##VIDEO ID:RIaAKrCQvrA## I'm chairperson Jerry Robinson we'll begin with the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance 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 [Music] for at this time I would like to entertain a motion for the school committee to adjourn to Executive session to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining related to the committee's contracts with the American Federation of state county and Municipal Employees Council 93 lunchroom monitors and local 230 cafeteria workers and the ongoing negotiations between Dev and Teamster Local Union 25 the committee will return to public session is there a motion so moved thank you it's z a second I guess we do miss parix will you please call the role thank you Dr alkins Mr cardet Hernandez yes M Lima Barbosa Miss palano Garcia yes Mr Tran yes Mr O'Neil yes M Robinson yes thank you Miss parvex I'll now invite my fellow members the superintendent and staff to reconvene in room 212 see you there in a moment is do we have materials we need to take with us this is it okay that's the packet we need yeah okay yeah we're going I just wanted to see if I need Boston school committee I'm chairperson Jerry Robinson the committee just returned from an executive session to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining with the lunch hour monitors and cafeteria workers and the ongoing negotiations between transdev and Teamsters Local Union 25 there will be report on the tentative collective bargaining agreements with the lunch monitors in cafeteria workers tonight later in the meeting I want to welcome everyone who is joining us tonight in person on Boston City TV and on Zoom I'm going to ask everyone here in the chamber to please turn off the volume on your laptops or other devices so it does not interfere with the audio for tonight's meeting thank you for your cooperation tonight's meeting documents are posted on the committee's web page bostonpublicschools.org school committee under the October 9th meeting link for those joining us in person you can access the meeting documents by scanning the QR code that's posted by The Doors the meeting documents have been translated into all of the major BPS languages any translations that are not ready prior to the start of the meeting will be posted as soon as they are finalized the meeting will be rebroadcast on Boston City TV and posted on the school committee's web page and on YouTube the committee is pleased to offer live simultaneous interpretation virtually in Spanish Haitian Creole C Verdian Cantonese Mandarin Vietnamese and American Sign Language the zoom interpretation feature has been activated Zoom par participants should click the globe icon at the bottom of your screen to select your language preference I'd like to remind everyone to speak at a slower Pace to assist our interpreters we'll begin the meeting with the approval of minutes I will now entertain a motion to approve the minutes of the September 25th 2024 school committee meeting is there a motion thank you is there a second second thank you is there any discussion or objection to the motion is there any objection to approving the motion by unanimous consent hearing none the minutes are approved we'll now move on to the superintendent report I present to you our superintendent Mary Skipper thank you chair Robinson good evening to everyone in the audience uh both in person and virtual I'd like to begin my superintendent's Report with an update on BPS Transportation Transportation team continues to work hard and to take steps to address the challenges that we saw at the beginning of school we know we have more work ahead but the team has made steady progress and we continue to see consistent improvements in ontime performance each week for the week of September 23rd the am or morning ontime per performance or OTP averaged 85% for the week of September 30th morning boss OTP increased to 89% which is the same as the comparable week during the 2324 school year additionally since September 17th which was the 11th day of the school year greater than 99% of the morning buses arrived within 30 minutes of on time on all days the team is urgently working to improve afternoon ontime perent performance where there's still more work to be done for the week of September 30th afternoon bus OTP averaged 78% compared to 87% the comparable week last school year I will also say that we're monitoring the te interruptions because for instance we know with the orange line closure uh that's having a direct impact with more cars on the road and so we're looking at that correlation of what's happening with MBTA on our buses um and so that's just something that we always have to uh you know be aware of and look at and uh as best we can and work on the routing our team continues to implement route adjustments and refinements each week to address buses with consistent challenges and continuously improve our yellow bus ontime performance we've also continued to gather valuable feedback from families on their experience in order to improve service to meet student and family needs some examples of this would be making sure that families who have multiple students at the same school are on the same bus together even if only one of the siblings has door to-door transportation in their IEP working with zoom to help improve the app experience so families can track the bus and see information on any prior route delays before the bus starts the students route to date nearly 13,000 families or which represent about 75% of our bus riders are utilizing the zoom mobile app we encourage All Families to download the zoom mobile app and reach out to the transportation team 617635 9520 at any time for support a few bright spots October 2nd was National custodian appreciation day more than 500 dedicated BPS custodians work hard to keep our buildings clean and welcoming for our students and families and I want to take this moment to thank them for their service to the district I also want to recognize one of our very own custodians here at bowling uh who works with us he's here tonight Mike who's in the [Music] back he's also an incredible Celtics fan so definitely uh definitely love Mike great guy on Thursday October 3rd we celebrated the Hispanic latinx Heritage Month here at bowling building this is celebrated nationally between September 15th and October 15th we recognized our central office employees at what was really a fun Lively event it featured guest speakers as well as latinx food and music we were joined by chair Robinson as well as at large city councilor Julia Mahia uh one of the event highlights was the reading um by josiana Cologne who was a 2022 graduate of new Mission high school and a former leader with BAC which is our Boston student advisory Council she's now serving as an intern from Northeastern University in the office of opportunity gaps uh and she uh she uh read and recited a very beautiful passionate poem I am from the hernandes DU language school held its annual International potlock in games day on Saturday and welcomed more than 300 members of the community for a day of fun games food and food especially made from recipes for members of the community hernandes school Partners came together to help organize various family activities including lessons on how to make apple cider and an inflatable obstacle course Mass General Brigham joined the community to provide all of vaccinations to students and families special thanks to City Sprouts M General Brigham the friends of the Hernandez and the Hernandez School family Council for making it a wonderful day BPS recently cut the ribbon on the newly named Ruth Batson Academy which was forly known as the merged Boston Community Leadership Academy or bcla and the McCormack schools as you know the school's leadership team alongside staff students and Community stakeholders embarked on a process to select a new name for the school in April this committee voted unanimously in favor of the name change and so it was a wonderful celebration Boston Public School's brand new girls Flag Football League got off to a great start this past Sunday many parents and caregivers turned out to show their support for students making it a truly special experience I want to shout out the BPS athletics department for getting this program started we cannot wait to see how the talented students continue to grow and shine and enjoy on and off the field and throughout the season earlier this week I join I joined our longtime partner Ed vestors for a reception honoring the 2024 school on the Move prize finalists it was a great seeing some of the committee members at that event each fall edvestors hosts the prize to Spotlight School Improvement in the district the prize comes with a $100,000 award public recognition and the opportunity for the winning school to document and share its best practice and strategies uh pictured here you'll see school leaders Ben halet from the B of Boston adult Technical Academy Walter Henderson from The matah Hunt Elementary School and Cynthia Soo from theia quiny elementary school the winning school will be announced on Tuesday October 22nd uh we're very proud of the nominees for all of their work in fact I said last night at the event that this is one that I I am very happy I don't have to judge because uh truly all of the schools are winners that make it into that final nomination uh and so really look forward to to seeing who takes home the big prize BPS colleg in career month officially began on Tuesday October 1st I'd like to remind everyone about the annual Citywide college career and stem fair which is Saturday October 19th from 10: to 1:30 at the Reggie Lewis Center here in rockberry students and families are invited to connect with more than 170 exhibitors and college reps learn about career Pathways and job training programs and experience all of the stem exhibits it's very Hands-On they're also invited to engage in Hands-On learning attend workshops on topics such as career and academic planning learn about tuition free community college and begin completing a free application for the federal student aid or what we call FAFSA The matah Hunt Elementary School in matapan and the curly K8 School in Jamaica plane recently received National Banner recognition from the Special Olympics North America for meeting national standards of excellence in the areas of inclusion advocacy and respect during the school year 2324 both School communities were honored for creating a school climate where everyone feels included and respected they represented two of 19 schools named in massach etts and are among 2002 I'm sorry 202 which are recognized Nationwide for this status so once again congratulations to matah hunt and to the curly for all their efforts and for receiving this distinguished award given the lengthy presentation we have a head chair for mcass that is the conclusion of my report thank you superintendent I'll now open it up to questions and discussion from the committee I'd like to remind my colleagues about our agreed upon Norm that we each have five minutes one to two questions please make sure your questions are on topics related to the items in the superintendence report and I'd also like to remind BPS staff to be brief in your responses anyone any question yes I do I'm we haven't talked about it here and we'll have the mcast presentation tonight but there's also a lot of noise across the state around the future of mcast other School committees have come out with their opinions around prop 2 um I guess I am just curious like where we stand as a system but also like what's our point of view what are we encouraging families to do and then also where we are as a school [Music] board want anybody want to respond I mean I will I will say uh from a systems perspective that whatever happens uh with the vote um you know we will adjust our systems most importantly and foremost to support our students uh I think that there's many questions that we need to ask in general about the mcass around it being more of a system as opposed to a particular test at a particular point of time uh I would very much like to see that I would also like to see more discussion about how uh certain groups of our students like our multilingual Learners are held to standards on it uh often which seem inequitable compared to students that have been speaking English since they were in kindergarten so I I would rather see us have a much broader discussion about the role of standardized test uh how we can actually as we're doing in our regional networks and in our classrooms use organic assessment in a way to give us that immediate feedback on students every day as opposed to particular moments of time what else I I don't know I mean other you know you're watching the conversations in Worcester and other places school board's having like really thoughtful conversations about this over the last month and we just maybe for political reasons haven't touched it but I I you know the question that people are being asked which I think is a a scary one is do we keep mcast for graduation requirement or get rid of it not replace it not improve it it's just either like will we have a graduation requirement or will we not um yeah and so I just think as the governing body of the largest city in Massachusetts we probably I mean I think each of us probably has our own opinion about that and again I mean it's it's fine that people can express their opinions but we've not we usually we traditionally don't vote on things that are not just focused on Boston this is a Statewide piece it's and the vote that will be taken um will be what the P what the public decides I think we have to look at what's in the best interest of our own students and we'll have to take whatever steps come necessary AR from whatever the results of this is um but you know that's fine for people to want to be able to express or share what their own thoughts about this is and I think people have varying pieces and so if there's anybody that wants to express their anybody else want to just I want to thank you uh M chair thank you superintendent for the report um super [Music] I would like to ask uh the superintendent um how I've been hearing how parents and teachers are very concerned about the topic of the model of inclusion education in the district the plan of the inclusion education in the district and how teachers are required to have several licenses so I would like to know if you have an update about this um plan of inclusion for the licenses that teachers are required to have I ask it's because too many people waiting for what happened what is the update what is the position what do you work now about it then this you know um so I I do think uh thank you for the question member palano Garcia uh I do think we will have some reporting out on the inclusion plan uh as it it further into adoption uh and what we see with that with our students um I think you know we we have been really looking at kind of K through 12 and uh you know we our belief is that the Sole Provider of services um should should not be one teacher with the multiple licenses without additional supports and so the premise of the team that we put together in each of those I inclusion plans was that a special educator a regular educator and in some cases uh a teacher with NL certification that could provide those services to our multilingual Learners would work together