##VIDEO ID:vnLazZblTrI## District school committee meeting for October 1st 2024 um those attending tonight's meeting should be aware that the meeting is being audio and video recorded by apaac and asrsd any audience members who wish to record any part of the meeting must inform the chairperson who will announce the recording this is to comply with the mass wiretap statute the listing of matters are those reasonably anticipated by the chair which may be discussed at the meeting not all items listed May in fact be discussed and other items not listed may also be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by law per air Shirley Regional school committee policy public comment is not a discussion debate or dialogue between citizens and the school committee it is a Citizens opportunity to express any an opinion on issues of school committee business citizens will have 3 minutes to express their views any staff members addressing the committee are reminded of their obligations under state and federal student record laws with respect to maintaining the confidentiality of student record information and refraining from disclosing any personal identifying information regarding students with all that said let's uh do the P Lees IED to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all wonderful and Michelle could you lead us in a roll call Mr res here I'm here Mrs Berard here Mr quiny here Mrs here Mr R here M here all right public Comm picture we have any we'll start with the phone and then we can move in person if we have any all right any public comment in the room all right with that we've got our um air Shirley Regional High School student recognition Mr Spencer Christie call thank you so I'm thrilled to have with us tonight Hayden F uh I'd like to just mention what the award summary is um so this is the Massachusetts Association of school superintendent award for academic Excellence uh and it's awarded to high school students who've distinguished themselves in the pursuit of Excellence during their High School career this year we are thrilled to be able to award this to Hayden Fallon uh Hayden's a current senior at air Shirley Regional High School he's not only a standout student in the classroom where he currently ranks number one in his class uh but also on the soccer field in the swimming pool and out on the track uh Hayden also mentors some of our younger students as a AER Mentor uh last year he won the St Michaels book award which recognizes a students academic success and exemplary community service Hayden recently referred to himself as a large golden retriever in an English essay uh which from an outside perspective may seem accurate Hayden is always smiling thank you Hayden right on Q uh and maybe the friendliest student we've had in my seven years at air Shirley and as a triplet in his family this may be his standout trait Hayden is loyal and dependable however one cannot Define Hayden by his friendlyness alone in the classroom Hayden is driven and inquisitive he strives not just for the best grades he can achieve but more for the knowledge he can gain his passion for the acquisition of knowledge is unchallenged and he is sure to make Panther Nation proud when he leaves us at the end of the year congratulations thank you [Music] [Applause] guys have to stay there get go you earned it moms go wherever they please thank you you thank you thank you all [Applause] [Music] right Hayden hold on you don't you don't get off that questions any questions from the no it is speech speech that's you can do it without putting you on the spot let's maybe if there's questions or comments from members of the I actually just wanted to say um I've known you for some time you've you've played sports with my kids and the younger kids and I see you around town and and it was mentioned how friendly and outgoing you are with the kids you are with adults too you're one of the kids that always says hi and has a great wave for me and all the adults but I've really seen you Mentor truly the kids and thank you you said a great example it's just a pleasure to have you in the school thank you any other comments all right well thank you again oh joy sorry down here it's all right shrinking um congratulations it's wonderful to see your whole family here that's fantastic and I think that speaks well for you and your family so welcome and where you going to school uh do you know I don't know yet I'm still looking have fun thank you all right right congratulations yes congratulations again and thank you everyone for coming out and supporting we really appreciate you being here all right that's all we've got now you all right moving from one exemplary high school student to two more we have our student Representatives Miss um Nia Flor Floren qua Floren SW Floren SWAT so close I'll get it next time I promise and Mr Colin Holbrook right oh I'm going toak hi guys long time to see I know um so the first thing I have on my list many list of things to talk about is um I started the college application process um I'm applying to about seven or six schools um two of those being not two sorry like five of them being for early action so November 1st deadline and then two of those being regular decision um I'm intending to major in architecture or um recently I've had a kind of aspiration to maybe also change and major in political science and consider a field in maybe like law or something like that so I'm still trying to decide um which I'm going to major in so um the college application process has been like kind of stressful but you know my mindset has been just like one day at a time and like it's all going to be fine and like one of my things has been like my senior year will be so much more fun once all the application process is over so I'm just trying to get through all of that stuff and so yeah and I'm working on like writing my college essay and all that stuff and like my letters of recommendation and I've been working on that since like my junior year so like I kind of set myself up for my college application process to be really simple going into my senior year um another thing so far into my senior year that I've been working on is doing the Patel top internship um I started started like yesterday it's Tuesday yeah yesterday um I'm working in the library at pageold toop I have the internship two blocks um out of like our 7even block schedule or whatever it is and I'm working in the library with ranges from Like Preschool to fifth graders and like I chose a library because like I wanted to be able to work with all the kids and not just work in like one cl classroom and I also chose a library cuz like when I went to page htop the library was such like a safe space for me going there so I wanted to be able to work with kids at a place that I felt so much com so such comfortable in and make the library such a comfortable place for them and then another thing happening in my senior year is we just finished um elections and I was elected um executive board president and so now being executive board president really working with like the other student councils to do stuff around the school and more for the entire student body and not just like my class alone so like pep Rally's um spirit week and stuff like that which we have we're currently having spirit week right now today was Country Club versus country we had a lot of country today like there was a lot of cowboy boots clocking around the halls it was pretty cool I almost wore my cowboy boots today but um my feet were hurting when I put them on and like that's not going to happen and we had a lot of Country Club as well some cute outfits I have to say um and then tomorrow's Adam Sandler which I definitely will be participating in I get to wear my sweatpants and my sweatshirt and just be comfy and then we have our pep rally on Friday which I think that day is class color and then we have our pep rally and you know I'm hoping for the senior class to pull through and when the pep rally might be a little bit embarrassing if we let the other classes beat us Colin the juniors are not beating us you're really not the seniors we're going to pull through you know we might convince whoever's judging the games to just sway it our way cuz you have to let the graduating class win like it's just no it is I think it's Tradition at this point no no I think it should no I guarantee you we dominated all four years freshman May was just last year class just they won all the time and the class before that always won but you know my class I'm hoping we win we don't have that much Spirit sometimes but I'm hoping you know senior year pull through I've been telling them guys we have to have more Spirit like the younger grade embarrassing us so yeah hopefully we pull through and win the pep you know I'll I'll update you guys next time if we want probably not but hopefully and then the homecoming dances on Saturday which I'm pretty excited about I'm going are you going home I'm going yep homecoming that's exciting you know I think it's like 10:00 not staying the entire time um you know that's a little late for me nowadays you know over the hill yeah so you know I think I I was saying to Mr Christy I'm only going to go till like 8:30 and then you know after that I think me and my friends are like getting food and then I think going to Billards playing pool and you know calling it a night after that you know I went to all the homecomings like the years before all the way till 10: p.m. and I was like so tired after that so I was like my senior year I'll be chill yeah uh speaking of homecoming I'm I'm actually I'm on student council and since it's our junior year I've been like working with them to like make homecoming happen and that's been like it's been pretty fun cuz we got to like choose the theme like kind of choose like what the layout's going to be and everything so that's been pretty fun um and I'm actually I'm just starting to like look at colleges like I didn't even know some of the schools you were going to go to existed so I'll have to look at them it's it's been really fun I've gone on like a couple tours just to the like UMass ones in the area but I haven't like really looked at any out of state ones yet so I'm kind I'm excited to do that um I've also started taking AP courses this year which it's definitely proving the when people say uh junior years your hardest year I believe them now because AP classes are just a different level uh I'm taking AP Lang and AP Physics and I'm also take I'm taking a coding class this year which I found pretty fun I've never done coding before um I'm also soccer is also going on right now along with robotics and the soccer season's going well uh we've been winning a good amount of games not all but and I really like my team we have a good coach so yeah it's been a lot of fun all right I know there's going to be questions Joyce did I see your hand no well um where's the homecoming dance so we can crash it uh it's actually right there right oh good okay easy yeah obviously yeah um what colleges are you applying to or did you apply to you're seven um so I haven't I haven't sent any of my applications in yet will you apply um I'm applying to Howard in Washington DC Hampton in Virginia North Carolina ant um Wentworth Institute of Technology UMass Amherst and Cornell in Columbia yes that's a list um where or how did you decide on architecture I know polysi is also an option but where did architecture come from I think because so one of my favorite games growing up was The Sims uhhuh and like The Sims and like Minecraft and stuff like that so like growing up I've always had like a love for like designing like buildings and stuff like that and I also had like a big love for Legos as a kid so it's been always something that I've like loved so much and like the idea of like be able being able to like create those buildings in real life and design those and see those actually like in real life and be like I designed that is something that I would just like love to see happen in life and have you taken um any have you been I should have the course catalog a little better internalized have you been able to take any drafting or courses like that here or is it still a little bit theoretical in terms of the like what architecture is um it's it's a little bit so theoretical like I think I when I was like up like trying to choose classes like I think I put in there that I wanted to get um what is it called computer aided design I think we have CAD but I wasn't able to get it in my like courses this year and it was something I did want to do and then I also had put in there for um what's that one class there was an engineering class where you like get to make like you do that like project with like the bridge and stuff like that and un the wood and stuff like that and I tried to get that but it didn't fit into my schedule which but it's okay but like it's still something architecture is also still something like theoretical like to yeah okay yeah no that's great and I will say as someone who has a like polyi like as a double major it's easy to add that as a double major you can fill those classes in pretty quickly so keep that you don't have to choose one or the other certainly not right away okay um other question I feel like I could talk to you for like an hour comment I mean um it was an awesome recap I mean we'd love to hear kind of uh your part of I think while you're here is to give us a window of what the student life is like and I mean that was great from both um tons of sounds like just tons of activity this week um I love it it sounds like it's fun it's bringing out school spirit and competitiveness and so um so it's fantastic and thanks to the administration to make sure that they're supporting all this because I I love to see just school is hard right now and especially I have a a daughter who's a junior and she's studying really hard so I I love to hear that there's a lot of fun getting mixed in so sounds like a great week and definitely if you can give us the update when you're here uh next time who wins senior on top win it no yeah we're going to win we got it Colin I have two questions one I think last time we heard from you you were going to work the soccer camps this summer how did that go that was that was good uh it was a lot of fun playing with the little kids cuz some of them just really like they don't really know how to play soccer they never touch a soccer ball before they met you right they kind of they kind of run around and you're just like good job so yeah I just like I like working with kids sometimes they're fun it's great and in terms of your college application process so you're like I didn't even know these schools existed yeah um where does a junior in high school in the year 2024 start in terms of like exploring colleges right like when I was a kid you went like there was one website you could go to like we had the internet but like you had one site you could go to but like what do you do now um I just start I like look stuff up like look stuff up on Google pretty much see and then like I'll just like look up like list of colleges and I'll like look and I'll click the link it'll show you like their campus and so what are some of the things you said like you go to Google are you like best party schools New England like what are you typing in uh no I'm like into engineering so I've been like searching up like in New England and Massachusetts cuz I kind of want to stay in state I don't know if I want to go very far so I've been looking up like engineering ones and I T you little you m yeah amazing all right well oh Jim um you signed up for a lot of early action was do you have a a a score sheet when you uh when you get your notifications from the universities that you know you could decide exactly what's going to happen but you know some of a lot of the schools will have political science programs and some of them may or may not have stronger architectural programs how will I mean cost is certainly a big part of it what what they're going to give you at any of the schools but um what do you think will be the strongest thing that will that will make a school get in your good graces and be able to win your heart and uh give them a credit well so I already have my heart set on one school you do yeah um Howard is like my school like I'm set on that school so much so like obiously I'm giving my other schools like a chance I'm AC like I'm already into Howard but like I'm obviously giving those other schools a chance but like I think it's definitely like obviously like ones like financial aid and stuff like that and like also like looking at obviously like the program like what it has an offering but also like the other stuff that the school offers like clubs and and stuff like that and also like one thing that's really important to me is like dorming and stuff like that I want you're like dorms or like because I don't want this is so bad I don't want like an ugly dorm like one of my schools like I literally said I was like who was the architecture architect on like standby when they designed this dorm because it was really ugly and I was like I can't have an ugly dorm because like mine's going to be cute and aesthetic so I was like that's one major factor and also like food like at the school it's good food so like I haven't toured all my schools but like I told my mom that I like need to go Tour all my schools so I need to try their dining holes cuz that's really something important to me so I was like that's why like I still hav the inventor D am get and they're number one and I'm like I need to go and try their food I'm a major foodie so like food I think that's like the lead thing like food might be like my deciding factor on these schools which is kind of bad do not go anywhere near Auburn or Vermont food is on your list stay away from both of those places um okay so when you went did you go to North Carolina a& I haven't gone yet okay report back on that one okay the next thing is is you need to once you've eaten at those places check your stomach the next thing I'm going to say there's a lot of preservatives true so you need to pay attention that's where you get your Freshman 15 just letting you know um also um one of the things that I was going to say is Colin as you're looking um for colleges some of the other things that you can look at one MIT currently has internships now while you're in high school so you can look at them linkoln ABS that'll be very helpful cuz you could kind of get your feet wet a little bit and then of course they have connections with schools UMass L is awesome a lot of um Engineers that work at UH miter and at Lincoln Labs go back for their secondary degrees and certifications at um W um and also uh looking at the structure of the schools what is the curriculum kind of look like and it used to be rate my professor.com but it might be something else there's there's a popular College websites look into those look into the majors that you want to be in and you'll start to see the profiles on the different professors that you guys could potentially have um so that you can kind of create a good balance a balance between if you know you're a strong writer you might want to load up one semester with writing versus one where you're going to have more testing and then considering the time of year if you know you do better sitting inside then maybe you want to do more writing when it's a heavy winter season so thinking about those Concepts now knowing your skill sets now is going to help you um because more than half the battle often times is once you're in that environment you kind of forget all the normal things because you no longer have that structure there so figuring out what your Norms are now is going to help you succeed when you get there um but I'm I'm really glad to hear about both Rihanna did wear her cowgir boots and she was very upset you did not have them on cuz you know her feet hurt all day um but that's okay and Colin she said she was going to make sure that she screamed as loud as she could because she purposefully wanted to beat the senior class so you got your hands full you know I'm going to text but thank you guys so much um thank you the last thing I'll just offer um when you're thinking about colleges it has been a long time since folks in my network have attended those schools but if you want to talk to alumni for Columbia Cornell or Howard I'm happy to connect you with folks have Dr or um principal Christie pass my email along I'm happy to make connections if you want to like do a virtual coffee chat more than happy and you can also ignore and say like no I don't want to talk to someone who went to those schools 20 years ago those does were all cinder blocks and they're eating tater tots like that's not the experience that there is today so the invitation is there if you want it feel free to pass I won't be offended I'll definitely reach okay great thank you you thank you thank you hold on all right we are moving along Mr chair yeah we if we may go out of order um AB we have Mr Kendall here uh to talk about two things one is the approval of the wrestling call with North M sex but we also have something un anticip uh not reasonably anticipated um within 48 hours and that is the school committee's uh approval or not of the annual cross country camping trip in Twilight Invitational at cap cloud grounds wonderful okay so that is 7A great 7A and one that is not actually on the agenda all right welcome how's everybody doing before I get started with the thing about North sex and the in the co-op I just wanted to talk about the beginning of fall Sports which has been outstanding uh but in particular uh our e sports program with Chris is involved with and Amy Doyle uh has gotten off to a great start for 25 is that great uh yeah and today three out of five CH players won their first matches and the fornite team won their first High School match yesterday so it's been a great start every wi was a shut out we've had so far great maybe hous in this room eventually still working on getting that up with all the equipment that's coming in uh but thanks to ASF for uh completely basically completely funding that program so it's got off to a great start um and the volleyball match is going well there it's one set to one I saw many of you up there checking it out before so uh today what we're here to do is uh we had a bunch of kids come to us uh come to me specifically and and ask about the possibility of joining up another school for wrestling it's going somewhere between four and six kids none of whom already participate in Winter sport uh North Middle sex is in a position where they are in need of additional kids wrestling as a sport pretty much need about 20 to 30 kids that really have any type of success because so many of them are in the same we classes um so they I approach Ryan dear the athletic director of assistant principal of North Middle sex and they are going to present to the league proposal to allow us to join them uh obviously we would like your approval for that as well before we proceed much further with it uh the other one I just found out today and it may not become official for another month but I want to give you guys a heads up that gr dunable has invited us to join their gymnastics program which would affect probably one or two kids at most here um and again kids that don't already participate went to sports would not impact anybody else that might be a few weeks away but that's probably coming down the plank as well questions anything that gives kids an opportunity because especially now where um kids early on get into a track for a sport you know you used to have three sport athletes and all that sort of thing and you could s of predict what was going to happen but now a lot of kids you track into one sport and play to state with that all the way through and and the job you've done the opportunity that we've had to join other districts allows them to stay with their friends in school and pursue their athletic Endeavors as well so anytime you have the opportunity to do this I'm definitely in favor of it I'm assuming there's transport what we going to say oh no I was just we do need a vote for that but but I don't want to interrupt the questions so my one question was going to be and I was going to I was looking towards bill but um the I'm assuming we need a bus transportation or with most co-ops yeah we do with II and swimming uh students are responsible for their own transportations parents or students many of them are seniors yeah uh would either carpool when we across with broad dpool we had a nice pairing car pool in the days in the days the mini bus was available I would drive them over yeah okay um so that would probably continue with this as well the nice thing is North Middle sex is about 12 minutes away so it's not not a bad R okay great so if I did have to use a mini bus it would be a possibility certainly it's available a little bit more in the winter than in the fall or the spring Jo uh I would make a motion to approve the wrestling co-op with North Middle sex Regional High School as presented by uh Mr Kindle tonight I second great any further questions or comments all right all those in favor I I any abstaining okay great all right the second item is the uh overnight field trip uh for the Twilight uh Invitational cross country event which they've been it's been they've been going through this as long as I've been here and I know before that uh at sham Crow State Forest and sandwich uh would be approximately 14 students with a minimum of three chaperons there's going to be many parents that go as well but both coaches would be attending along with uh Mrs Kendall would be the female chaperon I'm also planning on going down at least for the race I might stay tonight we'll see we'll see we'll see what the temperature is whether I C or not um but they do that that's coming up on um October 12th um so they'll be using the mini bus so the the the cost is minimal basically it's $25 to pay for the campground I that's really the cost and then District would pick up the gas fee of $35 or whatever it might be okay great any questions on that all right I make make a motion that we approve the request for the field trip out of state for us is it out of state not out of overnight excuse me uh because it's still in state Sandwich Mass is kind of still part of the state I think um on um o October 12th for the um annual cross country camping trip and Twilight Invitational at Cape Cod Fairgrounds second all right all those in favor I I all right thank you back for another one we're going in that Tucket and basketball in January or February so we're trying to figure out if we can pull that one off in a day but I don't think it's going to happen Mr K sorry Mr chairman maybe he would like maybe he could comment on the donation for the boys basketball team from the Basketball Academy yes we're going to have that coming up to approve but it' be nice to hear Mr so R Patrick Bo basketball coach runs the elevation basketball Camp he does it at multiple schools throughout the area uh but because he's when he does it here uh he donates all the proceeds back to the programs and this year the girls team also helped out so uh they basically split it but based on how many kids participated both as volunteers but also as registrations uh so some of that money will help pay for funding n Tucka trip because that was part of the deal I made with with Coach kill Patrick was if you want to go to n Tucket we're going to have to help fund it because it's not going to be a cheap trip right certainly um so that's where that they run the camp up here every summer Rick's been running it every year this year the girls help for the first time and it's a nice thing that he does he puts a lot of time in to that camp and it's helped by warm-ups and things things that we don't need but the kids always like to have so it's been nice so the kids haven't had to put any money out of their pocket for shooting jerseys or sweatshirts or warmups or anything like that since he's been here so it's been a nice addition to our program it's always is appreciated and it's a great I mean it's also great for the participants as someone who has a third grader who was in it it was great one more thing as the fall Sports been doing outstanding uh I mean right now four of our five teams are ranked in the top 16 in the State uh only football's just outside of 21 so our volleyball team's on the verge of qualifying for the state tournament for the first time in five years and boys and girls soccer are both pretty high up in the ratings and doing a great job in our numbers and boys and girls soccer cross country and volleyball are all up we end up not even using the call up with Littleton that you guys approved cuz we didn't need it um we had 24 girls trial for volleyball probably could add more if we wanted to bring our mle scorers in um but it's been a it's been a great fall so far and the weather's cooperated now we just get the mosquitoes to cooperate kind an early Frost would be say one real cold night and you'll be good yeah that's all we need thank you very much all right thank you thank you than for stopping in appreciate it all right what we're going to do is we're going to move back to item six on the agenda the consent agenda we have minutes for release as well as approving the donation from elevation Basketball Academy and uh four warrants and I would entertain a motion to approve those uh make a motion that we approve tonight's consent agenda as listed in the agenda I'll second all right all those in favor of approving the cons consent agenda as listed I I all right wonderful all right moving down towards new business we have completed 7A so moving towards um the mcast accountability presentation sure we just get it up here wonderful it's coming yeah good enough it's good enough and I think folks and it's on the drive you have the hand up perfect we'll warm up yeah we'll get there eventually um so annually we've done this presentation to highlight um mcast performance uh over the you know over the previous year over the 2024 or 2023 2024 school year um so over time we have taken this presentation and kind of condensed it a little bit to make it a little bit easier for folks here and the viewing audience that Me by tuning in to here there's obviously more information that's behind all of this but we try to provide a 10,000 ft view because you're going to beist listening to the principles over the next two series of meetings uh talk about their school Improvement plans which are derived in some part based on the information that's provided in this state assessment um so just to refresh people um we've started with a slide like this in the past is kind of the what was new um in 2024 and realistically there was nothing new um it was essentially the same assessment as was administered in 2023 it was the Next Generation test which is means that it's all computer-based testing for all of our kids grades 3 through 10 um there are accountability reports that are a little bit more detailed this year than they had been in years past uh because last year was missing the lowest performing students as part of that uh accountability process for the students in the high school but that has since been remedied and this was largely as a result of Co the calculation formula for accountability is determined by waiting the performance from the previous years so the ratings that we received this year are determined based on 40% of the waiting is from 2023 is performance and 60% of the rating is from um 2024's performance and that information contains all of the information in the accountability reports including performance towards indicator targets which I'll get into a little bit more and progress ratings on those um one thing that is different is the notion of an educational proficiency plan if you recall during Co there was an order from the State Board of Education to raise the minimum score for students which didn't make a lot of sense at the time um to raise the minimum score that students would have to earn on the 10th grade mcast in order to be considered to have met the competency determination for graduation so this is the first year that that has gone into place uh and the scores have gone from the minimum score that students had to earn previously was a 455 scaled score in ela now it's 470 for math it was a 469 now it's 470 so that's consistent so students who earn a 470 up to a 486 those students would qualify for an educational proficiency plan which basically means that the school has to monitor their progress and make sure that they meet the standards of 10th grade during their span of time that they're here in high school for the next two years these are 10th grade students who participate in the test and so on for students who are in a 486 or higher which is still technically in a needs Improvement category those students would be considered to have met the competency determination so that is something that is different from previous years so as we've shared in the past we take kind of an aggregate view of the performance of uh in each of the main uh test areas so this is English language arts for 2024 I show you on longitudinal information that goes back to 2019 showing you performance seeing that it's kind of ebbing and flowing um ultimately our performance in ela is consistent with the state performance um across the State um specifically cuz for the most part in the state Ela performance was down as you can see the trend the dash line that's on that Craft um and that was cutting across all of the grades um when we pull ours apart a little bit it's not shown in this picture or this image but our performance in grades 3 8 and 10 were up um our performances in grades four five and six were down and our performance in grade seven was reasonably flat so when you take all of that information into account we're still above state average uh the performance is slightly down if we look at our math performance our math performance is again consistent with the state uh in terms of reflecting changes minimal changes between last year to this year in terms of overall performance um and we had shared a few years ago we were talking about that recovery out of covid so that little dot the drop in 2021 and then kind of coming back obviously we're looking to move a little bit more northeasterly and that's the work that we're doing um and we're seeing some of that trajectory in specifically in grades three and five um and we're down a little bit in grades four 6 and 8 uh and we're reasonably flat in grades seven and 10 so there's I'll get to a little bit more about like what we're doing with this information but again high level overview uh Science and Tech you'll see the performance is up um this and I expected that there might be a question that maybe would come up like anything surprise you in the data and this is one that legitimately when look at I was like huh we didn't really spend a lot of time or energy focusing on science Technology and Engineering in terms of um major curriculum changes major changes to teaching methodology or anything in the grades and performance is improved so we got to unpack this one a little bit more um but in general across the state the state was up in grades 5 and 10 we were up in all three uh in grades 5 8 and 10 this test is only administered in three grades now I had mentioned before that accountability is a big part of this again and so to remind folks how accountability is determined I included a slide from the state um and there are two components of accountability one is a normative component which is that referred to as an accountability percentile which basically means they look at all the scores and they list all the performances of all the schools in the state in order from the highest performing to the lowest performing and they assign you a relative score that's your accountability percentile the other piece is your criteria referenced component which is your Performance Based on targets and targets are based