e e e e e e e e e mind all right I'm going to call the meeting of the Puma school committee to order at 6:30 um our first um item on the agenda is the Pledge of Allegiance you join me I pledge of Al to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible for liberty and justice for all and our next piece is to go into um an executive session for collective bargaining do I have a motion to go in for that purpose Mr Pano I move to that we go into executive session for the purpose of discussing collective bargaining thank you I have a motion do I have a second thank you Mr Morgan um do you have any questions on the motion having none we will do a roll call vote Mr Morgan yes Miss saory yes M Miss oh my God Mr Pano yes Dr senson yes and I vote Yes so we will go into executive session now can go upstairs yeah go up into very cold conference room and 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 all right thank you everybody we're going to come back into session after our executive session um and the first thing we're going to do is um comments from the General Public do we have anybody here who wants to speak all right seeing none I will um not read our typical um guidelines and we'll go over to pouth North with DC for his update uh thank you so we had a Spanish emerging trip over April break 13 Plymouth North High School students and two teachers um went over to Spain and had an amazing time visiting major cities of Andalusia and learning about the history and culture of the region they also participated in Daily Spanish emerging activities and practiced their Spanish uh while having a really cool and unique experience everyone said they had an incredible time um AP environmental science students uh visited tid Marsh before vacation um environmental Educators working with the mass aabon Society took students around introducing them to the biodiversity of tidm mar uh students took samples of water and uh help scientists classify a different species I did this trip last year it was very fun um and they did it again and did a really good job uh Juniors prom ticket sales or prom tickets are on sale on Gan until May 1 students will need a code to purchase and if they're bringing a guest who is not a a pouth North High School student they have to see Miss mcder or look on Google classroom for the guest forms Junior Prom will be held on Friday May 24th at Lake Pearland rthm AP testing begins uh Monday May 6th through Friday May 17th there are 224 stud students taking a total of uh 424 exams um for parents of sophomores and juniors applying for financial aid and paying for college uh can be a little overwhelming so uh to stay informed there's an overview of the financial aid process and a brief discussion of the Fast Fun CSS profile forms uh and tools to determine like your eligibility for need and Merit based Aid so visit uh the website for dates it's uh posted um I believe on our school page Deca Nationals uh Deca students will travel to Anaheim California on Friday April 26th to compete in the DEA Nationals competition we wish them all the best of luck 2024 and 2025 bus applications were sent home electronically please have them filled out and returned along with payment uh to the school by June 30th SKS skills USA students will travel to Marboro uh they leave on Thursday April 25th and we're turn on Saturday April 27th we wish we also wish them the best of luck senior showcase is happening in the cafeteria on Thursday May 16th for students of the technology programs offered at North they will showcase uh their final projects in the cafeteria and lots of vpa events um the Plymouth North Marching Band drum line performed at the Carver Jellystone campground for the walking of the Bears event to start the season uh the drum line sounded great and it was an awesome Community event event and there's a couple of upcoming concerts for the music department so chors and choir is on May 7th at 7:00 p.m. Bandon Orchestra on May 10th at 700 p.m. and the spring Acappella concert is on May 17th at 700 p.m. tickets for the spring Acappella concert are on sale and the other two concerts are free with no tickets Freshman Class The Freshman Class having a fundraiser called the Swift experience on Monday May 11th at 6:30 p.m. uh come celebrate your favorite ERA with your friends on the piano football field uh enjoy music friendship bracelets movies and many more uh there are tickets that are starting at $5 at lunches and $10 at the door tickets go on sale uh April 29th student council elections are scheduled voting will take place during Social Studies classes on May 1st and May 2nd uh Miss Ward uh won the they the head of North student council she's our adviser was named the 2024 student council advisor of the year for all of South Eastern Massachusetts at the recent recent seamass conference in wh manhon before break so we're really happy um about that and want to congratulate her and lastly senior events seniors only have 25 days of school left celebrations begin next week with the biomedical science senior celebration on the 29th for biomed students and Senior Fest on May 1st for all students who got a ticket that's it thank you so much you count down those days 25 days um anybody have any questions for DC no thank you so much that was great always so much happening um all right the next thing we're going to move on to is our yellow yellow Tula project presentation um with Judy and her students thank you for coming you're welcome I'll get in the chair of course how we use we need this okay this scary don't be scared I promise we're not scary you're going to do fabulous is it okay if we stand yes you can do however however you feel comfortable and as long as we can hear you on the mics it's not really for us but it's for the people who are watching at home but I promise it's not that many people out so don't get too nervous I know there are feel free to pick it up if you need to too okay yeah thank you so much for having us this evening and for giving us a little time to tell you about our project so as many of you know I'm Judy Dart I'm one of the nurses at pcis uh Middle School here in Plymouth and I have Ace uh melli who's uh one of our eighth grade students and has been part of the yellow Tula project since last year and then we have aah Wahlberg uh who is also representing uh YTP as we call it and she's one of our seventh grade students who uh who joined this year as well yes so before we talk uh exactly about what the yellow tulet project is and all that we did I just want to share with you a couple of Statistics statistics so suicide is the second leading cause of death in youth ages 10 to 19 years and that's from the American Foundation of Suicide Prevention these are CDC statistics and they are updated the rate of suicide attempts continue to rise particularly in adolescent females and when they did studies on ER visits uh they found that girls and young women have twice the amount of attempts as boys and young men but boys and young men tend to complete suicide so even though these are nationwide statistics I can tell you from being a nurse at a middle school this is something that we see within our community and as many of us know our youth are struggling with mental health um Co didn't help things uh but I'm sure all of you know someone who struggles with whether it's anxiety depression or some form of mental health issue and as we all know when one person is affected it there's a ripple effect it also uh you know it also affects family members friends close relatives and suicide in particular affects those people so what I wanted to do is to try to bring this project when I found out about it to our middle school because we know that the children are struggling but what can we do to prevent it and what can we do to get rid of the stigma surrounding mental illness so that people who are having a difficult time whether it's someone that they live with or they themselves eles will receive the help that they need and know that there is always hope out there so I'll let Ace tell you a little bit about what why TP is so the yellow tulip project was started a few years ago by Julia Hansen and her mother um it was started because Julia from middle school through high school was really struggling with her mental health particularly depression and when she was a sophomore in high school she lost her two best friends to Suicide one of her best friends happened to love the color yellow the tulips hence the name the yellow tulip project but essentially after engaging in self harm she had come to her mother and she said listen there is so much going on with this Mental Health crisis and so many people are struggling and we need to do something about this nothing is being done we should do something hence the yellow Tulu project was created with Hope Gardens and all of our amazing things that we do with the yellow tulet project and this is our 2023 to 2024 it's our current group at the elulu project ignore the fact that my shirt does not match everybody else's um but so in September in the early weeks of October there are so many announcements in the morning in the afternoon at lunch about how you should go see nurse juty for an application for the El tulip project now why do we have an application why can't you just show up at an informational meeting why can't you just show up at the first meeting and join the club well given the subject matter of suicide self harm mental health disorders all of that so amazing so fun to talk about out um you have to get your parents permission and you have to tell nurse Judy about your why why do you want to be in the club what is your motivation and make sure that you sort of have the responsibility to handle and if your parents don't think that you can handle what y to the project talks about it's important that we have their permission so this is that's our group from last year and that is the largest hope Garden in Plymouth I believe especially at our school definitely at our school and it's a wonderful time we meet on Thursdays from 3:00 to 3:45 we get because it's a late bus day and we have to make sure that everybody can get home when they need to and we do lots of fun things and I totally tell you what we do but you know there are more slides about that so bye so we'll start with the gardens so in the fall and I started this about three years ago and so it's grown as we'll tell you in the fall we started planting some Gardens and the first year I did it um I just started creating one large garden is what I envisioned at pcis and then any of you who have been to pcis know there are so many different entrances so once we created this large garden I thought well everybody depending on where they're walking into the school should have some tulips to see too in the spring so we ended up creating seven Gardens in total on that first year and it was really starting from scratch I was out there with a roto tiller and and the kids were out there planting and then it simply you know spread and there's a lot of metaphors that go along with planting these tulip bulbs so so when we talk to the kids and we all come together you know everyone's been in school all day it's kind of so nice to be out in the fresh air working in the garden any of you who Garden know it's so therapeutic and it's something that in this case does not give you immediate gratification which is really great for the kids because they come together they work on a project and all throughout the year as Ace will tell you we do so many other things and then now in the spring everything is blooming so we see what we worked for um but as far as the medic fors with uh with the Tulips and what we're planting so we tell the kids you know you need to plant these tulips they need to go 6 to 8 Ines deep and you need to plant them kind of close together much like people right um they bloom best when they have each other around them and we as as humans and need community and need people so that no one can go through this alone and that there's always people out there to help you and then also we think about here in New England we have long cold Winters right I know the month of March was so dreary and long we think these tulip bulbs remain in the ground for a long time through dark times and we say just like we can go through very difficult Dark Times where sometimes we feel like it's never going to get better and things just seem so hopeless you know I talk to the kids we never lose hope always stay positive and always know that better days are to come just like the Tulips will stay underground for a long time and now we see how beautiful beautiful they are and that's the message we really spread with all the