and that the school would work in a way to make that schedule happen sometimes as a teacher pushing in sometimes as a teacher pulling out but they would not be the Sole Provider like one teacher um I think this is something we're working through right now we're having conversations about uh and so um I'm happy when we do the inclusion presentation to share with you additional feedback that we have on that as we look across the system uh at how our classrooms are doing our students are doing and uh checking in with our IP teams but really the team approach that we put forward in the inclusion plan was never for one person to do everything but rather a team to work together [Music] yes it's very important because of the concern that we have in the district that we want to have more teachers you know for example I as a teacher I want to um to be focused to be in school and so instead of having that concern and we need more teachers instead of putting more pressure on the teachers um thank you madam chair so superintendent I I do have a question about your report particularly when you're talking about transportation and you mention the orang line shutdown that's going on now that I found out and I ride the Orange Line almost every day but I found out about it in the paper about a day before um do we know and then for most of September there was a good sh uh good size shutdown on the red line as well do we know the impact for our high school students who are taking the red line the Orange Line how that has impacted their attendance as an example and we have a great student rep now so maybe we could hear from him as well about how the shutdowns have affected transportation for our high school students and and their ability and do you think that has had an impact on the yellow bus transportation CU you know all along the orange line now traffic has gotten a lot worse with the buses and the special lanes and everything so I'm wondering your thoughts both for our high school students and um the impact on our yellow bus great so three a chair so so um I I absolutely think that what happens with the m MBTA is directly correlated to our yellow buses because it determines how many cars are on the road I know the morning of the orange shut line it was double commute for me and I only literally live 12 minutes away but it literally took me almost a half an hour um and so and when I talk to other people it was the same experience so certainly it has to Bear when more people drive into the city as opposed to public transportation I I also think for our high school students and we see this in the chronic absenteeism that when it's going to take it already you know we know the the average commute is over an hour for our high school students to their high schools that's a long commute on public transportation so then when you add shuttles or you add any other kind of barrier or or uh rerouting that's a disincentive for students to continue that Journey so I think it plays in in lots of ways not just in time they miss uh with school but I think it's also whether they come to school I also think if they're working which many of our high school students do they then feel a tension of not staying after not getting the extra support they need because they have to plan extra time to get to their activities their early college class you know whatever it is that they're doing so it absolutely does have bearing on it and I know we always try to work uh you know uh Dan Rosengard and Jackie Hayes always try to work within the mvta to get as much notice as possible when these things happen but as you know sometimes these are things that happen in the moment and so we have very little notice and therefore we really can't give schools any notice yeah I'm I don't know if you wanted to add a comment to that particularly have you seen an impact at the arant as an example because I'm sure many of the students are traveling by orange line to get there I certainly have seen an impact on the Orange Line shutdown especially like students coming in like maybe even an hour late to their classes as the shuttles the shuttle system is very crowded and so many people rely on it like you could go three shuttle buses by without well sorry well find and not finding one that's available right it's it's also impacting how when students get home and especially their activities cuz it took me about like 2 hours just to get home because I couldn't find a shuttle bus I couldn't had to wait like 30 minutes to find a shuttle B that was available wow thank you superintendent a followup to that do we um and by the way I appreciate that he is doing this because the rides get much better after the shutdown the slow zones get eliminated Etc um but it's it obviously is impactful to our students do we know we talk so much about our ontime percentage do we know the te's on time percentage so Dean I don't want to put you on the spot but do you happen to know that I thought it was something like 67 or 70% yeah I don't have an exact number so I'd be hesitant you know it it's it is it's somewhere in those ballparks and I think the different lines have different uh percents and we focus so much now about you know you were sharing for example the week of the 23rd it was 85 the week of the 30th it was 89 as far as the on time percent in the morning has desie shared with us like is there a Statewide average of how districts do in ontime percentage do we know what best practices are that we're other than you know we have we all have an I had that 95% figure yeah no so this is a good question um to to our knowledge no I don't think this is something that's reported out within the state by systems I know that at the time when um we were trying to formulate theou there was an attempt to get information from the large school districts but what we discovered as large school districts call OTP something different in each of them sometimes it is literally when the Bus shows up to the front of the school other times it's within a grace period uh of whatever is established uh for class time start uh and some it's actually within 30 minutes so there is there does not seem to be a national standard to this um but we're continuing to try to get that information and look mostly because we want to make sure that we're bettering our practice as much as possible and I think you know we probably are a great example of transparency of data because you know we we publish almost every single day this information right um you know in a positive way to show we're about the continuous Improvement I think uh Dan and his team really focus on that uh 30 minutes because we want to make sure that's very very very small and that it's not impacting the same kids uh so that's one that Dan and his team have jumped on to drive down and it's had been at the 99 percentile uh even within the 15 minutes we really try I mean um you know we ended the year last year I believe like a 96 average there uh might have been 97 but that's another one that we use as a thermometer to make sure like that 15 minutes doesn't mean the student's late for a first period it just means that the bus is late for their arrival time but that's one we try to get to as much as possible so rotp is literally when that bus pulls in and hits their GPS marker uh which is truly OTP so you mentioned you try to get National information does desie or any any of the districts in other districts in Massachusetts particularly the larger cities that also have big yellow bus I mean do we have peers that we can find out how we're doing versus peers I believe we do not but uh Dan do we I'm just trying to figure out how we can put in context the numbers we've always referred to last year's figure right and then an arbitrary figure we're trying to get to I'm trying to help the public and myself um understand the context of the figure yeah no I I appre appreciate the question um I am not a we we've I've had conversations with you know Transportation directors in many other districts uh but I'm not aware of any that have publicly shared their benchmarks or their their data interesting thank you thank you superintendent thank you chair yeah Dan while you're there I have a question about Transportation um I was talking to a couple of school leaders and we were talking about what's been happening with drivers and then some said to me that drivers rebid their Roots I not sure how often and so I guess my question is particularly for routes that have had difficulty um what happens when you get another a new driver driving that route does does the on time percentage go back down again and how often are we re you know having drivers change roots and what is that overall impact yeah no it's a it's a great question question thank you chair um so I think there's there's two ways in which a driver can get a new route first is every week our team is making adjustments to the routes to fix where we're seeing issues so buses that are consistant running late when we look and we see that that might be a rooting or a scheduling issue we're making a change there and that the driver uh is notified of that change uh either on on Friday or sometimes on Monday and then they have two days to to do a practice run before they uh that change takes effect on Wednesdays uh historically we have seen a slight dip on Wednesdays that usually recovers within a day or so um we have seen that Trend this year as well but I would say actually a slightly mitigated impact which was part of the benefit of going to zoom is your first time doing something you're not trying to read the paper but you have the GPS directions in front of you uh so that is is certainly a a benefit that we've seen there then uh the broader driver rebid which I think you you may have heard about it as well is within the driver's contract there's a a contractually obligated rebid that happens either uh sometime kind of end of October early November each year and that is um something where any bus that has changed in in the number of hours by more than 5 hours per week is obligated to go back up for bid and also any driver who decides can choose to give their their route up and participate in the bid again and that's a way for the drivers who if their route has changed from what they bid on in August it's kind of a a second bite at the Apple for you know now that routes have stabilized to say what do I want to be doing for the rest of the year uh we'll do Communications to schools in families to make sure they know if they're on a bus where the driver the permanent driver is changing when that goes into effect and uh similarly historically we have seen a dip in OTP on the first day when that takes effect which usually recovers within uh the second or third day and I think again Zoom should help soften the blow when when that happens do we make sure that parents are aware that that may be happening so that their expectations can be managed around those changes yes so we'll we'll communicate in advance of that to all families and then make sure that uh any families who are on a bus where the driver is changing they'll get an additional communication before the change happens and now with zoom um I I I I guess I was thinking at one point all of our buses have monitors but they all don't um so are the buses that are having problems do they all have monitors in are the monitors able to help drivers with zoom um um because I was wondering if managing all of these new things and having a bus that's not getting where it's supposed to be what other supports are we putting on the bus to try to help mitigate those issues yep so all of our buses uh all of our smaller buses so everything except the the full-size big buses all of our other buses which transport all of our students with disabilities all of those buses have at least one monitor on board and in some cases multiple monitors if there's a student who requires a onetoone monitor um the monitors you know certainly help help you know with the students but also can support the driver along the Route um I think I think what we have seen is you know that learning curve with zoom impacted the first couple weeks um I think we're largely through that and we're we're seeing you know that the drivers have really taken to zoom and and they're you know um they're we're not really seeing issues there at this point I think where we're continuing to see some of those ontime performance gaps from compared to last year in the afternoon particularly is on the um the scheduling side and just making sure that we're we're getting the routes to where they need to be and then my last question again about the buses is um are there opportunities for the drivers to actually either meet with the schools or the families that they're driving as a sense of of humanizing personalizing and taking a different level of responsibility about the importance of getting these children where they need to go I think it's a great question um I think that happens in real time particularly the first few days you know as as drivers are meeting families and meeting schools for the first time um for some of our our schools with very specialized programs for instance the the Horus man uh will'll have all of the drivers and monitors who are assigned to you know that school you know pick a day and have them go out in the middle of the day and they'll meet with students in the school and and be able to learn a little bit more about you know that school's program and and build those relationships um but I think it's it's a great question a great point I'd love to continue to think of ways we can give more opportunities for that type of bonding all righty thank you thank you oh great um actually I have a transportation question but it's it's simple I think um I'm curious is there will there be any changes to zoom because what I'm hearing from also families is they're deciding whether they should leave the house and take their kid to school sort of uh through public transportation or drive them or bike them or however you know they want to get there but they can't access access the information about the bus until they say their kid is going to be on it and so is there like a way is there a way to get information to families around timing before they say their kid is going to be on in route so the the family can see the um they can track the bus um from the start they don't need to only if they canel the ride for the day would they you know then you've can your ride but that's the question it's like when do you like can you if you cancel you can't see the route anymore but if you don't cancel you're creating the routing problem that I think is like backing up the system does that make sense uh it's kind so the cancellation is more of a a day-to-day thing um say you know my students out sick today I don't need the bus I think what what you may I think what likely you were hearing because this is the feedback we were hearing the first few weeks uh the way the app was working if the driver was still doing the trip for their first school and you were your student was on that second School you couldn't see the bus until the driver started the trip for your school and so say it was running behind on the first school you wouldn't know that until he finished the first school Zoom we were able to work with zoom and and give them that feedback and and they made a change to how it worked so families can now track the bus even if