on a number of categories here shown on this slide in section two which talks about achievement in each of the disciplines Ela Math and Science growth in ela Math and Science and if you're in the high school it focuses on um Advanced coursework completion graduation rates Dropout rates re-engagement rates fiveyear cohort graduation rate four-year cohort graduation rate a whole slew of things so there's lots of pieces that that contribute to an accountability and then those two pieces are kind of lumped together to make a determination about how you're doing so I included a summary of our accountability over time and our overall accountability score so this is the accountability percentile ranking this is not the Criterion reference piece but this is the percentile ranking so each of our schools in the percentile ranking are above 50 so 50th percentile is that middle range so this is the first time in the time that certainly I've been here in 7 years when we look at accountability that we have all of our schools that are in the 50th percentile are higher so that puts us kind of right in the smack dab middle of the state in terms of overall performance there's not a calculation for district accountability that ranks districts uh in terms of their relative performance when you unpack this a little bit more and you look at the schools remember I said there were two parts of accountability there's one this ranking and the other one is Criterion reference so I'm going to go back to that slide before and I have a little circle around one of the pieces there that you may not be able to read but it talks about your progress towards targets so each of our schools is rated based on their performance towards the targets that are set by the state the state sets these targets each year after students perform and the expectation is that schools are going to make a trajectory move towards meeting their targets so across all of our schools our schools either fell into the moderate progress towards targets or substantial progress towards targets which put us again right in the middle the pack with everyone else so what we noticed overall I had mentioned before are above this the first time we've been above all schools have been above 50th percentile uh the student growth percentile was typical growth it was categorized as typical growth in the lower end but it's typical growth which is what we're looking for we're still noticing that we have some proficiency gaps some growth gaps that still exist in our some of our groups High needs population our students with disabilities our low income and our multilingual learn ERS um and achievement Levels by and large you saw the graphical representations by and large achievement levels are flat when you look at the aggregate when you look at individual grades it changes when you look at individual groups it changes and that's why I have some relative strengths and relative weaknesses so some of the strengths um Ela achievement and growth at the high school was a strength and we'll go into this a little bit more there's math Improvement across all of the grades I know that when you look in the aggregate it looks like we didn't have a lot of change but there was a lot of work that we've been doing in math we've making some progress there we had significant Improvement in science Technology and Engineering chronic absenteeism was a focus uh across the district in other words to try to focus on making sure that students are coming to school uh and that made an impact on our student performance so almost all of our schools met their targets on chronic absenteeism uh and so that was a big thing that we were looking for we had typical growth which I mentioned uh a lowest performing students which is the category that the state uses because they measure accountability based on all of your students and then your lowest performing students and those are lumped together so our kids that are considered our lowest performing that's our bottom 25% of students we had pretty significant gains in that group across the board Dropout and graduation rates um were significantly improved and advanced coursework completion because we've added a lot of Project Lead the Way courses as part of our partnership that has increased the participation of students in advanced cours work and that process began in the high school and has now been spreading slowly uh into our younger grades so we have Project Lead the Way courses that are now happening in K through 5 6 through 8 and now 9 to 12 so it's kind of cool uh relative weaknesses our our Ela achievement these are kind of global pieces Ela achievement from grades 3 through eight we had mentioned last year we talked about the implementation of new literacy programs uh in both our K to 5 and our 6 to 8 our K to 5 our Focus was on the science of read the impact of that is going to be felt over time for sure so we're taking the Long View similarly the work that we're doing for math we're expecting the Long View changes as well to kind of build up our stamina for our kiddos and that's where the focus has been um our multilingual Learners their proficiency we're looking to kind of improve their proficiency levels we've had an increase in our multilingual population over the past couple of years uh and so that has placed some challenges upon the The Strain upon in the system and we've been working on that and making some significant gains in that so we expect some improvement there um writing has been so when we look at like specific areas of focus in terms of from a curriculum or instruction standpoint we look at things that are the biggest bang for their buck so when we look at the results from mcast we see that writing is an area where we can improve and that has been a focus uh math fluency tends to be one that comes up and we actually have a fluency plan in place to address a number of these issues that are here so in terms of some of our next steps which I've highlighted and I give you a laundry list here um but I'll just mention a couple um we're going to do some additional analysis this information will be shared with the staff of course they'll unpack more of the information to determine as staff now are currently doing their own goals based on some of this data schools are developing their school Improvement plans administrators are developing their goals and a lot of the professional development work that we coordinate is done over the summer with advanced notice of this information so that plays in part with all of this we're obviously going to continue our focus with our district goals um with the tiered system of social emotional support has been a big focus with our structures continuing with co- teing and continuing the focus on Equity because improving our student sense of belonging and fostering that in our schools and making sure that we're focused on effective instruction that's aligned with grade level is going to raise is the rising tide that raises all boats um goal areas in the school Improvement plan I already mentioned professional learning um we already are partnered with two different groups the hill for literacy uh which we've work on working with our curriculum implementation process so they're meeting with teachers at all grades K to8 uh in terms of literacy instruction and implementation of the new reading program uh in addition we've been working with Alis and Melo for math professional development and coaching and we're expanding that into the high school as well um professional learning I had shared there at the bottom as well in terms of coaching but the biggest piece on this is making sure the teachers are working together uh and focusing on some of this data and improving the performances that we have of us of our students body I wanted to highlight just a piece from the chronically absent this is from the state data I didn't pull out our own data at least not yet for this presentation um is the state data shows kind of this correlation between chronically absent performance versus those who are not chronically absent and if you notice if you're comparing the left side of this performance the chronically absent in 2024 average scaled score the difference for those that are chronically absent they're performing for 14 points or 18 points Less in ela 16 and 19 points less uh in mathematics and if you look at percentage of students who are categorized as meeting or exceeding expectations that number drops by even more 20 to 25 uh per. pretty significant so the simple response to that is as a school as a school district we obviously want to make sure that our kids are coming to school for parents who are watching this out there please encourage your kiddos to go to school and make sure that they're coming to school every day cuz it makes a differ difference for us for sure um and one just piece that we wanted to throw in there uh air Shirley Regional High School was named based on their performance this year was named a school of recognition so they were one of 57 schools in the state uh who were received this recognition only 20 of whom are high schools um and that's out of 1827 schools Statewide so the list of students or schools that are identified as a school of recognition is pretty short and pretty exclusive what this basically is the Desi recognizes uh schools that have met or exceeded their targets so as you recall from the accountability piece and Mr chrisy will refer to this a little bit in the school Improvement plan um is that the performance on each of those categories the high school met or exceeded all of their growth Targets in every category so which is pretty significant uh for you know looking at this in terms of performance a lot of hard work led to that a lot of processes systems had to be put in place to make that happen and dese recognized it as well so that being said I'll take any questions I've got you know I can talk about this for days so I'll let others jump in no you can go first all right um so the first is more of a comment and it's partially because I see uh Dr paky here we talk about chronic absenteeism and and a chronis will be a I'll get to the point very quickly um and you know I was at the open house at laor White we heard the the shiel on chronic absenteeism to parents we want our kids in school we I agree I know I had a daughter last year who I had a hard time getting to school because she was physically ill she was also very stressed and those two were very correlated mhm I know this year there are little things that I see teachers in her seventh grade school doing that are making tremendous difference she got a card from Dr paky it had a very very short note like note on it and she literally yelped with Glee like she is engaged this year in a way that she hasn't been in several years and like we talk about that communication whether it's from Educators to families but I think Educators to students like those moments matter and I think that's how you get kids to show up to school it's how you keep them healthy because they are not bringing that sort of emotional stress of what is difficult environment yeah like those things matter so just a thank you to you and I think that is a big part of the types of things that will help us get kids to school um I think the second this is a question you know I think mcast data you know it can be fuzzy right like and where lines get drawn between different performance bands like it's not throwing a dart but sometimes it's not far from that um and you know where those lines get drawn make a big difference in these numbers I guess one of the questions I have is when you look at the trends from the mcast data M how well do they match what you you know it's like we have curriculum they come with curriculum bet assessments we have other benchmarks like we have other data information and so are the things that mcast is telling us matching what we expect in terms of priorities and so that's my first question I may have follows depending on if you're like yeah this is what we would expect in terms of fluency and math writing and literacy so to some extent yes um a lot of our assessments that we administer in terms of like a on a benchmark basis are aligned their their diagnostic assessments by and large so they're not completely aligned to the standards which is part of the reason why we want to make sure that our assessments that we use from teachers so teacher created assessments we want to make sure that they are more aligned with the standards so that we can get a better predictor of how students are going to perform give them more opportunities so we've none of this from an Ela or math standpoint was a surprise yeah um and so when we look at the information we're collecting this information all along and looking at student progress and performance and then we're making adjustments to our professional learning structure what coaching we provide what instructional support we provide to kiddos what interventions we provide to kids and then we continue to try to help support their growth against the standard yeah okay great yeah and that was what glad that's what you're saying that like again that it's not because I would worry if we are like seeing mcast data and like knee-jerk or switching because I you know again we've put a lot of really good things in place in terms of materials in terms of right like and so making sure we're not um again there's a place for mcast data but it is there's this Moment In Time versus the like agreed there's a tendency um for school systems and schools to like overreact to the results that come out from mcast and it's one assessment on one day it happens to be important because a lot of things are driven I'm not minimizing the importance of that but I think the reality is is that there are a lot of variables that go into that day so we're looking at to see okay the kids in May this is how they performed you know there's still a whole other month or two of instruction that happens after the assessments are administered so there's still a lot more that can be learned and can be done so when we take this information sure do we look at the overall and say yeah we wish that would be a little bit better sure we do absolutely but in terms of using this as an informational tool we look at the information that comes out of the item analysis from a curriculum standpoint and alignment with standards that's what we tend to focus on we tend to focus Less on overall performance like we want to look at growth performance cuz that tells us how well we're instructing yeah and if kids are making the gains that we want them to make and that's what we use as kind of a driver for us those are the two that we really pay attention to k um probably would be better St to answer but you give us a Global Perspective we made a lot of changes in um curriculum and and practices in early literacy programs and how is how was that worked on uh on Startup I know when you do a lot of work to find you know what program you think is going to work the best but in a lot of cases anytime you change curriculum people don't like change no you know we're used to doing this I got all the stuff set up I got my lessons plan this now we're going to different B how has the change to what we're doing now been received by the uh early early age teachers um much more positively than what we were doing before um so what we've seen so linking what Chris had asked before about assessment information there are other assessments that we administer to students to kind of monitor progress and see where they stand especially in early literacy and so we've been administering those assessments over the past couple of years when we've made some of these changes and I haven't presented a lot of that information here because it's a lot of it's a lot of data and I don't want to bore people um but the short of it is what we've noticed is that our percentage of students kind of reading at grade level and mastering early literacy skills in the younger grades has been steadily improving over the past 3 to four years and that can be reflected as I said to you before when I went back to the ELA performance and I know it doesn't you can't see it here but when I said that grade three was above like that's a reflection of the work that we have done and so those students that group is now going to be in fourth grade and heading into fifth grade and so on with a stronger Foundation than we've had in the past so long answer to a short question we do we did expect a dip as far as mcast goes in the LA for 3 through eight because of the change in curriculum and that's pretty common the first year in a when when you change your curriculum yeah I'll be curious to hear what the uh what the teachers reactions are because it's it's tough because initially always some it's like we're changing course and some other people are like we changing course nay and and eventually you get to a point where you go like is everybody realize that this actually has some legs to it you know some things I like some like in anything there's some things I like some things I don't like but you know what we feel okay with what we're moving forward with now because I mean teaching something if you're not behind it it's a it's a hard thing to do because you have to motivate the kids to do it yeah and I'm sure we'll get more in depth analysis from Bonnie which you get up there yeah I think if you remember when we had approached um you all about approving the adoption of literacy curriculum we had referenced that there I had a slide that had the names of 40 teachers I think on it for grades 2 through eight and that was a huge I brought in kind of like here's the the big group of what we can pick from and then we distilled that to what would be most aligned and then ultimately it really came down to what the teachers felt like was going to be the best match for them and their kids so they were behind this from the get-go which that investment is really helpful now of course that's you know sometimes you have a little bit of buyer remorse anytime you do anything new and so there are pieces of that that you're like yes I really like this but wow there's a lot to it and so that takes some time so people are starting to get their legs under them with the new curriculum that we're using so I'm expecting to see continued growth and we have seen that um for sure and then with math it's been very similar the curriculum adoption took place a while ago but there wasn't it was a lot of um programmatic teaching shall we say and we don't teach programs we teach kids and we teach curricular standards and so ultimately we wanted to make sure that teachers were comfortable with understanding the math because most of our folks haven't been taught the math in the way that math is taught now they didn't learn it that way and so increasing that capacity for our staff was a huge thing and they are 100% in on it right now um in terms of like when we have days where Allison is coming people are like can I please sign up I need to see her I need this question we had 20 as an example we offered a math workshop class this summer um and we ran it as a it's a graduate course we had 20 there were 30 slots available we had 25 teachers sign up from our district or five others that came from other districts so like the dedicated three days in the summer in the middle of August and they're going to do a Saturday in October to kind of learn about a methodology to implement curriculum and then it's they going to spread to other folks so it's exciting like where we are is exciting I know when you look at the data you're like yeah it I'm telling you it's exciting well I want to just jump in and and give Charlie a lot of credit because he won't take any um he did a masterful job of curating the choices or the science-based choices um for the new reading curriculum and then Rel linished control and let the teachers pick the program they were all good choices we went through those I had one that was a favorite being a former elementary teacher and principal it wasn't the program that they chose and that's fine I'm not teaching it right um so he did a masterful job of re giving the control to the teachers to pick that and I think a lot of the buyin and in the fact that um people are signing up for these courses is because of that and the other part of it that we we haven't talked about before is teachers were asking for a change in our professional development for math um and Charlie listened and and knew had worked with uh Allison in the past and brought her in and I have to tell you the one of the first thing some teachers met with me about was math PD when I first started um and I can't tell you the the positive response that I'm getting um when math PD for the Elementary in Middle School comes up and and Alison me M's name is is often um assigned to that so that both of those things has has Charlie's fingerprints all over it thanks um so one thing only because we happen to be on the subject of math so just so that you guys can see the correlation down so Rihanna's also in the um elementary school internship and she is a part of the children that may have like problems um with like uh within the classroom with their class work so she's on her second day she's doing math I think she said she had a third grader so the third grader that had math that she was assisting had a similar issue that she had Rihanna can do mental math very well she struggles with writing on the page um and when she came here the time that she was in I think it was third grade is when I transitioned her um she had a very difficult time up until 6th grade trying to figure out how to put it down on the paper because of the new things that the teachers are learning it gives the kids the space now to where he said I I can't write it down I don't I don't understand how to write it down but I'll try and I said okay so she was looking and she kind of figured out a pattern But the teacher came over and gave him enough space to say okay well that's that's enough like you did what I asked you to do but I understand where you're coming from which then instead of him being reluctant to finish the rest of his paper Rihanna said okay well let's do the rest of the paper she didn't have to assist him in doing it because typically his struggle was you know he he didn't want to do it cuz he knew he was going to have to try and struggle through the rest um so seeing teachers now with these kids you know however many I mean she's a junior in high school be able to get children the space to complete math the way that they know how I think has been the best thing and she said he did get a 100 he was really excited he got he was really happy and then it helped her kind of reflect back like as a student hey that something I wish happened to me but I'm glad this kid got it so I think that clearly there is something working for that because kids are far less apprehensive when it comes um to math and to be able to have that space so it makes complete sense what you're saying and as far as chronic absenteeism like another thing that plays into it which you actually touched on Chris is um from the mental health standpoint so I work at impatient Psych facilities we have children um at one of them we have children and Adolescence at all three um we actually close down the children's units in the summer because there's there's no kids unless there's like a super emergent traumatic event as soon as school starts up we're full and a lot of the times what happens is is it Stress Management which is different from anxiety Stress Management is one of the hugest things and um one of the first groups that they have in an in inpatient acute setting um focuses on communication and exactly what Chris said is the first thing that we actually engage in with the kids they want to know whomever is their leader whomever is in control of their day actually takes out the time to see them or hear them or at least acknowledge them it is amazing the kid that come in on admission the day before who are terrified and probably been traumatized in the ER because they've been sitting there 3 or 4 days with adults because they don't have a kids section and then kind of unpacking through the day and then trying to figure out what their day is going to look like for the next 3 days that is the hugest thing to hear is the level of decompression and ability kids like have to just even take in information is that little sense of belonging or at least being seen even if it's a moment and physically having other things like paper it being in writing because it's something for them to look at um so the level of mindfulness that we have here in the school district is is pretty awesome and I think definitely contributes to um chronic absenteeism or the the lack thereof right the decrease of it sure um the other part is and I don't know I'm probably gonna somebody might you know be upset with me but I don't care um I don't um as much as I love the the mcast as much as I like you know scoring and all that what correlations I see as far as how our kids Thrive when they leave here is more important to me than this and the reason that I say that is right now in the workplace and space that I am at I'm in a leadership role in multiple um um um facilities and one of the largest things that I'm seeing is a massive disconnect between even secondary education and the workplace because there is a gap between teaching skills um for navigating life functionalities things that happen in the workplace a lot of times what I'm seeing is people are being taught to a curriculum and expecting when they come into the workplace the curriculum is going to be the same thing and we all know that's the that's not the case right so it's the life skills um accompanied with the education that's huge for me some people may not like that I don't care it's still true because in the sense like I just said if the kid can't function in their environment they're not going to be able to receive the information so yes they need the skills yes we need to build it yes that is important I'm not taking that away but what I like to see is when I see kids coming back and they're showing me how they're progressing and they're reacting to the world because they're what CEOs of flin 500 companies something suddenly happens and they're no longer that how are they going to function in the rest of the world how are we setting them up so that as life changes and happens they're able to do what they you know they can so I love seeing this and I think it's great and I do see the like the the way that you put it together very well um but I have to say one of the hugest things like for example a majority of the kids that come here and it's not just the ones that we have here that are a particular type right um or fit into a particular group are giving back to the kids behind them whether they're very silent students that don't really talk that much or talkative ones we have a huge system of students that are turning around and making sure that the younger Generations are doing better so quite frankly if we have that level of caregiving now we're going to reap the benefits of that when they're older so that's all I'll say about that even though it may be an unpopular opinion um thank I was looking Jo I can tell if your face was going to be a respons just listening all right I know we have thank you I know we have a full agenda M and we're getting later in the evening I'm going to ask just like one sorry last question um I Chris I know you'd have this conversation all day I know one one of these days I'll just set up a meeting do talk mcast um the fourth and sixth grade data seems wild like I look at third grade and they're you know 10 points 13 points above the district in you know or above the state fourth grade now they're you know Five Points Below in both subjects fifth grade they jump back up sixth grade there's a you know again five six point drop in like that like seesaw between those grades but then when I look back to last year's it's not like that those cohorts were lower performing the year before mhm and so it felt like last year there was a lot of cons like it was more consistent the Gap to the state across grades and this year it's like we have these huge G like places where we're head and places where we've gone behind and I can't make any meaning of it like I I'm curious if you have or if it's like if that's as big a mystery for you all too it's I haven't made a huge um I haven't unpacked it completely yet okay um and that's I think some of the work that the teachers have to do okay CU they know the kids they know what it is that they taught and like I said before when you implement a new curriculum you're going to see you know different traction along the way okay and you know by the time people get their stride it takes a little bit longer I'm not going to chalk it all up to that I think that there's more to it than that for sure um but I think what we're looking for is we're looking for kind of steady increase totally but as you say the road to success is never linear it's always kind of bouncing around um and so that's why I look at kind of overall you know there were pretty significant changes that I appreciated we saw a lot of growth like that's where you look at like achievement scores and different grade levels yeah and I don't put a lot of stock in that I'm looking at more growth to help me understand if we're actually meeting where our targets really are yeah um four and six are historically not uncommon in terms of uh the challenges that happen in those grade levels because if you remember way back when mcast was this is before nclb there were only three grades that mcast really mattered four seven and 10 yeah so those grade levels tend to be the ones where the test seems to be a little bit different than the other ones the other ones kind of added in yeah third grade from a reading standpoint the expectations on that test are slightly different from those expectations in grades four five and six six in our district is a transition Year from elementary school to a middle school so it's a little bit different and so we typically do see a bit of a decline in sixth grade when kids move from 5 to 6 yeah so it's I don't have a clean explanation to give you but it's where those are pieces that we have to unpack a little bit more it may be interesting over the course of this year to look at those particular cohorts so last year's fourth graders and fifth grade now seventh grade now and like what are we seeing what are we like yeah learning about what's happening in those grades in particular and again lots of things that we can Chu up to lots of different things but if there's things that we can look at over the course of the year that would be really those would be two grades that I think would be helpful for this group to have a line of sight into um yeah Mr Christy whatever you did in grade 10 Ela just blank check to keep doing it thanks anything else on mcast I'm trying to watch the clock and not doing a great job you're good all right um we don't need to do anything no vote there but let's move on to the school Improvement plan uh for Paige Hilltop thank you do have I do have good news both principles promised that they would keep it to exactly 10 minutes or less that was my not so subtle way of a reminder I'm going to be up here as little as possible um good evening thank you for having me today um so I want to just start by saying I've spent the last few weeks reviewing a lot of data um obviously mcast data being one of them I've been really diving into my attendance data um Behavior data and Benchmark so those are all going to be things to impact my school Improvement plan and my conversation with you tonight but I'm going to start with celebrations um so some of the things that we have to celebrate um reflected in and I I want to say thank you to Charlie cuz you really set me up great for my presentation thank you um the science achievement I was so thrilled that we met and exceeded our Target in that when I tell you that that is a difficult test and it's fifth grade is the first time those children you know have that test I see a lot of Hope in that because not only were they able to read and understand the content of what they were being asked but then also give the answer so to me that was I I that was a nice glimmer that I saw there um in my school the Cod teaching model that's being used at all grade levels um and we ref finding it weekly so when I first came on board it was still summertime and um one of the things I kind of took under my belt is all right I have to make sure that all of these special education teachers are able to push into classrooms for the amount of inclusion minutes that those children have in their IEPs also pull students out for the amount of minutes that they have in their IEPs for pull out um that was a big Challenge and what ended up happening at the start of the school year probably 2 weeks before school we ended up getting a very high number of students coming in on IEPs with a lot of demands in those IEPs so um every single week I want to give my Special Education team credit um all of the teachers they are looking at those IEPs every single week they're looking at their schedules they're tweaking it there hasn't been a week that's gone by since we've been in school where they has somebody hasn't come to me saying I had to change this cuz I really need to see this kid I really need to meet there and I it's really important to I'm not losing I'm I'm losing sleep at night cuz I'm not seeing this kid enough I I just they they have a very high expectation of themselves for making sure that they are providing what those children need so um I I'm I'm really excited about this quot teaching model um and just to kind of reiterate some of the things that have been happening the communication piece I know some of you were talking about communication earlier communicating with the families communicating with the classroom teacher communicating the sped teacher communicating with me um all of those things have been happening and flexibility is a huge thing so you know some teachers it's very easy to say nope this is my schedule I have to stick to this they are really thinking outside of the box and saying oh my gosh how can I change this a little bit or can I can I switch something else around so they're really being flexible in their thinking and they're just so committed to all of their students so I want to celebrate that um and then the professional support for teachers through the co coaching and the professional education Consultants I know Charlie already talked a lot about that but I just want to say being new to this District how admirable I feel that this is that we have tackled these two big um academic areas both Ela and math many districts will focus on one first get it kind of settled and then but we we really have tackled two at the same time here and um I just want to give credit to all of the classroom teachers they are doing so much work um we've really um and I've I've complained to Charlie a little bit about the frontloading of this but with the goal of that that's going to then sustain us throughout the school year so um you know I I've had teachers saying oh my gosh it's a lot of meetings it's a lot of Demands right at the start of the school year and it is but I'm hoping that we're going to reap the benefits of that within the next few months so um we're going to continue to work on that so our challenges and again this reflects a lot of what Charlie has already said we declined in our math and Ela um achievement scores I can tell you that having worked in this is being my Third District anytime we've taken on a new program or a new um structure of teaching we always see a decline so that wasn't a surprise for me too um our Ela and math growth was low and that again goes along with the achievement when you're struggling with achievement your growth isn't going to be as High um this was a big one for me and we've chatted a little bit about it this evening