership uh team and also with our uh districtwide Team of faculty and staff we're going to continue that work with Dr waram going into next year and expanding school-based models for our Equity work and Equity teams at the school level so we're excited about that um you have evidence around the Panorama surveys that are included also in the equity audit presentations and a lot of information was extrapolated from those uh to gather that information uh also building upon uh advisory in our schools this year I hope I'm not going too fast guys I'm just trying to be attentive of the time and just just pointing things out to you so I'll just keep even more huh okay good I'll step on the gas I'll definitely step on the gas uh so you'll see the examples of professional development that we did did here uh around advancing um our community connections okay and some work just around we we we did uh um well I'll just move into the next objective objective four um is really a lot about looking at how our approach of the deems balancing out our leadership and our deems and our social emotional structures that happened around the school has been very positive um and uh creating that that um uh the leadership I wanted to point out to you I had examples of but they're they're in the goals um pardon me uh this is another point where the finance and operations uh Center is critically important to creating transparency around how we're responsibly spending taxpayers dollars uh to educate students then moving into uh the goals now this is section two around the student learning goal our goal was around 70% of our students hitting um uh expected growth benchmarks and you had the uh beginning of the year and mid year presentation to that and we're pleased to see that we were hitting those benchmarks so we've met this goal uh we'll be doing our administrations end of the year again the next time we'll come around to you will'll be again next year after we do our first round of screenings to show year to year over a 12-month period what does the growth look like for those students that took those Universal screeners across both those benchmarks um and uh some important work that we referred to earlier in the year was around the midyear updates that we do with our principles around uh the work that's happening in their schools so working with the principles I promised we'd have a conversation with them and say okay can we make sure that our work is uh available for our committee so there you are here are the midyear updates that were conducted at the end of February was our midyear update and they're very different they're intentionally supposed to be different we give our principles in these presentations as they collectively presented to you School Improvement plans they uh have their their put their own flavor on the midyear update uh based upon the work that's happening in the schools and some areas that they're FOC focusing on based on those conversations so you'll see some of that there at the summer Retreat they'll be giving their state of the school presentations based on what they learned from the totality of this year and what they're thinking about uh in their plans to move forward for next year and there's uh the detail around those examples and you can read those things the professional practice goal is again to to be a little bit redundant uh around building that uh communication strategy for finance operations office I won't repeat myself there so as we move through there um and what you'll do is you look at the evidence and then look at the language and standards we strive for example um you know this is the same thing that when we put rubrics in front of students we that's what we strive for we strive for that because that's showing that we're we're putting our thoughts to work behind actions and we're trying to um uh show a high level of Excellence for the school system I can say that uh when we look at the opening assessments of instruction uh assessment in data informed decision making that I would assess all three of these as exemplary in the amount of work time effort and atttention that has gone on in the school district with our all of our teacher leaders and especially our Educators in the classroom around looking at this deeply that doesn't mean we've reached a desired State that's that's where we want to be we're a learning organization and as a learning organization we're constantly striving for continual Improvement so the effort towards that work it's exemplary and I can't understate that overstate that um now we know and as you see from what you is presenting the links we still have work to do we got curriculum Cycles to go through and every five years as we work through each sort of sector's curriculum cycle they each department is always going to be at a different place but that's what a continual cycle of improvement looks like it doesn't mean you've reached the utopian state of where things look it means your work your effort your analysis and your desire to always be better is present in the daily activities and work of the faculty and staff so as we look then into uh the management and and operation um element we actually sort of had some discussions a little bit about this uh this evening this is always an interesting one right um it around developing and executing plans for safe procedures routines and operational systems I would say the elements that pointed to this is some of the work that our our Middle School Deans have been doing around restorative practices how we're looking at updating our handbooks and working with our faculty and our administrators on training according to the law around safe procedures that we need to be uh uh conducting um and then Gathering feedback from family students and staff