the the bus is still doing the prior trip Fant for their school and it will give them an ETA on when the it will give them an ETA and it'll there's a message it might say like you know bus is running 10 minutes behind on a prior trip right now so they can start to plan ahead awesome that's great thank you thanks second question for me I'm only answering the thing that I asked even though we're not it didn't come up for we will discuss more about mcast during this the presentation no I was going to say about prop two you want the question two question two Yeah question two okay um I'm sorry I'm just like okay uh I guess what I'm say what I want to say I other people asked more questions than I'm asking so I'm just I think I'm on edge because I'm the only one who gets cut off the I guess what I want to say here I think we're going to see a presentation with some concerning results less than 27 % of our kids are on grade level 3 to8 I think this is probably the most consequential thing this is why I think it's important to talk about that is happening in education reform in Massachusetts we are making a decision if there is a the only standard we have across the state which is mcass if it will exist or if it will not as we continue to see declining outcomes I'm on a human level as a parent as an educator as a Schoolboard member for whatever it's worth like I'm saying I think we should loudly be encouraging folks to keep the one graduation requirement we have if we want to replace it later or talk about other system improvements we should do that but I am terrified of going back to a time which we have been in where the state had no graduation requirement and we saw who was the most harm vulnerable kids black and brown kids where the standards got lower and I think the entire conversation around this is about adults and not about kids it's not about rigor it's not about high expectations um and so I think it's it's a scary conversation that we're even afraid to have and I'm not saying we I mean the global we because of the power of the adults in the conversation um and the sort of political implications so um I am not saying mcast is is the Bible but I am saying every other industrialized country who performs significantly higher than us has a bar for graduation that is universal and to become a state where that just doesn't exist and to not put up a fight around that um I think is is is scary so for myself I will be voting no but I think it's important as a school Committee Member just to sort of name my my commitment to rigor the last thing I will also ask is just in what uh member palanco Garcia was speaking about I I am curious and maybe this will come up in the presentation as we're hearing this conversation about dual licenses and the desire from Educators to not have to sort of play multiple roles with their their lure and then we also see the outcomes that we'll preview today I hope that that is also part of the conversation like how we're thinking about human capital in Rel reltionship to solving some of the problems we'll talk about today um because I I the the noise around it is so clear and I was a teacher with two licenses as a special ed teacher and the idea of doing both jobs would feel impossible so I can imagine given our current state of play plus the demand we might just be thinking differently about that um so I think I think the team will get into uh some of the specific skills that we're focusing on particularly with literacy that we would then want to make sure teachers have plenty of professional development and support uh and so forth um again I think when it comes to specialized instruction of delivering IP Service uh the goal of the IPS and the plans uh were to make sure that students and what they were requiring was getting addressed by the constellation of adults that would be delivering those services so I think you'll hear that again in the presentation too any other questions thank you all I'll now entertain a motion to receive the superintendent's report is there a motion so move thank you is there a second thank you is there any discussion or objection to the motion is there any objection to approving the motion by unanimous consent hearing none the superintendent's report is approved we'll now move on to General Public comment Miss parvex [Music] thank you chair the public comment period is opportunity for parents caregivers students and other concerned parties to make brief presentations to the school committee on pertinent School issues questions on specific School matters are not answered at this time but are referred to the superintendent for a later response questions and specific policy matters are not answered at this time but may be the subject later of of later discussion by the committee the meeting will feature two public comment peers with the first comment period limited to 1 hour priority will be given to those testifying in person time permitting this committee will then open it up for virtual testimony after 1 hour anyone who hasn't testify will have the opportunity to do so at the end of the meeting we have 11 speakers this evening each person will have 3 minutes to speak and I will remind you when you have 30 seconds remaining if your remarks are longer than three minutes please email your comments for this distribution to the committee the time that an interpreter uses for English interpretation will not be deducted from a speaker's allotted time speakers may not re assign their time to others please direct your comments to the chair and refrain from addressing individual school committee members or District staff please note the comments of any public speaker do not represent the Boston Public Schools or the Boston school committee please state your name affiliation and what neighborhood you are from before you begin so we'll start with the inperson speakers Stephanie Aguayo did raning and John mud hello good evening um good evening superintendent Skipper and BPS school committee memb members my name is Stephanie aguo I am a resident of Rosendale I am speaking today on behalf of so Latina an out of school time Youth Development organization in Roxbury where I manage our arts and culture and Civic engagement programs for BPS high school students additionally in previous roles I work directly with BPS students to advocate for issues which affect them and their communities I want to preface by acknowledging my colleagues Victoria Garcia Al like Alandra Oliver Dava and Julia Morales who have spoken at previous school committee meetings this fall about concerns that so Latina has regarding our current Teen Mental Health crisis in my role I work with BPS high school students to become the next generation of leaders in their communities throughout my interactions with young people I have observed the negative impacts um of the of too much screen time and the harms of social media including unhealthy comparison misinformation racism self harm and cyber bully from my conversations with youth I've heard that the constant comparison online leads to anxiety low self-esteem and in some cases depression I acknowledge the vast improvements that social media has made on our society and our young people and how social media can be a tool for connection however we cannot ignore the severe implications it also comes with it's our responsibility to ensure that we are equipping our students with the life skills necessary to avoid the harms associated with their Tech We Believe VPS needs to provide opportunity ities for students to understand these harms and to be able to have agency to make choices around their use of Technology moreover the impact on youth's attention spans um cannot be over overlooked with the endless modifications and quick consumption content it seems as our youth and adults as well are losing the ability to focus on tasks or enjoy deep conversations this constant distraction affects our students academic performances and their ability to engage meaningfully with the world around them I have heard from our students how their technology also affects their quality of sleep our students are not able to put their phones down at night which also contributes to poor academic performance in school not to mention all the other health issues which um may arise when sleep is Disturbed at a developmental age lastly this lack of sleep also contributes to our students chronic absenteeism that we're still seeing across the district at to Latina we have begun a no cell phone policy and seen firsthand the results of improved student engagement 30 seconds and relationship building that this policy has instilled in our programs we urge B has to make sure that you're upholding your own cell phone policy with Fidelity across the district I've heard from our students that cell phone policy implementation varies widely at different high schools that they attend at the very minimum we need to ensure all of our schools are upholding these policies and the standard additionally we need to be in conversation with our BPS Youth and families about their experience with this policy so Latina is requesting a BP that BPS creates a committee that includes students parents Guardians and external organizations that work with you to advise on this policy thank you next speaker St Manning good afternoon my name is dearra Manning I am a doorchester resident single parent of two public school students I'd like to refer the school committee members and the public to the recordings on September 11th at the 1 hour and 51 minute Mark and on September 25th at the 1 hour and 15 minute Mark so that you can hear more about what I'm speaking about this evening I would like to let school committee members know that I I think the situation now is getting very urgent you are now starting another cycle of admissions next Wednesday is the first parent zoom and on the zoom last year parents were informed that tiers would be made known in the late fall they were not released until January 7th so if you were the person who didn't have a backup plan and you were looking to apply to a private school you had eight days to turn around an application and get testing and that's assuming of course that you even have the resources to afford a private school I know families of color who decided that applying was a waste of time so they weren't even in the applicant pool I know people who weren't of color who also felt that applying was a waste of time so if you're looking at a reason another reason why numbers are down for exam School applications I um would tell you that that is definitely a reason um BPS students get to take map testing three times a year that is not an equable situation and then even worse on one single day non-bps students will have to take both sections back to back in a strange location with an unfamiliar test administrator and without their peers it's extremely stressful situation and testing conditions for those students the whole I can't even call it a process this is just such a situation that is so incredibly stressful for families um you know April 10th at 4:30 p.m. is when it actually people were told whether they had a seat or not on March 26th they tell you what your GPA is everything is just so far down the the line it's impossible for people to plan I would say that the policy is well-intentioned but it would be absolutely generous of me to call the Implement implementation of this policy a mess it's a disaster this is just so inequitable it's not fair um and I just imagine that there are going to be parents going in next Wednesday October 16th listening to this this process and and determining you know getting information that doesn't even actually State you know what what's going to happen a simple motion here's a draft right here I'd like to make a to amend the exam School admission policy to allocate the number of seats awarded per tier based on the number of applicants in each tier which would result in the same rate of admission across TI the policy still would need to be changed but at least you'd have something for this year that gave people some hope thank you thank you very much next speaker is John mud good evening my name is John mud I'm a resident of Cambridge and a longtime education advocate in Boston I uh in my analysis of the mcast results I looked for three things first what's happening to the achievement Gap the size of the achievement gaps in English language arts increased from the gaps in 2021 to the gaps in 2024 for All subgroups Blacks Latinos English Learners students with disabilities for grades 3 to 8 and grade 10 in math there was a credible increase in the absolute scores for all subgroups between 2021 and 2024 in grades 3 to 8 but the achievement Gap increased for all subgroups between those dates the level of the scores and the magnitude of the gaps are not trivial for example less than 20% or 1 of blacks and Latinos in grades 3 to8 met expectations in English language arts in 2024 and the gaps compared to whites were more than 40 percentage points overall BPS is still failing to improve equity for the students in the system secondly on Equitable Literacy for English language literacy scores overall there was almost no change in mcast achievement grades three and four where the Equitable literacy program was initiated compared to last year or for the achievement gaps in those grades the outcomes remain unacceptably low passing rates of 4% for English Learners 15% for blacks in grade four and for 2024 for example there is no equity in Equitable literacy according to mcast 2024 result results this suggests another question are there any differences among schools or regions that could identify bright spots with lessons for districtwide reform thirdly a number of members asked to see the outcomes for multilingual Learners at low English language development levels in gened with the SL uh uh support this is the model for multilingual Learners in the inclusion plan there is no report in this I would hope that if the data is not available now it will be in time for the October 28th Retreat where I would hope that people could have some significant discussion of this inclusion proposal finally just briefly those English Learners that exit the programs and become former English Learners score better than regular students in this system thank you Mr M time there are implications and we will pursue this further speakers are Jonathan Rodriguez and Naomi Dreer Jonathan Rodriguez hello good evening um my name is Jonathan Rodriguez I'm an organizer with the Boston Teachers Union I live in matapan and it's great to be here with you guys um I'm here to read a couple of stories I know the mayor uh received over 4,500 of these a couple weeks ago uh but we still have some coming in we have some great stories from our members um that I'd like to to read as many as I can today so dear mayor Wu I'm one of the teachers who has had to teach in her three licenses at the same time it has taken a huge toll on my ability to actually service the needs of the high needs populations that I supporting they deserve real specialized support please support our students um students and teachers by ending this practice Rosemary pekham I am a proud uh proud to Proud to teach in a fully inclusive classroom at BPS but I could never do it without the support of my co- teer and ESL service provider one teacher cannot do the work alone trust me I tried it's time to end the practice