our absentees and rate overall um it increased from 8.5% to 11.8% which to me is a huge jump in absenteeism um and again if kids aren't in school we can't educate them so that's going to be something that I continue to look at um one of the things that I've done for this past month today was October 1st I pulled my attendance report from the past month I have um 55 attendance letters that are going out to families um we looked at it we are only gr sending them out for grades grades 1 through five I didn't send letters for prek students I didn't send letters for kindergarten students I didn't send letters to any families where they are experiencing any kind of hospitalization for their children so those children were removed from the list and I still have 55 letters that have to go out to children who have three or more days of attendance um of absenteeism for the month of September because I think it's important to get in early and to be consistent I'm so I'm going to be doing this every single month looking at with the attendances Mr pizzy my assistant principal and I will be looking to see okay was it just this kid might have been sick the first couple school but now we're not seeing it so great we don't have to send letters you know in October and November or are we seeing the same kids that are still being absent and we need to do more to support that family do we need to get the family in do I need to um provide outside services so we need to look at the whole picture there something is like what you were talking about with the mental health and the stress and the anxiety we want to make sure we're targeting those things as needed so um and I also want to talk just a little bit about um um and again Mr um CER spoke a little bit about this um the last this whole past day I've been looking at teacher goals all of our teacher goals were due this um this week and all of my teacher goals are directly connected to data so they're looking at their data and saying okay this is where I need to improve my instruction this is my professional development goal for my students this is my professional development goal for me personally so I feel like yes um you know cast is just one point but we're looking at multiple data points to make sure that we're providing really good instruction and teachers are working on it professionally as well as in the classroom with students um so the next page um in my goal one and goal two I'm going to kind of condense because I created the same goal in both math and Ela because our achievement was low and because I want to get it up so um my goal was that PHL sou students will increase their math proficiency scores by 10 % and increase their growth by 10 uh 10 points um I'm doing this because I want to I want to have a better way to instruct students in the area of math and our goal is to focus on achievement for students and make greater strides in supporting specific learning needs um some of the thing the ways that we're going to do this um we're going to obviously collect data we just finished our um fall Benchmark data collection and we're going to make informed decisions so our next step is to have our data meetings and be talking with teachers and our coach and our Consultants about this is what our data looked like what do we need to improve it's not just about um making sure our score goes up but Are there specific areas that we're struggling with and we have noticed that and I'll talk a little bit about that in a minute um so using this Baseline data from the fall and then small group instruction and intentional academic lessons that are going to be used so I have a class in front of me and in within that class certain kids are going to need some things other kids are going to need others so yes we do uh hold group instruction on skills and standards because we want to make sure we target that but then we also want to make sure that every kid is getting what they need so using small group instruction using literacy centers and math centers which all of our teachers are working on to Target those specific needs of individuals that's really important so we're working on that um and then continuing to support teachers through professional development um professional learning community so we're having PLC meetings um sometimes they're meeting with me for PLC meetings sometimes they're meeting with the literacy code for PLC meetings sometimes they're meeting with one of our consultants for um PLC meetings sometimes they're meeting with um Mr pizzy or um the school adjustment counselors you know so so we have different PLC meetings that are that are focused on different areas trying to make sure we're targeting all areas um and then once we have success we're going to have teachers who have a solid understanding of the standards and that we're strong in um and the ones that we're strong in and what we need to work on um we're going to continue with our um tri-annual assessment system that's already in place um teachers are going to understand data in a way that allows them to utilize tear instruction and um support students and what I will tell you is I'm a little bit of a data geek myself so I appreciate everything that you're saying chis um I loved looking at my data even when it was bad I loved it first of all anything I do is going to improve it's going to make me look good so I I always accepted and and kind of was like woohoo if I've got low data I'm going to move those kids but also um I find it fascinating to see where kids are struggling and where kids are strong and I think that that's going to come through in our data meeting so really looking at that and and kind of dissecting that a little bit more I love that so I'm excited to run our data meetings and you know help teachers kind of look at it through that lens um and then um having specific students that are identified for intentional targeted interventions our two reading Specialists are already working on that they came to me last week they're like all right we kind of already have a list of the kids these are what they need to work on and I was so impressed that they've based on that Baseline data that they've collected and you know and the the kids that are in third fourth and fifth that they've already worked with and said listen we've tried this this and this we need to move on to this we need to try something else so they're already reflecting on their past practices and their data now just very impressive to me um and then the staff process um so we're going to have a procedure in place where if a teacher is concerned about a child they're going to bring them to a stat meeting we're going to talk about the intervention um we're going to try some things for 6 weeks after 6 weeks we're going to REM and say what's happening are we seeing some growth do we need to continue this intervention and if not do we need to take it to the next step which might be a referral for special education services um teachers are going to use data to create into just fluid groups um I know years and years and years ago you know kids would get in that little group and then they never leave that little group you know and they were on that kind of track that's not how it is now you know we look at it and we say okay this time this group is good to be more of a fluency group but in 6 weeks maybe they're going to need a comprehension group maybe we improve their fluency and they're moving along and now we want to Target comprehension so it's not just about keeping that kid in that group but it's about continuing to assess every six weeks every eight weeks what do they need what are the changes in the curriculum that we need to make to support them and then finally um that again communication with parents and Guardians and talking to them about what we're working on in the school with your child in ways that you might be able to support them at home and I think think that that's really important when I met with my school Improvement Council um last week and I was going over this plan with them they were like we absolutely want to know that we want to know how we what are some things we can do to help support our kids so I was really um pleased with that so I won't go over goal two because it's the same exact thing for literacy as it is for map the same process procedures everything's going to be in place my last goal I'm going to talk about is um our um our social emotional goals so pay top students are going to increase their ability to communicate their feelings and needs while also developing an understanding and empathy for others in turn this is going to decrease the number of behavior incidents in students by 10% or more and you know I put this goal out and I I asked people like what are your thoughts on this and give me some feedback on that and you know some people said H is it really a social emotional goal or is it a behavior goal because you're using Behavior data and that's a great question I want it to be a social emotional goal because that's where I want to focus but my expectation is um it will Pro it will provide behavioral outcomes when we have children who are happy to come to school when we have children who feel safe coming to school when we have children feeling that they have a voice and can be heard it automatically improves Behavior a lot of our behaviors are directly connected to social emotional needs um I always say behavior is about communication when you have a a 5-year-old or a six-year-old in front of you and they can't communicate what they want with they need it comes out in their behavior so that's something that we're going to be working on I started the school year by asking my sta staff how do you want to feel at school and my staff came up with things like I want to feel heard I want to feel supported I want to feel calm I want to feel prepared so I'm spending time talking to my staff about okay what are the things we need to have in place for you to feel that way eventually that's going to translate to my staff saying to my students how do you want to feel when you come to school and I can tell you in my previous school we had those conversations with children children want to feel happy they want to feel safe be safe they want it to be fair so when we talk to Children about what do you need to do so that we all feel like that when we're here at school and we talk about things like um listening and following directions and having a safe body and things like that so all of that social emotional stuff that we're talking about and sometimes people say oh it's just fluff it's just feelings it's so important because it is going to reduce the behaviors and when we reduce the behaviors I also feel like that's going to impact our instruction because teachers will be able to devote more time to meeting students academic needs and less time having to worry about Behavior means so long story short um I do have a couple of other things that I did want to share just datawise and celebrate and I pulled this last minute because we've just kind of finished up our benchmarks but our fall Benchmark data our grade 1 students 67% of them are above Benchmark and our grade two students 80% of them are above Benchmark um grade three students 68% of them are above Benchmark our grade four students 70% were above Benchmark and our grade 5 students 61% were above Benchmark so when Charlie was talking earlier about being that 50% or more we're in a great spot for fall and I wanted to make sure I celebrated that tonight because I feel like we we have a great starting point to just grow from there so I'm going to end with that I don't I haven't time to myself I hope that that you're over but it's all right we're going to let us slide but um I do want to offer any questions or comments or anything Kevin so the the scores that you just said those are phenomenal are those from the most recent um test or that's from our fall Benchmark data so um we're doing dible data right now we're doing star data we're collecting all of that stuff so that's what those scores are congratulations thank you I was excited I was I was a little sad when I looked at my but again I you know I know we're going to we're going to go out Jam um what I want to thank you for the coling work on think from a corporate environment where it's like this is the line and every everybody gets this line with a strong un shop the letters go out but behind every instance there can be reasons there can be very good reasons then to compound a problem and get parents who you need the most to be involved in that turned against you because they were in some extreme circumstance and got a form letter with their name written in isn't going to help anything so whatever time it takes to do that face and Spades in the end and then outside of that I would just like to congratulate um M Renda well done good choice Happ over there so this is this is going to afford US well you get two points all right I'll take it I'll take every point I can get Ashley yeah U I just wanted to say for the third goal I'm really excited um to see that goal for you I know I have my two kids are at page Hilltop and last year was a rough year with behaviors and you know learning to respect each other and all those different issues so I think this will be really important and I think you will see it help overall um and then as a side note I um popped in the other day and you were giving out panther paw Awards and I got to see my middle son get an award um just kind of by accident and I wanted to say they adore you and they just think school is the greatest right now so oh I'm so glad you're doing a great job and thank you thank you I appreciate that and I think so the pan paw and we're also going to be talking um we have a a panther Pride meeting this week um about Panther Pioneer which is like a whole another level on top of that but it really encourages children to be leaders in you know um taking care of others and that empathy p is huge and even when I do have behaviors in the office I'm talking about well how would you feel and putting yourself in that other person's shoes and I don't think we practice giving children enough opportunity to do that and I think that that helps a lot too I've seen a lot of benefits come of that um doing that with children so modeling that and celebrating those good leadership opportunities for children and then giving children a lot of opportunity to think and put themselves in other people's shoes I think both of those you know go a long way so I'm glad I'm glad your children are having a good good time at school and enjoying it but I want I wanted to take the opportunity to to thank it was fil Mo right with the coins yes so um um so I I did something similar in my previous school so I was talking to Dr render about this and he said um you know reach out to the high school and see if um you know they can create coins for you cuz I had coyote coins in my old school so um I did reach out and um I have four Juniors they actually delivered um about 4 coins to me today um that they've created on a 3D print printer um and they're in Maroon white gray and black and they have our little Panther emblem on them so um I'm going to be rolling those out with um the staff um this week we have a staff meeting on um Thursday I'll be rolling them out with them and you know talking about what are the things that you would give a kid a coin for and then um once they get a coin once a month I'll be doing a principal lunch so any child who's received a coin will have lunch with me and then they'll be able to select a book and um get a book so those great some of the little things our school committe members like to participate in I heard you have a just open door policy to you Jen you can show well the four Juniors that came and delivered the points to me today from the high school that have been working on them on the 3D printer they were lovely young men um all you know I just had a chat with them and just asked like what are you know are you going to be going to school for and most them were going to school for engineering or environmental engineering and things like that um but they're going to continue to work on it and they promised me that they would continue it next year and train other kids coming into it so I plan on toing this for quite a while so hopefully we'll get a lot of kids that are continuing and and that piece of the high school and and what you were talking about giving back to the younger kids and stuff I I feel that in in my school especially this week with the interns that are coming back and coming into the school and working with the kids so that's something that I'm going to continue to grow as well awesome this is it 58 high school students UD over 64 periods 55 high school students and I and I want to thank um Mr Christie he came in and spoke to my staff in um our first staff meeting um and talked a little bit about them to get in you know teachers interested in participating in it and our former principal Mr deppy has been working with him to train the children knowing what they have to come into and elementary school so um I feel like it's really involving into a great team effort and um I appreciate it um yeah so I would say the the key things that I hear and see um in in your plan is being proactive um being mindful um and being data driven which I love those things um the combination of them it definitely sets the kids up to except um one of the things uh that stuck out to me when you were talking about belonging was definitely in in being fair one of the hugest pushes that we have right now is trauma informed care which a lot of people hear the terminology but may not necessarily understand it um from an elementary standpoint particularly that age range it's in what we say um so a lot of times because kids are not old enough to they want to be autonomous but they don't understand what autonom is right there's still a certain level of them believing exactly what an adult says so what that looks like is um you have a student who all kids do it but like let's say they don't feel like doing their work anymore so they want you to do it for them so they're going to ask questions so you say okay well I know you you want me to work for it but this is for you to work for it right so that's a way to communicate it it's still in a decent manner but sometimes there are adults that will say something like oh well you're manipulating me this is a child you're an adult Like You full on know what the kid's doing you know what it is but being mindful of the words that we use and what we say to the students because even though they may not know that word in that moment there will come a time where they do know it and they can attach their identity to it um so that's one of the hugest things that I've seen like a little bit of um mindfulness around it but I would love to see more around where we talk about as adults the power that we all know words have power but often times we're more conscious with another adult than we are with kids not realizing that you're sewing Seeds of Life into their well I say it like this you're sewing a seed into their life whether you're conscious of it or not so it I'm not saying it's malicious or on purpose it's just the mindfulness of it um but I love the plan that you have so I I I appreciate that thank you um my first question is for goal number one or two can you I'm assuming it's mcast scores are going to um proficiency scores will increase by 10% yeah um can you um talk me through like how you're measuring that is that like percent of students who are going up like what is the it would percentage of students so that's what we're looking at so like when I look at my mcast scores next year this time I'm going to be looking to see if If I Only Had you know um 43% of my students that were meeting or exceeding I'm going to expect that to be 53% next year okay yeah I wasn't sure if you were thinking about the um meeting meeting or above or if it was like 10% are moving yeah okay perfect and then for me I'm I'm a big growth data person so I want to see the growth you know what I mean I I had tremendous growth in my previous school because I knew I was taking some very low struggling students and moving them I might not get them to meet and exceeds but I'm going to move them and that growth piece is huge so that's another big Focus area for me yeah no that's it's helpful and I would be disappointed if we weren't talking about growth because it's it's easy to manipulate that like meet and exceeds it's really hard to manipulate the growth data I always look at my kids who weren't meeting and then got into progress towards like that to me get them into that next category you know what I mean that's that's a huge jump of growth I I celebrate that even though they're not a me meets or ex I'm I'm happy about that yeah um and then I'm for um with in go one and two I mean it is the steps feel they're very data heavy understandably um I would think about what are the ways that um like students are invested or involved in that and so thinking about things like efficacy um I think again student performance isn't something that happens to kids and a bunch of adults sitting in you know the cafeteria after school in a PD like asking a student do they see themselves as a mathematician I guarantee there's a like8 or higher correlation with their mcast score yeah and so can I just Chum in on that one um I mentioned before Alison Melo yeah yeah is the person so her dissertation was on that yeah was on the impact of math disposition on student performance and also math disposition on teacher efficacy yeah and then ultimately so as part of the PD that we're doing that is a big part of it so actually when she comes into classrooms and does fluency modeling for kids yeah it's constantly the question of the kids who and here is a mathematician and then it's like all of you kids are mathematicians or whatever and that has been contagious across all the grade levels certainly in elementary yeah that math literacy like students believing that they are literate and that they have skills and understanding that is a mindset it's a game changer and so that would just be my one like charge is like where do you see the students showing up in those first two goals around learning because they're the ones doing the learning so let's make sure that they show up and they see themselves there thank you that's good feedback um I think that's on and then I think for goal three my question is and again like I put it to you Dr Renda but if what matters is students being able to communicate their feelings and needs like I would say that's what you should measure I know that the behavior data is a like it's a data point it exists in a system it's like easy to measure and it's the like thing that is like deals like a harder scientific number yeah there's nothing wrong with like self-reported data and I think it's as valid so I would just say like if what matters is student belief y um or student's ability to communicate feelings that should be what you measure and write a goal about because otherwise you're going to be doing things I couldn't agree with you more I just don't think I'm going to get there this year okay so what I will tell you is um I need to work with my staff first on that I need to do a whole Year's worth of work on my staff with my staff on that because I believe that in order for them to be able to teach kids how to communicate their feelings my staff has to be able to communicate their feelings fair in a constructive way don't get me wrong and anybody watching at home I hear you um you know I know my staff can communicate with me no problem they've done it but um what I want to teach children and and what we got really skilled out in my previous school I'm sorry I keep saying that um is doing check with kids so one of the things we would always say is how are you feeling today and we would do daily check-ins I do have ways to collect that data I'm just not ready to roll it out yet okay so it's it's on the way it's going to come at some point um and I have all little way ways to do it with kindergarteners ways to do it with fifth graders and um one of the things that we're going to be doing is building their vocabulary about feelings you know what I mean so like today I had a I had a kindergarten student in my office this afternoon and I said he would he was very upset and I said are you do you think you're feeling angry do you think you're feeling sad do you think you're feeling frustrated and he looked at me and I said I'm not feeling any of those things and I thought great that was a great like he but he doesn't he can't tell me how he's feeling so we need to kind of continue to work on that with them um and and one of the things that I'll be doing with my students over the next couple of years this is now we're like 5 year old is um increasing their vocabulary around feelings you know what I mean it's not just I'm mad or sad there's there's so many there's a gradient of feelings about that and I want them to be able to think about that I'm not mad but I'm not you know not not mad you know what I mean so what is it in between there so that's coming it's going to come it's just it's probably not going to happen these conversations have already happened and uh Bonnie has already mentioned to me wanting to bring uh the ruler program in out of the um yel School of social emotional intelligence and um Dr bracket braet y Dr Mark Brackett so he wrote the book permission to feel I don't know if any of you are familiar with that he spoke in District three years ago yeah I've done book studies with teachers on that and um it it's amazing it's it's it changed the culture of my school so that's eventually where I want to get I'm just not there yet okay great I just want to make sure that you had the permission charged from this group like feelings matter and we're allowed to measure them and again a student survey is as valid a piece of data as how many checks in power school absolutely if you have the goal you want that's great I just wanted to make sure yeah no I'm I've got big picture too so this is kind of like what can I the immediate steps I can take so um I would we need to vote and approve on this um I would entertain a motion to approve unless there's further questions discussion all right entertain a motion I make a motion that we approve I also think that we need about another 14 hours with this um yeah I hungry I haven't had dinner yet oh dinner no one has dinner before meeting this is standard yeah have a second second all right all those in favor I I thank you thank you all right and er need to run yeah I am converting to zoom Michelle just so that those are all sent I apologize I know that uh while we're in transition feel free to jump in I mean public it's not public comment but feel free to jump in while we are I'm sorry I was able to uh come up with my question during public time but I had two questions I want to ask okay um uh it's fine so what I would love um it's great to see you um because of where we are TimeWise and um maybe what we can do is if you I mean I only said you want to come to two of these meetings is it for the um presenters to is it like directed towards the presenters or like where like what what are the questions uh one is for Mr Christie and one is for um the panel um let's maybe do it can we do it over email I just want I want to be mindful of we have two Educators who have been got to school early this morning and are keeping here late sorry and thank you but yeah let's do it over email we'll find a way to like make sure we can cover that topic with that we're going to move to um principal Christie thank you everyone uh I know it's late I will try to be as brief as possible ready I'm ready all so it was good year last year um we did have some some challenges uh so two of the challenges the the kind of key ones we saw were extended engagement rates so that's uh students graduating within five years if they're not able to graduate within four we saw a dip within our our stats there uh and is certainly something we we are looking at uh for this coming year the other one was our AP scores in math and science could improve this has kind of been an ongoing Trend with us I and our mcast math scores and the growth could improve so you're going to see that reflected in a few of the goals coming up in a moment some of the celebrations uh as Mr Clary mentioned earlier uh we were thrilled to be receiving the 2024 desie School of recognition status um as you mentioned this is only awarded to a select number of schools so we are one of 57 schools overall under 20 high schools uh that were were recognized in the state um and I I really think that that the the bulk of the the honor should go to the high school teachers who put in Yan's work day in and day out to make sure that that we earned this recognition was really uh incredible work on um this was a good year for us on mcast scores um especially El and science science we were up 177% from the the prior year uh our graduation rate again improved drastically our attendance rate improved drastically um the thing I'm most proud of actually out of of our uh Ela data is that our lowest performing students which were not reported the year prior uh we met 87% of the Criterion referenced Target percentage points so I know that's a big long phrase and probably somewhat meaningless um but it meant that where desie sets specific standards uh that they're looking for us to hit as far as either achievement or growth we met 87% of of the possible points that we could earn in that area for our lowest performing students uh these are the students that that frankly need our attention the most um and the ones that that probably made me the most proud um additionally we we continue to expand the the opportunities for students at the high school uh internships so we have uh one student right now that's working with the air Police Department one student that's working with the air fire department we have 55 students again over 64 periods that are working at pel toop this is something we'd like to continue grow uh Fire part department is now in its second year paig Hilltop is in its second year uh police department's in its first year um and they are all fantastic uh that the students we have in those areas uh have shown an an interest um in pursuing careers in in potentially uh either schools uh or Civil Service uh I'd really love to be able to play someone in air toown hall um and we have a number of students that are interested in nursing um so we are placing those within the fire department and roughly 75% of their calls are now medical um and they've been unbelievable Partners uh really through throughout the work of the towns uh but we'd like to get more opportunities for students especially students who are looking to to pursue nursing um we also had a really wonderful first year in a new schedule um so this was something that that helped us tremendously um W with achieving our our goals um so moving moving on to our goals our our first goal is to improve performance in mcast map uh a lot of the work we did last year really became around science uh and it became specifically around looking at progress monitoring uh science throughout the year and then taking the data that we were receiving to change instruction so seeing what was successful and what wasn't successful for particular groups of students uh giving students th those numbers allowing them feedback on what they saw uh for very real data coming in in real time um and having conversations with them about where we could improve specific target areas we had set for ourselves uh we are using the same uh progress monitoring software that we used with science now with math uh we are going to be in our second year of changing our math sequencing so we moved if you remember from I am1 2 3 to now Algebra 1 and geometry next year we'll be adding in Algebra 2 as well uh so we are seeing some some changes within just our math sequencing um but again this is leading to us having more a state standard alignment that that really is what we're looking for we'll know we hit our Target uh for this when we are seeing the our our achievement levels either at meeting or exceeding in math uh and when we see our Target for growth uh exceeding uh at least 50% uh our second goal is is something we've really started to take a look at over the past year or two and that's taking a look at our grade waiting systems um overall and for High School courses so specifically for students in the high school as they're applying to schools um you'll see a number of of different option for grade waiting potential grade weights for High School courses uh ours is somewhat unique in in how we structure it in some ways that's great in other ways it's not um and so we would like to form a committee for grade waiting create surveys from our collaborators and really take a look at how we're appropriately waiting uh courses for students and reporting that out to schools because I think there is an opportunity there for us to be um placing students in more uh competitively advantageous situations our third goal is something we've been talking about for a while um but but this year we're really going to start to dig in on and that's strengthening our family and Community Partnerships and and we're going to use the word Partnerships very deliberately here uh I think we've done a a decent job of having one-way communication out with families but we're really looking for more feedback from from folks that that are involved with us uh to see what we could do better uh where we're succeeding where we're falling short of their expectations and how we can really look at at meeting more their expectations uh some of the ways we're going to be going through this we're going to be holding forums directly with with families uh and we're going to be taking a look at specifically targeted groups along the way to see what we can do uh to really improve um the family experience uh within the high school over the next few years and the last goal we have in here it really ties in pretty strongly to our second goal uh this is going to be a multi-year goal so we're going to start this in this here but but this will expand over time um we're questioning our connection between report card grades and performance unstandardized assessment so more specifically on our AP exams um we really want to start to take a look at our grading practices and how they align um wi with State Standards with uh standards within each of our AP courses and seeing what we can do to to have those more in alignment than than potentially they currently are um we will know we've reached this goal when we have a grading system that we can accurately communicate to our families and our students exactly what they're being um assessed on uh how we are sharing communication around student performance uh as well as transferable skills so something you've heard me talk about for a few years now is transferable skills of vision of a graduate um we need to find a way of communicating out to both students and families where they stand at any moment in time uh on those transferable skills and how we can continue to build those transferable skills uh and potentially use family input um to to see how we can partner up uh to grow those transferable skills over a fouryear stretch of time all right questions Jim um if you could just give me uh bring me up to speed on um what it is how it's measured how you track it extended engagement rate yeah it's a great question uh so engage extended engagement rate again is students over a fiveyear stretch of time being able to graduate from from high school um so the way we can see it is taking a look at students from the time they enter in 9th grade to the time they uh are able to graduate a year after the the potential year of graduation um that involves us really speaking heavily with students that have dropped out or students that that I think what they were looking at more as students who have not completed their