around what's happening in our schools and we did a lot of that work this year in terms of the engagement surveys working with our high school students uh and so I think we've done a a a lot of work in informing our instruction we saw examples of that tonight scheduling management and information systems you'll see uh the work of the high school schedule soon get the elementary and middle school updates on on how we're looking at that and then the fiscal systems points to the obvious place I've mentioned already we believe uh in a shared responsibility of our work we're empowering administrators to work to collaborate uh with families to address academic social and emotional needs that is done a lot in our survey work and I I'll tell you when when we get requests at our office where parents and families have concerns I can tell you we invite people in come sit down we're not going to turn you back we're going to we're going to engage with you to learn and understand in an effort to move forward and always improve the system as well and then as we work on uh shared culture the major piece of work around shared culture here is the work that we did around our plc's this year and building um the the Norms the agreements the practices of how we work together as Educators to look at student learning to understand it and and be curious about the questions of when we see students not able to meet those learning goals or exceed those learning goals what are the steps actions and intentions we have to address that that's the core of PLC and the PLC links that are uh referenced in the evidence so with that uh fantastic thank you for that presentation it was quite fast we do appreciate that um before I take any questions I'm just needing you guys to Buckle in for about 15 more minutes maybe 20 can I get a thumbs up if that's okay oh it's so hard I know I know all right so stay if you can um so let do you guys have any questions Fork around this massive amount of work um M quick I promise with regards to the indicators uh the standards in the IND indicators um remind me where we would find the evidence that speak to each of those indicators what I'm asking you to do is you as you go through the goals as as you go through the goals they're going to tell you just you just walk them straight to the evidence you walk them straight to the standards that's all thank you so guys if you have any questions about eval um that it's just like clarifying or you need more information funnel them to me and I will bring them to Kirk so that he's not inundated with that and do so um sooner than later because you probably won't get a lot of answers if you're asking you know 9:00 uh at night the before it's due so your individual evaluation will be due to Sharon on the 15th okay thank you for that Kirk um so we're moving on here with finance and operations and it looks like we have a few uh votes to take here based upon some donations and grants um so the first piece is the um HQ IM Network support Grant brevity is the goal yes previty is the goal thanks um so as you're aware during the fy2 budget building process we were notified uh that we did not receive the high quality instructional materials purchase Grant um which would have provided some significant funding for our new Elementary literacy instructional materials that will be uh purchased short order however we were recently notified that our uh previously approved high quality instructional materials planning selection Grant um has been increased to include an additional $ 62,3 65 uh for the work that has been done in selecting um the literacy curriculum this year and will support the initial purchases uh and the onboarding of the new curriculum into the summer uh with regards to professional development for our staff so I'd like to show some gratitude also towards the teaching and learning department for their ongoing pulse on state opportunities and diligence and pursuing these Brant opportunities they stay very tied in to what may be available this is something that we had before and because of they stay tied in um when one door closed another open um so this provides us with some support and some also um relief that will occur for our FY 25 budget before we even open the books so this is great fantastic so I'm going to look for a motion well you know that's interesting because M uh no m m didn't provide a motion for this particular oh she didn't she did where is it is BU um sorry out of board um I apologize uh it was not in sequence which I expected so M chair I move to accept the fiscal year 24 fc11 evaluate and select hqm Network support Grant updated May 8 2024 expenditure is presented in accordance with school commit policy DD I will second that any further discussion on accepting lots of money okay seeing no discussion all those in favor looks unanimous to me thank you again guys for that that is fantastic news for our residents and our kids all right guys on to the next matter here and that is is chronic absenteeism recovery initiative family engagement and communication Grant sure um so this Grant's being submitted for approval in order to support our efforts in working with students dealing with uh School avoidance and supporting their families you know as Dr Boon pointed out uh this evening addressing chronic absences been a focus in the district and certainly in the high school um earlier this year desie made $10,000 per District available uh with really the only stipulation that you choose 103 Pathways to work on uh chronic absenteeism either implementing tracking and monitoring systems which we already have um offering attendance recovery cies which we really didn't necessarily need to do and then the third improving family engagement and communication focused on strengthening