of mandating a single educator meet all ESL and IEP needs while simultaneously delivering general education instruction in the same classroom inclusion Done Right requires a team of qualified Educators working together Chelsea Falco Henderson inclusion um around housing housing costs in Boston are Out Of Reach for most of our members especially our par professionals we all deserve to be able to live in a city where we work Genesis Len former BPS student who once lived in the Southend community and no longer can afford to live in the city I grew up in housing costs in and around Boston are Out Of Reach for most of our members especially our par professionals I have been working in BPS for four years and have never and have had to work a second job in order to maintain housing and travel even with two jobs I still cannot afford an emergency fund uh for when hard times come I love my job at BPS and I am even working towards finishing my degree in order to further my career with with BPS pay Equity is a small ask with all that we do in our schools Carlos Al's PA professional Tech Boston um uh to Mayor woo I have been an educator for 25 years in Boston I have worked in inclusion for 20 years I work with three four five year olds um it's not sustainable and it's not even developmentally appropriate uh might go on a little too long on that one um mayor R I have been a teacher at the Edison in Brighton for 14 years and I still cannot afford to live in the city I work in how can this be Laura Higgins thank you 30 seconds oh I have one more uh May mayor as a teacher with BPS for over 11 years I have seen many iterations of what the district believes inclusion uh should look like I have he to tell you that true inclusion provides all students with all they need by having quality Educators uh who are experts in their chosen Focus area students deserve an ESL teacher a special education teacher and a Content teacher they do not deserve one teacher trying to juggle and because multiple lies thank you that's from the Edison thank you next speaker is now M drer good evening members of the school committee my name is Naomi drer I live in the Fenway neighborhood and I teach at the first and finest Elementary School in North America the ma in Dorchester I am here to speak in support of BTU's contract demand for inclusion done right this is important to me because I am experiencing firsthand the detrimental effects of how inclusion is being implemented in the district currently I am an inclusion specialist in kindergarten this means I split my time between two classrooms serving both students who receive special education services and multilingual Learners right now one classroom has three students who receive special education services for between 90 and 120 Minutes daily and nine students students who are doe at least 90 minutes of ESL Services outside the classroom my other classroom has a similar makeup with seven multilingual Learners and three students who receive special education services I have a total of 400 service minutes a day there are only 240 minutes of instructional time in one day there is literally not enough time in the day for me to proide the services all my students need and deserve I am being mandated to teach under my moderate disability license and my English as a second language license in two different classrooms with a case load that I cannot support asking one teacher to support both populations in two different settings is untenable students who receive special education services have unique needs as do students who are multilingual Learners the lack of staff is making learning harder on the populations that need the most support by school committee I urge you to meet the BTU's demand for BTU's contract for inclusion done right our students deserve an inclusion model where there are at least two teachers in every classroom all day every day this model ensures that case loads are manageable for teachers and more importantly ensure student get the services they are due and deserve thank you we will now transition to um public comment on Zoom please make sure you're signning to zoom with the same name you used to sign up for public comment and be prepared to unmute yourself and turn on your camera when it's your turn to testify please raise your virtual hand when I call your name our next speakers there will be Mike hman Abigail Corner Lee Nave and Moira Collins Mike hman we live in the wealthiest nation in the world World there is an abundance of wealth in our Commonwealth and in our Rich City horrible conditions have existed in our school system for Generations you approved an austerity budget submitted by mayor woo that promises additional harm for our children this school year harmful policies are often chosen because they are cheaper than providing additional funds for successful policies this must change the horrible must become unacceptable and our deficiencies solvable negotiations with the Boston Teachers Union are providing you with many opportunities to improve teaching and learning a major disagreement is how the system will deal with inclusion you want one teacher in a large classroom who has multiple licenses and teach a diverse class including those who have special needs and or have a primary language different than English the btu wants a sufficient number of teachers who collectively collectively have the training and experience and collaborate so that every child will have a high quality education your way is inclusion done cheaply field policies like this saves lots of money the cost is the continued miseducation of our children the BTU's way is inclusion done right yes it is expensive however our children their families and our community deserve it I call on the community to support the BTU's calm and good contract let us move forward in love and educate all of our children mcast the child Massachusetts child abuse system has for decades caused terrible harm to our state schools including our schools and children in Boston the passage of question two in November would alleviate some of the future damage by ending this Deni the ending the denial of high school IAS for those who have failed this discriminatory and racist test our whole system would benefit there would be less pressure to raise test scores and more support to educate our children I once again call on school committee and Miss Skipper to join with other school committees City councils and superintendant and endorse the passage of question two Mr cardet Hernandez thank you for bringing it up and once again the school committee is ducking its responsibility taking a position seconds we could do a much much better job of creating our own assessment system and our own standards for promotion and graduation the current system is poisoned by mcast the massachus child abuse system thank you thank you very much next speaker is Abigail corner good though hello my name is Abigail carner I I live in Brighton I am a point8 science teacher teaching four grades at a full inclusion school I do not have a physical classroom and frequently teach without additional support this year my role could not be funded to be full-time nor could sign specific coaching across the district or pair professional support for specialist teachers at my school this year at the bats we specialist teachers work alone during most classes working alone is not fine or fair when all students at the Phineas spat School are promised a model of inclusion where two adults support all classes instead I alone attempt to support students in accessing science content in rooms where in many cases up to half of students have IEPs and others are learning English or have 504 plans without question this is not in keeping with our schools inclusion model due to these working conditions I struggle to facilitate learning that aligns with our school's goals for Equitable disciplinary literacy instruction resulting in students accessing materials with various varying levels of rigor unique goals and accommodations cannot be addressed simultaneously while managing a classroom of over 20 children without the support of an second educator consequently during literacy Focus science lessons each classroom community experiences an inex Equitable learning environment some students work independently without support and others receive small group instruction because of the Personnel limitations our school faces due to funding constraints my science classes are scheduled during common planning time for grade level teams there are limited opportunities to discuss and work through these challenges with fellow Educators during my contract hours in my opinion the limitations of this unsupported role are also a value statement about Science Education in Boston public schools is this core discipline not important enough to fund full-time teachers classroom spaces or additional Personnel the addition of just one more day per week would allow me to better plan and collaborate with other Educators addressing these gaps in instruction the addition of one inclusion Specialist or one pair of professional would help all four specialist teachers at our school reach our inclusion model for all students my experience at the Bates as school held up as a long-standing model of full inclusion shows that inclusion Done Right is a choice and a value even in places like the baits the district has unfortunately backtracked we can't go back we must have inclusion Done Right 30 seconds next speaker is Lee na followed by Moira Colin hi good evening school committee members uh my name is Lena Jr I am an Austin resident BTU staff member and a father of two including a four-year-old who is a K1 student at the gardener pilot Academy who is also in a full inclusion classroom he has an i AP with speech delay and a secondary diagnosis of autism he has a wonderful teacher a par professional another inclusion teacher as well as a specialist for a speech delay when he first attended the Gardner he had a vocabulary so small he rarely made more than three words sentences he he knew about 20 words in total and I am advocating today that BPS fully fun inclusion done right as a parent my top priority is my Children's Welfare my wife and I worked with BPS and Early Child Development and uring he had full placement somewhere that could fully assist all his needs we advocated not only for our child to receive services but a placement that allows our child to be fully engaged in a school-based environment at first BPS suggested he merely come twice a week during the day for two different 30 minute sessions at the Blackstone for speech therapy this for several reasons was not tangible we advocated and met again with the I AP team and were able to determine he needed a placement in a full-time School environment a full inclusion environment a year later we've seen amazing results because of this now he's seen major changes in his development he can tell you an entire book from front to back he's active in every discussion he according to his teachers is explaining to all the kids in his class how things are run he's a leader and he gained these skills his voice from a full inclusion classroom with teachers and Educators and Specialists who helped in various ways they all report in different aspects of how they assist him I can honestly say my son is an example of how powerful inclusion Done Right can be and and every child with an i AP in particular would need would needs these specialized services to fully Thrive therefore I urge this committee and the administration to fully invest in inclusion for all where every child every kid like mine can have their formative early years get the services that they need thank you thank you very much the next speaker Moira Collins is not in the meeting um chair that concludes public comments that's it okay sorry thank you thank you Miss PRX and thank you to those of you who spoke this evening and shared your perspective your testimony is very important to us our only action item this evening is the grants for approval totaling 700,000 now I'd like to turn it over to the superintendent for any final comments uh wonderful thank you chair uh so you have two grants before you tonight um both equally exciting one is for Special Olympics uh this is a continued Grant year three uh within our athletics department uh and this is to support our special Olympic efforts and the schools at which that will happen are listed the second is Hub schools this is uh uh Grant from the lubben foundation which has been extremely supportive to us in um in both establishing and expanding our hubs model so I would just ask the committee for their approval in these grants to be able to continue a lot of the exciting work that we've begun thank you and now open it up to questions and comments from the [Music] committee thank you if there are no further questions I will now entertain a motion to approve the grants as presented is there a motion you have do you want to say anything about that oh excuse me let me go back goe sorry [Music] something that I saw in the within the within the USC Grant is that there was only 31 schools selected and then up to 12200 students that it was only going to support up to 1,200 students and I was just wondering if that covers like all of the of the special needs students within the BPS district and if if it if it isn't is there any like action being made to support them all include them no it's a great it's a great question I think this is more about supporting particular programming in it but I know Avery EST still is here um Avery did you hear that question if you want to come up to the mic good evening um I think I heard some of it uh just in terms of the schools and the number of students that were're uh supporting so the the grant is around if they had if we achieve it we would have all our schools become unified Champion schools um the Special Olympics Massachusetts has a full-time staff member that supports um this initiative in the district and works to recruit schools get them involved support them bring them along help them grow um so the byproduct of some of that is the um two schools that uh are receiving the banner Awards okay was a great question great question from our student rep okay anything else superintendent I'll just say I'm I'm incredibly supportive of of the goal of making so many of our schools Hub schools um and I would love at some point that we actually get an update on the progress on that what is working what the what the goals are Etc wonderful uh but very thankful for this grant to support bringing this to more schools great they're wonderful yes and Luben has been a partner with us since Inception so we're very thank for their support thanks any other questions did you have another question nor I also noticed another thing within the within the document is that the Hub school's Grant is going to go to ensuring that the Hub school's priorities align with the BPS district priorities I was just like wondering if students have had an input within like what those BPS priorities are and if they are like within the priorities of what the students want sure so that's a that's a great question actually that would be wonderful because um it foreshadows when we actually get together uh for our Retreat for school committee for which you'll participate and we set goals um what we do is as a district we look at the school committee's goals and then we