course of study within the fouryear stretch of time that we we've given to them for high school um in a way this goes hand inand with um our our four-year completion rate which went up drastically a lot of the work I think we've been doing recently has been to increase increas the number of students that are able to graduate within that that fouryear stretch of time um a lot of the work we did involve to taking a look at our schedule and changing our graduation requirements those have been successful for us um wildly successful for us where we've struggled is within that that grouping of students who are still not able to um to find their path within the first say two years probably more even in the third um and struggle and and find themselves unable to complete th those two years successfully um so so really it becomes twofold one about ensuring that students um are successfully completing their freshman year which is our most important piece of data and then really as a secondary option their sophomore year as well um and that comes in through a few different ways um grades are important absolutely but I think it's also students self-confidence and belief in the the fact that they can do this they can make it through high school they can have a successful time here in a sherley so we adopted Mass core that's going to take a big bite out of that right so uh students who found themselves falling behind their freshman year sophomore year under our old graduation standards had a very difficult time staying with us in seeing the light at the end of the tunnel um they were they dropping out some of them were were attending um all turn into high schools yes that was big um I would also uh say that the the choices that the high school has made to be proactive not only in academics but for the social emotional mental health needs of kids we're going to see that payoff with when we had ESS last year and now we have our our homegrown yeah version of that in steps um and we're providing really for the clinical needs of our needest students hopefully that's going to to affect that too yeah and I wonder not not for tonight's discussion but you know I'm sure it's something we'll be looking at what our some of our graduation requirements more course specific and in certain categories and there may be some adjustments we can do there because you know although we have requirements for particular subjects all four years you know and they show a lot of that lines up with what colleges are expecting to see the kids that go to college they don't do that anyway you don't need you don't need a policy to do that the policy ends that doesn't help them at all it can hurt people at the other end of the spectum so we have to take a little higher look at that tonight but at some point we really need to revisit that and see whether that really makes sense anymore uh secondly I just wanted to point out I was very happy to see the um hitting 87% of the targets for the lowest performing because I mean if you you've got students that are meeting and exceeding I mean you you want everybody to do better but somebody goes up five points or 10 points and they're already meeting exceeding other than reading and seeding even better their lives probably doesn't change a whole lot but you get somebody down toward a tail end of that who goes up and you H 87% of that stuff and that their lives can change based on what you're doing in that group the other groups not so much but down there that makes a big difference for the rest of the why so I'm glad to see that is a specific Target in that group and you're right that that's um to to me probably the biggest factor of how how do we keep our graduation rate high how do we improve our extended engagement rate it's making sure that students are successful and that is our Target area if I can just jump in because I know um Spencer gave credit to the high school teachers who deserve the credit for um the school of recognition but the administration at the high school deserves credit for this too where we're seeing what I being in this building last year it felt different it just did it felt different than the other years um and I think a lot of credit has to go to the teachers and to the administration in the collaboration that they had on a weekly or bi-weekly basis where they are actively dealing with issues before they they became big um there was it was impressive and the high expectation for academics that they have and the high support that they have for some of our neediest kids the student support group meetings that are happening weekly in this building i i attended one last week um where they're talking about some of our needest kids and creating action plans to R some barriers to learning it's it was it's impressive I mean and at part at times the meeting got heated which was great because people were really advocating for what they believed and and sometimes it's discourse and and typically um we're getting better decisions when we have that kind of passionate discourse happening um the Student Success plans that are happening when when a student is in danger of failing is is you know I I know they work in progress but it's a huge step in the right direction including the parents in those decisions and what those plans are going to be again we need to move forward with that but it's a what a huge step forward so what I'm seeing is just a complete shift of being proactive for both academics and the social emotional well-being of students and I I think it's paid off and um so congratulations to the teachers but um Mr christe deserves a lot of credit for this too thank you and well Dr runda won't say this um a lot of credit goes to him actually as well who was able to to foresee um a lot of the the social emotional challenges that were coming PR pandemic Dr you've been an unbelievable Champion as of you Mr Clary um in setting the high school up in a way where we can provide wraparound clinical support for students well thank you but you already signed your contract so but I appreciate it bit bit realistically but both these gentlemen have have been unbelievably supportive to the high school um since I've been here Joyce so the question that keeps coming up in my mind and yes I'm way back in the cave land but um if we're doing so well in science yeah to me science and math are the same thing they're analytical thinking and investigating and seeing how things relate and if I'm learning if I'm doing that well in science then I have applied math in science and so I can't I can't see why and I know sure our math our math system that we had to me to people who are in that vein they go yeah it all goes together and so why don't we have it all together but then it becomes a problem um and since what is mcast testing that's not integrating math and science is the problem in the test or is in the where where is the disconnect here I got this so so part part of what you're asking is a great question students are being tested primarily in biology um biology is out of the Sciences we offer here probably the one that's most aligned with our humanities so it is term heavy um it's going to be a lot of memorization of key terms key Concepts understandings how how items flow and really has less Applied Mathematics um than C we have physics and we have we do but where our students are being tested for understand biology the mcast test is actually biology yes oh the mcast test right it's a biology incast right that's one of the options and that's what most of the students if the so in a sense the problem is that the incast test is not Global on science is that what you're saying well there's a couple there's a couple choices in most of our students physics and that's it at this point we're down to to those two choices okay all right and of course that's grade level yes focused so it's not Global right correct and and so for us students in grade n will take their biology tests M um and so what you're seeing is is a largely I would say um more humanities-based science rather than math-based science whereas if we were at any point to switch to to taking a look at doing physics um physics is is just a more of a math-based exam uh than the biology exam is well and then you hear the kids talk about how they're looking at engineering and going in engineering and that's all math baby um so it's like where's the where's the flaw to this so listen I agree with you I think I think you're asking some wonderful questions that unfortunately the the state's taken away some options yeah um so a few years ago we were able to offer an mcass in um in engineering uh that has been eliminated as a choice okay um chemistry we were able to use as an option unfortunately that has been eliminated as a choice so we are down to to two choices um for us we like having the students have one um the ability to pass one of their mcast completed by the end of their nth grade year which really then their 10th grade year allows them to focus in on math and English um because we have separated it in that that manner the science that they're using is um largely devoid of math so then improving the performance on mcast math yes as a goal which really should be forget in is incorporating math into our world with science never mind about incast yeah so do we do our own testing on our math someplace along the line that we would see the success of the kids not necessarily related to incast Yes uh so what I think you're asking me is is are we progress monitoring how students are performing on specific State Standards um for math as we go through the year yes um and so that it it really becomes a more concentrated look at specific standards as we're going through um really zeroing in on exactly what we're teaching making sure that students have hit a Mastery level before we start moving on to the next uh the next standard the next unit the next Mark of of time um again for us with with science last year this proved to be an incredibly successful way of altering the instruction that happened in the classroom and not not necessarily even about altering the assessment although that happens it really is using assessment data to change the way we teach and to change the way we teach specific students now knowing exactly what they know and what was our graduation rate I thought it was pretty high 99.5% right and um so and that hasn't really changed why is Charlie smiling at me well it's it's gone up it's gone up yeah yeah that's up that was improv right right so I think you should have said that when you said graduation rate because that sounds pretty damn good 99.5 that's pretty good Ashley um yeah just one quick comment the internship program I think that's really great and I just had kind of a question and a suggestion on it um please who's able to participate in that is it just seniors or is it also Juniors uh thank you right now it's Juniors and seniors okay so uh for paig hillt we we've opened it up to to our Juniors we started that about halfway through our year last year when we started to see some success with our seniors uh for the fire department and the Police Department those we are still just doing seniors um what I would really like to do over the next few years is expand this out further uh I would like to take a look at both more municipalities as well as more private businesses in town um I would really like to see where students area of passions lie and see if we can line them up with someone who has a a business in town so if I had someone that that say Really was fascinated about going into gas um I I believe I know someone who may work for shirle gas uh that I might be able to to line them up and and have them see a potential career path moving forward uh similarly we know we have a a large grouping of students that again love nursing this has become a a career Focus for them the challenge for us is is unfortunately we had a a hospital close in the area um and when we've reached out to to various nursing operations anywhere locally um there are some concerns with having students be a part of of the organization where I think we've been able to dispel some of those fears within our own community and air has been tremendous as far as as their willingness to partner with us um I cannot give enough credit to uh both Chief Gil and chief Johnson of the the police and fire department um for being willing to take students who have a a passion area uh either for for potentially becoming a police officer in the future becoming uh a a fire person or or really going into the EMT aspect of that um understanding that that we do have critical shortages in these areas um and knowing that this becomes a a prime opportunity for recruitment of our students uh similarly for us we would love to see more of our high school students now come back 5 years six years become teachers within the school um promote the culture that that we're trying to build here from within um and make us the top School in Massachusetts I think that's great and just to add on that I would say maybe speak to the DPW or speak I think you mentioned Town Hall but I know Municipal Finance is an area that has critical shortages and no one wants to really get into that field and it can actually be a really great career so just something you know for kids to kind of figure out I think when I was in high school I had no idea what I was doing with my life so someone had stuck me somewhere maybe I would have like taken a cleaner path to where I ended up so I think that's awesome thank you we we had a student at parks and wreck last year yeah um perfect who's I I believe going to be pursuing a passion in that area and Jeff Thomas was phenomenal at really helping to Foster this students's passion um so it it's there are tremendous people in Aaron Shirley um we've now given students sort of theoretical base on how they can move forward um I think it students are loving having the opportunity to apply some of that theoretical knowledge now to potential careers um and to give them the opportunity to give back to the towns that have given them so much um so so the more we can grow this the better off we'll be the long-term data for this and to see how many of these students end up in education that that there is a national teacher shortage right so I would say we're doing our part in air Air sherley Regional School District to try to help that in the future and hopefully a large percentage of them do go into the field then come back and teach in their their their hometowns that's what we're hoping that's great we won't see that pay off for five to yeah five to seven years but although we are now starting to see some of our our former students return uh we recently hired a student who graduated from college uh and is now pursuing a master's who's a par professional of the high school 3 days a week uh I ran into a former student today at page Hilltop uh who's subing in that building will BEC coming back and subbing here um we we want our students to return we have some some really incredible kids um and we'd love to keep them here in in our in our grasp yeah yeah um yeah so just a a thought I mean as you look at internships I guess two comments um one is you know there are many professionals such as myself that largely work remotely so I wouldn't I I wouldn't limit us to just some of the physical right places around work and and that could open up Avenues of people that work for in Cambridge Massachusetts but largely work remotely it doesn't have to be in my house I can work at other places as well so I don't know it's just opportunities maybe even high school libraries absolutely could be anywhere um I know other schools um towards the end of their senior year you know have been doing the practicums or internships where the last three weeks of school you know actually go out and that's their fulltime it's a massive undertaking but I've I've been hearing good things from just I have um cut nieces and nephews that just recently graduated from Westford and um they had very good things to say about it um it got some students that I think my niece in particular that um was a huge introvert and struggled to but it it got her out into kind of the Working World and I think um hopefully was eye openening and and really helped her to think see herself in the Working World outside of just a classroom environment and everything so so I I wonder if we're starting to look at that at all but seems like it's big Trend and and people find it rewarding um so I I do have if I'm sorry to be critical here um but part of our role um I'm not looking at it right now but the measurement part I mean the goals are are obviously important there are whole annual goals like the two in particular the last two goals it seem like there wasn't a lot there that actually shows how are we truly going to measure some of those goals I wonder if we can can add more you know one of them is getting feedback from parents but if there's something about you know one of them had a survey so what does the feedback look like there and the the goal number four I just didn't really understand like how how would we actually measure that so sure um so so I let me start with four and I can kind of work backwards uh I think when we take a look and and one of the things I've done for the last few years is to to take a look at how we're aligned grade wise to performance on AP exams and what we're finding is there's a disconnect um so too often students will receive a 90 or above in a course and unfortunately score under three in an AP exam so what we are saying is the student has mastered the content and what the exam is saying is the student has fallen short of any proficiency uh for being able to gain Credit in the course um we are looking at closing that Gap um and and certainly could there be a student or too that through their time um will perform exceptionally well in a course and will underperform an exam yes but I think when we take a look at at large data um which is what we're seeing here that's not what we're seeing we're seeing a misalignment um between what the course is attempting to teach um and how our students are scoring on those courses so we're bringing to that what we're hoping to see is a larger sense of alignment between those um I'm talking primarily about AP but I really think this could expand out um to include other courses as well um and and so when we start to take a look at at math courses or English courses where students are getting straight A's and unfortunately are not uh in the exceeding or meeting expectations level of mcast we have to start asking very real questions about do we have an alignment issue between what we're attempting to teach uh and what the state standards or expectations are on those yeah okay and so I mean there's OB there's data there it sounds like it would be difficult to track but if there's something measurable that we can you know track our progress that that's obviously the ideal yeah even if the goal knowing that it's a multi-year goal was something to the effect of like pilot and increase correlation by yeah you would you'd have something and you could even say like within AP courses like or an AP course like pick an AP course and see if you can um yeah thank you it's great feedback I think one of the things we were hoping at your one is is to start to build what that measurement system could look like uh to determine how aligned or misaligned we are um and and to truly be able to track track where we are as far as progress towards meeting okay so we'll have all the data we're going to have we're going to have their grades and we're going to have their their scores on AP but I I think what I'm hearing is to CH the goal so that the measurable smarkle right so it's part of uh the measurement we can we can work on that absolutely yeah and and part of it maybe we got to understand the Baseline first so how are we going to determine Baseline yeah I mean we could use last year's results could be absolutely be the Baseline certainly could interest right did I'm good you're good do we are we do you want to vote on do we want to come back when we have this what's the right way to do this I don't know if you wanted to think about this goal more if we wanted to vote on it massage it a little bit we could uh we could massage this in Charlie and I would you be okay with Charlie and I presenting the change um next time so we can save Mr Christie from coming back to the next meeting otherwise we have to start buying you coffee he's such a good speaker he he he's an excellent speaker I agree but we um yeah be yeah let's wait and yeah we'll we'll massage that and we present that thank you thank you appreciate all right Dr paky I'm terribly sorry that it has taken us this long um to hear from you but we are very eager to hear about ballot question to going to get up um thanks for having me tonight um especially on such short notice I was contacted by our regional uh representative from the MTA who asked me to address you and U neither he or my president Maryann zimon could be here today to talk to you but we wanted to ask the school committee to revisit the letter that uh was published on August 16th 2023 about the Thrive Act and revise it for the um ballot question two coming up as there are some differences particularly with the language around uh the MC as a requirement for graduation a yes vote on the ballot measure would remove that um qualification and allow districts to uh Implement their own criteria for graduation requirement and I'm trying to I think we have a we have letter are ready to or we sent that letter and so this the request is can we update that letter with the most current yes language um I'm curious if anyone has any objections to doing that again the um this does not get rid of mcass right m still happens Gru grad just as a graduation 10 that we had talked about yeah so it'll allow us to continue to get data from it but it will no longer be held over a students head as a requirement for graduation exactly those that 3 4% that were sitting in that red square at the bottom and to Echo something that Mr chrisy brought up um as many of you know I have a bachelor's a master's and a doctorate in my field um I always I think the lowest grade I ever got was a C+ the class was of Art and philosophy and I was asleep because I swear Ben Stein was teaching it and I could not stay awake even with coffee when I could drink coffee and that was the lowest grade I ever got but if you ever gave me a standardized test I would show you exactly how big of an idiot I am don't do well on them never have never will um in in New York we had to take uh we didn't have we had regent exams me to take them every year for every subject um I barely coasted by getting through them but in my class as I could show absolute proficiency um and it had to do a lot with my personal you know anxieties towards that and then finally somebody let me know in my senior year that I didn't need to take them to uh graduate and get a a because they have multiple different kinds of diplomas so there's Advanced regions diploma regions diploma local diploma and I said well I'm going to school in Massachusetts does it matter and my counselor said they won't know what a region diploma is you're fine with a local diom okay then I thought I was all done until we got to Gres and then I was like oh God yeah Joyce and then Kevin I'm put my own thing on this and that I think that we are a high standard school and we are going to know that our diploma is worth something and it won't be the state that who will decide that and it won't be the Region's test that will decide that it'll be our own high high standards and high qualifications that we want our kids to have so I have no problem adding uh taking it out as a as a graduation requirement Kevin I'm just wondering do do we have the specifics of what we would need to edit or change I don't have the letter in front of me are there suggestions do you know what we need to update yeah that was going to be my question for you if we have the I know I don't believe it's much because the way the letter was written um the way I wrote the letter for the school committee was essentially saying that we wanted the mcast requirement for graduation taken out but but not get rid of the mcast um test the Thrive act originally wanted mcast just gone right and the committee was in favor of getting rid of the mcast graduation required but not getting rid of the test which is what the ballot question I believe unless I'm incorrect is now so we're really just endorsing question it would be endorsing and updating the date right that's basically I mean the letter was very clear on that there are a number of issues they wanted to bring up they said that's really out of the scope of what we're looking to do here but is and I think the letter was very specific saying like as far as an mcast requirement for graduation that's a local control issue and we're we absolutely support getting rid of the mcast requirement for graduation and allowing local control I think the letter is very clear to that tect um and thank you Michelle for sharing that it's in all of our inboxes right now um if we are um I am I believe it's at the end of paragraph one if I remember correctly y but this is our 15th so don't trust anything I say um Dr pad if I share this letter with you will you I have it you have it this town is really good perfect if you would make a comment on that dock I would like this changed I feel confident that it will a l and we can send that letter off okay um because again what this is asking for is what this letter so we can certainly update the um date in the specifics and um I don't think that there's any real um disagreement between uh az's position and the school committee's position on this you know we agree that um the MKS can have a useful Pur is data collection but we really do feel strongly in the sense that we have a confidence in our students we have a confidence in our staff we know that we hold our students to the highest standards and as many of you echoed here tonight you know we're not we see beyond data especially when you work with these kids every single day I don't look at them and I I don't see a number I don't see a a grade level I see a human being and each one deserves my individual care and attention tailored to them and while data can help me um uh better align my curriculum to standards that the state has created to demonstrate their Proficiency in a subject um the the Personal Touch without the high stakes you need this to graduate is I I don't see removing it um as a as a real negative for our students yeah great all right well like I said I am very happy to take the step on this letter to make it you know bring it up to date from a year ago last August and make sure that you all and then in terms of sending it are we email I don't remember how we did this last last time is it just put it in your hands do you want us to send the letter um we're happy to send it back to our uh local representatives and share a copy with Azria great wonderful okay appreciate that thank yeah of course and I I think you actually wrote this one it I might yeah I'm like you wrote it someone Mr Quincy wrote it great I don't know I feel like last year there was a lot of things being written as we were going through policy somewhere who knows what I wrote it's very clear so that I knew it wasn't me once I reread it um great so we'll get that done and between Michelle and the magic that happens over across the street there it'll get sent to the people it needs to and next meeting we'll talk about um ballot question number three four we can go through all of them hey but right that's what we're doing talk about Uber drivers and uh right state auditor yeah exactly um no no appreciate your time and again it's been a long day for you um thank you all for your time and I know that as A's vice president I'm supposed to stick here to the end but I'm going to go you should go well we will report back that you called in on your your drive home thank you all so much for allowing me to speak and uh and allowing me to have your time I really appreciate it yeah absolutely thank you Dr paky it's your's favorite teacher I I said it earlier I mean it's the reason why my daughter is like going to school earnestly excited every morning so so thank you as a just personal thanks um I will always say to you every other parents and every student that I teach the same thing which is I'm not a good teacher but if I'm ever called one it's only because I have good students [Applause] okay all right we have made it through our new business we've got a superintendence report I can be pretty quick on the superintendance report um so we don't have to go we we talked I think we talked enough about the school of recognition uh that that is there there's no new information that I would share with that so I will move on um we are currently working um with Steve hemond from Mars to create we're working uh jointly to create a school budget presentation for the community this will be geared towards both school committee select boards fincom but but parents um we are putting those slides together uh jointly uh I you you've probably most of you have probably met Mr hemond at some point he has worked and assisted um during the region ization and some of the um um in the business office before I don't know if there's anyone in the state that knows this process uh better than he does um so he and I have already met he's meeting with um Mr plunet this week to kind of get some more information and he's going to really tailor um that presentation uh for parents for what we want uh we also I did also get in touch with the um Dr Joe Walsh from Boston University uh I had mentioned this in the last school committee meeting but I I had not been able to um I had reached out we have a meeting scheduled uh for this week to again discuss what her presentation for parents could look like about the dangers of technology and social media um we we're still kind of figuring out whether this is going to be in person um or or V virtual um it can be either I'm leaning towards in person um you know it's I think it might be a tough cell to talk about the dangers of technology and then have a presentation that is virtual right um uh but we would like to have this happen relatively soon um knowing that uh January 2nd there's a couple things that that didn't make it on the report that I want to share Garder public schools had uh the superintendent and high school principal has offered to schedule time to meet with the school committee to answer some questions about the cell phone policy they have recently implemented it this year um they're seeing some interesting results uh the high school had a 70 so far 70% reduction in disciplinary referrals the middle school is something at like 30% they didn't really change the policy for elementary wasn't wasn't quite an issue um the same type of issue and uh some some good news as far as our succession planning and providing opportunities for teachers to kind of grow um within the field uh we have the need right now for our substitute High School assistant principal um and we have two um teachers in the high school that are going to kind of split that job they're going to do an internship uh to work towards their Administration license and there's also going to be um um uh a differential in pay for for some of the work that they are doing and that is uh Mrs Lindsay Rocco and Mr Mark juusto um that was shared today with the staff um and from what Mr christe was telling me it that news went over very well with the staff there both um well expected within the school and both have a goal to be in administration at some point in their career so we're excited about that and it's a it's going to be hopefully easier to find a substitute to fill in for Mr juo and Mrs uh Rocco than it is sometimes to find a sub a substitute for for assistant principal that is all for the superintendent report I'm happy to answer any questions if there are any questions comments all right let's talk about the revision to policy JB which we looked at last meeting although last meeting as a reminder um we looked at a new policy um and the recommendation from the committee was to rather than having what was it J which focused on um the um entrance age for students above um a certain age I forget what it was titled but um the recommendation was why don't we have one policy that talks about the entrance age for kindergarten through um what we're calling um older mature yeah mature students uh I'm sure we had a much more eloquent term for it um and Mr CLE did that for us so we have what was uh JB with um the addition of um six um are there any questions or comments just I I love getting rid of the fluff stuff that is totally pointless like the the purpose of this is like we don't need any of that kind of stuff this gos rights to entrance age here you go find yourself somewhere in here this is what we do move on to the next policy I I really appreciated that other questions are comments looks good good by me I know this is technically a first read and if again in the spirit of being uh efficient with time I would also if folks wanted to vote and approve this we could um if folks wanted to wait to next meeting we can do that but seeing that there isn't discussion and all of the feedback from the last meeting is Incorporated in this we could vote and approve it and get it into our materials I hate to say anything because it's 5: after 9: but um so JB is titled in entrance age should it be a more inclusive title on the thing instead it's entrance whether it's kindergarten or high school yeah this is like the into the district com District okay any other questions or comments how about admission ages or something like that entrance age matches what the yeah it just seems it needs to be a little bit entrance age matches what mask has in there like every other school district in Massachusetts has a policy JB titled entrance age okay all right and I was going to say this is an amalgam from a bunch of local districts as well so and they all have the same same title yeah correct I think we can just probably take a vote on it because our discuss really was just making sure that we had one policy can you combine it instead of having two yeah and we've effectively done that so are you making a motion Mr quiny I'm making a motion that approve poliy J entrance age as presented I'll second it all those in favor I thank you Erica that was great not expecting that all right there are no chairperson's notes are there any items not anticipated 4 hours in advance Jo I think this Falls within 48 hours since the holdenwood Run was Sunday morning and this is Tuesday does that make 48 maybe more however I think it was a fantastic thing and I would like to thank all the people who did a tremendous amount of work on setting it up and organizing it and running it and it was just very very well done I got a report from my daughter that she saw the two of you going for a walk on the two c did very well um and we came back too didn't go no you didn't go you came back um all right Communications actually Monday October 7th athletic boosters meeting 7:00 p.m. at the high school Wednesday October 9th 90 minute early release preschool through 12 and professional development for teachers um High School 12:55 Middle School 1245 Laura White Page Hilltop 1:45 Wednesday October 9th is the air Shirley education Foundation meeting at 7: p.m. at the high school Thursday October 9th is the page Hilltop PTO meeting at 700 p.m. at page htop Monday October 14th no school and observance of Columbus Day Wednesday October 16th school committee meeting at 6:30 p.m. the Middle School library and finally Wednesday October 23rd another 90minut early release day same time all right yes Jo Mr chair I'd make a motion that we adjourn at 910 there's no need for executive say before we do that is there any need for executive session there's no need wonderful all right we have a second for that second all right all those in favor all right --------- ##VIDEO ID:B5HkHVa_Zd4## District school committee meeting for October 1st 2024 um those attending tonight's meeting should be aware that the meeting is being audio and video recorded by apaac and asrsd any audience members who wish to record any part of the meeting must inform the chairperson who will announce the recording this is to comply with the mass wiretap statute the listing of matters are those reasonably anticipated by the chair which may be discussed at the meeting not all items listed May in fact be discussed and other items not listed may also be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by law per air Shirley Regional school committee policy public comment is not a discussion debate or dialogue between citizens and the school committee it is a Citizens opportunity to express any an opinion on issues of school committee business citizens will have 3 minutes to express their views any staff members addressing the committee are reminded of their obligations under state and federal student record laws with respect to maintaining the confidentiality of student record information and refraining from disclosing any personal identifying information regarding students with all that said let's uh do the P Lees IED to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all wonderful and Michelle could you lead us in a roll call Mr res here I'm here Mrs Berard here Mr quiny here Mrs here Mr R here M here all right public Comm picture we have any we'll start with the phone and then we can move in person if we have any all right any public comment in the room all right with that we've got our um air Shirley Regional High School student recognition Mr Spencer Christie call thank you so I'm thrilled to have with us tonight Hayden F uh I'd like to just mention what the award summary is um so this is the Massachusetts Association of school superintendent award for academic Excellence uh and it's awarded to high school students who've distinguished themselves in the pursuit of Excellence during their High School career this year we are thrilled to be able to award this to Hayden Fallon uh Hayden's a current senior at air Shirley Regional High School he's not only a standout student in the classroom where he currently ranks number one in his class uh but also on the soccer field in the swimming pool and out on the track uh Hayden also mentors some of our younger students as a AER Mentor uh last year he won the St Michaels book award which recognizes a students academic success and exemplary community service Hayden recently referred to himself as a large golden retriever in an English essay uh which from an outside perspective may seem accurate Hayden is always smiling thank you Hayden right on Q uh and maybe the friendliest student we've had in my seven years at air Shirley and as a triplet in his family this may be his standout trait Hayden is loyal and dependable however one cannot Define Hayden by his friendlyness alone in the classroom Hayden is driven and inquisitive he strives not just for the best grades he can achieve but more for the knowledge he can gain his passion for the acquisition of knowledge is unchallenged and he is sure to make Panther Nation proud when he leaves us at the end of the year congratulations thank you [Music] [Applause] guys have to stay there get go you earned it moms go wherever they please thank you you thank you thank you all [Applause] [Music] right Hayden hold on you don't you don't get off that questions any questions from the no it is speech speech that's you can do it without putting you on the spot let's maybe if there's questions or comments from members of the I actually just wanted to say um I've known you for some time you've you've played sports with my kids and the younger kids and I see you around town and and it was mentioned how friendly and outgoing you are with the kids you are with adults too you're one of the kids that always says hi and has a great wave for me and all the adults but I've really seen you Mentor truly the kids and thank you you said a great example it's just a pleasure to have you in the school thank you any other comments all right well thank you again oh joy sorry down here it's all right shrinking um congratulations it's wonderful to see your whole family here that's fantastic and I think that speaks well for you and your family so welcome and where you going to school uh do you know I don't know yet I'm still looking have fun thank you all right right congratulations yes congratulations again and thank you everyone for coming out and supporting we really appreciate you being here all right that's all we've got now you all right moving from one exemplary high school student to two more we have our student Representatives Miss um Nia Flor Floren qua Floren SW Floren SWAT so close I'll get it next time I promise and Mr Colin Holbrook right oh I'm going toak hi guys long time to see I know um so the first thing I have on my list many list of things to talk about is um I started the college application process um I'm applying to about seven or six schools um two of those being not two sorry like five of them being for early action so November 1st deadline and then two of those being regular decision um I'm intending to major in architecture or um recently I've had a kind of aspiration to maybe also change and major in political science and consider a field in maybe like law or something like that so I'm still trying to decide um which I'm going to major in so um the college application process has been like kind of stressful but you know my mindset has been just like one day at a time and like it's all going to be fine and like one of my things has been like my senior year will be so much more fun once all the application process is over so I'm just trying to get through all of that stuff and so yeah and I'm working on like writing my college essay and all that stuff and like my letters of recommendation and I've been working on that since like my junior year so like I kind of set myself up for my college application process to be really simple going into my senior year um another thing so far into my senior year that I've been working on is doing the Patel top internship um I started started like yesterday it's Tuesday yeah yesterday um I'm working in the library at pageold toop I have the internship two blocks um out of like our 7even block schedule or whatever it is and I'm working in the library with ranges from Like Preschool to fifth graders and like I chose a library because like I wanted to be able to work with all the kids and not just work in like one cl classroom and I also chose a library cuz like when I went to page htop the library was such like a safe space for me going there so I wanted to be able to work with kids at a place that I felt so much com so such comfortable in and make the library such a comfortable place for them and then another thing happening in my senior year is we just finished um elections and I was elected um executive board president and so now being executive board president really working with like the other student councils to do stuff around the school and more for the entire student body and not just like my class alone so like pep Rally's um spirit week and stuff like that which we have we're currently having spirit week right now today was Country Club versus country we had a lot of country today like there was a lot of cowboy boots clocking around the halls it was pretty cool I almost wore my cowboy boots today but um my feet were hurting when I put them on and like that's not going to happen and we had a lot of Country Club as well some cute outfits I have to say um and then tomorrow's Adam Sandler which I definitely will be participating in I get to wear my sweatpants and my sweatshirt and just be comfy and then we have our pep rally on Friday which I think that day is class color and then we have our pep rally and you know I'm hoping for the senior class to pull through and when the pep rally might be a little bit embarrassing if we let the other classes beat us Colin the juniors are not beating us you're really not the seniors we're going to pull through you know we might convince whoever's judging the games to just sway it our way cuz you have to let the graduating class win like it's just no it is I think it's Tradition at this point no no I think it should no I guarantee you we dominated all four years freshman May was just last year class just they won all the time and the class before that always won but you know my class I'm hoping we win we don't have that much Spirit sometimes but I'm hoping you know senior year pull through I've been telling them guys we have to have more Spirit like the younger grade embarrassing us so yeah hopefully we pull through and win the pep you know I'll I'll update you guys next time if we want probably not but hopefully and then the homecoming dances on Saturday which I'm pretty excited about I'm going are you going home I'm going yep homecoming that's exciting you know I think it's like 10:00 not staying the entire time um you know that's a little late for me nowadays you know over the hill yeah so you know I think I I was saying to Mr Christy I'm only going to go till like 8:30 and then you know after that I think me and my friends are like getting food and then I think going to Billards playing pool and you know calling it a night after that you know I went to all the homecomings like the years before all the way till 10: p.m. and I was like so tired after that so I was like my senior year I'll be chill yeah uh speaking of homecoming I'm I'm actually I'm on student council and since it's our junior year I've been like working with them to like make homecoming happen and that's been like it's been pretty fun cuz we got to like choose the theme like kind of choose like what the layout's going to be and everything so that's been pretty fun um and I'm actually I'm just starting to like look at colleges like I didn't even know some of the schools you were going to go to existed so I'll have to look at them it's it's been really fun I've gone on like a couple tours just to the like UMass ones in the area but I haven't like really looked at any out of state ones yet so I'm kind I'm excited to do that um I've also started taking AP courses this year which it's definitely proving the when people say uh junior years your hardest year I believe them now because AP classes are just a different level uh I'm taking AP Lang and AP Physics and I'm also take I'm taking a coding class this year which I found pretty fun I've never done coding before um I'm also soccer is also going on right now along with robotics and the soccer season's going well uh we've been winning a good amount of games not all but and I really like my team we have a good coach so yeah it's been a lot of fun all right I know there's going to be questions Joyce did I see your hand no well um where's the homecoming dance so we can crash it uh it's actually right there right oh good okay easy yeah obviously yeah um what colleges are you applying to or did you apply to you're seven um so I haven't I haven't sent any of my applications in yet will you apply um I'm applying to Howard in Washington DC Hampton in Virginia North Carolina ant um Wentworth Institute of Technology UMass Amherst and Cornell in Columbia yes that's a list um where or how did you decide on architecture I know polysi is also an option but where did architecture come from I think because so one of my favorite games growing up was The Sims uhhuh and like The Sims and like Minecraft and stuff like that so like growing up I've always had like a love for like designing like buildings and stuff like that and I also had like a big love for Legos as a kid so it's been always something that I've like loved so much and like the idea of like be able being able to like create those buildings in real life and design those and see those actually like in real life and be like I designed that is something that I would just like love to see happen in life and have you taken um any have you been I should have the course catalog a little better internalized have you been able to take any drafting or courses like that here or is it still a little bit theoretical in terms of the like what architecture is um it's it's a little bit so theoretical like I think I when I was like up like trying to choose classes like I think I put in there that I wanted to get um what is it called computer aided design I think we have CAD but I wasn't able to get it in my like courses this year and it was something I did want to do and then I also had put in there for um what's that one class there was an engineering class where you like get to make like you do that like project with like the bridge and stuff like that and un the wood and stuff like that and I tried to get that but it didn't fit into my schedule which but it's okay but like it's still something architecture is also still something like theoretical like to yeah okay yeah no that's great and I will say as someone who has a like polyi like as a double major it's easy to add that as a double major you can fill those classes in pretty quickly so keep that you don't have to choose one or the other certainly not right away okay um other question I feel like I could talk to you for like an hour comment I mean um it was an awesome recap I mean we'd love to hear kind of uh your part of I think while you're here is to give us a window of what the student life is like and I mean that was great from both um tons of sounds like just tons of activity this week um I love it it sounds like it's fun it's bringing out school spirit and competitiveness and so um so it's fantastic and thanks to the administration to make sure that they're supporting all this because I I love to see just school is hard right now and especially I have a a daughter who's a junior and she's studying really hard so I I love to hear that there's a lot of fun getting mixed in so sounds like a great week and definitely if you can give us the update when you're here uh next time who wins senior on top win it no yeah we're going to win we got it Colin I have two questions one I think last time we heard from you you were going to work the soccer camps this summer how did that go that was that was good uh it was a lot of fun playing with the little kids cuz some of them just really like they don't really know how to play soccer they never touch a soccer ball before they met you right they kind of they kind of run around and you're just like good job so yeah I just like I like working with kids sometimes they're fun it's great and in terms of your college application process so you're like I didn't even know these schools existed yeah um where does a junior in high school in the year 2024 start in terms of like exploring colleges right like when I was a kid you went like there was one website you could go to like we had the internet but like you had one site you could go to but like what do you do now um I just start I like look stuff up like look stuff up on Google pretty much see and then like I'll just like look up like list of colleges and I'll like look and I'll click the link it'll show you like their campus and so what are some of the things you said like you go to Google are you like best party schools New England like what are you typing in uh no I'm like into engineering so I've been like searching up like in New England and Massachusetts cuz I kind of want to stay in state I don't know if I want to go very far so I've been looking up like engineering ones and I T you little you m yeah amazing all right well oh Jim um you signed up for a lot of early action was do you have a a a score sheet when you uh when you get your notifications from the universities that you know you could decide exactly what's going to happen but you know some of a lot of the schools will have political science programs and some of them may or may not have stronger architectural programs how will I mean cost is certainly a big part of it what what they're going to give you at any of the schools but um what do you think will be the strongest thing that will that will make a school get in your good graces and be able to win your heart and uh give them a credit well so I already have my heart set on one school you do yeah um Howard is like my school like I'm set on that school so much so like obiously I'm giving my other schools like a chance I'm AC like I'm already into Howard but like I'm obviously giving those other schools a chance but like I think it's definitely like obviously like ones like financial aid and stuff like that and like also like looking at obviously like the program like what it has an offering but also like the other stuff that the school offers like clubs and and stuff like that and also like one thing that's really important to me is like dorming and stuff like that I want you're like dorms or like because I don't want this is so bad I don't want like an ugly dorm like one of my schools like I literally said I was like who was the architecture architect on like standby when they designed this dorm because it was really ugly and I was like I can't have an ugly dorm because like mine's going to be cute and aesthetic so I was like that's one major factor and also like food like at the school it's good food so like I haven't toured all my schools but like I told my mom that I like need to go Tour all my schools so I need to try their dining holes cuz that's really something important to me so I was like that's why like I still hav the inventor D am get and they're number one and I'm like I need to go and try their food I'm a major foodie so like food I think that's like the lead thing like food might be like my deciding factor on these schools which is kind of bad do not go anywhere near Auburn or Vermont food is on your list stay away from both of those places um okay so when you went did you go to North Carolina a& I haven't gone yet okay report back on that one okay the next thing is is you need to once you've eaten at those places check your stomach the next thing I'm going to say there's a lot of preservatives true so you need to pay attention that's where you get your Freshman 15 just letting you know um also um one of the things that I was going to say is Colin as you're looking um for colleges some of the other things that you can look at one MIT currently has internships now while you're in high school so you can look at them linkoln ABS that'll be very helpful cuz you could kind of get your feet wet a little bit and then of course they have connections with schools UMass L is awesome a lot of um Engineers that work at UH miter and at Lincoln Labs go back for their secondary degrees and certifications at um W um and also uh looking at the structure of the schools what is the curriculum kind of look like and it used to be rate my professor.com but it might be something else there's there's a popular College websites look into those look into the majors that you want to be in and you'll start to see the profiles on the different professors that you guys could potentially have um so that you can kind of create a good balance a balance between if you know you're a strong writer you might want to load up one semester with writing versus one where you're going to have more testing and then considering the time of year if you know you do better sitting inside then maybe you want to do more writing when it's a heavy winter season so thinking about those Concepts now knowing your skill sets now is going to help you um because more than half the battle often times is once you're in that environment you kind of forget all the normal things because you no longer have that structure there so figuring out what your Norms are now is going to help you succeed when you get there um but I'm I'm really glad to hear about both Rihanna did wear her cowgir boots and she was very upset you did not have them on cuz you know her feet hurt all day um but that's okay and Colin she said she was going to make sure that she screamed as loud as she could because she purposefully wanted to beat the senior class so you got your hands full you know I'm going to text but thank you guys so much um thank you the last thing I'll just offer um when you're thinking about colleges it has been a long time since folks in my network have attended those schools but if you want to talk to alumni for Columbia Cornell or Howard I'm happy to connect you with folks have Dr or um principal Christie pass my email along I'm happy to make connections if you want to like do a virtual coffee chat more than happy and you can also ignore and say like no I don't want to talk to someone who went to those schools 20 years ago those does were all cinder blocks and they're eating tater tots like that's not the experience that there is today so the invitation is there if you want it feel free to pass I won't be offended I'll definitely reach okay great thank you you thank you thank you hold on all right we are moving along Mr chair yeah we if we may go out of order um AB we have Mr Kendall here uh to talk about two things one is the approval of the wrestling call with North M sex but we also have something un anticip uh not reasonably anticipated um within 48 hours and that is the school committee's uh approval or not of the annual cross country camping trip in Twilight Invitational at cap cloud grounds wonderful okay so that is 7A great 7A and one that is not actually on the agenda all right welcome how's everybody doing before I get started with the thing about North sex and the in the co-op I just wanted to talk about the beginning of fall Sports which has been outstanding uh but in particular uh our e sports program with Chris is involved with and Amy Doyle uh has gotten off to a great start for 25 is that great uh yeah and today three out of five CH players won their first matches and the fornite team won their first High School match yesterday so it's been a great start every wi was a shut out we've had so far great maybe hous in this room eventually still working on getting that up with all the equipment that's coming in uh but thanks to ASF for uh completely basically completely funding that program so it's got off to a great start um and the volleyball match is going well there it's one set to one I saw many of you up there checking it out before so uh today what we're here to do is uh we had a bunch of kids come to us uh come to me specifically and and ask about the possibility of joining up another school for wrestling it's going somewhere between four and six kids none of whom already participate in Winter sport uh North Middle sex is in a position where they are in need of additional kids wrestling as a sport pretty much need about 20 to 30 kids that really have any type of success because so many of them are in the same we classes um so they I approach Ryan dear the athletic director of assistant principal of North Middle sex and they are going to present to the league proposal to allow us to join them uh obviously we would like your approval for that as well before we proceed much further with it uh the other one I just found out today and it may not become official for another month but I want to give you guys a heads up that gr dunable has invited us to join their gymnastics program which would affect probably one or two kids at most here um and again kids that don't already participate went to sports would not impact anybody else that might be a few weeks away but that's probably coming down the plank as well questions anything that gives kids an opportunity because especially now where um kids early on get into a track for a sport you know you used to have three sport athletes and all that sort of thing and you could s of predict what was going to happen but now a lot of kids you track into one sport and play to state with that all the way through and and the job you've done the opportunity that we've had to join other districts allows them to stay with their friends in school and pursue their athletic Endeavors as well so anytime you have the opportunity to do this I'm definitely in favor of it I'm assuming there's transport what we going to say oh no I was just we do need a vote for that but but I don't want to interrupt the questions so my one question was going to be and I was going to I was looking towards bill but um the I'm assuming we need a bus transportation or with most co-ops yeah we do with II and swimming uh students are responsible for their own transportations parents or students many of them are seniors yeah uh would either carpool when we across with broad dpool we had a nice pairing car pool in the days in the days the mini bus was available I would drive them over yeah okay um so that would probably continue with this as well the nice thing is North Middle sex is about 12 minutes away so it's not not a bad R okay great so if I did have to use a mini bus it would be a possibility certainly it's available a little bit more in the winter than in the fall or the spring Jo uh I would make a motion to approve the wrestling co-op with North Middle sex Regional High School as presented by uh Mr Kindle tonight I second great any further questions or comments all right all those in favor I I any abstaining okay great all right the second item is the uh overnight field trip uh for the Twilight uh Invitational cross country event which they've been it's been they've been going through this as long as I've been here and I know before that uh at sham Crow State Forest and sandwich uh would be approximately 14 students with a minimum of three chaperons there's going to be many parents that go as well but both coaches would be attending along with uh Mrs Kendall would be the female chaperon I'm also planning on going down at least for the race I might stay tonight we'll see we'll see we'll see what the temperature is whether I C or not um but they do that that's coming up on um October 12th um so they'll be using the mini bus so the the the cost is minimal basically it's $25 to pay for the campground I that's really the cost and then District would pick up the gas fee of $35 or whatever it might be okay great any questions on that all right I make make a motion that we approve the request for the field trip out of state for us is it out of state not out of overnight excuse me uh because it's still in state Sandwich Mass is kind of still part of the state I think um on um o October 12th for the um annual cross country camping trip and Twilight Invitational at Cape Cod Fairgrounds second all right all those in favor I I all right thank you back for another one we're going in that Tucket and basketball in January or February so we're trying to figure out if we can pull that one off in a day but I don't think it's going to happen Mr K sorry Mr chairman maybe he would like maybe he could comment on the donation for the boys basketball team from the Basketball Academy yes we're going to have that coming up to approve but it' be nice to hear Mr so R Patrick Bo basketball coach runs the elevation basketball Camp he does it at multiple schools throughout the area uh but because he's when he does it here uh he donates all the proceeds back to the programs and this year the girls team also helped out so uh they basically split it but based on how many kids participated both as volunteers but also as registrations uh so some of that money will help pay for funding n Tucka trip because that was part of the deal I made with with Coach kill Patrick was if you want to go to n Tucket we're going to have to help fund it because it's not going to be a cheap trip right certainly um so that's where that they run the camp up here every summer Rick's been running it every year this year the girls help for the first time and it's a nice thing that he does he puts a lot of time in to that camp and it's helped by warm-ups and things things that we don't need but the kids always like to have so it's been nice so the kids haven't had to put any money out of their pocket for shooting jerseys or sweatshirts or warmups or anything like that since he's been here so it's been a nice addition to our program it's always is appreciated and it's a great I mean it's also great for the participants as someone who has a third grader who was in it it was great one more thing as the fall Sports been doing outstanding uh I mean right now four of our five teams are ranked in the top 16 in the State uh only football's just outside of 21 so our volleyball team's on the verge of qualifying for the state tournament for the first time in five years and boys and girls soccer are both pretty high up in the ratings and doing a great job in our numbers and boys and girls soccer cross country and volleyball are all up we end up not even using the call up with Littleton that you guys approved cuz we didn't need it um we had 24 girls trial for volleyball probably could add more if we wanted to bring our mle scorers in um but it's been a it's been a great fall so far and the weather's cooperated now we just get the mosquitoes to cooperate kind an early Frost would be say one real cold night and you'll be good yeah that's all we need thank you very much all right thank you thank you than for stopping in appreciate it all right what we're going to do is we're going to move back to item six on the agenda the consent agenda we have minutes for release as well as approving the donation from elevation Basketball Academy and uh four warrants and I would entertain a motion to approve those uh make a motion that we approve tonight's consent agenda as listed in the agenda I'll second all right all those in favor of approving the cons consent agenda as listed I I all right wonderful all right moving down towards new business we have completed 7A so moving towards um the mcast accountability presentation sure we just get it up here wonderful it's coming yeah good enough it's good enough and I think folks and it's on the drive you have the hand up perfect we'll warm up yeah we'll get there eventually um so annually we've done this presentation to highlight um mcast performance uh over the you know over the previous year over the 2024 or 2023 2024 school year um so over time we have taken this presentation and kind of condensed it a little bit to make it a little bit easier for folks here and the viewing audience that Me by tuning in to here there's obviously more information that's behind all of this but we try to provide a 10,000 ft view because you're going to beist listening to the principles over the next two series of meetings uh talk about their school Improvement plans which are derived in some part based on the information that's provided in this state assessment um so just to refresh people um we've started with a slide like this in the past is kind of the what was new um in 2024 and realistically there was nothing new um it was essentially the same assessment as was administered in 2023 it was the Next Generation test which is means that it's all computer-based testing for all of our kids grades 3 through 10 um there are accountability reports that are a little bit more detailed this year than they had been in years past uh because last year was missing the lowest performing students as part of that uh accountability process for the students in the high school but that has since been remedied and this was largely as a result of Co the calculation formula for accountability is determined by waiting the performance from the previous years so the ratings that we received this year are determined based on 40% of the waiting is from 2023 is performance and 60% of the rating is from um 2024's performance and that information contains all of the information in the accountability reports including performance towards indicator targets which I'll get into a little bit more and progress ratings on those um one thing that is different is the notion of an educational proficiency plan if you recall during Co there was an order from the State Board of Education to raise the minimum score for students which didn't make a lot of sense at the time um to raise the minimum score that students would have to earn on the 10th grade mcast in order to be considered to have met the competency determination for graduation so this is the first year that that has gone into place uh and the scores have gone from the minimum score that students had to earn previously was a 455 scaled score in ela now it's 470 for math it was a 469 now it's 470 so that's consistent so students who earn a 470 up to a 486 those students would qualify for an educational proficiency plan which basically means that the school has to monitor their progress and make sure that they meet the standards of 10th grade during their span of time that they're here in high school for the next two years these are 10th grade students who participate in the test and so on for students who are in a 486 or higher which is still technically in a needs Improvement category those students would be considered to have met the competency determination so that is something that is different from previous years so as we've shared in the past we take kind of an aggregate view of the performance of uh in each of the main uh test areas so this is English language arts for 2024 I show you on longitudinal information that goes back to 2019 showing you performance seeing that it's kind of ebbing and flowing um ultimately our performance in ela is consistent with the state performance um across the State um specifically cuz for the most part in the state Ela performance was down as you can see the trend the dash line that's on that Craft um and that was cutting across all of the grades um when we pull ours apart a little bit it's not shown in this picture or this image but our performance in grades 3 8 and 10 were up um our performances in grades four five and six were down and our performance in grade seven was reasonably flat so when you take all of that information into account we're still above state average uh the performance is slightly down if we look at our math performance our math performance is again consistent with the state uh in terms of reflecting changes minimal changes between last year to this year in terms of overall performance um and we had shared a few years ago we were talking about that recovery out of covid so that little dot the drop in 2021 and then kind of coming back obviously we're looking to move a little bit more northeasterly and that's the work that we're doing um and we're seeing some of that trajectory in specifically in grades three and five um and we're down a little bit in grades four 6 and 8 uh and we're reasonably flat in grades seven and 10 so there's I'll get to a little bit more about like what we're doing with this information but again high level overview uh Science and Tech you'll see the performance is up um this and I expected that there might be a question that maybe would come up like anything surprise you in the data and this is one that legitimately when look at I was like huh we didn't really spend a lot of time or energy focusing on science Technology and Engineering in terms of um major curriculum changes major changes to teaching methodology or anything in the grades and performance is improved so we got to unpack this one a little bit more um but in general across the state the state was up in grades 5 and 10 we were up in all three uh in grades 5 8 and 10 this test is only administered in three grades now I had mentioned before that accountability is a big part of this again and so to remind folks how accountability is determined I included a slide from the state um and there are two components of accountability one is a normative component which is that referred to as an accountability percentile which basically means they look at all the scores and they list all the performances of all the schools in the state in order from the highest performing to the lowest performing and they assign you a relative score that's your accountability percentile the other piece is your criteria referenced component which is your Performance Based on targets and targets are