things that we do so we do talk about the mental health but a lot of this group focuses on just being kind and understanding that everyone is going through something and so sometimes you may not understand why someone is acting a certain way but they may have a story behind them so just be kind so these are some um pictures from our Gardens this year uh after the first year I decided Well I think our community needs a garden so I worked with Plymouth Public Library and we created a hope Garden there that when you drive in you can see it near the flag pole in the parking lot and then this year I decide well where else can we go so I worked with Karen Peterson from B Plymouth and we created two gardens at the hospital so the kids would take a bus after school and we would go to all these different locations and I really wanted to spread it to the ele schools so obviously at an elementary school level we don't necessarily talk about suicide but we do talk about how you can have bad days and just to stay positive and have hope and that things again always get better it was wonderful seeing the collaboration between the Middle School students and the elementary school students because some of these middle school students were going back to their Elementary School and Ace did a fantastic job explaining to the kids how to plant the bulbs and everybody came together and worked together it was really a lot of fun but we do a lot more than just plant tulips at the yellow tulip project so the literacy n at pcis is open to the entire community and it's a fun night there's lots of stuff going on but we have a table we've had a table for the past two years and we did a raffle this year got Brave and we have coloring sheets crayons all that sort of stuff and we have a nice trifold and people can come and they can ask me what they can ask whoever is there what it's about and I can explain it and it's so good to get it out into the community we made bracelets for some of our teachers at the beginning of the year and one of my favorite events which I'm going to say a bunch of times but it really is so fun is we make hope holidayish bags for adolescence kids teens at um at B in the emergency room waiting for mental health services because that is one of the scariest days of their lives before it happened it was one of the scariest days of their lives and after it happened it was also probably one of the scariest days of their lives and it is just so important that they have some form of distraction something to keep their minds off of why every they're there so there's cards there's oh no we're on the next slide now okay that's there's cards there's stickers there's little like activity books little drawing books stickers I already said stickers but there's a bunch of stuff in there it's really cool um so the Tulip Tree event also one of my favorite events is really fun and the stuff goes to Franciscan Children Hospital just outside of Boston and also the Life Care Center for some more elderly people um in Plymouth and and all throughout March we have boxes and little tulip trees and on the tulip trees there's tiny little tulips all the Tulips have stuff on them and they say like oh you should bring in a blanket or socks or a puzzle all that fun stuff and then people bring it in they put it in the Box we collect it nurse dudy brings it to the people and it's wonderful and it's fabulous and it spreads the hope it smashes the stigma it gets all the points across so some of the art projects that we do um involve some rock painting so when we were looking at the gardens once they were created you know then it just looks like dirt with maybe some mulch over it so we thought how can we make these Gardens stand out so we hosted some uh rock painting afternoons where we invited anyone who wanted to join us uh from the school and the kids paint positive messages um just sweet little pictures and then all those Garden all those um rocks are bordering the gardens all throughout our community we also work on some art projects with uh the woman in the picture on the left is Susan tier and she's the creative arts program for the yellow tulip project she's based out of Vermont and I just got to know her through doing this project she's amazing and she has a group in um in Vermont and so I went to visit her in the fall and saw that her group had created this great art show that they had at a coffee shop and the the pictures that these middle school students created and the meaning behind the picture was really impressive and I thought I want to bring that to Plymouth so we got together with some Plymouth North High School National Art Honor Society students because I am not an artist and I needed some guidance for the students and so we've been working for the last four weeks on these art projects they are almost done and they will be on display at the kisy coffee shop on Court Street as well as sweet frogs and Colony Place okay so I have what's called cam counselor energy and so I did very good at the youth conference that Aid and I went to because I got to be very loud and very enthusiastic and I have to be all formal today and I'm not doing very good at that apologies um but so the be in the youth no conference its theme was um Substance Abuse Prevention and mental health ties in so incredibly well with substance abuse I mean like not in a good way but it still ties in right and so many people abuse drugs and alcohol in a way for their mental health to as a distraction so when we went there were groups from I believe nine other schools and nine other districts but only three presented and we were lucky enough to be one of them and we have a very similar presentation to the one we're doing today and it was a very fun time it was a wonderful time okay so the Tulip Tree walk is amazing and fabulous and wonderful and you should all go and it's when the Tulips are in full bloom it starts at Plymouth North and then the turnaround point is the Plymouth Public Library and there are so many fun things because we have different booths we have people from The Suicide Prevention Coalition and there is crafts and then we go to the health fair after and we do the walk and it's a very fun time and it's great and you should go these are some other Gardens there's one at Plymouth North one of those is at an elementary school and the other two are at pcis cuz pcis is amazing and that's great and this is our biggest garden at pcis with our ambassadors from last year and we have a very very very pretty mural that we were lucky enough to have one of the teachers one of the art teachers paint for us and we're very grateful that our Gardens can look so pretty so this is just a flyer for our hope day walk which is this Saturday at 9 o'clock there is no charge to attend but we would love for any of you to join us just come together as a community it's a very short one mile walk so it's great for little kids it's great for older people um but it's just an opportunity to come together and spread this a simple message of hope so we always say smash the stigma and spread the hope and before we go we just want to share a a video of the last three years and what we've done you won't click will they play it can't click on it I think it just you just need to click on it yeah on it you'll get the link and then say yes there you go sound can't get the music it okay we can play it in our head it's fine no worries we all have some sort of music playing right I will tell you uh as we're watching the slideshow sorry about the music Problem uh but we do have currently we have Hope Gardens at hedge Cold Spring West and manat Elementary three schools uh Plymouth North Plymouth High School Plymouth North High School Plymouth South High School our school and Plymouth South Middle School so our goal is to have one at every school in the next year or so what I do it's a little boring without music pi so the chairs that you see in the video too we worked with the library and so you'll see a couple of those chairs are at the library and then we also have some in our schools and now all the Tulips are in bloom everywhere so they're really beautiful so in this last year we planted over a th tulip bulbs just this year it's probably been at least 2,000 in the last three years wow so cute we have been very um grateful for a lot of support that we've received from the Plymouth Education Foundation so that I can continue this work and a friend of mine uh through her organization Matthews crew my friend had lost her son to suide right before the pandemic which is kind of what brought all of this on um it's how I learned about the yellow tulet project and we've also had other donations our Home Depot has helped us with mulge uh landscape and companies so we appreciate all of the support that we've received throughout the community because uh we can't we can't do all of this without their support and with the support of our school and administration so thank you and thank you so much for your time and attention thank you so much thank you that was that was wonderful I don't know if anybody I know you ran back to your seats but um I don't know if anybody up here has any questions for you all or anything they want to say I just want to say thank you so much for taking the time to come and speak to us you you guys did a fabulous job so you did a great job presenting you were professional just like you said you weren't but you were I promise um no but thank you for taking time out of your day and I wish I could be there this Saturday but but I'm unfortunately going to be in Virginia but I'm sure you'll get some others who are able to show up but I will probably be there it's such a it's such a great thing to do I was there last year well thank you yeah just yeah and thank you Judy for starting this and to our students you know this is really you've really this a ripple effect that you've seen across this community and you're true leaders and it's inspiring so thank you for what you do it's wonderful and I'll see you on Saturday yes yep thank you all right right we're going to move on so our next item on the agenda is Cape C collaborate but they're not here they will be here on May 6th correct they needed to reschedule they just had a um unexpected meeting come up so they will be here on the 6th and the next one we have is we have Cold Spring Elementary School princi Morgan for her last time sad this wasn't a we didn't plan this them this evening but for some reason I know that was is a great presentation that we just watched so I don't know how we're going to beat that but it's hard yeah so but uh thank you for having us I know it's my it's sad for my last time but um I'm I know that moving forward this Improvement plan is going to take on life and um move forward still um so today I have with me um uh council members Stephanie Van Winkle so she's going to help share and present uh for us today um today so this is our second year of living this plan so there's one more year to go and then whomever they'll start their new plan um moving forward in 2025 um so I'm glad to say or happy to say that we have accomplished a lot in our plan so now is more just keep keeping it going and keeping it um thriving at Cold Spring so there we go so I want to say a big thank you to our Council members who have done a lot of work creating goals creating actions and getting things going um Miss uh Miss O'Brien Miss Higgins Barbara pagnotti Amanda Pinto so Andrea and um Tammy are parent Representatives Barbara and Amanda our teachers Stephanie's teacher and then Mr bazano who is also on our team um coming up with some great thoughts and great actions for um Cold Spring so I appreciate all the work just a little bit bit of information about Cold Spring before we begin um looking at our demographic information so 52.7% is economically disadvantaged oop sorry about that um 19.1% are our elll population and then um 19.5 is our special education population so that is our makeup for Cold Spring and our languages now currently at this point uh are English Brazilian Portuguese haian Creole and Arabic so we continue to grow in our languages at um Cold Spring so our four goals that we've been working on did one and not the other are number one is to increase our family and Community engagement through students Le initiatives so students taking the leadership role with the leader in me um enhance our academic achievement to close those gaps for all students promote and support the culture of diversity in our community and then increase growth in our math so but before I get into that we do offer a lot of outside programming at Cold Spring just to tell you a few things that we do run every year we have our Garden