help to set priorities to support those goals and others in the case of the Hub schools we actually follow on model that was established um out of New York of community schools and so uh we started with six and then we've built to where at the end of this year there'll be up to 20 Hub schools and those Hub schools um very much are about individual schools where students parents stakeholders all have a role in helping to determine for that school what the Hub will look like what what it will focus on what kinds of Partnerships they want to bring in so absolutely students will be involved in the voice of setting that for each of the schools that becomes a hub okay thank you superintendent and can I just add that the Hub school strategy has been incorporating the voices of families with authentic student engagement students we've even included BAC in many of our opportunities to roll out our strategies and we'll continue to work with Community part Partners across all sectors in an effort to meet the very specific needs of our students relevant to the schools they attend so currently we have 20 Hub schools we're super excited the strategy is all about equity and it's all about having parents and community members be a part of the decision-making process so we're not doing things to them we working with them so we look forward to coming back and doing a whol scale presentation on HUB schools in the near future and this is Dr Mcintyre who uh among her portfolio as the deputy chief uh in schools and accountability part of her role is overseeing the Hub schools thank you Omar thank you okay all right good all right so if there's again if there's no further discussion I'll now entertain a motion to approve the grants as presented is there a motion so move thank you is there a second second thank you is there any discussion or objection to the motion is there any objection to approving the motion by unanimous consent hearing none the grants are approved our first presentation this evening is tentative collective bargaining agreements with the lunch hour monitors and cafeteria workers I'll now invite Labor Relations director Jeremiah Hassan to please step forward with the presentation while he's getting settled I'd like the invite the superintendent to give opening remarks uh wonderful chair thank you so BPS Labor Relations director Jeremiah Hassen is here to walk you through two separate tentative collective bargaining agreements that were recently reached with two of our unions the lunch hour monitors uh asme Council 93 and local 230 cafeteria workers these agreements were discussed in an executive session earlier this evening the school committee members have received memorandums of agreement outlining both tentative collective bargaining agreements which are being extended through 2027 the lunch hour monitors ask me Council 93 is expected to hold its ratification vote later this week local 230 cafeteria workers are expected to hold theirs next week on or about October 16th the cost of wage increases for fiscal year 2024 will be paid for using existing reserves which were established by the city of Boston in anticipation of a finalized collective bargaining agreement there is no school committee action required at this time for fiscal year 2025 we are asking the school committee to request an fy2 supplemental appropriation from the Boston City Council in amounts of $457,900 us tonight I'm excited to be here with labor Council Michelle bushard who has really worked closely with asme and the union presidents to get these deals done uh so with that we're excited to present to you and we recommend that you support two recent tentative agreements that we reached with ASE to cover the first which is um for our lunch hour monitors these are the employees who monitors monitor our students during lunch and recess periods and there are roughly uh 318 employees in this group um with some hires pending so the agreement extends for four years the superintendent said it runs it it's two consecutive agreements the first is for last year fiscal year 24 uh school year 23 24 and in that year is fully retro we have used a market analysis to adjust the rates and so the parties have created a new step one at $16.81 a new step two at $17.84 and a step three which is a new Step altogether uh at $18.19 so that is the first agreement and that is fully retroactive in the second agreement it covers three years and it is consistent with the city's wage pattern that it reached with its as groups and it's 2% per year increases with additional cash added to the employees annual salary so in the first year it's $250 spread out annually across their paychecks in year two it is $900 spread out across their paychecks and in year three it is $800 spread out across their paychecks uh as superintendent pointed out to cover the cost of this contract uh we are also recommending your support with a supplemental appropriation request in the amount of 457,000 886 with that I'll take any questions related to the lunch monitors unit any questions no I think you can go on thank you all right and moving on to the cafeteria workers so this group does food preparation and service in our schools in similar to asme this is going to be a total 4-year agreement broken down into two M Moa the first being fully retroactive for fiscal year 24 uh this follows the more traditional uh wage pattern with the city and it'll be a 2% increase in fiscal year 24 with an additional $500 spread over the life of the contract um or over the end the year uh spread out on paychecks uh by year so it'll total $500 per year for each member uh in fiscal year 25 it's another 2% % with the additional $250 uh fiscal year 26 is 2% with the additional $900 in fiscal year 27 is 2% with an additional $800 spread across the con the um paychecks uh as superintendent mentioned to support the cost of this contract in the current year fiscal year 25 we are requesting your support with a supplemental appropriation request to C City Council in the amount of $881 , 479 and I open it up for to questions regarding the cafeteria workers no and if there are no questions I just want to thank the asme bargaining team uh presidents Bonnie McMaster and hyri Rivera for working with us at the table uh as one thing I mentioned in executive session we have a really strong uh partnership with this group at the moment and so we've been able with both groups so we were able to work through these contracts um in a a professional and efficient manner and I thank them for the support and I want to thank Michelle for all her work to get these across the Finish Line yeah um thank you both and the committee looks forward to taking action on these items at our next meeting thank you thank you our next report is the 2024 State assessment and accountability results I'll now invite Dr Linda Chen senior Deputy superintendent of academics and April Clarkson senior executive director director of data and accountability to please step forward with the presentation while they are getting settled I'd like to invite superintendent I'd like to invite the superintendent to give opening remarks thank you chair uh so on on September 24th Desi released the 2024 accountability results for schools and districts across the state and the Sy 2324 mcast results as a reminder students in grades 3 through 8 and in grade 10 took the mcast in the spring of 2024 in math Ela and science at the last school committee meeting I shared some high level takeaways from the results and tonight we'll take a much deeper dive into that data tonight we're joined by a whole team in academics um but specifically Dr Linda Chen who's our senior Deputy superintendent of academics and Senior executive director of The Office of data and accountability April Clarkson and they will share provide a much more detailed analysis of the results chief of teaching and learning Leslie Miller uh chief of uh the office of Multicultural multilingual education Joel gamir K seal chief of special of office of specialized Services uh wow everyone is back there but they will introduce as they come up but we also have uh School soups Dr Mcintyre who is here uh and I know that Chief McCarthy uh from student support will also be speaking um I think collectively they are going to speak to the implementation of high quality instructional materials which we refer to as HQ the district's Equitable literacy practices and how we will work to ensure that English language Learners receive access to rigorous content and language support and as I reported last week Boston's data showed that the district's performance remains largely unchanged following the decline in performance due to the pandemic Boston is not new unique this is a similar Trend that we see at the state level and in other urban districts around the nation the district is making progress toward meeting its Improvement goals meeting or exceeding 48% of its Improvement targets set out by the state in addition the district was not identified as requiring any assistance or intervention in total 54 schools do not require Assistance or intervention while 43 schools are designated as requiring assistance and intervention these are similar numbers to the 2023 and in next uh next school committee we will do a a deep dive into the transformation schools which are the schools requiring assistance and intervention one of the highlights from this year's result is that the district exceeded targets for reducing chronic absenteeism in non- high school grades with an average rate of 27.1 BPS met the targets for The Chronic absenteeism targets at the high school level with an average rate of 4 7.5 and I believe the Blended was 34.1 I believe the district average and that was a 7.5% reduction from the previous year so definitely very very solid gains um I'd like to again highlight the schools with the greatest year-over-year reduction in chronic absenteeism from 2223 to 2324 MAV K8 lion High School East Boston eec tinan Elementary young achiever K8 and the odonnell elementary school the district demonstrated typical growth in ela and math in all grade levels that means a student growth percentile between 40 and 60 the district exceeded its targets for chronic absenteeism at the third and eth grade levels and met its targets for English language proficiency at the high school level three BPS schools were named schools of recognition the Curtis gu Elementary East Boston the alagan element monori School in East Boston alary rather and Fenway High School in Mission Hill schools of recognition are schools that met or exceeded their targets and had high achievement and high growth of the school district's 39 transformation schools 22 of them improved their accountability percentile five schools improved above the bottom 10% and five schools remained above the bottom 10% my team will provide a quarterly transformation School update at this next school committee which is on Wednesday the 23rd we're encouraged by the steady progress we're making in reducing chronic absenteeism in grades 3 to8 math achievement and English language proficiency at the high school level teams worked hard to implement strong systems across the BPS the data shows that there's important work ahead of us which we will get into tonight and talk through to improve student achievement as our students continue to recover from the pandemic at this point I'll turn things over to Dr Chen and everyone good evening chair Robinson school committee members I want to actually begin um because a few of you had some questions about the inclusive education plan and Staffing and certainly that has implications of some of the things we discuss with this presentation I just want to provide some clarifications um because I want to be clear that from the very beginning our vision for the inclusive education work was not that any educator be would be alone solely serving all the required services for the diverse Learners in their class but rather as the superintendent noted at the top it is really about a team-based approach to teaching where there is an ESL instructor when that is needed for the students in that class and there is um a special educator when that is needed to provide services and specially designed instruction so we are um obviously in conversation with the btu on figuring out how we can um work that out so we are not having um sort of the a a sort of a single story of a teacher necessarily encountering those situations given that you know every school every classroom is different the composition of students who are multilingual Learners and students with disabilities vary there isn't a one-size fits all Staffing model or lure requirement that's going to meet the needs of every class in the same way way so those are the things that we are trying to work out I just wanted to be upfront about that um it it is something that I just want to assure folks that that is not our vision and our expectation for how this works but we do need to find a way that we can um meet the needs of our students through providing the capacities that our Educators need and you will hear some of that throughout um this presentation so without further Ado I do want to also thank you all for taking the time to review a number of very dense slides and I apologize in advance for that um but I also appreciate that you have posed some questions to us and um our goal this evening is to embed responses to your questions throughout different parts of the presentation so you'll get some data so that I think it's important for us to all have the same information and then Pro get some information from folks behind me uh as well in terms of our responses to that um to the data that we have seen both what is in the presentation in terms of accountability mcast and access but also and other points of data that the team and and our schools look at because it's always about multiple sources it's never relying on one single measure but certainly the ones that we're talking about this evening are important so um we didn't want to wait to respond to some of the questions all the way to the end so we'll still be using the same slides that you have but we'll some at the our first plan was to talk all about it on the last slide which was 36 we just thought that was a lot of data to go through before talking about some of these things um so April Clarkson will review some of the slides which Encompass the analyses of the 2024 accountability mcast and access data um and we are also joined by lesli Ryan Miller Joel G and K seal who will provide additional context to better understand District achiev data as it relates to instructional and programmatic support that the district provides um again we know that these results are important but not the sole metrics for monitoring um progress so they will share how we leverage some other sources of information alongside these data to delineate how all of these indicators inform us of what is working and certainly what needs to be changed in order for us to improve further you will see quite and he quite a bit of data um and again it's it's important to ground ourselves in the results but we know that we are not satisfied I do want to say this very clearly we are not satisfied with where we need to be to deliver for all of our students uh we also have Regional superintendents epine todano and lesie Gant as well as lindsa McIntyre and Corey McCarthy here who are ready to provide