based on a number of categories here shown on this slide in section two which talks about achievement in each of the disciplines Ela Math and Science growth in ela Math and Science and if you're in the high school it focuses on um Advanced coursework completion graduation rates Dropout rates re-engagement rates fiveyear cohort graduation rate four-year cohort graduation rate a whole slew of things so there's lots of pieces that that contribute to an accountability and then those two pieces are kind of lumped together to make a determination about how you're doing so I included a summary of our accountability over time and our overall accountability score so this is the accountability percentile ranking this is not the Criterion reference piece but this is the percentile ranking so each of our schools in the percentile ranking are above 50 so 50th percentile is that middle range so this is the first time in the time that certainly I've been here in 7 years when we look at accountability that we have all of our schools that are in the 50th percentile are higher so that puts us kind of right in the smack dab middle of the state in terms of overall performance there's not a calculation for district accountability that ranks districts uh in terms of their relative performance when you unpack this a little bit more and you look at the schools remember I said there were two parts of accountability there's one this ranking and the other one is Criterion reference so I'm going to go back to that slide before and I have a little circle around one of the pieces there that you may not be able to read but it talks about your progress towards targets so each of our schools is rated based on their performance towards the targets that are set by the state the state sets these targets each year after students perform and the expectation is that schools are going to make a trajectory move towards meeting their targets so across all of our schools our schools either fell into the moderate progress towards targets or substantial progress towards targets which put us again right in the middle the pack with everyone else so what we noticed overall I had mentioned before are above this the first time we've been above all schools have been above 50th percentile uh the student growth percentile was typical growth it was categorized as typical growth in the lower end but it's typical growth which is what we're looking for we're still noticing that we have some proficiency gaps some growth gaps that still exist in our some of our groups High needs population our students with disabilities our low income and our multilingual learn ERS um and achievement Levels by and large you saw the graphical representations by and large achievement levels are flat when you look at the aggregate when you look at individual grades it changes when you look at individual groups it changes and that's why I have some relative strengths and relative weaknesses so some of the strengths um Ela achievement and growth at the high school was a strength and we'll go into this a little bit more there's math Improvement across all of the grades I know that when you look in the aggregate it looks like we didn't have a lot of change but there was a lot of work that we've been doing in math we've making some progress there we had significant Improvement in science Technology and Engineering chronic absenteeism was a focus uh across the district in other words to try to focus on making sure that students are coming to school uh and that made an impact on our student performance so almost all of our schools met their targets on chronic absenteeism uh and so that was a big thing that we were looking for we had typical growth which I mentioned uh a lowest performing students which is the category that the state uses because they measure accountability based on all of your students and then your lowest performing students and those are lumped together so our kids that are considered our lowest performing that's our bottom 25% of students we had pretty significant gains in that group across the board Dropout and graduation rates um were significantly improved and advanced coursework completion because we've added a lot of Project Lead the Way courses as part of our partnership that has increased the participation of students in advanced cours work and that process began in the high school and has now been spreading slowly uh into our younger grades so we have Project Lead the Way courses that are now happening in K through 5 6 through 8 and now 9 to 12 so it's kind of cool uh relative weaknesses our our Ela achievement these are kind of global pieces Ela achievement from grades 3 through eight we had mentioned last year we talked about the implementation of new literacy programs uh in both our K to 5 and our 6 to 8 our K to 5 our Focus was on the science of read the impact of that is going to be felt over time for sure so we're taking the Long View similarly the work that we're doing for math we're expecting the Long View changes as well to kind of build up our stamina for our kiddos and that's where the focus has been um our multilingual Learners their proficiency we're looking to kind of improve their proficiency levels we've had an increase in our multilingual population over the past couple of years uh and so that has placed some challenges upon the The Strain upon in the system and we've been working on that and making some significant gains in that so we expect some improvement there um writing has been so when we look at like specific areas of focus in terms of from a curriculum or instruction standpoint we look at things that are the biggest bang for their buck so when we look at the results from mcast we see that writing is an area where we can improve and that has been a focus uh math fluency tends to be one that comes up and we actually have a fluency plan in place to address a number of these issues that are here so in terms of some of our next steps which I've highlighted and I give you a laundry list here um but I'll just mention a couple um we're going to do some additional analysis this information will be shared with the staff of course they'll unpack more of the information to determine as staff now are currently doing their own goals based on some of this data schools are developing their school Improvement plans administrators are developing their goals and a lot of the professional development work that we coordinate is done over the summer with advanced notice of this information so that plays in part with all of this we're obviously going to continue our focus with our district goals um with the tiered system of social emotional support has been a big focus with our structures continuing with co- teing and continuing the focus on Equity because improving our student sense of belonging and fostering that in our schools and making sure that we're focused on effective instruction that's aligned with grade level is going to raise is the rising tide that raises all boats um goal areas in the school Improvement plan I already mentioned professional learning um we already are partnered with two different groups the hill for literacy uh which we've work on working with our curriculum implementation process so they're meeting with teachers at all grades K to8 uh in terms of literacy instruction and implementation of the new reading program uh in addition we've been working with Alis and Melo for math professional development and coaching and we're expanding that into the high school as well um professional learning I had shared there at the bottom as well in terms of coaching but the biggest piece on this is making sure the teachers are working together uh and focusing on some of this data and improving the performances that we have of us of our students body I wanted to highlight just a piece from the chronically absent this is from the state data I didn't pull out our own data at least not yet for this presentation um is the state data shows kind of this correlation between chronically absent performance versus those who are not chronically absent and if you notice if you're comparing the left side of this performance the chronically absent in 2024 average scaled score the difference for those that are chronically absent they're performing for 14 points or 18 points Less in ela 16 and 19 points less uh in mathematics and if you look at percentage of students who are categorized as meeting or exceeding expectations that number drops by even more 20 to 25 uh per. pretty significant so the simple response to that is as a school as a school district we obviously want to make sure that our kids are coming to school for parents who are watching this out there please encourage your kiddos to go to school and make sure that they're coming to school every day cuz it makes a differ difference for us for sure um and one just piece that we wanted to throw in there uh air Shirley Regional High School was named based on their performance this year was named a school of recognition so they were one of 57 schools in the state uh who were received this recognition only 20 of whom are high schools um and that's out of 1827 schools Statewide so the list of students or schools that are identified as a school of recognition is pretty short and pretty exclusive what this basically is the Desi recognizes uh schools that have met or exceeded their targets so as you recall from the accountability piece and Mr chrisy will refer to this a little bit in the school Improvement plan um is that the performance on each of those categories the high school met or exceeded all of their growth Targets in every category so which is pretty significant uh for you know looking at this in terms of performance a lot of hard work led to that a lot of processes systems had to be put in place to make that happen and dese recognized it as well so that being said I'll take any questions I've got you know I can talk about this for days so I'll let others jump in no you can go first all right um so the first is more of a comment and it's partially because I see uh Dr paky here we talk about chronic absenteeism and and a chronis will be a I'll get to the point very quickly um and you know I was at the open house at laor White we heard the the shiel on chronic absenteeism to parents we want our kids in school we I agree I know I had a daughter last year who I had a hard time getting to school because she was physically ill she was also very stressed and those two were very correlated mhm I know this year there are little things that I see teachers in her seventh grade school doing that are making tremendous difference she got a card from Dr paky it had a very very short note like note on it and she literally yelped with Glee like she is engaged this year in a way that she hasn't been in several years and like we talk about that communication whether it's from Educators to families but I think Educators to students like those moments matter and I think that's how you get kids to show up to school it's how you keep them healthy because they are not bringing that sort of emotional stress of what is difficult environment yeah like those things matter so just a thank you to you and I think that is a big part of the types of things that will help us get kids to school um I think the second this is a question you know I think mcast data you know it can be fuzzy right like and where lines get drawn between different performance bands like it's not throwing a dart but sometimes it's not far from that um and you know where those lines get drawn make a big difference in these numbers I guess one of the questions I have is when you look at the trends from the mcast data M how well do they match what you you know it's like we have curriculum they come with curriculum bet assessments we have other benchmarks like we have other data information and so are the things that mcast is telling us matching what we expect in terms of priorities and so that's my first question I may have follows depending on if you're like yeah this is what we would expect in terms of fluency and math writing and literacy so to some extent yes um a lot of our assessments that we administer in terms of like a on a benchmark basis are aligned their their diagnostic assessments by and large so they're not completely aligned to the standards which is part of the reason why we want to make sure that our assessments that we use from teachers so teacher created assessments we want to make sure that they are more aligned with the standards so that we can get a better predictor of how students are going to perform give them more opportunities so we've none of this from an Ela or math standpoint was a surprise yeah um and so when we look at the information we're collecting this information all along and looking at student progress and performance and then we're making adjustments to our professional learning structure what coaching we provide what instructional support we provide to kiddos what interventions we provide to kids and then we continue to try to help support their growth against the standard yeah okay great yeah and that was what glad that's what you're saying that like again that it's not because I would worry if we are like seeing mcast data and like knee-jerk or switching because I you know again we've put a lot of really good things in place in terms of materials in terms of right like and so making sure we're not um again there's a place for mcast data but it is there's this Moment In Time versus the like agreed there's a tendency um for school systems and schools to like overreact to the results that come out from mcast and it's one assessment on one day it happens to be important because a lot of things are driven I'm not minimizing the importance of that but I think the reality is is that there are a lot of variables that go into that day so we're looking at to see okay the kids in May this is how they performed you know there's still a whole other month or two of instruction that happens after the assessments are administered so there's still a lot more that can be learned and can be done so when we take this information sure do we look at the overall and say yeah we wish that would be a little bit better sure we do absolutely but in terms of using this as an informational tool we look at the information that comes out of the item analysis from a curriculum standpoint and alignment with standards that's what we tend to focus on we tend to focus Less on overall performance like we want to look at growth performance cuz that tells us how well we're instructing yeah and if kids are making the gains that we want them to make and that's what we use as kind of a driver for us those are the two that we really pay attention to k um probably would be better St to answer but you give us a Global Perspective we made a lot of changes in um curriculum and and practices in early literacy programs and how is how was that worked on uh on Startup I know when you do a lot of work to find you know what program you think is going to work the best but in a lot of cases anytime you change curriculum people don't like change no you know we're used to doing this I got all the stuff set up I got my lessons plan this now we're going to different B how has the change to what we're doing now been received by the uh early early age teachers um much more positively than what we were doing before um so what we've seen so linking what Chris had asked before about assessment information there are other assessments that we administer to students to kind of monitor progress and see where they stand especially in early literacy and so we've been administering those assessments over the past couple of years when we've made some of these changes and I haven't presented a lot of that information here because it's a lot of it's a lot of data and I don't want to bore people um but the short of it is what we've noticed is that our percentage of students kind of reading at grade level and mastering early literacy skills in the younger grades has been steadily improving over the past 3 to four years and that can be reflected as I said to you before when I went back to the ELA performance and I know it doesn't you can't see it here but when I said that grade three was above like that's a reflection of the work that we have done and so those students that group is now going to be in fourth grade and heading into fifth grade and so on with a stronger Foundation than we've had in the past so long answer to a short question we do we did expect a dip as far as mcast goes in the LA for 3 through eight because of the change in curriculum and that's pretty common the first year in a when when you change your curriculum yeah I'll be curious to hear what the uh what the teachers reactions are because it's it's tough because initially always some it's like we're changing course and some other people are like we changing course nay and and eventually you get to a point where you go like is everybody realize that this actually has some legs to it you know some things I like some like in anything there's some things I like some things I don't like but you know what we feel okay with what we're moving forward with now because I mean teaching something if you're not behind it it's a it's a hard thing to do because you have to motivate the kids to do it yeah and I'm sure we'll get more in depth analysis from Bonnie which you get up there yeah I think if you remember when we had approached um you all about approving the adoption of literacy curriculum we had referenced that there I had a slide that had the names of 40 teachers I think on it for grades 2 through eight and that was a huge I brought in kind of like here's the the big group of what we can pick from and then we distilled that to what would be most aligned and then ultimately it really came down to what the teachers felt like was going to be the best match for them and their kids so they were behind this from the get-go which that investment is really helpful now of course that's you know sometimes you have a little bit of buyer remorse anytime you do anything new and so there are pieces of that that you're like yes I really like this but wow there's a lot to it and so that takes some time so people are starting to get their legs under them with the new curriculum that we're using so I'm expecting to see continued growth and we have seen that um for sure and then with math it's been very similar the curriculum adoption took place a while ago but there wasn't it was a lot of um programmatic teaching shall we say and we don't teach programs we teach kids and we teach curricular standards and so ultimately we wanted to make sure that teachers were comfortable with understanding the math because most of our folks haven't been taught the math in the way that math is taught now they didn't learn it that way and so increasing that capacity for our staff was a huge thing and they are 100% in on it right now um in terms of like when we have days where Allison is coming people are like can I please sign up I need to see her I need this question we had 20 as an example we offered a math workshop class this summer um and we ran it as a it's a graduate course we had 20 there were 30 slots available we had 25 teachers sign up from our district or five others that came from other districts so like the dedicated three days in the summer in the middle of August and they're going to do a Saturday in October to kind of learn about a methodology to implement curriculum and then it's they going to spread to other folks so it's exciting like where we are is exciting I know when you look at the data you're like yeah it I'm telling you it's exciting well I want to just jump in and and give Charlie a lot of credit because he won't take any um he did a masterful job of curating the choices or the science-based choices um for the new reading curriculum and then Rel linished control and let the teachers pick the program they were all good choices we went through those I had one that was a favorite being a former elementary teacher and principal it wasn't the program that they chose and that's fine I'm not teaching it right um so he did a masterful job of re giving the control to the teachers to pick that and I think a lot of the buyin and in the fact that um people are signing up for these courses is because of that and the other part of it that we we haven't talked about before is teachers were asking for a change in our professional development for math um and Charlie listened and and knew had worked with uh Allison in the past and brought her in and I have to tell you the one of the first thing some teachers met with me about was math PD when I first started um and I can't tell you the the positive response that I'm getting um when math PD for the Elementary in Middle School comes up and and Alison me M's name is is often um assigned to that so that both of those things has has Charlie's fingerprints all over it thanks um so one thing only because we happen to be on the subject of math so just so that you guys can see the correlation down so Rihanna's also in the um elementary school internship and she is a part of the children that may have like problems um with like uh within the classroom with their class work so she's on her second day she's doing math I think she said she had a third grader so the third grader that had math that she was assisting had a similar issue that she had Rihanna can do mental math very well she struggles with writing on the page um and when she came here the time that she was in I think it was third grade is when I transitioned her um she had a very difficult time up until 6th grade trying to figure out how to put it down on the paper because of the new things that the teachers are learning it gives the kids the space now to where he said I I can't write it down I don't I don't understand how to write it down but I'll try and I said okay so she was looking and she kind of figured out a pattern But the teacher came over and gave him enough space to say okay well that's that's enough like you did what I asked you to do but I understand where you're coming from which then instead of him being reluctant to finish the rest of his paper Rihanna said okay well let's do the rest of the paper she didn't have to assist him in doing it because typically his struggle was you know he he didn't want to do it cuz he knew he was going to have to try and struggle through the rest um so seeing teachers now with these kids you know however many I mean she's a junior in high school be able to get children the space to complete math the way that they know how I think has been the best thing and she said he did get a 100 he was really excited he got he was really happy and then it helped her kind of reflect back like as a student hey that something I wish happened to me but I'm glad this kid got it so I think that clearly there is something working for that because kids are far less apprehensive when it comes um to math and to be able to have that space so it makes complete sense what you're saying and as far as chronic absenteeism like another thing that plays into it which you actually touched on Chris is um from the mental health standpoint so I work at impatient Psych facilities we have children um at one of them we have children and Adolescence at all three um we actually close down the children's units in the summer because there's there's no kids unless there's like a super emergent traumatic event as soon as school starts up we're full and a lot of the times what happens is is it Stress Management which is different from anxiety Stress Management is one of the hugest things and um one of the first groups that they have in an in inpatient acute setting um focuses on communication and exactly what Chris said is the first thing that we actually engage in with the kids they want to know whomever is their leader whomever is in control of their day actually takes out the time to see them or hear them or at least acknowledge them it is amazing the kid that come in on admission the day before who are terrified and probably been traumatized in the ER because they've been sitting there 3 or 4 days with adults because they don't have a kids section and then kind of unpacking through the day and then trying to figure out what their day is going to look like for the next 3 days that is the hugest thing to hear is the level of decompression and ability kids like have to just even take in information is that little sense of belonging or at least being seen even if it's a moment and physically having other things like paper it being in writing because it's something for them to look at um so the level of mindfulness that we have here in the school district is is pretty awesome and I think definitely contributes to um chronic absenteeism or the the lack thereof right the decrease of it sure um the other part is and I don't know I'm probably gonna somebody might you know be upset with me but I don't care um I don't um as much as I love the the mcast as much as I like you know scoring and all that what correlations I see as far as how our kids Thrive when they leave here is more important to me than this and the reason that I say that is right now in the workplace and space that I am at I'm in a leadership role in multiple um um um facilities and one of the largest things that I'm seeing is a massive disconnect between even secondary education and the workplace because there is a gap between teaching skills um for navigating life functionalities things that happen in the workplace a lot of times what I'm seeing is people are being taught to a curriculum and expecting when they come into the workplace the curriculum is going to be the same thing and we all know that's the that's not the case right so it's the life skills um accompanied with the education that's huge for me some people may not like that I don't care it's still true because in the sense like I just said if the kid can't function in their environment they're not going to be able to receive the information so yes they need the skills yes we need to build it yes that is important I'm not taking that away but what I like to see is when I see kids coming back and they're showing me how they're progressing and they're reacting to the world because they're what CEOs of flin 500 companies something suddenly happens and they're no longer that how are they going to function in the rest of the world how are we setting them up so that as life changes and happens they're able to do what they you know they can so I love seeing this and I think it's great and I do see the like the the way that you put it together very well um but I have to say one of the hugest things like for example a majority of the kids that come here and it's not just the ones that we have here that are a particular type right um or fit into a particular group are giving back to the kids behind them whether they're very silent students that don't really talk that much or talkative ones we have a huge system of students that are turning around and making sure that the younger Generations are doing better so quite frankly if we have that level of caregiving now we're going to reap the benefits of that when they're older so that's all I'll say about that even though it may be an unpopular opinion um thank I was looking Jo I can tell if your face was going to be a respons just listening all right I know we have thank you I know we have a full agenda M and we're getting later in the evening I'm going to ask just like one sorry last question um I Chris I know you'd have this conversation all day I know one one of these days I'll just set up a meeting do talk mcast um the fourth and sixth grade data seems wild like I look at third grade and they're you know 10 points 13 points above the district in you know or above the state fourth grade now they're you know Five Points Below in both subjects fifth grade they jump back up sixth grade there's a you know again five six point drop in like that like seesaw between those grades but then when I look back to last year's it's not like that those cohorts were lower performing the year before mhm and so it felt like last year there was a lot of cons like it was more consistent the Gap to the state across grades and this year it's like we have these huge G like places where we're head and places where we've gone behind and I can't make any meaning of it like I I'm curious if you have or if it's like if that's as big a mystery for you all too it's I haven't made a huge um I haven't unpacked it completely yet okay um and that's I think some of the work that the teachers have to do okay CU they know the kids they know what it is that they taught and like I said before when you implement a new curriculum you're going to see you know different traction along the way okay and you know by the time people get their stride it takes a little bit longer I'm not going to chalk it all up to that I think that there's more to it than that for sure um but I think what we're looking for is we're looking for kind of steady increase totally but as you say the road to success is never linear it's always kind of bouncing around um and so that's why I look at kind of overall you know there were pretty significant changes that I appreciated we saw a lot of growth like that's where you look at like achievement scores and different grade levels yeah and I don't put a lot of stock in that I'm looking at more growth to help me understand if we're actually meeting where our targets really are yeah um four and six are historically not uncommon in terms of uh the challenges that happen in those grade levels because if you remember way back when mcast was this is before nclb there were only three grades that mcast really mattered four seven and 10 yeah so those grade levels tend to be the ones where the test seems to be a little bit different than the other ones the other ones kind of added in yeah third grade from a reading standpoint the expectations on that test are slightly different from those expectations in grades four five and six six in our district is a transition Year from elementary school to a middle school so it's a little bit different and so we typically do see a bit of a decline in sixth grade when kids move from 5 to 6 yeah so it's I don't have a clean explanation to give you but it's where those are pieces that we have to unpack a little bit more it may be interesting over the course of this year to look at those particular cohorts so last year's fourth graders and fifth grade now seventh grade now and like what are we seeing what are we like yeah learning about what's happening in those grades in particular and again lots of things that we can Chu up to lots of different things but if there's things that we can look at over the course of the year that would be really those would be two grades that I think would be helpful for this group to have a line of sight into um yeah Mr Christy whatever you did in grade 10 Ela just blank check to keep doing it thanks anything else on mcast I'm trying to watch the clock and not doing a great job you're good all right um we don't need to do anything no vote there but let's move on to the school Improvement plan uh for Paige Hilltop thank you do have I do have good news both principles promised that they would keep it to exactly 10 minutes or less that was my not so subtle way of a reminder I'm going to be up here as little as possible um good evening thank you for having me today um so I want to just start by saying I've spent the last few weeks reviewing a lot of data um obviously mcast data being one of them I've been really diving into my attendance data um Behavior data and Benchmark so those are all going to be things to impact my school Improvement plan and my conversation with you tonight but I'm going to start with celebrations um so some of the things that we have to celebrate um reflected in and I I want to say thank you to Charlie cuz you really set me up great for my presentation thank you um the science achievement I was so thrilled that we met and exceeded our Target in that when I tell you that that is a difficult test and it's fifth grade is the first time those children you know have that test I see a lot of Hope in that because not only were they able to read and understand the content of what they were being asked but then also give the answer so to me that was I I that was a nice glimmer that I saw there um in my school the Cod teaching model that's being used at all grade levels um and we ref finding it weekly so when I first came on board it was still summertime and um one of the things I kind of took under my belt is all right I have to make sure that all of these special education teachers are able to push into classrooms for the amount of inclusion minutes that those children have in their IEPs also pull students out for the amount of minutes that they have in their IEPs for pull out um that was a big Challenge and what ended up happening at the start of the school year probably 2 weeks before school we ended up getting a very high number of students coming in on IEPs with a lot of demands in those IEPs so um every single week I want to give my Special Education team credit um all of the teachers they are looking at those IEPs every single week they're looking at their schedules they're tweaking it there hasn't been a week that's gone by since we've been in school where they has somebody hasn't come to me saying I had to change this cuz I really need to see this kid I really need to meet there and I it's really important to I'm not losing I'm I'm losing sleep at night cuz I'm not seeing this kid enough I I just they they have a very high expectation of themselves for making sure that they are providing what those children need so um I I'm I'm really excited about this quot teaching model um and just to kind of reiterate some of the things that have been happening the communication piece I know some of you were talking about communication earlier communicating with the families communicating with the classroom teacher communicating the sped teacher communicating with me um all of those things have been happening and flexibility is a huge thing so you know some teachers it's very easy to say nope this is my schedule I have to stick to this they are really thinking outside of the box and saying oh my gosh how can I change this a little bit or can I can I switch something else around so they're really being flexible in their thinking and they're just so committed to all of their students so I want to celebrate that um and then the professional support for teachers through the co coaching and the professional education Consultants I know Charlie already talked a lot about that but I just want to say being new to this District how admirable I feel that this is that we have tackled these two big um academic areas both Ela and math many districts will focus on one first get it kind of settled and then but we we really have tackled two at the same time here and um I just want to give credit to all of the classroom teachers they are doing so much work um we've really um and I've I've complained to Charlie a little bit about the frontloading of this but with the goal of that that's going to then sustain us throughout the school year so um you know I I've had teachers saying oh my gosh it's a lot of meetings it's a lot of Demands right at the start of the school year and it is but I'm hoping that we're going to reap the benefits of that within the next few months so um we're going to continue to work on that so our challenges and again this reflects a lot of what Charlie has already said we declined in our math and Ela um achievement scores I can tell you that having worked in this is being my Third District anytime we've taken on a new program or a new um structure of teaching we always see a decline so that wasn't a surprise for me too um our Ela and math growth was low and that again goes along with the achievement when you're struggling with achievement your growth isn't going to be as High um this was a big one for me and we've chatted a little bit about it this