Club um which is also focusing on a big science initiative that we're working on at Cold Spring our math club came out of the our Council um early act Club works with ro Rotary Club um the student Lighthouse Club ukul chorus 3D engineering and then uh songwriting those those are just a few that we offer but then our long year initiatives are the leader and me we are whole school Title One school um this year we were been very fortunate to partner with a big brother and big sister um so they come in our bigs come in during lunchtime they meet with students and they sit with them about a good 45 minutes that has been going on we have after school why mentoring programs not the why that runs the after school programs like Aftercare this is mentoring they come in on Mondays and they work with a group of students and they run a mentoring program this is our second year doing this it's been a great partnership for our kids um the yellow tulip project um we also have goold and then we we started the um we joined with pins to start our positive peer award um so that the kids that were going above and beyond what was expected of them um they every Friday we announce them the teachers vote on who is going to be a positive peer um and they get a certificate from pins that allows them to have one free game of bowling and um free shoe rentals so the kids love it they look forward to it we had mcass and couldn't announce them on time on Friday because of the testing and they were all like Miss vanwinkle when are you going to announce so they are actually buying into it which has been fabulous and then we also do our Cub coins um for kids to catching them when they're doing what's expected and it seems to be a great incentive so they do classroom Awards and then they do um the whole grade level Awards and then whole school Awards SCH Awards we're about ready to do the whole school again absolutely all right so our first goal Stephanie is going to take us into uh what we've done and accomplished there all right so obviously um as you all know our demographics have changed they continue to change um we are a very diverse school um but we are also um a school that has a lot of students that have experienced um trauma so we are trying to do everything we can in the building to make them feel safe and loved and cared for and part of the community um so in an attempt to build these relationships to help them feel safe we have done things um like had parents come in and they volunteer to do crafts or they volunteer to read um our librarian um Stephanie grindle has done um story time um the math club is where um our older kids in fourth and fifth grade Mentor our younger kids um one of our goals is obviously um to increase our math um and so it's not only increasing our math skills but it's also having the kids enjoy math and find math to be fun um our student Le events the leader and me um event they we do an assembly and the kids do it from beginning to end they plan it they organize it and then they will they tell the kids what the expectations are for assemblies and they fit close it out out so um that's been really good um to celebrate our growing um diverse Community um we have started to do our morning announcements that have always been read by our students um in both English and Brazilian Portuguese so we have two students that read those every morning and our students that are from especially from Brazil it feels it's a great way for them to start the day they're here in their language and there's more um we also obviously want to get our families engaged um as our school is becoming more and more diverse we also have more and more um homelessness and our students that are living in the hotels um are living in one room um and they don't have a lot of activities and then also for our families that are just families that are always on the go and busy we wanted them to be able to engage again with each other so we started our backpack family um fun night so the kids can um sign them out for a week and it's got a board game puzzles um arts and crafts in there so the families can do it together um we have again signage all across our building that is in all of our language for the bathrooms and the main areas it's in all of the languages that we have um right now um I already did the story time African um Arts Expo was our um art teacher and music teacher did this um prepared it and had a presentation and um the kids did a lot of artwork and music and dance um and that was presented we are also um putting together a cultural event we're working with Brianna to um get that together for next year we were hoping to get it to this year but um we don't we want it to be perfect so we're planning that for next year um and I think that's it yeah so the cultural Fair we wanted to do something that involved all three schools in North Plymouth so we started at the beginning of the year starting to plan out what would that look like um that celebrated the culture and diversity of the north Plymouth area of all our kids and so it like Stephanie said in order to get that right we really just need to take our time and plan it out well and um so we did talk with Brianna and then U Mike capable and so working with vpa and trying to do a really nice cultural fair that will celebrate everyone and organize it and like at the Colt spring area so that will hopefully come to fruition next year you'll have to send me pictures yep so because I really want to see that happen it's it's a b a goal but you're gonna have to send me pictures come for a visit so um so the second goal was to increase our academic achievement and close the gap so what we did this year were um I triy to put in this scaffold I like what we've done so for reading everyone had to do um ker3 kind of record and monitor our our reading but I also extended that to four and five so we all did the did the same thing we had specialized grade level meetings we had um a collaboration with Teachers College we work with our literacy coach we tracked on Excel sheet of the student progress noted what we did what the next steps are for RTI how did the results come out and so that's how we met all the time to track our progress and hope make um steady student progress um so we worked on those interventions and continued to work on them we're going to do the same format next year for math but for this year for math we used our staff meetings and so we worked with our math coach did the same thing we looked at Star math we looked at the data teachers worked together in collaboration figured out their next steps and track student progress then in the classroom you know you've heard me talk about our goals for the past several years now so we have the whole building goal we have the classroom goal and then the students have their own personal goals and they track their progress so that's still going on in the classrooms um this year with the classroom goal teachers held uh public celebrations so did they reach they track their progress with the kids and did they reach their um their progress in addition to all of that you know working with science science is very um important and we really needed to work on on how we were approaching science at Cold Spring and to do a better job so we partner with Allison Ren our science coordinator um we have an outdoor Garden that's going on with working with the minimat um Incorporated a science center in minimat so grade three goes to the center grade four and five maintain and plan the next steps in the garden so that's working on so we're working on the next steps um this year we already have another we have the main Garden by on Alden Street but we have another Garden in the back of the school so that's happening but science journals so in order to help our kids understand what we're doing in science this year we um went and we did the open sad we did that um program this year but K our kids are now doing science journals this is the second year and so our science journals mimic what they're doing at pcis so when our kids leave Cold Spring they'll make that smooth transition to pcis and know exactly what to do in the science journal but it's about critical thinking and trying to get them more engaged in The Sciences so here comes the fun part so I did throw up some data for you but in your in my report I also put different charts so you can see how we're oops I know I'm just talking um you so you you see how like in the charts how we made progress from um like not um meing Improvement meeting progressing and so you can see how we are making that progress these charts that I use is Cold Spring uh versus the state so overall in grades 3 to five um we were outperforming the state um for ELA 3 to five um for math we're kind of neck and neck with um the state still keeping moving in a good um good Rhythm we are are we are making steady progress towards our goals um for grade three I broke it down to all of our grade levels so I don't know if you can see that data so right now on for grade three so grade three for ELA and I apologize it's a little small but um grade three was 75% and the state was 44% so that was a 31% increase over the state so they really knocked it out of the park there um for math was 56% and the state was 41% so still was a 15% increase so grade three did a really good job we have some work to do um in grade four um it was 41% in 40 for ELA so kind of necking neck again um and then for math it was 45% for the state and 38 for Cold Spring so we will um continue to work on that um for grade five five you know and this is really important to note for grade five so last year we had a situation where we had to go down we had to merge two fifth grade classrooms into one wasn't what we wanted to do but is what we had to do and I wanted to say that this still turned out really well due to really some a really talented team that worked with their kids so for fifth grade for ELA we were on par with the state for ELA for math the same we were on par we actually made a little bit of slight gain in math and then for science um the same thing we were um neck and neck with the state again but we were making uh we made a slight gain so that was really good news for for grade five um then I broke it down into the subgroups so when you have when you look at the chart in front of you the blue is Title One the orange um or yellowish color is low income and then the reddish color is high needs so when we take a look at grade three moving in the right direction for ELA and then slight dip for math but we've still um we are still making progress even though that slight dip um same thing with grade four um we see that our low income for ELA was making uh did a great um increase so they moved up in their scores and same thing for math with special ed and our low income we made um an increase and then for grade five um grade five stayed steady and then our high needs um made an increase for ELA they also um had a little difficulty more in math but then science again was more in a up upscale climb um for our high needs for specialed so then overall um this is overall Ela for grades five with our different categories title one is a whole school uh low income and high needs um showing good progress and then the same thing for math uh especially our lowincome um made a slight gain so turning it over to Stephanie for grade three uh promoting culture and diversity um so one of the things that we did in is in the classrooms we updated the libraries to include books that were in the students languages and allowing the students to see themselves on the pages um the uh like I said before the diverse language signs throughout the building in the different languages that we have in our building at this time all of our welcome packets are translated in their language so families are given um their welcome packages in their L home language to help them feel welcomed celebrated and included in our school community and then the morning oh the diverse cultural um programming um in addition to everything else that we're doing we're like we said we're going to do the cultural Fair um and hopefully we'll have that up and running and sending you pictures um um and then morning announcements as I stated were um always LED but they're going to be right now it's just a Brazilian Portuguese but we're hoping that next year we'll be able to introduce the other languages as well one week will be each language be great and so then closing the Gap in our math so what we worked on this year is that um again we created our overarching goals we work with our math coach for professional development grade level planning came in to uh play at staff meetings and then we called other