some concrete examples we think it's important to share the strategy and what we are doing but also what are some concrete examples on the ground in school schools of what is being done um and the work underway um in schools so I'm going to turn this time over now for the accountability part of the presentation to April Clarkson and she'll continue on here thank you Dr Chan good evening chair Robinson and school committee members we'll begin with the state accountability data thank you um the purpose of State accountability system is to provide clear actional actionable information to families community members and the public about district and school performance tonight's meeting will have a lot of data presented on slides I'll try to highlight some insights from the data and frequently pause to allow you to digest the tables and charts that you see additionally we will take time throughout the presentation to connect the data you see with what we're learning from the classroom where we have received specific questions from the committee we will try to answer them throughout the the presentation I want to start with a description of what encompasses the state accountability system the system looks at mcast achievement and growth English proficiency chronic absenteeism as well as two high school specific domains High School um completion as well as advanced coursework in their classification systems schools are categorized according to their normative accountability percentile ranking this ranges from a school of recognition to a school not requiring Assistance or Intervention which at its highest level includes schools that are meeting or exceeding their targets all the way down to schools that require Assistance or Intervention which includes at its lowest level requiring broad or comprehensive support there are three main takeaways as it comes to be as it comes to bps's accountability performance first we do not require Assistance or intervention as we have met 48% of our Improvement targets second BPS has met and exceeded its chronic absenteeism targets for non-h high school and high school grade spans as well as for most student groups and lastly transformation schools have substantially improved in relation to their accountability targets as I uded in the beginning of the presentation the first major takeaway is that BPS is classified by the state as not requiring Assistance or intervention because it's making substantial progress towards its Improvement Targets on average BPS has made progress in 48% of the state's Improvement targets as compared to all districts Statewide whose Target Improvement rate is 39% the bottom table shows the number and percent of schools who are in each category related to whether or not they require Assistance or intervention and those schools with insufficient data slide seven shows how the number of schools in each classification category has shifted since 20123 you can see that the number of schools requiring assistance has remained consistent while for schools not requiring Assistance or intervention there is a move to the middle in terms of an increase of schools that are making either moderate or substantial progress towards Targets this next table shows the overall results for Boston's accountability report in each category of the accountability system Boston has the opportunity to receive up to Four Points representing that the district exceeded its accountability Target or exceeded typical growth at the low end the district will receive zero points if its achievement has declined or exhibited very low growth we have highlighted the areas of the report where the district met or exceeded its targets or typical growth in green and where the district has declined or experienced very low growth in red these results show that BPS has shown strong performance in mathematics growth the extended engagement rate and most notably in reducing chronic absenteeism however we note that BPS has left points on the table as it relates to ELA and science achievement this next slide is in response to some of the questions that we received from the committee it displays School classification by region as a reminder the district is grouped into nine regions that are generally geographically based and grouped by Elementary or secondary grade levels in this chart you will note that the bars are not ordered by region but rather by the percent of schools within a region that require Assistance or intervention we have also included the percent of lowincome students within each region to highlight that region demographics are not uniform across the district the major takeaway from this slide is that school classifications range across all regions from a high of over 50% of schools requiring assistance in regions 3 9 and 8 to a low of fewer than onethird of schools requiring assistance in regions 4 5 and 1 looking at the school level performance we note that 13 schools have increased their accountability percentile for the last two consecutive years the increases range from 1 point to 18 five of the schools have been identified as schools of recognition over the past years and one school the chit is a transformation school that has demonstrated consistent Improvement since 2019 we know that school committee members had a question about the schools with declining performance in our next school committee meeting we'll be discussing transformation schools and in that conversation we will include other schools of concern in a way that directly addresses that question slide 11 displays the account accountability percentile change for each of the 39 transformation schools this chart shows that the change in percentiles for transformation schools ranges from a 19point decrease to an 8o increase we note that 22 transformation schools improved their accountability percentile five improved above the bottom 10th percentile and five remained above the bottom 10th percentile since 2023 I will now pass it to my colleague Dr Chen to discuss the district's response to the accountability data thanks given that we are going to um we have many other topics and questions we want to respond to um we are going to address some more of this in our transformation presentation but I I did want to say that we know that in order to have sustained School Improv Improvement it is a um it requires a comprehensive and holistic approach where multiple factors work in Tandem and when we think about this we think about two broad categories and these actually are since we were talking about Hub schools earlier these are characteristics of the Hub schools and why that strategy is so important to us so one of the two broad elements is a culture of belonging and agency that is reflected in the safety and comfort of our physical spaces which we are obviously in the process of doing something about our Capital planning powerful student and family engagement that Dr Mcintyre spoke about earlier and collaborative leadership that cultivates shared power and voice in the school the other element that we think about broadly is rigorous highquality learning experiences that are culturally and linguistically responsive and at grade level um member cardet hernandz spoke earlier about holding a clear bar for rigor and expectations and that is an important aspect of this that we should not forget and that also includes expanded learning and enriched learning experiences as well and so those are some of the elements that really need to come together under the direction of school leadership and that is a lot of what our regional school superintendent that is their job to be able to do that we will be talking um during that transformation presentation about how we are looking at um schools that have gained ground lost ground multiple years in a row levels of proficiency all of those things and how we are activating the regional supports to be able to provide the Equitable supports that are needed in targeted ways it's not just about getting more but how are we using the data through our progress review Cycles to ensure that the right kinds of support are going to the schools that need it and they are in a coordinated way where it's not just about putting coaching in but going back to see what happened with that coaching what happened with the supports and what are the adjustments that we need to make to better support schools in the greatest areas of need so with that I'm going to actually now um we do have a few folks who have as your questions come up we'll we all want to ground them in concrete examples of school school so we will kind of hold on that so we can kind of in the interest of moving things forward but we're going to now move into the mcast portion of um the presentation thank you Dr Chen so a quick note about the data in the following slides you will see the scaled score and student growth percentile SGP presented scaled scores range from a low value of 440 to a high value of 560 the first table shows the range of scores along the performance level cut points of not meeting meeting sorry not meeting um partially meeting meeting and exceeding expectations you can also see that the SGP ranges from 1 to 99 with values that correspond to categories from very low growth to exceeding typical growth as we look at the data it's important to understand the state context for these data this table displays the percent of students who met or exceeded expectations in grades 3 through 8 as well as the state um in in ela the yellow columns and math the blue columns across the state and including Boston we see one in fiveyear decreases in ela performance at the non- high school level for math performance we are still seeing lower performance as compared to 2019 however the one-year Trends show mixed results with year-over-year improvements for certain grade levels and student groups similarly in the table in slide 16 um we compare Boston's 3 to8 Performance in ela Math and Science to that of other large urban districts across the state here we see that Boston's results are similar in ela and math but not in science which is lower than the performance seen at the state and other urban districts the major takeaways that we have for this year's performance are four-fold first BPS has reduced chronic absenteeism across all grade levels and for most student groups second performance mirrors State and large Urban District performance Statewide third consistent Improvement was seen for students in grades four and 7 as well as improved performance for black students and the lowest performing student group lastly English learner performance indicates that a focus on improved English proficiency is necessary to achieve higher results slide 18 shows the overall mcast achievement for grades 3 to 8 in ela and math the two charts represent average scaled score performance in ela on the left and math on the right the gray bars represent previous performance from 2019 to 2023 the blue bar represents 2024 performance the green line represents the proficiency score of 500 and the orange triangles represent the 2024 accountability targets you can see that similar to the state Ela performance decreased by 0.8 scaled score points and fell below its accountability Target as for math the average scaled score increased by 0.9 scaled score points since 2023 but it also fell below the state accountability Target at the high school level both Ela and math performance decreased and fell below their targets the decline in math achievement is similar to what we've seen across the state the next slide describes the relationship between mcass results and chronic absenteeism so last year we showed you a chart that described the negative relationship between chronic absenteeism and mcast performance this visual showed that as chronic absenteeism increased mcast performance decreased this relationship held at both the high school and non-h high school levels as well as for both subject areas this year we're displaying the average skilled score and percent meeting or exceeding expectations for chronically absent students as well as non-chronically absent students the difference in performance between both groups is also shown what you can see by reading the yellow Ela table is that the average scaled score for achievement is 12.5 scaled score points lower for chronically absent students as compared to those who are not chronically absent in grades 3 through 8 and 13.4 points in grade 10 additionally as we move to the right in this table we see that whereas 22 to 24% of non-chronically absent students are meeting or exceeding expectations only 3% of chronically absent students at the 3 to8 level and 9% of chronically absent students at the high school level are meeting or exceeding expectations I will now pass on to my colleague Corey McCarthy who will discuss the district's approach to Chronic absenteeism good evening everyone my name is Cory McCarthy I'm the chief of student support you know um I cannot have this conversation um about such critical data um without talking talking about the experiences that our students have and the challenges and the barriers that prevent them from coming to school and doing the things that they need to do in our wonderful schools with our wonderful Educators and our U very strong School leaders um as we look at the challenges that they have uh we aim to continuously um improve um so we can lower and remove some of those barriers I think some of the things that we're trying to do through our opportun the Youth Department and our um student supervisors of attendance is really work on relationship building um and how that relates to students and how they are positioned to come to school um looking at the root causes as to why students um are not coming to school evaluating them on a school-based level um coaching through Best Practices on the school-based level um some of the other pieces that we have include um relationship C Center strategies you know I think um often times our young people they have a hard time finding their person right and they and when you don't have a person um sometimes you don't you don't always have a purpose and I think unpacking those pieces are are critical for us so that our young people could say Hey listen I not only do I want to go here I want to stay here I want to learn here I want to achieve here and you can't get that unless you're unless you're in school um at as we look at the students who are struggling the most uh we have to I know there's a you know there's a buzz turn meeting students where they at I think at this point we have to go get them right and um and I think the the strategy and the approach uh you know I was just talking to city council L Weber at an event and you know he's we're going into Heath Street um down um The Hil Center tomorrow um and we're going to have some critical conversations with families um we need our young people to be there uh we need our young people to be in school uh one of the strategies that we are also using we're bringing and we're bringing back our um attendance campaign uh but really focus on students who um are tier three with their attendance um students who really really have deep struggles and um part of that approach is going to be looking at safety um looking at the psychological safety looking at what supports they need outside of school how can we be creative after school how can we be creative on weekends how can we get students access to