evening our absentees and rate overall um it increased from 8.5% to 11.8% which to me is a huge jump in absenteeism um and again if kids aren't in school we can't educate them so that's going to be something that I continue to look at um one of the things that I've done for this past month today was October 1st I pulled my attendance report from the past month I have um 55 attendance letters that are going out to families um we looked at it we are only gr sending them out for grades grades 1 through five I didn't send letters for prek students I didn't send letters for kindergarten students I didn't send letters to any families where they are experiencing any kind of hospitalization for their children so those children were removed from the list and I still have 55 letters that have to go out to children who have three or more days of attendance um of absenteeism for the month of September because I think it's important to get in early and to be consistent I'm so I'm going to be doing this every single month looking at with the attendances Mr pizzy my assistant principal and I will be looking to see okay was it just this kid might have been sick the first couple school but now we're not seeing it so great we don't have to send letters you know in October and November or are we seeing the same kids that are still being absent and we need to do more to support that family do we need to get the family in do I need to um provide outside services so we need to look at the whole picture there something is like what you were talking about with the mental health and the stress and the anxiety we want to make sure we're targeting those things as needed so um and I also want to talk just a little bit about um um and again Mr um CER spoke a little bit about this um the last this whole past day I've been looking at teacher goals all of our teacher goals were due this um this week and all of my teacher goals are directly connected to data so they're looking at their data and saying okay this is where I need to improve my instruction this is my professional development goal for my students this is my professional development goal for me personally so I feel like yes um you know cast is just one point but we're looking at multiple data points to make sure that we're providing really good instruction and teachers are working on it professionally as well as in the classroom with students um so the next page um in my goal one and goal two I'm going to kind of condense because I created the same goal in both math and Ela because our achievement was low and because I want to get it up so um my goal was that PHL sou students will increase their math proficiency scores by 10 % and increase their growth by 10 uh 10 points um I'm doing this because I want to I want to have a better way to instruct students in the area of math and our goal is to focus on achievement for students and make greater strides in supporting specific learning needs um some of the thing the ways that we're going to do this um we're going to obviously collect data we just finished our um fall Benchmark data collection and we're going to make informed decisions so our next step is to have our data meetings and be talking with teachers and our coach and our Consultants about this is what our data looked like what do we need to improve it's not just about um making sure our score goes up but Are there specific areas that we're struggling with and we have noticed that and I'll talk a little bit about that in a minute um so using this Baseline data from the fall and then small group instruction and intentional academic lessons that are going to be used so I have a class in front of me and in within that class certain kids are going to need some things other kids are going to need others so yes we do uh hold group instruction on skills and standards because we want to make sure we target that but then we also want to make sure that every kid is getting what they need so using small group instruction using literacy centers and math centers which all of our teachers are working on to Target those specific needs of individuals that's really important so we're working on that um and then continuing to support teachers through professional development um professional learning community so we're having PLC meetings um sometimes they're meeting with me for PLC meetings sometimes they're meeting with the literacy code for PLC meetings sometimes they're meeting with one of our consultants for um PLC meetings sometimes they're meeting with um Mr pizzy or um the school adjustment counselors you know so so we have different PLC meetings that are that are focused on different areas trying to make sure we're targeting all areas um and then once we have success we're going to have teachers who have a solid understanding of the standards and that we're strong in um and the ones that we're strong in and what we need to work on um we're going to continue with our um tri-annual assessment system that's already in place um teachers are going to understand data in a way that allows them to utilize tear instruction and um support students and what I will tell you is I'm a little bit of a data geek myself so I appreciate everything that you're saying chis um I loved looking at my data even when it was bad I loved it first of all anything I do is going to improve it's going to make me look good so I I always accepted and and kind of was like woohoo if I've got low data I'm going to move those kids but also um I find it fascinating to see where kids are struggling and where kids are strong and I think that that's going to come through in our data meeting so really looking at that and and kind of dissecting that a little bit more I love that so I'm excited to run our data meetings and you know help teachers kind of look at it through that lens um and then um having specific students that are identified for intentional targeted interventions our two reading Specialists are already working on that they came to me last week they're like all right we kind of already have a list of the kids these are what they need to work on and I was so impressed that they've based on that Baseline data that they've collected and you know and the the kids that are in third fourth and fifth that they've already worked with and said listen we've tried this this and this we need to move on to this we need to try something else so they're already reflecting on their past practices and their data now just very impressive to me um and then the staff process um so we're going to have a procedure in place where if a teacher is concerned about a child they're going to bring them to a stat meeting we're going to talk about the intervention um we're going to try some things for 6 weeks after 6 weeks we're going to REM and say what's happening are we seeing some growth do we need to continue this intervention and if not do we need to take it to the next step which might be a referral for special education services um teachers are going to use data to create into just fluid groups um I know years and years and years ago you know kids would get in that little group and then they never leave that little group you know and they were on that kind of track that's not how it is now you know we look at it and we say okay this time this group is good to be more of a fluency group but in 6 weeks maybe they're going to need a comprehension group maybe we improve their fluency and they're moving along and now we want to Target comprehension so it's not just about keeping that kid in that group but it's about continuing to assess every six weeks every eight weeks what do they need what are the changes in the curriculum that we need to make to support them and then finally um that again communication with parents and Guardians and talking to them about what we're working on in the school with your child in ways that you might be able to support them at home and I think think that that's really important when I met with my school Improvement Council um last week and I was going over this plan with them they were like we absolutely want to know that we want to know how we what are some things we can do to help support our kids so I was really um pleased with that so I won't go over goal two because it's the same exact thing for literacy as it is for map the same process procedures everything's going to be in place my last goal I'm going to talk about is um our um our social emotional goals so pay top students are going to increase their ability to communicate their feelings and needs while also developing an understanding and empathy for others in turn this is going to decrease the number of behavior incidents in students by 10% or more and you know I put this goal out and I I asked people like what are your thoughts on this and give me some feedback on that and you know some people said H is it really a social emotional goal or is it a behavior goal because you're using Behavior data and that's a great question I want it to be a social emotional goal because that's where I want to focus but my expectation is um it will Pro it will provide behavioral outcomes when we have children who are happy to come to school when we have children who feel safe coming to school when we have children feeling that they have a voice and can be heard it automatically improves Behavior a lot of our behaviors are directly connected to social emotional needs um I always say behavior is about communication when you have a a 5-year-old or a six-year-old in front of you and they can't communicate what they want with they need it comes out in their behavior so that's something that we're going to be working on I started the school year by asking my sta staff how do you want to feel at school and my staff came up with things like I want to feel heard I want to feel supported I want to feel calm I want to feel prepared so I'm spending time talking to my staff about okay what are the things we need to have in place for you to feel that way eventually that's going to translate to my staff saying to my students how do you want to feel when you come to school and I can tell you in my previous school we had those conversations with children children want to feel happy they want to feel safe be safe they want it to be fair so when we talk to Children about what do you need to do so that we all feel like that when we're here at school and we talk about things like um listening and following directions and having a safe body and things like that so all of that social emotional stuff that we're talking about and sometimes people say oh it's just fluff it's just feelings it's so important because it is going to reduce the behaviors and when we reduce the behaviors I also feel like that's going to impact our instruction because teachers will be able to devote more time to meeting students academic needs and less time having to worry about Behavior means so long story short um I do have a couple of other things that I did want to share just datawise and celebrate and I pulled this last minute because we've just kind of finished up our benchmarks but our fall Benchmark data our grade 1 students 67% of them are above Benchmark and our grade two students 80% of them are above Benchmark um grade three students 68% of them are above Benchmark our grade four students 70% were above Benchmark and our grade 5 students 61% were above Benchmark so when Charlie was talking earlier about being that 50% or more we're in a great spot for fall and I wanted to make sure I celebrated that tonight because I feel like we we have a great starting point to just grow from there so I'm going to end with that I don't I haven't time to myself I hope that that you're over but it's all right we're going to let us slide but um I do want to offer any questions or comments or anything Kevin so the the scores that you just said those are phenomenal are those from the most recent um test or that's from our fall Benchmark data so um we're doing dible data right now we're doing star data we're collecting all of that stuff so that's what those scores are congratulations thank you I was excited I was I was a little sad when I looked at my but again I you know I know we're going to we're going to go out Jam um what I want to thank you for the coling work on think from a corporate environment where it's like this is the line and every everybody gets this line with a strong un shop the letters go out but behind every instance there can be reasons there can be very good reasons then to compound a problem and get parents who you need the most to be involved in that turned against you because they were in some extreme circumstance and got a form letter with their name written in isn't going to help anything so whatever time it takes to do that face and Spades in the end and then outside of that I would just like to congratulate um M Renda well done good choice Happ over there so this is this is going to afford US well you get two points all right I'll take it I'll take every point I can get Ashley yeah U I just wanted to say for the third goal I'm really excited um to see that goal for you I know I have my two kids are at page Hilltop and last year was a rough year with behaviors and you know learning to respect each other and all those different issues so I think this will be really important and I think you will see it help overall um and then as a side note I um popped in the other day and you were giving out panther paw Awards and I got to see my middle son get an award um just kind of by accident and I wanted to say they adore you and they just think school is the greatest right now so oh I'm so glad you're doing a great job and thank you thank you I appreciate that and I think so the pan paw and we're also going to be talking um we have a a panther Pride meeting this week um about Panther Pioneer which is like a whole another level on top of that but it really encourages children to be leaders in you know um taking care of others and that empathy p is huge and even when I do have behaviors in the office I'm talking about well how would you feel and putting yourself in that other person's shoes and I don't think we practice giving children enough opportunity to do that and I think that that helps a lot too I've seen a lot of benefits come of that um doing that with children so modeling that and celebrating those good leadership opportunities for children and then giving children a lot of opportunity to think and put themselves in other people's shoes I think both of those you know go a long way so I'm glad I'm glad your children are having a good good time at school and enjoying it but I want I wanted to take the opportunity to to thank it was fil Mo right with the coins yes so um um so I I did something similar in my previous school so I was talking to Dr render about this and he said um you know reach out to the high school and see if um you know they can create coins for you cuz I had coyote coins in my old school so um I did reach out and um I have four Juniors they actually delivered um about 4 coins to me today um that they've created on a 3D print printer um and they're in Maroon white gray and black and they have our little Panther emblem on them so um I'm going to be rolling those out with um the staff um this week we have a staff meeting on um Thursday I'll be rolling them out with them and you know talking about what are the things that you would give a kid a coin for and then um once they get a coin once a month I'll be doing a principal lunch so any child who's received a coin will have lunch with me and then they'll be able to select a book and um get a book so those great some of the little things our school committe members like to participate in I heard you have a just open door policy to you Jen you can show well the four Juniors that came and delivered the points to me today from the high school that have been working on them on the 3D printer they were lovely young men um all you know I just had a chat with them and just asked like what are you know are you going to be going to school for and most them were going to school for engineering or environmental engineering and things like that um but they're going to continue to work on it and they promised me that they would continue it next year and train other kids coming into it so I plan on toing this for quite a while so hopefully we'll get a lot of kids that are continuing and and that piece of the high school and and what you were talking about giving back to the younger kids and stuff I I feel that in in my school especially this week with the interns that are coming back and coming into the school and working with the kids so that's something that I'm going to continue to grow as well awesome this is it 58 high school students UD over 64 periods 55 high school students and I and I want to thank um Mr Christie he came in and spoke to my staff in um our first staff meeting um and talked a little bit about them to get in you know teachers interested in participating in it and our former principal Mr deppy has been working with him to train the children knowing what they have to come into and elementary school so um I feel like it's really involving into a great team effort and um I appreciate it um yeah so I would say the the key things that I hear and see um in in your plan is being proactive um being mindful um and being data driven which I love those things um the combination of them it definitely sets the kids up to except um one of the things uh that stuck out to me when you were talking about belonging was definitely in in being fair one of the hugest pushes that we have right now is trauma informed care which a lot of people hear the terminology but may not necessarily understand it um from an elementary standpoint particularly that age range it's in what we say um so a lot of times because kids are not old enough to they want to be autonomous but they don't understand what autonom is right there's still a certain level of them believing exactly what an adult says so what that looks like is um you have a student who all kids do it but like let's say they don't feel like doing their work anymore so they want you to do it for them so they're going to ask questions so you say okay well I know you you want me to work for it but this is for you to work for it right so that's a way to communicate it it's still in a decent manner but sometimes there are adults that will say something like oh well you're manipulating me this is a child you're an adult Like You full on know what the kid's doing you know what it is but being mindful of the words that we use and what we say to the students because even though they may not know that word in that moment there will come a time where they do know it and they can attach their identity to it um so that's one of the hugest things that I've seen like a little bit of um mindfulness around it but I would love to see more around where we talk about as adults the power that we all know words have power but often times we're more conscious with another adult than we are with kids not realizing that you're sewing Seeds of Life into their well I say it like this you're sewing a seed into their life whether you're conscious of it or not so it I'm not saying it's malicious or on purpose it's just the mindfulness of it um but I love the plan that you have so I I I appreciate that thank you um my first question is for goal number one or two can you I'm assuming it's mcast scores are going to um proficiency scores will increase by 10% yeah um can you um talk me through like how you're measuring that is that like percent of students who are going up like what is the it would percentage of students so that's what we're looking at so like when I look at my mcast scores next year this time I'm going to be looking to see if If I Only Had you know um 43% of my students that were meeting or exceeding I'm going to expect that to be 53% next year okay yeah I wasn't sure if you were thinking about the um meeting meeting or above or if it was like 10% are moving yeah okay perfect and then for me I'm I'm a big growth data person so I want to see the growth you know what I mean I I had tremendous growth in my previous school because I knew I was taking some very low struggling students and moving them I might not get them to meet and exceeds but I'm going to move them and that growth piece is huge so that's another big Focus area for me yeah no that's it's helpful and I would be disappointed if we weren't talking about growth because it's it's easy to manipulate that like meet and exceeds it's really hard to manipulate the growth data I always look at my kids who weren't meeting and then got into progress towards like that to me get them into that next category you know what I mean that's that's a huge jump of growth I I celebrate that even though they're not a me meets or ex I'm I'm happy about that yeah um and then I'm for um with in go one and two I mean it is the steps feel they're very data heavy understandably um I would think about what are the ways that um like students are invested or involved in that and so thinking about things like efficacy um I think again student performance isn't something that happens to kids and a bunch of adults sitting in you know the cafeteria after school in a PD like asking a student do they see themselves as a mathematician I guarantee there's a like8 or higher correlation with their mcast score yeah and so can I just Chum in on that one um I mentioned before Alison Melo yeah yeah is the person so her dissertation was on that yeah was on the impact of math disposition on student performance and also math disposition on teacher efficacy yeah and then ultimately so as part of the PD that we're doing that is a big part of it so actually when she comes into classrooms and does fluency modeling for kids yeah it's constantly the question of the kids who and here is a mathematician and then it's like all of you kids are mathematicians or whatever and that has been contagious across all the grade levels certainly in elementary yeah that math literacy like students believing that they are literate and that they have skills and understanding that is a mindset it's a game changer and so that would just be my one like charge is like where do you see the students showing up in those first two goals around learning because they're the ones doing the learning so let's make sure that they show up and they see themselves there thank you that's good feedback um I think that's on and then I think for goal three my question is and again like I put it to you Dr Renda but if what matters is students being able to communicate their feelings and needs like I would say that's what you should measure I know that the behavior data is a like it's a data point it exists in a system it's like easy to measure and it's the like thing that is like deals like a harder scientific number yeah there's nothing wrong with like self-reported data and I think it's as valid so I would just say like if what matters is student belief y um or student's ability to communicate feelings that should be what you measure and write a goal about because otherwise you're going to be doing things I couldn't agree with you more I just don't think I'm going to get there this year okay so what I will tell you is um I need to work with my staff first on that I need to do a whole Year's worth of work on my staff with my staff on that because I believe that in order for them to be able to teach kids how to communicate their feelings my staff has to be able to communicate their feelings fair in a constructive way don't get me wrong and anybody watching at home I hear you um you know I know my staff can communicate with me no problem they've done it but um what I want to teach children and and what we got really skilled out in my previous school I'm sorry I keep saying that um is doing check with kids so one of the things we would always say is how are you feeling today and we would do daily check-ins I do have ways to collect that data I'm just not ready to roll it out yet okay so it's it's on the way it's going to come at some point um and I have all little way ways to do it with kindergarteners ways to do it with fifth graders and um one of the things that we're going to be doing is building their vocabulary about feelings you know what I mean so like today I had a I had a kindergarten student in my office this afternoon and I said he would he was very upset and I said are you do you think you're feeling angry do you think you're feeling sad do you think you're feeling frustrated and he looked at me and I said I'm not feeling any of those things and I thought great that was a great like he but he doesn't he can't tell me how he's feeling so we need to kind of continue to work on that with them um and and one of the things that I'll be doing with my students over the next couple of years this is now we're like 5 year old is um increasing their vocabulary around feelings you know what I mean it's not just I'm mad or sad there's there's so many there's a gradient of feelings about that and I want them to be able to think about that I'm not mad but I'm not you know not not mad you know what I mean so what is it in between there so that's coming it's going to come it's just it's probably not going to happen these conversations have already happened and uh Bonnie has already mentioned to me wanting to bring uh the ruler program in out of the um yel School of social emotional intelligence and um Dr bracket braet y Dr Mark Brackett so he wrote the book permission to feel I don't know if any of you are familiar with that he spoke in District three years ago yeah I've done book studies with teachers on that and um it it's amazing it's it's it changed the culture of my school so that's eventually where I want to get I'm just not there yet okay great I just want to make sure that you had the permission charged from this group like feelings matter and we're allowed to measure them and again a student survey is as valid a piece of data as how many checks in power school absolutely if you have the goal you want that's great I just wanted to make sure yeah no I'm I've got big picture too so this is kind of like what can I the immediate steps I can take so um I would we need to vote and approve on this um I would entertain a motion to approve unless there's further questions discussion all right entertain a motion I make a motion that we approve I also think that we need about another 14 hours with this um yeah I hungry I haven't had dinner yet oh dinner no one has dinner before meeting this is standard yeah have a second second all right all those in favor I I thank you thank you all right and er need to run yeah I am converting to zoom Michelle just so that those are all sent I apologize I know that uh while we're in transition feel free to jump in I mean public it's not public comment but feel free to jump in while we are I'm sorry I was able to uh come up with my question during public time but I had two questions I want to ask okay um uh it's fine so what I would love um it's great to see you um because of where we are TimeWise and um maybe what we can do is if you I mean I only said you want to come to two of these meetings is it for the um presenters to is it like directed towards the presenters or like where like what what are the questions uh one is for Mr Christie and one is for um the panel um let's maybe do it can we do it over email I just want I want to be mindful of we have two Educators who have been got to school early this morning and are keeping here late sorry and thank you but yeah let's do it over email we'll find a way to like make sure we can cover that topic with that we're going to move to um principal Christie thank you everyone uh I know it's late I will try to be as brief as possible ready I'm ready all so it was good year last year um we did have some some challenges uh so two of the challenges the the kind of key ones we saw were extended engagement rates so that's uh students graduating within five years if they're not able to graduate within four we saw a dip within our our stats there uh and is certainly something we we are looking at uh for this coming year the other one was our AP scores in math and science could improve this has kind of been an ongoing Trend with us I and our mcast math scores and the growth could improve so you're going to see that reflected in a few of the goals coming up in a moment some of the celebrations uh as Mr Clary mentioned earlier uh we were thrilled to be receiving the 2024 desie School of recognition status um as you mentioned this is only awarded to a select number of schools so we are one of 57 schools overall under 20 high schools uh that were were recognized in the state um and I I really think that that the the bulk of the the honor should go to the high school teachers who put in Yan's work day in and day out to make sure that that we earned this recognition was really uh incredible work on um this was a good year for us on mcast scores um especially El and science science we were up 177% from the the prior year uh our graduation rate again improved drastically our attendance rate improved drastically um the thing I'm most proud of actually out of of our uh Ela data is that our lowest performing students which were not reported the year prior uh we met 87% of the Criterion referenced Target percentage points so I know that's a big long phrase and probably somewhat meaningless um but it meant that where desie sets specific standards uh that they're looking for us to hit as far as either achievement or growth we met 87% of of the possible points that we could earn in that area for our lowest performing students uh these are the students that that frankly need our attention the most um and the ones that that probably made me the most proud um additionally we we continue to expand the the opportunities for students at the high school uh internships so we have uh one student right now that's working with the air Police Department one student that's working with the air fire department we have 55 students again over 64 periods that are working at pel toop this is something we'd like to continue grow uh Fire part department is now in its second year paig Hilltop is in its second year uh police department's in its first year um and they are all fantastic uh that the students we have in those areas uh have shown an an interest um in pursuing careers in in potentially uh either schools uh or Civil Service uh I'd really love to be able to play someone in air toown hall um and we have a number of students that are interested in nursing um so we are placing those within the fire department and roughly 75% of their calls are now medical um and they've been unbelievable Partners uh really through throughout the work of the towns uh but we'd like to get more opportunities for students especially students who are looking to to pursue nursing um we also had a really wonderful first year in a new schedule um so this was something that that helped us tremendously um W with achieving our our goals um so moving moving on to our goals our our first goal is to improve performance in mcast map uh a lot of the work we did last year really became around science uh and it became specifically around looking at progress monitoring uh science throughout the year and then taking the data that we were receiving to change instruction so seeing what was successful and what wasn't successful for particular groups of students uh giving students th those numbers allowing them feedback on what they saw uh for very real data coming in in real time um and having conversations with them about where we could improve specific target areas we had set for ourselves uh we are using the same uh progress monitoring software that we used with science now with math uh we are going to be in our second year of changing our math sequencing so we moved if you remember from I am1 2 3 to now Algebra 1 and geometry next year we'll be adding in Algebra 2 as well uh so we are seeing some some changes within just our math sequencing um but again this is leading to us having more a state standard alignment that that really is what we're looking for we'll know we hit our Target uh for this when we are seeing the our our achievement levels either at meeting or exceeding in math uh and when we see our Target for growth uh exceeding uh at least 50% uh our second goal is is something we've really started to take a look at over the past year or two and that's taking a look at our grade waiting systems um overall and for High School courses so specifically for students in the high school as they're applying to schools um you'll see a number of of different option for grade waiting potential grade weights for High School courses uh ours is somewhat unique in in how we structure it in some ways that's great in other ways it's not um and so we would like to form a committee for grade waiting create surveys from our collaborators and really take a look at how we're appropriately waiting uh courses for students and reporting that out to schools because I think there is an opportunity there for us to be um placing students in more uh competitively advantageous situations our third goal is something we've been talking about for a while um but but this year we're really going to start to dig in on and that's strengthening our family and Community Partnerships and and we're going to use the word Partnerships very deliberately here uh I think we've done a a decent job of having one-way communication out with families but we're really looking for more feedback from from folks that that are involved with us uh to see what we could do better uh where we're succeeding where we're falling short of their expectations and how we can really look at at meeting more their expectations uh some of the ways we're going to be going through this we're going to be holding forums directly with with families uh and we're going to be taking a look at specifically targeted groups along the way to see what we can do uh to really improve um the family experience uh within the high school over the next few years and the last goal we have in here it really ties in pretty strongly to our second goal uh this is going to be a multi-year goal so we're going to start this in this here but but this will expand over time um we're questioning our connection between report card grades and performance unstandardized assessment so more specifically on our AP exams um we really want to start to take a look at our grading practices and how they align um wi with State Standards with uh standards within each of our AP courses and seeing what we can do to to have those more in alignment than than potentially they currently are um we will know we've reached this goal when we have a grading system that we can accurately communicate to our families and our students exactly what they're being um assessed on uh how we are sharing communication around student performance uh as well as transferable skills so something you've heard me talk about for a few years now is transferable skills of vision of a graduate um we need to find a way of communicating out to both students and families where they stand at any moment in time uh on those transferable skills and how we can continue to build those transferable skills uh and potentially use family input um to to see how we can partner up uh to grow those transferable skills over a fouryear stretch of time all right questions Jim um if you could just give me uh bring me up to speed on um what it is how it's measured how you track it extended engagement rate yeah it's a great question uh so engage extended engagement rate again is students over a fiveyear stretch of time being able to graduate from from high school um so the way we can see it is taking a look at students from the time they enter in 9th grade to the time they uh are able to graduate a year after the the potential year of graduation um that involves us really speaking heavily with students that have dropped out or students that that I think what they were looking at more as students who have not completed