meetings um during the day to bring teams together we worked on our rti in our interventions and then we also provided time to work with um the math coordinator as well so our teachers had the opportunity to speak with her and ask questions and dive into the curriculum but um most importantly last year we had our our our kiddos here to talk about math club so I didn't want to keep them up late again this year so um I decided to do a video so they were just in the beginnings and introducing what math club was going to be about now that this year they worked they have a math day that they're going to do instead of a math night we're doing a math day because that provides the opportunity for all children to participate because sometimes at night time families can't come back and they can't get us so we're going they're going to do it during the day and then also creasing to have a math incentive beyond the math club to do something like our reading incentive to try to get the kiddos really into practicing their math and I think if that all happens you're going to start to see the increase in our the scores at Cold Spring and the kids um loving math that's what's the most important thing so our we have a video that we can play for he's on it he's um it's not attached to here it's a little video of the kids telling about in their words did you know that coling has a math cup come with us as we learn how students are working to help their peers learn in love math students in math cling mons a week with Miss Pinto where they learn fun and exciting games activities to promote a love of math uh so something that we do in math club is we teach um kindergarteners first graders and second graders uh what we math things and um we do games with them like we walk around the school and we um look for shapes we play a lot of games and like we have this like game it's called the fruit um Loops game and like we set the kids to like count the FR loops and then we tell them to like put the FR Loops in each color and then they count that and we make them put like in the graph it it's basically like a type of like math connect for where you have to roll a dice and you have to add up the numbers that are on the top of the dice and then once you add those numbers up you have to find it on the board so it's basically just like a learning Connect 4 for kids in math club we help kindergarteners and any grades from K to 3 learn to love math and we play games and read fun math [Music] books it's actually really fun and then you can learn about like you can learn a lot of new things and we also um teach like the kindergartens to be [Music] leaders in addition to working with students in kindergarten through second grade the math club is also Crea a math Day celebrating for the entire school we thought it would be fun for all the grades to do math that's kind of like a carnival for math day we are going to throw like a math Carnival and it's going to be really fun because there's going to be like math related games that are carnival games math club members are taking leadership roles among their peers to organize the exciting event a few weeks before we met up and we learned how to play all the games and we organized what dates we were going to do who's going to run with stations and all of that stuff we planned out like games that we can do outside for like the summer when it's like hot and we also did some games that from the inside we thought of things that we could do for um the grades so first we were doing like the things for kindergarteners and it made it harder for the fifth graders they quit doing multiplication for them math club and math day are great ways that students are able to combine their leadership skills and love for math I think in fourth grade Miss Burns told me that math is around you everywhere so you kind of need to know it to get through life because as I said it makes us like we can teach them to be a leaders for like the whole school and teach them that like math club can be hard sometimes but you can do it I think having this math Day celebration is important because it's to help kids learn to love math and that is like not like a boring topic it's fun we look forward to celebrating matth on June 6th this has been Olivia with cscs news so it's up on my time here has always been important to get the kids out front and to show what they are doing um it's one thing for for us to come up here and talk about it but it's actually for you to see what the kids are doing and hearing it from them they are true leaders they come up with great ideas and uh they are doing a wonderful job so um I'm very proud of them love it thank you so much that was awesome anybody have any questions no I just wanted to wish you good luck and thank you say it's a big loss for the district thank you but we're all happy for you and disappointed for us making me emotional I wasn't going to do I was like oh yay it was my last meeting Mr Pano thank you do you have Oh I thought you had something yeah C thank you so much that was wonderful I could have used math club I mean I still need math club teach me to love math that'd be great thank you that was awesome yeah ex I need to let me know what math day is please do come with me love M all right our next one we have is another last presentation Michael Spencer this is like a sad day we'll try not to make you cry sorry we can't promise allor right we might not let you out of the door today I know both of you you're stuck here oh so thanks for having us uh tonight and uh every remiss before we get going officially I just want to um thank Mrs Morgan um so she and I kind of well I guess I started Ed together with her she was here uh when I came here and she was uh one of the most welcoming people and wise uh people that I've come across in education and so enjoyed the time that we had together and have just been consistently impressed by her leadership it just oozes out of her presentation so I didn't know that she was going to go before me I would have tried to jump ahead and pretend I was a South High uh representative today maybe G um but that said um we have some some work we want to highlight um and so this year what we've done at our school council is actually create our our next plan is what we're presenting for you so this is a two-year plan that was put together this a new a new Council that joined us this year and um I am always amazed by the talent um that we can harness uh from the various perspectives when we come together at a school council and that's what makes uh these sessions and meetings really um important for us so this is our our list of school counsil and it's made up of Educators from other districts um obviously staff from our own School uh we are thrilled to have a family medicine practitioner on our Council um and then obviously Mrs Chase and myself um sort of as the school leaders to sort of help set the tone on where we're going so again this group uh listed there uh all of our sessions um came out of true curiosity um and also really trying to think about the work that school council will do so as a as a new group there's a little bit of Education there and talking about what people's interests were so it was interesting to sort of come together uh on that piece it coincided a little bit we had a a transition that happened to us earlier in the year of some students that came all at once um of a different demographic and uh was quite impactful for our school community and then just as we were all feeling like we had a a good handle and we're helping move those students forward they sort of were gone in the wind um so uh I I I greatly appreciate the school council's efforts uh all of them uh two specifically that are here tonight and I feel like they get the attendance award as well um they've been at just about every meeting and have been great um participants so uh one of our kindergarten teachers Jen Paladino is here tonight and is on on the school council for us and a great um representative of Staff viewpoints and teaching viewpoints and also brings her own parent lens uh to the table and then uh Dr Kate Angel uh is here tonight as well and has joined us not only just thinking about education issues but thinking about broader societal conversations and how do we think about those who are uh underserved sometimes and their voices aren't heard so those those have been sort of the backdrops of the of the people that are on the screen there uh typically as we create these plans and and I know that you have sort of the deeper um action plans and school Improvement plan in in the packet that we shared we don't we don't want to lose sight and we and we start off from both the mission and and sort of vision that we have but we really look at those core values which is uh emblematic in our uh PBIS system with crew and so what we want to come out of our our school Improvement plan is competent students uh resilient children uh engaged Learners which is one of our goals we're sort of defining engagement and trying to relook at that defining and obviously we want welcomed individuals so just like um Cold Springs sort of shared with you this is a little bit Us by the Numbers we are hovering wavering at the 5:15 we just had three students join us today we have two more coming next week so um we might be closer to 520 by the time the year ends uh 24 general education classrooms across Arc 5 building uh we have one districtwide program that Services students in three four and five um it's called The Bridge classroom uh and it is there to support students who are uh a little bit behind their sort of academic goals and learning than their same age peers our English language learner population is uh right around 10% so 99.2% at the October 1 data but we're a little bit closer to the 10% piece and again primarily Brazilian Portuguese um but we also have representative of Arabic languages and guarte and um Hindi uh our economically disadvantaged number is actually a little bit closer to 40% again this is a a number that we just get out of the state 35.5% is what listed but we're hovering a little bit closer to that 40 which put us this year uh as a title one uh whole school uh assistance situation so that was um helpful as we'll talk a little bit more about some of the efforts that we put forward not only this year but I'm thinking about this plan about interventions and then students with identified disabilities which also includes not just IEP students but also students on 504 so that's where our number goes a little bit higher than what we might see on other uh sites to 16.2% so continuing with the numbers a little bit of a data dive um we love to talk about data we love to talk about you know where we can find it and it's it's out there every day for us obviously but we have it both in District space and we have state data that we think about so we just pulled a couple different um stats there and I think Mrs Chase was going to sort of share some of this data that's on on the page for us and then I'm going to just pop ahead and then come back you know we have a little colorful chart here that shares some of that data that we have on the districtwide data that you know Mrs Morgan shared before that all of us in the district were thinking about that early literacy initiative um and so um Mrs Chase thank you so um looking at the district data we use the star um data as our as our early screener and also our measurement for um these numbers so looking at the early literacy um star screener in the fall um you can see the percentage numbers we had 35% of our kiddos in the um what we label as the not meeting or partially meeting um and those are colored in the next next graph as the yellows and the Reds um so those are the kiddos that we're really looking at um and same as our second grade numbers they were 25% in in those two categories so you know we met as grade level data teams and we really looked at those individual kiddos that fell in those categories to say what do we need to do for them what are their strengths what can they do how can we move them forward um we looked at the you know the needs of the kiddos and then we looked at our staff and our and our curriculum to say like okay who you know who's going to help when are they going to help and how are they going to help um doing what and we really had individual conversations um with teachers about the individual kiddos and I think you can see the jump from the fall um scores to the winter scores so it just in a couple of months we um decreased the number of first graders that were in those warning kind of categories by 20% so um 35% of the kiddos in first grade early literacy um 35% were not meeting or