curriculum when they're not school how do we not in school how do we get them to respond um after we have we have our intervention so one thing that we have we have learned um from previous years is really really reaching into and developing a strong uh an effective toolbox for our students to be successful and um you know it's ongoing battle you know although there's some you know we're not satisfied I think Dr Chen mentioned that earlier we're not satisfied with our numbers and everything can stand to improve I think ongoing and continuous Improvement has to be the anchor for which we how we want to approach this um you know this National problem of chronic absenteeism and I think you know uh kudos to our team for for really working extremely hard but you know there's more to be done thank you we'll now move to the detailed student group analysis the next slide will describe grade 3 to8 math results however some of the bright spots that are being called out here have been seen in other subjects as well these insights can be seen in the other tables that are included in the appendix the table in this slide displays the percent of students who met or exceeded expectations in grades 3 through 8 and Ma since 2019 the final column shows the one-year Trend across grade levels and student groups the chart displays similar information but it shows the trend in scaled score performance um between the years of 2023 and 2024 as we described earlier there was an overall increase in the math performance for students in grades 3 through 8 this increase was evidence across most grade levels in all student groups particularly of note are the the increases in the percent of students meeting and exceeding expectations um for students in grades four and seven for black students and for white students in mathematics slide 24 shows how student growth has changed since 2019 in both the table and the chart um in this chart we overlay a green band from the SGP between 40 and 60 um this represents typical growth that we would expect ECT on the mcast as we look at growth year-over-year increases were seen across several student groups again grade four black students but also um for growth we're seeing English Learners students with disabilities and English Learners with disabilities it's important to note that most student groups and grade levels experienced increases in their SGP since 2023 next we're going to look at a detailed view of the science results one area where BPS performance differed from the state and from other urban districts was in science um in BPS we saw um an increase in performance in grade five but a decrease in grade eight um when we couple both of those Elementary Science grades together we see declines in um performance for most student groups the decline seen for students in um Elementary GR grades are not mirrored at the high school level and there is more variation in student group performance when we're looking at the biology and the physics um assessments those tables are available in the appendix we're now going to review grade 10 Ela performance this is just to illustrate some of the performance trends that we saw at the high school level math is in the appendix similar to Statewide decreases in Ela performance grade 10 students in Boston also experienced those declines um we see it across all student groups however black students and economically um disadvantaged students experience the smallest declines um across our student groups in conjunction with the performance de cines across student groups we also note that student growth remains in the typical to low typical range for all students groups we especially note that for the growth for English language Learners um with disabilities it actually fell just shy of the SGP of 40 which represents lower than typical growth I'll now pass it to my colleague Leslie Ryan Miller who will discuss the district's response to the mcast data good evening everyone um thank you for having us us um I just want to start by saying these scores were certainly not um what we had hoped for um there was definitely a period when um I looked at the aggregated data and my heart did sink um we were hoping for better um although um as I presented in the spring we did acknowledge that we knew there was an implementation issue around our high quality instructional materials and we continued um to want to see better implementation of both hqm and Equitable literacy in our classrooms so the implementation issue was something that we expected from the spring and we've already made some adjustments to um which I will highlight and then certainly um as we have looked deeper in the data there are subsequent changes that we'd also uh plan to make as we move forward that being said we can learn a lot from this data um especially when we look at it um as it's disaggregated so there were eight schools that made an improvement in all testing areas 20 schools that made improvements in at least two testing areas and upwards of 40 that made Improvement in at least one testing area and those are all places where we need to follow up at the school and look at what practices were in place how they have been able to implement the universal expectations and take some of those key learnings and bring it back and make continuous Improvement so I want to say that Equitable literacy is still our priority and we're still moving forward with Equitable literacy with course Corrections so the mcast and map data show that many of our students are still struggling to read proficiently and to understand grade level Texs we have to continue to build educator capacity to provide support to deliver highquality research aligned curriculum as well as Implement evidencebased instructional practices so this year our approach to professional learning has been different than prior years we're using 12 of the 30 hours to um Implement um professional learning that is related to Equitable literacy with a focus on specific curriculums so what that means is that teachers can select a particular curriculum area like illustrative math which is one of our new curriculums um uh El which is our Ela District supported curriculum um and as they engage in professional learning they're taking a stance of learning through the curriculum so thinking about how do you address where in the curriculum is universal designed for learning addressed where is specially designed instruction addressed and where is academic language addressed in the curriculum so that as they learn those specific practices related to udl uh specially designed instruction and academic language they're also learning more about the curriculum so we've already had over a thousand Educators go through this 12 hours of professional learning and we've had very positive feedback from our Educators around their ability to take what was learned in the professional learning and Implement in their classrooms and they have we've also had very high scores in terms of relevance in terms of what we are sharing with teachers and what is needed to adjust their practice um also um as tier one starts to solidify and get better we'll also be able to be much more targeted in the interventions that we provide to students so we're continuing the funding of various interventions in both math an Ela um that can be used at the school site um to Target tier 2 and tier Three Needs within schools so as we look at the mcast um some of the largest gaps compared to the state are in Reading thinking about key ideas in details and in writing and so we're finalizing um our next steps in these specific areas so certainly some of the work that we're doing around curriculum and professional learning will address this but as we look much more closely at item analysis we'll be able to be much more strategic about next steps we're also finalizing districtwide writing guidance for our teachers this quite frankly has been an area um that we knew needed attention for some time um and it's been if I can be transparent it's hard to focus on a number of things at one time and so hqm has been our Focus as we really felt like that was highest leverage as we were doing that we've had teams in the office of teaching and learning that are preparing writing guidance one of the things that's different about the way we're approaching writing is we're not getting a separate writing curriculum what we're doing is looking at the curriculum we already have each of those curricula have writing guidance embedded and so we're teasing that out pulling out the highest leverage practices and that's the guidance that we will share with Educators once we've completed that assessment another learning um which we knew also from our map data um that is while while phonic uh knowledge in kindergarten has definitely improved there's a districtwide challenge in how our students are applying that pheic awareness to texts that they're reading so basically when they're seeing um uh various words and letters in isolation their practice has improved in terms of decoding what they read but then when they pick up a text and try to implement what they've learned in isolation they're really struggling to implement that in their reading so that's another area of growth for us another place where we're really looking at our strategy is in grades three through 12 specifically focusing on the Middle grades so our Equitable literacy coaches are going through a training right now that really focuses on adolescence and literacy and how adolescents who are still learning to read what that instruction looks like for them uh versus their peers and so what we know is that we cannot uh move forward in the same way with a young person who is struggling to read as we can with a child and Early Child Ood who is learning to read there's a number of strategies that have been proven to be high leverage that are evidence-based and so we're working now to build the capacity of our coaches who can then go and support our Educators in that area and then lastly um one of the things that we're thinking a lot about now is how we continue to refine the regional model so when I returned to the district almost a little over a year and a half ago the regional model was really getting settled and there were a lot of support positions that were put in place and some of those we see phenomenal practice we see growth in other areas we haven't seen as much growth and so the change that we're making Now is really trying to be more strategic in how we deploy those supports to school to schools and I'll give you an example um I was at a school just last week um and there was a new support that had been given to that school in terms of their Implement implementation of hqm and I was looking at the principal and the principal was looking a little frustrated a little bit confused and so we just stopped the meeting and we dug in I said well you know tell me a little bit about what you're thinking I think something's going on and she said I'm trying to think about how I'm going to manage all these supports and the people that are coming into my building okay enough said and I don't think that's the only principal who is having that challenge and so that really begs of us to think about how we're deploying supports to school more sometimes less is more and so we really have to start thinking about what that change looks like so that a school is not overwhelmed but they have the right amount of support they need um to make change within the school um so I'll stop there again those are some things that we've already put in place and then also some things that we've been been considering since really taking a deep dive and looking at the data my true hope is that when I come to you at this time next year it's a very different scenario I believe that it will be I truly believe that the practices that we have in place they're the right ones they're evidence-based they're research aligned um their standards aligned their grade level appropriate so again it really has to do with our implementation and we're taking a lot of time to review and course correct so thank you and I will turn it back to April thank [Music] you we're now going to shift to the 2024 access results as a reminder students tested on the access for L's assessment between January in March of 2024 this slide displays two charts um they describe the percent of students making progress on the access test in the chart on the left you can see that the overall making progress rate for Access declined by 1 percentage point to 33% the chart on the right shows that this overall decline was evidenced due in part to the 2.2 percentage Point decrease for non- high school students whereas the high school population experienced a 2.3 percentage Point increase helping the district to earn three out of four of its accountability [Music] points slide 32 represents the change in the the percent of students making progress from 2022 through 2024 for Boston as well as other large urban districts in the state here we see that the 1 percentage Point decrease is similar to declines that we've seen in other large urban districts slide 33 presents the average student growth percentile on access for students by grade level when we look at the access growth across grade levels we see typical growth for all grade levels as well as consistent gains and growth at the high school level our final data slide for you this evening um looks at the relationship between access performance and the ELA mcass this slide displays the average mcast scaled score by access overall level the yellow line displays the average mcast scale score for all English Learners in grades 3 through 8 in BPS the red line displays the average Ela mcast score for all students in grades three through 3 through eight throughout BPS the Blue Line represents the average Ela MK score for former English Learners and the green line represents the proficiency score of 500 as you can see the average Ela mcast score increases as a student's overall level on the access test increases moreover the average MK score for English Learners coincides with the average scaled score for students at a level three we also see that students who score in levels 4 through six on the access test have an average Ela mcast score of 483 this score is just below the district average of 485 lastly we see on this chart that the average mcast score for former English Learners of 494 is above that of students who score in levels 4 through six as well as above the average scale score for all BPS students in grades 3 through 8 in fact it's just shy of the proficiency score of 500 this showcases the strength of English language acquisition for multilingual learners as a necessary and beneficial asset to higher levels of achievement I will now pass it on to my colleague Joel gamir to discuss the access and English learner performance thank you April good evening chair Robinson and members of the school committee when I look at the access and mcast data for our students it is concerning um there are some pockets in areas of school tools that have made gains um but when we look at um the scores were not complacent but then we think about how we have structured our department to address these scores and address and meet the needs of our students so the way we have our department structured um we support the regional model in terms of we have our equity and accountability managers who help support schools to