Family School Partnerships to better support students um so we chose a family engagement pathway and intend to use the funding um uh that we to have identified staff and teams uh participate in school avoidance professional development for a team to create a protocol for our district to address School avoidance at the elementary middle and high school level um and we'll also have up to 60 slots available through that same training modules uh for parents to to participate in those online modules if necessary and wanted into the future those don't expire um so this is something that we can continue to offer to families as issues may come up with school avoidance um this work is going to be led by our nurse leader Mariah wicker and high school assistant principal Dan Walker um beginning really as soon as as this is over and starting and going into the summer and have that protocol ready for the fall fantastic I'm going to look for a motion thank you man chair I would move to accept the department of Elementary and SEC education chronic absenteeism recovery initiative and family engagement and communication grant for expenditure as presented in accordance with school Community policy DD I will second that any discussion you like money everybody in favor raise your hand please thank you very much for that oh yeah M no that was a yes okay fantastic U moving right along we are now going to discuss the Luther Burbank donation which I assume you also know about yeah with uh without repeating the letter from uh principal OA we've had a very generous uh Anonymous donor come forward and uh donate $1,000 to support uh Luther Burbank Middle School students um in their Great Road musical festival which is coming up at the end of this month all right a motion uh Madam chair I move to accept the $1,000 donation to Li Bank Middle School from an anonymous donor to be used to defay the cost of students attending the Great Road musical festival which will occur on May 24th 2024 specifically this donation is intended to help defay the cost of the trip for all students in the seventh and eighth grade band in Wind Ensemble who are attending I will second that any further discussion all those in favor that's unanimous wonderful uh on to our final item here and that is is uh Nish Regional High School donation yeah so this is specifically a donation uh to our High School athletics department in the form of a uh automated external defibrillator AED um so the Scholastic Sports Zone Foundation has uh delivered this and we are looking to accept uh this as a donation my initial and first reaction to this is it's great um and does it currently fit in with the training that we've had on our current aeds supplies things like that it's the exact same version of what we currently have at the high school so this fits imp perfectly and and you know I don't think we could ever have enough aeds uh within ishot of wherever athletes or our visitors are so this is a continued good stuff for the athletic department fantastic M move to accept the donation of an automatic stal defibrillator donated to the noo Regional High School from the Scholastic Sports Zone Foundation I will second that any discussion oh yeah this is just what I'm going stay every single time doesn't it wasn't it already accepted didn't it say it got August April 30th that we already it was delivered but we can't do anything with it we wouldn't open it we wouldn't yeah cuz otherwise we' just return it if we said no correct if it was that would be correct we would ask them to come back and pick it up it was already installed somewhere like the last no it's not but it it was sort of they stopped by and delivered it to to Mis um and so yeah this is where we're looking for the acceptance of it Wonder to a good point proed thanks Dana all those in favor accepting this donation wonderful and thank you very much to that Organization for doing so and thank you Ross for your updates um so guys I have an idea and I'm wondering how you're feeling about it yes um I'm thinking that the subcommittee reports can perhaps wait considering the next meeting is where all the subcommittees are responsible for sharing out our goal acquisition so how are we all feeling about that can I get a thumbs up if you're okay with for going no subcommittees are going to die if we do that budget and Warren I'm just kidding no next week all right but before we go I do have to say that we have two fantastic members who are definitely retiring and this is going to be their last iners meeting so although I going to do this at your subcommittee report without this in Li of subcommittee reports I'm going to give this and maybe we just pass a double line to Karen Divine who we are so grateful thank you your leadership especially with CPAC and your knowledge around special education has been endlessly invaluable and we're so grateful that you stepped up for your community and you did this for three years so thanks thank you you're you're a wonderful committee to work with that's for sure so we make it fun and uh also to our friend Mike porish who is also retiring after six years um his endurance and his willingness to take on the budget and warrant subcommittee and really work with Ross and the superintendent to make this a very transparent and accepted um subject matter in our communities making it known and and kind of um no longer murky it's really done great a great service to our committee and to our communities and we're forever grateful for you Mike and we wish you both the very best as you go off don't forget you know there are always chairs in the back we would love it we love it uh so um that guys I'm going to move to a Jour second okay all those in payment thank you everyone for uh the endurance tonight yeah thank you you