or partially meeting in the fall and now it's 15% in the winter um similarly in second grade 25% of the kiddos not meeting um in the not meeting or partially meeting in the fall um down to 10% um in the winter so um you know definitely the the targeted work um and and interventions that um were designed really specifically for those kiddos um is working we're we're seeing some great Improvement movements and we we actually just met you know of our so as Mrs Chase shared you know we had these data meetings and then we have sort of progress meetings based on the interventions and so we just had one of those based on this winter data um and continue to see growth so those numbers they continue to diminish um in terms of those students who are landing in what we like to call the red and yellow areas um and then in having those conversations definitely think about also the other data that we have that isn't just the star generated data and is it is it matching to what we're seeing on that is is because this is a screener right and it's help us guide us on where on where we want going to go is there any surprises or there things that we're not seeing in the sort of other assessments that we have and that I think those have been really productive conversations and um and team conversations so it's not just you know like classroom teacher answering the questions it's the team of support so it's our Consulting teachers of literacy it's um we're a part of the conversation it's the you know msns at the grade levels or um Title One teachers um different support um e staff El staff like it's it's definitely a team approach and a team support and once again humility is a great trait of Mrs Chase she says she's part of the conver I would say she's a lead of the conversation so um I feel like I'm at home with the remote like I just keep clicking around jump back between I see if I get the bones game on here feel like I'm at home too I don't get the remote absolutely you want Netflix there's another TV in the other room isn't that what happen so then State data we just put some listing out there so this is last Spring's uh information obviously but um you know one of the thresholds we want to think about is being you know past the state U benchmarks and these are exceeding in meeting so looking at the percentage of students so in all our of our assessments Ela math science at grade three and four and five with the science piece added in um above the state benchmarks um you know you can see the numbers that are there for that some other data that we're able to access and and think about uh that I wanted to just to call out and and sort of think about and put out there as we were crafting our goals and objectives in into this plan um there's something called the dart comparison which is about data analysis and and tool that we have that takes some like districts um based on demographic information and and actually like schools um so in in this kind of listing of schools that has some similar demographics that naani Morton does across the state um we were ranking second in student growth percentage so that that idea using mcast data from third to fourth grade so seeing a fourth grade score in the fourth to fifth grade and also the exceeding and meeting percentages that I had up there before so we were second in that list it's usually about 10 or 11 schools that are in there so that was a good data point I think for us to see um another piece that Desy loves to put out there is this accountability targets so we are substantially making progress we're not in any kind of need of assistance and we're we're at a 62% threshold of the targets that have been sent to us for us and so 75 is kind of that number to get to so we are continually to kind of make those strides in that area which is again important uh this data point I think was also important to look at we always think about subgroups and talk about them so in looking at high high need students and students with disabilities uh in addition to all students um the growth so the growth percentile um in ela and math uh was higher so our growth percentile was higher than also the district and state benchmarks for those same subgroups so that was uh an important piece for us to think about uh a data point that I think we want to focus on to see if we can change uh in five of the seven so we have Ela math in grade three Ela math in grade four and then we have Ela math and S and in five so seven Assessments in five of those we had 10% or more some of them were like 12% but it's more than 10% students not meeting expectations right so that that's sort of last category and we want to think about diminishing that that piece not only in our all students category but across our our subgroups the last chart and last data point when we think about sort of data is specifically to our El students this is this is for the access weeda scores um so 50% of our El students are making their progress Target Target so again they're they're set up their own targets based on year-to year and how they perform on the weed and and the chart down to the bottom just kind of talks about the various stages of proficiency that kids land in so the overall proficiency rate for US is at a 2.9 uh exiting um is you know past the four St uh stage and so you know we have some room to grow in there and those are both both numbers and percentages of our overall population which is put at 51 students so um I often wonder about if we put all students through the access test as first graders um how heavy the language is and the component how all students who aren't just um English language Learners uh would perform on that situation it's it's a tricky a tricky piece especially when you look at the the literacy component uh of it in there so we put all those data pieces together we put those great conversations we're having at the school council table we think about our day-to-day work with our students where we've come in our last couple years of what we've been trying to do and we created U some different objectives um and goal areas if you will um we have five of them uh because we sort of took academic success and broke it into two separate areas um each slide is sort of presented with the overall objective we have and then sort of our theory of action is underneath that some of the expected outcomes we hope and then the targeted kind of the focus objective for next year and and what that looks like so um this first one about academic success is building off of these data team meetings that we were talking about I think Mrs Morgan referenced that a little bit in her work towards AC academic success you know when we gather as building leaders across the district we have our conversations think we're we're having similar conversations and so it's probably reflected in our school Improvement plans because we're all trying to drive at that same piece about student growth and thinking about the information that's in front of us so for us we are definitely looking to establish data meeting ings across all content areas um and using responsive intervention systems within and across grades so that's the big kind of ticket item and I think we can as I was saying before lean into sort of the the more anecdotal the some way but more consistent classroom based data that we have when we talk about other content areas that might not have some of the screener star data things of or an mcast data point that we have so we really can have these kind of conversations um the the key part is in that conversation what intervention comes out of it what does the system look like and how do we approach kids uh if a more consistent approach this is the theory uh to data analysis and responding interventions is assigned and I think this is the key part of this sort of phrasing in a responsive teaching approach so really meeting kids where they're at who's in front of you um then all students will increase proficiency across academic areas both by state and District assessments that's our hope um some of those thresholds are or outcomes or hoped expected outcomes are there that you can look through and think about in the in the documents that we gave you before that second bullet down or I guess it's an asteris uh is the one I was talking about before that we really get that percentage of not meeting and according to the mcast data really below 5% and that all subgroups you know make some marked improvement in in that percentage area um but our Focus for next year would be really starting a data review timeline across all content areas and thinking about assessments and data that we can use and then the accompanying interventions so that's sort of the the piece for for next year Mrs Chase is going to walk us through objective two and three for object objective two it's the student engagement um where we're looking to provide opportunities and guidance for student goal setting voice and choice um Our Hope really is that with the um increased in student agency and goal setting students will move from passive to active engagement in their learning um and really looking at the kind of Engagement Continuum um to be you know actively engaged versus passively engaged and positively actively engaged so not just like active refusing but active participating um is what we're what we're looking for too um and the way we're trying to kind of go about doing that is um to have our um grade level engagement rubric so like all teachers you know kind of looking at this um and seeing how they can make make the make the days more kind of engaging um and and fun um we do across our school year um have some engagement Days whole schoolwide engagement days um we've kind of model after the rock your school days that you've probably seen some highlights of um but the idea like it's not just stand alone like and those days like those are big days for us and we do incorporate you know different stem or steam activities um throughout those days but to have that kind of excitement in learning um ongoing as often as as possible um and having like you know professional development opportunities um per grade level for engagement observations and and discussions I think is you know always helpful to learn from learn from each other too I think we've been fortunate to have a variety of um Consultants outside people walk through our buildings uh District based people as well on our learning walks um to give us feedback and that feedback you know typically comes back about there is engagement so that's where we were sort of talking about how do we drill down a little deeper into that engagement and and the impact that it can have and I think a big part of that in addition is we' started it a little bit this year but really trying to make a a you know name it and really be a goal area this idea of goal setting for kids and them to be kind of in charge of their learning and I think that really helps with this idea of of active engagement and we've talked a little bit about having it that be a shared goal um with families as well so like to drive our parent teacher conferences um to have like that shared goal with the teacher and the student and the parent to have that as a goal you know kind of individual for each kiddo um and tying in with that engagement is the social emotional Wellness um you know I think sometimes our kids like they need to feel connected um and to have that you know feeling of connected like they want to be in a place will get the engagement out of them and they really need to feel like you know we're looking at their social emotional Wellness we care about them um in that way too so um provid proving direct instruction and authentic experiences for social interaction is our goal thinking about you know those non um structured times like the recess and lunch times um I would maybe add bus to that too and thinking about it like how many um Behavior referrals we get during those times um and if we can hopefully you know if students are given more direct instruction around the social competencies and purposeful social interaction students will form more positive peer relationships develop greater sense of community and connection and then we'll see a reduction of those behavior um referrals and kids can have more positive experiences to to build upon um and what we're thinking of like our kindergarten rooms have part of their day um devoted to purposeful play and so they have curriculum Connections in those settings but they also really talk about you know the getting along turn taking sharing um some really important skills that kids need and they need the direct instruction in that and then the reflection of that and so what we've seen um are