their course of study within the fouryear stretch of time that we we've given to them for high school um in a way this goes hand inand with um our our four-year completion rate which went up drastically a lot of the work I think we've been doing recently has been to increase increas the number of students that are able to graduate within that that fouryear stretch of time um a lot of the work we did involve to taking a look at our schedule and changing our graduation requirements those have been successful for us um wildly successful for us where we've struggled is within that that grouping of students who are still not able to um to find their path within the first say two years probably more even in the third um and struggle and and find themselves unable to complete th those two years successfully um so so really it becomes twofold one about ensuring that students um are successfully completing their freshman year which is our most important piece of data and then really as a secondary option their sophomore year as well um and that comes in through a few different ways um grades are important absolutely but I think it's also students self-confidence and belief in the the fact that they can do this they can make it through high school they can have a successful time here in a sherley so we adopted Mass core that's going to take a big bite out of that right so uh students who found themselves falling behind their freshman year sophomore year under our old graduation standards had a very difficult time staying with us in seeing the light at the end of the tunnel um they were they dropping out some of them were were attending um all turn into high schools yes that was big um I would also uh say that the the choices that the high school has made to be proactive not only in academics but for the social emotional mental health needs of kids we're going to see that payoff with when we had ESS last year and now we have our our homegrown yeah version of that in steps um and we're providing really for the clinical needs of our needest students hopefully that's going to to affect that too yeah and I wonder not not for tonight's discussion but you know I'm sure it's something we'll be looking at what our some of our graduation requirements more course specific and in certain categories and there may be some adjustments we can do there because you know although we have requirements for particular subjects all four years you know and they show a lot of that lines up with what colleges are expecting to see the kids that go to college they don't do that anyway you don't need you don't need a policy to do that the policy ends that doesn't help them at all it can hurt people at the other end of the spectum so we have to take a little higher look at that tonight but at some point we really need to revisit that and see whether that really makes sense anymore uh secondly I just wanted to point out I was very happy to see the um hitting 87% of the targets for the lowest performing because I mean if you you've got students that are meeting and exceeding I mean you you want everybody to do better but somebody goes up five points or 10 points and they're already meeting exceeding other than reading and seeding even better their lives probably doesn't change a whole lot but you get somebody down toward a tail end of that who goes up and you H 87% of that stuff and that their lives can change based on what you're doing in that group the other groups not so much but down there that makes a big difference for the rest of the why so I'm glad to see that is a specific Target in that group and you're right that that's um to to me probably the biggest factor of how how do we keep our graduation rate high how do we improve our extended engagement rate it's making sure that students are successful and that is our Target area if I can just jump in because I know um Spencer gave credit to the high school teachers who deserve the credit for um the school of recognition but the administration at the high school deserves credit for this too where we're seeing what I being in this building last year it felt different it just did it felt different than the other years um and I think a lot of credit has to go to the teachers and to the administration in the collaboration that they had on a weekly or bi-weekly basis where they are actively dealing with issues before they they became big um there was it was impressive and the high expectation for academics that they have and the high support that they have for some of our neediest kids the student support group meetings that are happening weekly in this building i i attended one last week um where they're talking about some of our needest kids and creating action plans to R some barriers to learning it's it was it's impressive I mean and at part at times the meeting got heated which was great because people were really advocating for what they believed and and sometimes it's discourse and and typically um we're getting better decisions when we have that kind of passionate discourse happening um the Student Success plans that are happening when when a student is in danger of failing is is you know I I know they work in progress but it's a huge step in the right direction including the parents in those decisions and what those plans are going to be again we need to move forward with that but it's a what a huge step forward so what I'm seeing is just a complete shift of being proactive for both academics and the social emotional well-being of students and I I think it's paid off and um so congratulations to the teachers but um Mr christe deserves a lot of credit for this too thank you and well Dr runda won't say this um a lot of credit goes to him actually as well who was able to to foresee um a lot of the the social emotional challenges that were coming PR pandemic Dr you've been an unbelievable Champion as of you Mr Clary um in setting the high school up in a way where we can provide wraparound clinical support for students well thank you but you already signed your contract so but I appreciate it bit bit realistically but both these gentlemen have have been unbelievably supportive to the high school um since I've been here Joyce so the question that keeps coming up in my mind and yes I'm way back in the cave land but um if we're doing so well in science yeah to me science and math are the same thing they're analytical thinking and investigating and seeing how things relate and if I'm learning if I'm doing that well in science then I have applied math in science and so I can't I can't see why and I know sure our math our math system that we had to me to people who are in that vein they go yeah it all goes together and so why don't we have it all together but then it becomes a problem um and since what is mcast testing that's not integrating math and science is the problem in the test or is in the where where is the disconnect here I got this so so part part of what you're asking is a great question students are being tested primarily in biology um biology is out of the Sciences we offer here probably the one that's most aligned with our humanities so it is term heavy um it's going to be a lot of memorization of key terms key Concepts understandings how how items flow and really has less Applied Mathematics um than C we have physics and we have we do but where our students are being tested for understand biology the mcast test is actually biology yes oh the mcast test right it's a biology incast right that's one of the options and that's what most of the students if the so in a sense the problem is that the incast test is not Global on science is that what you're saying well there's a couple there's a couple choices in most of our students physics and that's it at this point we're down to to those two choices okay all right and of course that's grade level yes focused so it's not Global right correct and and so for us students in grade n will take their biology tests M um and so what you're seeing is is a largely I would say um more humanities-based science rather than math-based science whereas if we were at any point to switch to to taking a look at doing physics um physics is is just a more of a math-based exam uh than the biology exam is well and then you hear the kids talk about how they're looking at engineering and going in engineering and that's all math baby um so it's like where's the where's the flaw to this so listen I agree with you I think I think you're asking some wonderful questions that unfortunately the the state's taken away some options yeah um so a few years ago we were able to offer an mcass in um in engineering uh that has been eliminated as a choice okay um chemistry we were able to use as an option unfortunately that has been eliminated as a choice so we are down to to two choices um for us we like having the students have one um the ability to pass one of their mcast completed by the end of their nth grade year which really then their 10th grade year allows them to focus in on math and English um because we have separated it in that that manner the science that they're using is um largely devoid of math so then improving the performance on mcast math yes as a goal which really should be forget in is incorporating math into our world with science never mind about incast yeah so do we do our own testing on our math someplace along the line that we would see the success of the kids not necessarily related to incast Yes uh so what I think you're asking me is is are we progress monitoring how students are performing on specific State Standards um for math as we go through the year yes um and so that it it really becomes a more concentrated look at specific standards as we're going through um really zeroing in on exactly what we're teaching making sure that students have hit a Mastery level before we start moving on to the next uh the next standard the next unit the next Mark of of time um again for us with with science last year this proved to be an incredibly successful way of altering the instruction that happened in the classroom and not not necessarily even about altering the assessment although that happens it really is using assessment data to change the way we teach and to change the way we teach specific students now knowing exactly what they know and what was our graduation rate I thought it was pretty high 99.5% right and um so and that hasn't really changed why is Charlie smiling at me well it's it's gone up it's gone up yeah yeah that's up that was improv right right so I think you should have said that when you said graduation rate because that sounds pretty damn good 99.5 that's pretty good Ashley um yeah just one quick comment the internship program I think that's really great and I just had kind of a question and a suggestion on it um please who's able to participate in that is it just seniors or is it also Juniors uh thank you right now it's Juniors and seniors okay so uh for paig hillt we we've opened it up to to our Juniors we started that about halfway through our year last year when we started to see some success with our seniors uh for the fire department and the Police Department those we are still just doing seniors um what I would really like to do over the next few years is expand this out further uh I would like to take a look at both more municipalities as well as more private businesses in town um I would really like to see where students area of passions lie and see if we can line them up with someone who has a a business in town so if I had someone that that say Really was fascinated about going into gas um I I believe I know someone who may work for shirle gas uh that I might be able to to line them up and and have them see a potential career path moving forward uh similarly we know we have a a large grouping of students that again love nursing this has become a a career Focus for them the challenge for us is is unfortunately we had a a hospital close in the area um and when we've reached out to to various nursing operations anywhere locally um there are some concerns with having students be a part of of the organization where I think we've been able to dispel some of those fears within our own community and air has been tremendous as far as as their willingness to partner with us um I cannot give enough credit to uh both Chief Gil and chief Johnson of the the police and fire department um for being willing to take students who have a a passion area uh either for for potentially becoming a police officer in the future becoming uh a a fire person or or really going into the EMT aspect of that um understanding that that we do have critical shortages in these areas um and knowing that this becomes a a prime opportunity for recruitment of our students uh similarly for us we would love to see more of our high school students now come back 5 years six years become teachers within the school um promote the culture that that we're trying to build here from within um and make us the top School in Massachusetts I think that's great and just to add on that I would say maybe speak to the DPW or speak I think you mentioned Town Hall but I know Municipal Finance is an area that has critical shortages and no one wants to really get into that field and it can actually be a really great career so just something you know for kids to kind of figure out I think when I was in high school I had no idea what I was doing with my life so someone had stuck me somewhere maybe I would have like taken a cleaner path to where I ended up so I think that's awesome thank you we we had a student at parks and wreck last year yeah um perfect who's I I believe going to be pursuing a passion in that area and Jeff Thomas was phenomenal at really helping to Foster this students's passion um so it it's there are tremendous people in Aaron Shirley um we've now given students sort of theoretical base on how they can move forward um I think it students are loving having the opportunity to apply some of that theoretical knowledge now to potential careers um and to give them the opportunity to give back to the towns that have given them so much um so so the more we can grow this the better off we'll be the long-term data for this and to see how many of these students end up in education that that there is a national teacher shortage right so I would say we're doing our part in air Air sherley Regional School District to try to help that in the future and hopefully a large percentage of them do go into the field then come back and teach in their their their hometowns that's what we're hoping that's great we won't see that pay off for five to yeah five to seven years but although we are now starting to see some of our our former students return uh we recently hired a student who graduated from college uh and is now pursuing a master's who's a par professional of the high school 3 days a week uh I ran into a former student today at page Hilltop uh who's subing in that building will BEC coming back and subbing here um we we want our students to return we have some some really incredible kids um and we'd love to keep them here in in our in our grasp yeah yeah um yeah so just a a thought I mean as you look at internships I guess two comments um one is you know there are many professionals such as myself that largely work remotely so I wouldn't I I wouldn't limit us to just some of the physical right places around work and and that could open up Avenues of people that work for in Cambridge Massachusetts but largely work remotely it doesn't have to be in my house I can work at other places as well so I don't know it's just opportunities maybe even high school libraries absolutely could be anywhere um I know other schools um towards the end of their senior year you know have been doing the practicums or internships where the last three weeks of school you know actually go out and that's their fulltime it's a massive undertaking but I've I've been hearing good things from just I have um cut nieces and nephews that just recently graduated from Westford and um they had very good things to say about it um it got some students that I think my niece in particular that um was a huge introvert and struggled to but it it got her out into kind of the Working World and I think um hopefully was eye openening and and really helped her to think see herself in the Working World outside of just a classroom environment and everything so so I I wonder if we're starting to look at that at all but seems like it's big Trend and and people find it rewarding um so I I do have if I'm sorry to be critical here um but part of our role um I'm not looking at it right now but the measurement part I mean the goals are are obviously important there are whole annual goals like the two in particular the last two goals it seem like there wasn't a lot there that actually shows how are we truly going to measure some of those goals I wonder if we can can add more you know one of them is getting feedback from parents but if there's something about you know one of them had a survey so what does the feedback look like there and the the goal number four I just didn't really understand like how how would we actually measure that so sure um so so I let me start with four and I can kind of work backwards uh I think when we take a look and and one of the things I've done for the last few years is to to take a look at how we're aligned grade wise to performance on AP exams and what we're finding is there's a disconnect um so too often students will receive a 90 or above in a course and unfortunately score under three in an AP exam so what we are saying is the student has mastered the content and what the exam is saying is the student has fallen short of any proficiency uh for being able to gain Credit in the course um we are looking at closing that Gap um and and certainly could there be a student or too that through their time um will perform exceptionally well in a course and will underperform an exam yes but I think when we take a look at at large data um which is what we're seeing here that's not what we're seeing we're seeing a misalignment um between what the course is attempting to teach um and how our students are scoring on those courses so we're bringing to that what we're hoping to see is a larger sense of alignment between those um I'm talking primarily about AP but I really think this could expand out um to include other courses as well um and and so when we start to take a look at at math courses or English courses where students are getting straight A's and unfortunately are not uh in the exceeding or meeting expectations level of mcast we have to start asking very real questions about do we have an alignment issue between what we're attempting to teach uh and what the state standards or expectations are on those yeah okay and so I mean there's OB there's data there it sounds like it would be difficult to track but if there's something measurable that we can you know track our progress that that's obviously the ideal yeah even if the goal knowing that it's a multi-year goal was something to the effect of like pilot and increase correlation by yeah you would you'd have something and you could even say like within AP courses like or an AP course like pick an AP course and see if you can um yeah thank you it's great feedback I think one of the things we were hoping at your one is is to start to build what that measurement system could look like uh to determine how aligned or misaligned we are um and and to truly be able to track track where we are as far as progress towards meeting okay so we'll have all the data we're going to have we're going to have their grades and we're going to have their their scores on AP but I I think what I'm hearing is to CH the goal so that the measurable smarkle right so it's part of uh the measurement we can we can work on that absolutely yeah and and part of it maybe we got to understand the Baseline first so how are we going to determine Baseline yeah I mean we could use last year's results could be absolutely be the Baseline certainly could interest right did I'm good you're good do we are we do you want to vote on do we want to come back when we have this what's the right way to do this I don't know if you wanted to think about this goal more if we wanted to vote on it massage it a little bit we could uh we could massage this in Charlie and I would you be okay with Charlie and I presenting the change um next time so we can save Mr Christie from coming back to the next meeting otherwise we have to start buying you coffee he's such a good speaker he he he's an excellent speaker I agree but we um yeah be yeah let's wait and yeah we'll we'll massage that and we present that thank you thank you appreciate all right Dr paky I'm terribly sorry that it has taken us this long um to hear from you but we are very eager to hear about ballot question to going to get up um thanks for having me tonight um especially on such short notice I was contacted by our regional uh representative from the MTA who asked me to address you and U neither he or my president Maryann zimon could be here today to talk to you but we wanted to ask the school committee to revisit the letter that uh was published on August 16th 2023 about the Thrive Act and revise it for the um ballot question two coming up as there are some differences particularly with the language around uh the MC as a requirement for graduation a yes vote on the ballot measure would remove that um qualification and allow districts to uh Implement their own criteria for graduation requirement and I'm trying to I think we have a we have letter are ready to or we sent that letter and so this the request is can we update that letter with the most current yes language um I'm curious if anyone has any objections to doing that again the um this does not get rid of mcass right m still happens Gru grad just as a graduation 10 that we had talked about yeah so it'll allow us to continue to get data from it but it will no longer be held over a students head as a requirement for graduation exactly those that 3 4% that were sitting in that red square at the bottom and to Echo something that Mr chrisy brought up um as many of you know I have a bachelor's a master's and a doctorate in my field um I always I think the lowest grade I ever got was a C+ the class was of Art and philosophy and I was asleep because I swear Ben Stein was teaching it and I could not stay awake even with coffee when I could drink coffee and that was the lowest grade I ever got but if you ever gave me a standardized test I would show you exactly how big of an idiot I am don't do well on them never have never will um in in New York we had to take uh we didn't have we had regent exams me to take them every year for every subject um I barely coasted by getting through them but in my class as I could show absolute proficiency um and it had to do a lot with my personal you know anxieties towards that and then finally somebody let me know in my senior year that I didn't need to take them to uh graduate and get a a because they have multiple different kinds of diplomas so there's Advanced regions diploma regions diploma local diploma and I said well I'm going to school in Massachusetts does it matter and my counselor said they won't know what a region diploma is you're fine with a local diom okay then I thought I was all done until we got to Gres and then I was like oh God yeah Joyce and then Kevin I'm put my own thing on this and that I think that we are a high standard school and we are going to know that our diploma is worth something and it won't be the state that who will decide that and it won't be the Region's test that will decide that it'll be our own high high standards and high qualifications that we want our kids to have so I have no problem adding uh taking it out as a as a graduation requirement Kevin I'm just wondering do do we have the specifics of what we would need to edit or change I don't have the letter in front of me are there suggestions do you know what we need to update yeah that was going to be my question for you if we have the I know I don't believe it's much because the way the letter was written um the way I wrote the letter for the school committee was essentially saying that we wanted the mcast requirement for graduation taken out but but not get rid of the mcast um test the Thrive act originally wanted mcast just gone right and the committee was in favor of getting rid of the mcast graduation required but not getting rid of the test which is what the ballot question I believe unless I'm incorrect is now so we're really just endorsing question it would be endorsing and updating the date right that's basically I mean the letter was very clear on that there are a number of issues they wanted to bring up they said that's really out of the scope of what we're looking to do here but is and I think the letter was very specific saying like as far as an mcast requirement for graduation that's a local control issue and we're we absolutely support getting rid of the mcast requirement for graduation and allowing local control I think the letter is very clear to that tect um and thank you Michelle for sharing that it's in all of our inboxes right now um if we are um I am I believe it's at the end of paragraph one if I remember correctly y but this is our 15th so don't trust anything I say um Dr pad if I share this letter with you will you I have it you have it this town is really good perfect if you would make a comment on that dock I would like this changed I feel confident that it will a l and we can send that letter off okay um because again what this is asking for is what this letter so we can certainly update the um date in the specifics and um I don't think that there's any real um disagreement between uh az's position and the school committee's position on this you know we agree that um the MKS can have a useful Pur is data collection but we really do feel strongly in the sense that we have a confidence in our students we have a confidence in our staff we know that we hold our students to the highest standards and as many of you echoed here tonight you know we're not we see beyond data especially when you work with these kids every single day I don't look at them and I I don't see a number I don't see a a grade level I see a human being and each one deserves my individual care and attention tailored to them and while data can help me um uh better align my curriculum to standards that the state has created to demonstrate their Proficiency in a subject um the the Personal Touch without the high stakes you need this to graduate is I I don't see removing it um as a as a real negative for our students yeah great all right well like I said I am very happy to take the step on this letter to make it you know bring it up to date from a year ago last August and make sure that you all and then in terms of sending it are we email I don't remember how we did this last last time is it just put it in your hands do you want us to send the letter um we're happy to send it back to our uh local representatives and share a copy with Azria great wonderful okay appreciate that thank yeah of course and I I think you actually wrote this one it I might yeah I'm like you wrote it someone Mr Quincy wrote it great I don't know I feel like last year there was a lot of things being written as we were going through policy somewhere who knows what I wrote it's very clear so that I knew it wasn't me once I reread it um great so we'll get that done and between Michelle and the magic that happens over across the street there it'll get sent to the people it needs to and next meeting we'll talk about um ballot question number three four we can go through all of them hey but right that's what we're doing talk about Uber drivers and uh right state auditor yeah exactly um no no appreciate your time and again it's been a long day for you um thank you all for your time and I know that as A's vice president I'm supposed to stick here to the end but I'm going to go you should go well we will report back that you called in on your your drive home thank you all so much for allowing me to speak and uh and allowing me to have your time I really appreciate it yeah absolutely thank you Dr paky it's your's favorite teacher I I said it earlier I mean it's the reason why my daughter is like going to school earnestly excited every morning so so thank you as a just personal thanks um I will always say to you every other parents and every student that I teach the same thing which is I'm not a good teacher but if I'm ever called one it's only because I have good students [Applause] okay all right we have made it through our new business we've got a superintendence report I can be pretty quick on the superintendance report um so we don't have to go we we talked I think we talked enough about the school of recognition uh that that is there there's no new information that I would share with that so I will move on um we are currently working um with Steve hemond from Mars to create we're working uh jointly to create a school budget presentation for the community this will be geared towards both school committee select boards fincom but but parents um we are putting those slides together uh jointly uh I you you've probably most of you have probably met Mr hemond at some point he has worked and assisted um during the region ization and some of the um um in the business office before I don't know if there's anyone in the state that knows this process uh better than he does um so he and I have already met he's meeting with um Mr plunet this week to kind of get some more information and he's going to really tailor um that presentation uh for parents for what we want uh we also I did also get in touch with the um Dr Joe Walsh from Boston University uh I had mentioned this in the last school committee meeting but I I had not been able to um I had reached out we have a meeting scheduled uh for this week to again discuss what her presentation for parents could look like about the dangers of technology and social media um we we're still kind of figuring out whether this is going to be in person um or or V virtual um it can be either I'm leaning towards in person um you know it's I think it might be a tough cell to talk about the dangers of technology and then have a presentation that is virtual right um uh but we would like to have this happen relatively soon um knowing that uh January 2nd there's a couple things that that didn't make it on the report that I want to share Garder public schools had uh the superintendent and high school principal has offered to schedule time to meet with the school committee to answer some questions about the cell phone policy they have recently implemented it this year um they're seeing some interesting results uh the high school had a 70 so far 70% reduction in disciplinary referrals the middle school is something at like 30% they didn't really change the policy for elementary wasn't wasn't quite an issue um the same type of issue and uh some some good news as far as our succession planning and providing opportunities for teachers to kind of grow um within the field uh we have the need right now for our substitute High School assistant principal um and we have two um teachers in the high school that are going to kind of split that job they're going to do an internship uh to work towards their Administration license and there's also going to be um um uh a differential in pay for for some of the work that they are doing and that is uh Mrs Lindsay Rocco and Mr Mark juusto um that was shared today with the staff um and from what Mr christe was telling me it that news went over very well with the staff there both um well expected within the school and both have a goal to be in administration at some point in their career so we're excited about that and it's a it's going to be hopefully easier to find a substitute to fill in for Mr juo and Mrs uh Rocco than it is sometimes to find a sub a substitute for for assistant principal that is all for the superintendent report I'm happy to answer any questions if there are any questions comments all right let's talk about the revision to policy JB which we looked at last meeting although last meeting as a reminder um we looked at a new policy um and the recommendation from the committee was to rather than having what was it J which focused on um the um entrance age for students above um a certain age I forget what it was titled but um the recommendation was why don't we have one policy that talks about the entrance age for kindergarten through um what we're calling um older mature yeah mature students uh I'm sure we had a much more eloquent term for it um and Mr CLE did that for us so we have what was uh JB with um the addition of um six um are there any questions or comments just I I love getting rid of the fluff stuff that is totally pointless like the the purpose of this is like we don't need any of that kind of stuff this gos rights to entrance age here you go find yourself somewhere in here this is what we do move on to the next policy I I really appreciated that other questions are comments looks good good by me I know this is technically a first read and if again in the spirit of being uh efficient with time I would also if folks wanted to vote and approve this we could um if folks wanted to wait to next meeting we can do that but seeing that there isn't discussion and all of the feedback from the last meeting is Incorporated in this we could vote and approve it and get it into our materials I hate to say anything because it's 5: after 9: but um so JB is titled in entrance age should it be a more inclusive title on the thing instead it's entrance whether it's kindergarten or high school yeah this is like the into the district com District okay any other questions or comments how about admission ages or something like that entrance age matches what the yeah it just seems it needs to be a little bit entrance age matches what mask has in there like every other school district in Massachusetts has a policy JB titled entrance age okay all right and I was going to say this is an amalgam from a bunch of local districts as well so and they all have the same same title yeah correct I think we can just probably take a vote on it because our discuss really was just making sure that we had one policy can you combine it instead of having two yeah and we've effectively done that so are you making a motion Mr quiny I'm making a motion that approve poliy J entrance age as presented I'll second it all those in favor I thank you Erica that was great not expecting that all right there are no chairperson's notes are there any items not anticipated 4 hours in advance Jo I think this Falls within 48 hours since the holdenwood Run was Sunday morning and this is Tuesday does that make 48 maybe more however I think it was a fantastic thing and I would like to thank all the people who did a tremendous amount of work on setting it up and organizing it and running it and it was just very very well done I got a report from my daughter that she saw the two of you going for a walk on the two c did very well um and we came back too didn't go no you didn't go you came back um all right Communications actually Monday October 7th athletic boosters meeting 7:00 p.m. at the high school Wednesday October 9th 90 minute early release preschool through 12 and professional development for teachers um High School 12:55 Middle School 1245 Laura White Page Hilltop 1:45 Wednesday October 9th is the air Shirley education Foundation meeting at 7: p.m. at the high school Thursday October 9th is the page Hilltop PTO meeting at 700 p.m. at page htop Monday October 14th no school and observance of Columbus Day Wednesday October 16th school committee meeting at 6:30 p.m. the Middle School library and finally Wednesday October 23rd another 90minut early release day same time all right yes Jo Mr chair I'd make a motion that we adjourn at 910 there's no need for executive say before we do that is there any need for executive session there's no need wonderful all right we have a second for that second all right all those in favor all right