great you know like great Centers Great purposeful play center activities and stuff that the kindergartens are doing but really when they come back together and talk about it um and how they got along how do they problem solve without the teacher present um that's where real good learning can happen and so we want to extend the purposeful play activities into our first and second grades um incorporating like integrating science um and social studies standards um and not like an everyday kind of a thing but definitely you know a couple throughout the school year um with those um purposeful play activities or units that kids can really have those opportunities to continue that growth from kindergarten up through first and second grade and you know integrating science and social studies um in those areas I think would be a great a great tool yeah I think we we discussed as a council um so social competencies uh is an area that we still see a lag I know it was concern and worry and you know we've looked at comparisons of you know 2019 data and 2023 data in terms of some of the academic pieces and you know there are areas that we want to identify and there is areas of growth this area of social competencies especially for our younger students and what they missed out on during this you know some of those issues that we went through a few years back uh is something we see day-to-day and I think as Mrs Chase said that idea of explicit direct instruction is is what we're hoping for and giving it uh in the classroom setting that's the other kind of push on this goal and what we're naming uh we have a lot of small group interventions whether it's like lunch bunches or other kind of um counseling based situations and those those are working like those are successful but it's the carryover in the generalization so us really trying to think about this as a goal that that touches into classroom into direct instruction makes it a part of the learning um and hopefully um gets kids back on track and those things that are important that we Nam down there you know like turn-taking managing emotions those are big feedback pieces for to us from from from families when as a school council we did a little bit of a narrower uh survey uh we sent out a more targeted um kind of survey it was less you know 17 18 questions it was like three or four different kind of questions what are topics those were topics that really came up that people you know felt um their child and they they themselves and helping their children needed um so speaking about families we continue to think we're communicating pretty well with them um but we want to keep pushing ourselves uh and so our objective four is around family communication but we've also sort of termed it shared decision-making I think that's the next step for us in involving a true partnership with families and again the objective is we provide frequent opportunities for family feedback so this targeted you know checking with families along the way um and about student learning and the school experience not just about the logistics pieces or about events that are coming up those are all important um we had a lot of communication around our ninja fundraiser um last week or right before vacation Mrs Chase and I were climbing that wall and soon to be slimed evidently I think so those are important important pieces to share but it's really about the learning expectations and the learning outcomes um so again our theory of action if families can be involved in that kind of conversation Beyond just Logistics but are really about true decision makers and goal sharing um then we will have a true shared partnership uh for student growth and there's you know just count countless research that that's one of the cornerstones in seeing you know success for students is having that partnership between family and school um our strategic F Focus we kind of lifted uh and gave great credit to Dr Campbell for his um coffees um conversation coffees with a conversation or something along those lines I'm sorry I'm butchering at the moment but um we thought it would be an important piece given that there would be um a new principal to provide listening opportunities for the new principal to hear from families on targeted topics so setting up really actionable items really to be able to hear and have a dialogue back and for forth um we've heard from our families who've been able to either be part of it live or or get feedback from from these coffee conversations that they have been um welcomed and they feel like it's a true dialogue so we we thought it would be you know we shared our crew cast idea podcast idea with you so we feel we could take one back on the other side um and then last but not least strategic five Equity inclus inclusive behaviors we continue to think about English language learners but we enhance it a little bit and just think about this term language development again I mentioned we've had Consultants working with us throughout the year one particular called confianza has really I think broadened our understanding of of the need for certain professional development um to enhance the learning of not just English language learners but of all of our students um so if if we can enhance understanding and language development then we'll see a more responsive inclusive setting for El learners for sure but as an elementary school and some of our objectives in our in our curriculum that language will Infuse and enhance all our Learners it's sort of a udl kind of approach um our Focus for next year is to establish peer visits and observations across settings and models that we have in our own building and across buildings around language development and this came directly out of a visit that we just had about a month ago from this outside Consultant Group uh where we had some of our El teachers be able to get into other spaces and one of them was actually uh our fiz ed class and just the reaction and the modeling that was being done in there and the language domains that were being used in representation and the visuals and the demonstration pieces um one of the teachers was you know I've never been into a gym space before I haven't seen and vice versa so people really um I think we're excited about the opportunity to see each other in action and see see how each of us are using our different approaches to support our students and then lastly um some of the things that we have beyond the day um you know our ukulele Club is still going strong and we'll be starting up here uh in a moment uh we have taken a different look at Art Club and really called it more art techniques Workshop I can't say enough about um Mrs manassian uh she had a recent art show again uh and she and Mrs fona joining magical forces in the vpa to take us into the rainforest uh so we had an our show going then we had a fifth grade performance um with our steel drums that were on stage that was fantastic we're keeping robotics moving and Alive even though we don't have some of the same rally that's going on across the district U we have a program that we've been running literally sorry about that for the last few years Girls on the Run and that is for third through fifth graders and it's really about giving uh those students a voice and empowering not only their physical movement but their their leadership capacity um chorus will be happening uh in terms of their presentation of their performance I think next week um Queen is the theme this year um band and Orchestra obviously and then our PTA continues to just come up with creative and family inclusive events fall Festival Winter Wonderland our love of reading book fair that we had um seems like everything we've tried to schedule is had a weather uh situation coming around it but we've we've pushed through and have gotten there so we do have a quick little look back across 23 24 for our cre crew Journey so as we like to say in the business Seth you can cue that up whenever you're ready [Music] a [Music] look at like that that little video clip um is why we put all those things on the screen it's why we make those objectives it's sort of to get out that end where kids are excited they're engaged they're they're happy um and again I would be remiss if I didn't I usually start it this way but ending it this way none of those things happen without the dedication of Staff you know I go be Beyond teachers like we uh PA professionals custodial sta our entire almost 100 staff in our building uh they may say no when they walk away but are always at least to Christian I face saying yes when we're asking about things and a lot of these ideas and initiatives come from them and we're saying yes to their face and maybe we walk away and say no but um it's a collective effort at the end of the day um giving all those kids those opportunities that you get to see a quick snippet of is is what it's about hopefully these new objectives and new goal areas will continue to push through that uh experience for students at NES so we'd be happy to take any questions if you have them thank you anybody have any questions Dr senson actually another question I want to make a couple of comments we just heard really good in very very good stuff from both schools I mean you you guys less than a mile apart as the crow flies so you have programs that this whole part of town is clearly going to gain from I mean the cultural diversity and the language at cold ing uh and and presenting uh in three languages that's that's great for the majority as well as the minority because of course everybody becomes the majority that way and that's fantastic at your school there's certain things that I think are fantastic the uh the teaching of social competency and positive purposeful social interaction our children need that because they don't learn that anywhere anymore parents used to teach that in grandparents but everybody's at work and trying to pay their bills and that sort of gets all by the wayside so that's really important to teach them and your and at at Nathaniel Morton your your scores are pretty amazing I mean that difference in literacy from fall to winter 30% that's an I have him right here that's an that's amazing who would have guessed that I would have never had guessed those SC would jump like that the the uh consistently above the state both schools in in almost all areas uh that's what we want to see and that's what we are seeing and I say and I agree with you uh that it's the staff and the administration that that does that for us uh and certainly um the the growth potential uh the growth potential slide I really appreciate it to see to see those numbers so I appreciate both schools a great deal from what you presented and keep up the good work thank you thank you Mrs Jackson uh I just wanted to say the same thing that it's a huge loss for the district you know that you and Nathaniel Moren hold a special place in my heart uh Lucy was ready to move on I was not but uh echoing what Dr Sorenson said you both have done some amazing things for the district and it'll be hard act to follow appreciate that thank you also Lucy asked if the other Mr Spencer was applying oh so for those who don't follow along that my U one of my sons has been substituting every now and again so has had a presence it's been called Mr Spencer 2 Mr Spencer Jr little Spence little Spence um as he shared to me to share to students who have asked because I had a fifth grader asked me the same thing uh it's not a monarchy so he doesn't is just handed down to him so no he won't be applying Mr saory I just want to Echo them my kids went through Nathaniel Morton and I still remember the day that my friend from Lexington called me and said hey you're getting Mr Spencer and in in Plymouth and we are so happy so thank you and good luck with your graduate with your retirement yeah yeah appreciate it thank youo did I see your hand no thank you so much I really appreciate it and I can't say anything better than anybody else said but thank you both like for your service to our district we're really lucky to have you and we're going to miss you sure so thank you thank you guys thank you and I have a request to take um only a two minute but let's do a five minute just to give people enough time so we'll come back here at like 8:31 it wasn't me this time you e e e e e e e e e all right thank you everybody for um allowing us to take this a quick break we're going to now start up with our superintendent report Dr Campbell thank you Miss Badger well hope everyone all of our staff that were on vacation last week had a ref and enjoyable break uh a few things to report this evening just an update strategic planning is coming along well um our final committee meeting will actually be next Monday the 29th and we should be ready to D um share a draft of the plan with the school committee this may so really looking forward to that um coffee and conversations as Mr Spencer mentioned our last Forum uh was well attended on health education very appreciative of Dr Rogers and um Mrs Sorenson joining as well as some of our elementary Health Educators um we had great conversation um and um there one more coffee form that is scheduled for this year in May U it'll be one of two things depending on the um the availability might be a meet and greet with a new director of special education once that person is appointed um or an opportunity to U share the Strategic plan with with people in a in a form Cofe style form uh so that will be determined very soon um Hometown voices our podcast our monthly podcast we recorded our last podcast of the year um just before the break will go out in um that one will go out in May on multilingual multilanguage Learners um which was great we had um two two of our ESL teachers and a student from North High School join us and we had some great conversations about um the the lived experiences of our students um how we support them and um much of the things that you actually heard from some of our staff here today um so that was great so I look forward to that going out um administrative posting so we're making progress we actually had our special education finalist interviews today and we look forward to um hopefully by the next meeting if not by the the meeting there after having someone to bring forward to you for an official um um suggestion in in and approval of of this committee um our initial Nathaniel Morton principal interviews are happening this Wednesday and Cold Spring is the following Tuesday so week from from tomorrow for Cold Spring so we look forward to um a number of candidates for both of those um we look forward to um going through that process and finding our our new principles shortly uh town meeting as mentioned we had a very successful town meeting which actually carried into Monday the 8th um and as as you all know we had a level service budget that was approved for next year as well as the reserve account um to support um any settled contracts in the future so um we we know in terms of what our finances sit for fy2 right now and as was mentioned by U nurse Judy and our students uh the health and safety fair is this Saturday a ail 27th from 10: to 1: the fair will be taking place and we have the walk um the yellow tulip walk at 9:00 the hour before uh it's the third annual Fair we I think we have over 45 vendors Touch a Truck Early Childhood fair for our younger families as well as a food truck and the YMCA will be there again to support uh families so that they can you know do a meet and greet with the various vendors that are there without having to worry about children so look forward to that and hopefully the weather looks pretty good too oh it's at North High School again yep so uh we look forward to that and that's all I have this evening thank you anybody have any questions thank you all right now we're going to move on to our retirement announcements Mr tropy yes good evening I do have one retirement to share with you this evening uh Lee McGee Who special education teacher at pcis has served over 15 years with Plymouth Public Schools and she will be here through October so it's a little early uh um but uh we'll have her through October of 2024 perfect thank you Mr Pano yep on behalf of the school committee and the district like to thank Miss McGee for her 15 plus years of service of the district thank you and our next we have our Master planning did you have a meeting Mr Morgan no we haven't have me we're waiting for the selection of the consultant and then we'll start meeting again Perfect all right I don't know this isn't moving um all right we've got an advocacy update um that we kind of want we wanted to share with all of you I did hear that um some of the documents may not have come through for everybody uh but we can again I think these were on we just kind of put it as an info action item uh so if people chose to move on it tonight they could but otherwise it could be informational purposes we don't have yeah yeah they're in did read them and I was able to open them they attach electronic School Board these are the so we have advocacy we have the regional yeah Regional equable funding yeah I just know Dr senson said he had trouble accessing one of them so I didn't know if that was more people had trouble accessing the documents um but so oh I just I don't know what just happened to my meeting I'm now with the Pledge of Allegiance sorry um I went the wrong direction uh but the first thing we wanted we kind of just want to bring some of the resolutions we brought before you before uh and you've kind of had some time to kind of think about it hopefully and then some of them are new but I'm turn it over to Mrs Jackson I think that's I think we're on resolutions yep so uh right now we have a uh Equitable funding for non Regional School Districts for high Transportation costs so this is something that we've all talked about before and that Dr Campbell has talked about in his presentations for the budget and it's mostly just um something going to the state to try and have them have them have some reform around um the high cost of Transportation that's being charged right now um as he said before and you guys all know but I'll just say it for the general public that sometimes um we are we are always legally obligated to transport um homeless and Foster Care students and also students who um with special needs who go to different programs that are not covered under the school and some of those Transportation costs can go up to like $800 a day and because we're legally obligated to transport them it becomes a very costly part of our budget um and this is just uh an this is just a mandate that we want to send out to the mass Association of school committees to try and Implement some reform around that process so that there's maybe some initiative with the state to try and get that spending under control yeah so this one is the one that's right in front of you right now is the one about non-regional school districts we are working on the piece that um Mrs Jackson talked about but we've got an idea with Dr blazel that we talked about um you're fine um that we are going to see if we can get a couple other districts kind of maybe on board if they're interested and then we'll bring that to you but what we want to do is put this forth as a resolution for um the state conference in November and we have to have a vote by June uh Dr senson yeah I wasn't able to access this yesterday and even today but I can read it now and I can Gras but make a suggestion and and maybe there's a reason why you didn't include it um you make a statement here um a special fund shall be established to provide financial assistance to non Regional School Districts with higher Transportation costs and you end the sentence there I'm thinking it would be higher transport costs than some Regional School districts because everybody's got high Transportation costs we're trying to make the point here that our transportations cost are greater than Regional I think we got yeah no that's a great idea I know that at one point we had talked about whether it was like 125% of the average I think was one of the numbers we had thrown around right so I think at to your point Dr seron the the idea behind this is to look at reaching a threshold right so when you exceed that threshold so perhaps having something in there higher Transportation costs than yes than the state average is what we were looking for and and and as you can see on the second page some of the suggestions on what that higher than number would be is to try to quantify it similarly to when we look at extraordinary Lea for special education so reaching 125% say for example of State average in expenditures so if say the state average is $780 per student when you look at what spent for those districts that exceed that average by 125% there would be a reimbursement opportunity perhaps to submit much like we do for special education for that difference and this accounts for a larger sampling of communities across the common and I I appreciate that explanation I think it's appropriate uh I would be concerned still concerned though because if we're using State average 50% of the districts have costs greater than the average well that's why when we when when I came up with this figure and presented to um St rep and the Department of Education we looked at the per pupil spending um in FY 23 and it was approximately uh 700 and some odd dollar $780 per student and we were about 12290 so when you look at the number of districts that exceeded uh the per per pupil spending by 125% it was actually 32 communities across the entire Commonwealth so it was just about 10% of all communities and they range from very rural to large cities so um what worri me is when the pie gets so big they shut us it gets shut down sure and looking at this the the other attempts that we've had and I know well before I uh took on the superintendency we were the only ones because we were looking at purely by geography yeah and we were we're the largest community by far you know on the East Coast um so trying to find a way that would bring other you know how do we get other communities to buy into this and other you know um state representatives and other you know legislators from across the Commonwealth so so in looking at this we were able to come up with the figure that while it's would require some funding that number could always be adjusted kind of considering this like a grant the state would say we would appropriate x amount of dollars for this extraordinary relief everyone can apply to it if they're eligible based on these conditions so it's that number wouldn't necessarily you know that again the state could say we can afford this much towards extraordinary relief and that that so that could vary depending on how much revenue is available I guess at the state but the the the thing that I liked about this approach is that it opens the doors to again a larger a larger population was 32 other communities if I'm not mistaken so that brings in more people that hopefully will support some Rel pris my concerned the more you bring in the more expensive the reform right unless there's a cap on the on the on the grant okay yeah but we can make some changes like that change if you want it I'm happy to put it but you're okay with that okay just want to make sure okay M Miss does anyone going to the day on the hill for masc it's May 6 I can't go this year but that's one of their the regional one is on their agenda yeah so we were I reached out to both of our legislators and I was told they're not going to be there because it's not actual people cuz last year they like I think Betty came and lunch with us no they did not say whether or not they would be there so I figured it wasn't really not that it's not worth our time but if we can no but I I was thinking if you're going to bring it forth as a resolution for the general population this is a would be a good opportunity to start talking it up yeah right if anybody's I don't know if anybody's going or registered but I can't I'm leaving I I'm going away that week so I can't I'm not able to go anybody else have any thoughts about this because I know they've been talking about it for a very long time regionally regionally yes a long time regionally we need to start changing that conversation thank you um anything else does the committee have a how they'd like to move on we can bring put this on the agenda for the 6th as well if that if we however you want to move forward I'm sorry I'm just wondering how you all want to move forward whether we want to put this on the agenda for the 6th or um you want a motion or if you want a motion to approve and put it forth on Ms yeah I can make a motion to approve it with any did you want to add some language to it any additional language no I think Dr Campbell of answered my my concern all right so I would I would move that we approve the resol resolution proposal for Equitable Equitable funding for non Regional School District that's spelled wrong too by the way on here Regional spelled wrong in the title of the document good call fun okay so we have a motion do we have a second a second okay we have a motion in a second any questions on the motion um seeing are we able to vote Yes okay need that like music yes well this is my job I'm supposed to yeah you were supposed to create commentary for us that's right we discussed that at town meeting now always keep it going yeah all right that passes unanimously so we will figure out the process that we need to do to submit it and get it to msba I mean that's wrong m m wrong acronym too many of them okay and then the next piece we have is something we brought to you months ago um that our our existing resolutions that committees have put forth and they're asking um committees to take on these resolutions to keep them going uh at this point I know Mrs Jackson has been in like connection with um some people trying to figure out if others have taken these on but we uh figured as a board we would at least take them on and maybe other people would join us um but Mrs Jackson so um in order to to say that we support the resolutions we need to vote and then we just need to have either the chair or the secretary submit a letter to masc to say that we are supporting the resolutions um the um the resolutions that we had in here are all ones that we've discussed before so um I don't know if there are any additional questions about them um these ones were the ones that we thought were fairly straightforward and well written and wouldn't be a heavy lift as far as like adding additional language or having to research it further but things that were important in the district the did we didn't we vote on these when they came up because usually we vote to approve them we have to vote to continue them to continue them even though these are these are new that mean expiring oh okay cuz some of them were voted on this year yeah they said they these four are in that kind of group that are going to expire this year okay um after we had a conversation and it was confirmed but okay no that's fine then we we voted on these this year that's why I was just confused some these are the ones according to them that expire I think what they're trying to do is was it 18 months that they're trying to I can't remember what what um oh my gosh his name has just left me Jason Jason thank you Jason was telling us in the fall was that the fall CU I remember there was discussion summer Institute resoltion they had a lot of discussion on it this year so I just curious yeah I don't know they said I don't even think it that might I don't know if that that must have passed they said that these were all on their docket but we're expiring so whether or not we want to take them all up one of them none of them bless you um is up to the committee so just figured we bring it back to the group as a whole and we just have to decide by before June 1st the letter has just submitted bless you bless you us um we can either um it's an info action item so we can either take more time to look through and see if there's language we would change or if somebody wants to vote or to say something different um do Dr th we've discussed all of these yes so I think we're we should be in a position yeah that was that's what we figured yeah we're just reaffirming our so yeah so we just need a motion to airm Perfect all right so we have a motion it's perfect a second so we should be able to vote so we will put these we will get that letter together between the two of us and figure that out that was fast perfect unanimous thank you everybody um and then our next piece I can get back to where I am committee descriptions so these uh this one we figured it should be info action because this is when we're just bringing to you all but we have had some like a little discussion on some of them but we were talking you know we bless you we're you know new membership comes forth It's like must be something over there new membership come forth and nobody you know you don't necessarily know what a committee is and what what it does and how frequently it meets and how many people are needed and so we didn't even know if this actually needs to be approved or if we should just put it in front of of the committee for like agreement uh so we just kind of wanted to put this out there for kind of some conversation Miss Avery um I think I sent you an email on this because I know like um we probably should start with going through and making sure that all these things are right because distinguished visitor committee meets monthly and it says as needed so somebody might sign up for that committee and think that it's not and that's why we're having this conversation yeah but I I think I sent you email on couple of there were a couple of issues yeah did you send it today no a month ago weird sorry no that's all right it was um it was I think when we were talking about we might have been talking about the diversity committee because I was we weren't getting notifications of it got DTC monthly I mean I I didn't that's just a quick glance I didn't go through all the rest of them but just to make sure that that part of it right and we put the red line through um the consolidation committee because technically I mean we've had it on there um if people want to call it up we could be like an ad hoc committee I don't know if it's something that we need to have standing so it's all up to you all how you kind of want to move forward but we just wanted to get this out there for our any potential new members that might come our way anybody have any questions or thoughts and I can for some reason I'm unable to read the descript if you click on it you're supposed to get the uh the text correctly yeah I had it wrapped but in this doc if you double click on the click on the line if you double click in the Box they may open it up all right I'll try it again I can what we can do is um I can email it out to everybody and that way you have it and we can talk more about it on the sixth I get this is a different mine is on the Chromebook it is opening up if you drag it it opens up yeah I don't mine's not doing it on this Chromebook either so I don't know yeah um but yeah we can I'll can reformat it and send it out did you get so you I'll get it but if anybody has any like things you want changed or anything we can um we can make those changes but yeah that's our not here anybody else have anything okay I'll refil at it and send it out as soon as possible maybe maybe tonight I can't promise um all right our next piece our next item committee reports am I correct this yes Committee Member reports anybody have anything to report Miss hunt I miss Davy geez I'm going back and forth today okay um I know I think I mentioned about our uh virtual exchange the last time I talked with shig Gama so um I've been going back and forth with them the last week or so um we do have we have dates um of them coming we still don't know who's coming which is they're still trying to work it out on their end but what they want to do is look at other um other structures of a of a virtual exchange so what they are proposing is perhaps we look for people in Plymouth that are learning Japanese or speak Japanese that want to have a conversation with them in Japan in Japanese um we're trying to figure out how to recruit those people um because they would have to be pretty versed um in in Japanese so other than social media maybe enlisting the school's help um nothing's set in stone yet but that's what they're because they they kind of went down the list as you know a soccer team went they've been just um administrators that have gone but the police department went and you know it's mostly students but now they want to try to throw in some other things perhaps virtually so just kind of keep I'm saying it for the one or two people that might be listening at home if anybody knows anybody that would be interested in that um we're going to start throwing that out there that's really cool yeah and I think that they're going to start to look at because we you know we now we got zoom and we can do it more often um doing that so that's there their their next thing cool that's all I have anybody else have anything I've been I've been a little busy once I know a little bit um I just want to thank everybody for taking time out of their schedules to go to the caucuses I think we only missed one or two so I think that's a huge statement to staff and school committee members I know it's a big chunk of time out of your life but I really appreciated everybody going to those going to town meeting I think it really um I think it was really good thing for us I think we were able to answer a lot of good questions and um get those questions out of the way for people before um town meeting um and then I also again you know uh had the opportunity at Miss Jackson we went to um the pth Education Foundation gala with Dr Campbell and Dr Rogers and um it was great and I think it you know as always it was nice to see the it's nice to support some a group that supports the P public schools so much um which was it was really nice um and then the tomorrow is a I'm going to the Charter Review Committee as a representative from the school committee really they just want to know if we I guess want any changes made to our Charter uh I know we're ver we are mentioned in like four sentences I think it's like there is a school committee they exist you know if in you know in in the basic terms um and so that I think is what they want to discuss so I don't know if anybody had any thoughts on that I'm happy to you know talk through that um and then on the thank you for to Mrs Haywood for doing our the 30th interview and for everybody else on this table who has done an interview I know it takes a whole day and really appreciate that um and then just another fun reminder that I'm hoping I will get all of your evaluations by the end but before you go to bed tonight um but I plan to hopefully work on them uh later this week so please let me know if you have any questions or need a little bit more time I might be able to give it to you um but yeah that's all I have on the charter would be the statutes that this massachusett statutes outline responsibilities of school committee yeah maybe they ought to just include that Lang yeah that's a good idea I have something about yes Miss um I think too it's really important that you know when you said it's just we're very barely mentioned in it I think it's important to get mentioned in it because if something were to happen like we went to a mayor system and the mayor could be the chair of the school committee so you know I think we need to try to figure out what what kind of advice or what suggestions we give them about that because it could affect it could affect us pretty heavily yeah yep suggestion those are really good suggestions anybody else I think that was my concern since day one yeah you just don't know I mean anybody else have anything anything to report okay see none we will move on and we'll go to the Plymouth building committee report Mr Morgan yes um uh update on the uh West Plymouth fire station they're on punch list items they'll be finishing up theend of May um includes some landscaping and the new lifts for the um for the vehicle maintenance were supposed to be installed I assume they were done uh station five progressing they're monitoring the vibration make sure there's no issues with the Butters and station 4 has kind of been put on hold for now um School roofs is probably more of an doctor place so probably a better update um there was supposed to be a walkth through um we went over the warranties for West indion Brook in um Federal furnace going to be 3 years um uh do they do the walkth through um I'm not sure if the walkthrough took place I haven't Ted touched on that um and there's going to be some plans for cleanup and um trying to apply for some more um um MSB um funds to help with that so um but they're they're reaching they're reaching the end and that's all I have thank you anybody have any questions for Mr Morgan just a question Dr funds for cleanup did you say yeah there's some some cleanup above the tiles from they're working on the um HVAC system know what you're talking about y okay um Personnel reports Mr Trophy uh yes just uh two to share with you one parental leave and one medical leave was approved thank you and then does anybody have any unfinished or new business they would like to add or talk about later okay perfect and now we have our approval of the consent agenda anybody have anything they need remove from the consent agenda if not I can take a motion on the consent agenda I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda second perfect we have a motion in a second anybody questions on the motion seeing none we should be able to vote that passes unanimously thank you everybody we don't have any items pulled and it looks like we are finished at 9:00 on the dot um just wishing everybody a happy Earth Day and thank you all for coming and we'll see you next time bir e