ensure that all else are receiving their ESL services not because of compliance but because it's a fundamental right we also have our multilingual instructional coaches who are there to help build the capacity of the schools to meet the instructional needs of our multilingual Learners they also are there to support teaming structures like the ilt the instructional leadership team the CPT um and provide school-based professional development aligned to the school's quality the quality School plan so as my colleague said sometimes School leaders are like I have all these people in my building but we're really working to ensure that we're providing the targeted supports so each School leader has identified areas of need need for them and we're able to deploy our people our folks to help support in that targeted Direction where people need to go also as a district we have double down on Equitable Literacy for all our students and all our students include our multilingual students and so you see as we do our um walkthroughs where we have evidence of more classrooms across the district implementing high quality um instructional materials and in addition to that we have created our ESL curriculum that is aligned to the district curriculum so that we can meet the needs of our students so this comprehensive ESL curriculum for both Elementary and secondary students um so that teaching and learning for our multilingual Learners is aligned not siloed it's in alignment with like I said with the district's initiative to use Equitable literacy framework that ensures that all students have access to tier one grade level curriculum that is something that for a while in many multilingual classrooms you have not seen also we are ensuring that when we have the teaming structures that our multilingual Learners are at the Forefront at the thought of teachers so we have created well we have not created ourselves but we're work we have worked with the Department of um wessi to when we are in a school structure and we're looking at all of the data points mcast access that we are um looking at the service delivery determination process for our students we're taking all of these data points and this process allows for our teams to analyze the access composite scores and triangulate them with other formative Su and summative data points on uh for our students progress to assign appropriate levels of ESL services so we may have a student who traditionally before was maybe at the end was a 2.7 and then before they would say okay students is going to have an is going to be an ESL 2 and so now we're able to look at various points to determine that that student based on the data sets can be an es in ESL 3 which would help support our students also we're creating or we have other formative assessments that we can use for our students so that we're not just waiting for Access that we could use that to determine um supports and structures for our students that is um aligned to the scoring scale and we can see immediate results to see whether the data is working for our students now big oh I need some water I'm so sorry thank you apologies thank you okay much better so um when we look at our multilingual Learners and we look at the needs of our multilingual Learners um what can we do as a district right because when we look at our students our vision for our multilingual students is that they have a sense of belonging and a sense of Joy so how do we incorporate that in our instruction for our students we do that by expanding our bilingual education program for our students so since we have started or since I have started in January um in last year we put forth five bilingual education programs for our students in terms of s programming dual language programming at the mun um and over the 40-year span of the district we had never moved at that level this year looking at the needs of a students looking at it from a regional approach ensuring that families have choices in bilingual education for their families and their kids we looked at it strategically to see where can we offer more bilingual education opportunities for students students and so we put forth more proposals for bilingual education to meet the needs of our students and so not only are we building and expanding on our bilingual education but we're also working to strengthen the current dual language programs and S programs that we have um for the D dual language curriculum we've trans adapted in um our existing District curriculum in Haitian Creole in Vietnamese and we're developing focus in espanol uh building blocks in Mandarin Chinese and we are working to develop more curriculum that is aligned for our students in other languages as well such as ker and KOLO it's very important too as we're building out these bilingual education programs that if we're building them in a strand in a school that the teachers don't feel siloed either right we want to make sure the students don't feel siloed but we want to make sure that the teachers don't feel siloed as they're planning so they're able to plan alongside their colleagues with the same curriculum but they just have a wonderful opportunity to um instruct in a different language also we we are um working with our external monitoring Partners um to ensure that our secondary multilingual Learners are on greater Target for graduation so working with those Partners to ensure that our students are on target for graduation because when you come in as a multilingual learner you're taking esl1 you're taking ESL 2 by the time you get to ESL 3 that should count for your Ela so that you have options to take more electives as your peers if you're in a voke school that you have options to take vocational courses so we're advocating for our students that way um so when we look at the data to there are areas that you know as a school when you're at a school you look at the data to inform your instruction you look at the data to develop interventions so as a department we're looking at the data to see what type of interventions that we can create for our students and one of the major things that we want to tackle is that long-term um L situation we have for many of our students so when we look at the S programming and we look at the um opportunities for students to transition out of SLI um we need to work with our external Partners too to ensure that our students have a clear exit criteria um that is keeping that has the students in there for about two years but no longer than that when we look at the data some of our students are in s for something that is a very criminal um time in terms of because of the external pressures for the trans um the exit criteria for our students so we need to do that advocacy as well too to ensure our students are transition um so uh with that being said um other items that we want to look to build on based off the data and just knowing that what's good for students what's good for multilingual Learners is also building a pipeline of Educators um we've already worked with the office of Human Resources um in local colleges and universities uh to provide teachers with the bilingual endorsement but then also building the p power to teacher Pipeline and then also increasing bilingual Educators especially in the lowi incidence languages as we look at the students who are matriculating into Boston Public Schools when we look at that say we look at from June to October when we look at those numbers our students are entering our multilingual students are entering as multilingual Learners at a much rapid rate than the current multilingual learner rate percentage that we have now so as a department as a district we are looking to see how we are meeting the needs of our multilingual students um and how we're supporting Educators and school leaders to meet those needs as well so thank you for your time so actually Casal is going to um provide some brief comments about students with disabilities and the work that's underway there um especially given our results and then we want to make sure we move onto your questions um additional questions that is good evening stretch there a lot of information should have you stand up like we do in the classroom thank you so much for this opportunity I feel truly blessed to sit here to talk about our students to disabilities we have a motion we have a range of students that we really treasure and that we really work hard collectively and strategically to meet their needs and I think as you look at the mcast results for our students with disabilities and I'm going to refer to them with abilities you might pause you might wonder you might ask what can we do differently to accelerate learning for our students within this District as you think about that I want to acknowledge the importance of understanding the mcast data for our students as one measure to determine student growth however considerations must also include individual students progress towards their IP goals and objectives and unlike our other students it's important for us to realize that as we reflect in the findings of these students that we must keep in mind the I AP is a road map to our Student Success and for BPS this year it begins with the new IEP we look at that as an opportunity for us to hit reset this IEP is really design and I'm going to use that word design because we often realize that when we look at instruction for students with disabilities we're looking at the access to content course standards but it embeds specially design instruction and for our students with abilities design is the key word everything that we do must be designed to meet the individual needs of our students and that's part of the work for us here in BPS excuse me I apologize my computer went to sleep just like some of us might want to do right now thank you for your patience so as we look through the process and we look at the mcast data for our students we want to assure you that we are working strategically and collectively as a cross functional team within this district from teaching and learning to Oda to M also working closely with um transportation and all the stakeholders here in the district to really meet the needs of all of our students as we look at our professional development plans and we look at what we're doing to meet these needs we look at general education as also a catalyst to our progress for our students and what we must do to really support and accelerate learning opportunities for our general education teachers and our Specialists across the district we are and Boston Public Schools is the Northstar for inclusion across the Commonwealth and as a district that is the largest District in Massachusetts we look at the mcast and we look look at our inclusive education plan as an opportunity for our students to progress and to meet with success um there are many people that's leading this work but I want to give a shout out to um our team our inclusive Education team we have two phenomenal executive directors tashiba Martin and also a new executive director Carmen Mendez melendes Quintero and they have worked strategically with all school-based teams they have assign we have assigned nine inclusion coaches that will lead the work and support the work so when we look at the mcast data I want you to keep in mind that these CL these coaches will work strategically to focus on curriculum instruction strategies Universal Design to learning as well as espcially design instruction within our classrooms to focus on teaching and learning we also work closely with um through our multichair systems of support and understanding that when we break our data down and we look at the interventions we look at the interventions through the lens of tiers you've heard before our tier interventions as universal and that's for all of our students and our tier interventions for two which really looks at the five core readings when you look at the data you see that that's a huge area for us as a district to focus on what we must do to in increase and improve our reading outcomes for our students so we know that we must focus on those four principles of reading our phonic awareness our fonics fluency our vocabulary our reading comprehension and for most importantly for our older kids their written language expression that is key now I want you to think when you think of tier three I want you to look at it more explicitly and that's really targeting our students with abilities because it really focuses on the interventions and those targeted interventions that are really individualized to meet the learning goals of our students and that once again is outlining our students IEPs when we as a district have also focused on looking at our students abilities by identifying how we can partner with teaching and learning Christine Cronin and her team to really look at what we can do as part of our literacy plan under the office of specialized services and through that listary plan our district initiatives embeds our SDI which are evidence-based rule-based reading programs as we look at mcast results we address strengthening our lzard initiatives as a priority in the especially when we look at our students at the secondary level we know that teaching our students to read comprehend and write is essential to their success also meeting the Multicultural needs of our students we recognize that we must invest and focus on evidencebased interventions to address the reading abilities of our students in the areas of comprehension executive function and using a range of multi-sensory methodologies but also interventions and in addition to resources and supports what we have done within the district is we have outreached we've done it we started last year in looking at Consultation Services as an investment to promote systemic shift to evaluate and strengthen our specially designed instruction initiatives in the areas of reading and literacy to Target resources and professional learning for our special education teachers and Specialists as we work strategically to advance our students learning and progress um we started with an LD audit learning disabilities audit we made sure that we were supporting our students that did have a reading disability and we partnered with a researcher and a consultant from Mass General focusing on going into the classrooms observing teaching and learning making recommendations working closely with our school leaders to really identify what we need to do to shift our service delivery models but also instructional strategies to close the achievement gaps for these students and to really make sure that what we're doing is with Fidelity that we're working with our students and providing instruction with Fidelity and that we're progress monitoring our students and that we're analyzing the data to to close that achievement Gap as well we also wanted to make sure that our IEPs and this is also through the IEP initiative which I said before is going to be a great opportunity for us to shift some of the things that we were doing we need to raise the bar for our students IEP goals and objectives they need to be aligned to content standards content standards they need to excel but they need to have access we need to make sure that if we have a seventh grade student or eighth grade student that that student schals and objectives should address the grade level content standards for that grade now I'm going to need water thank you when we think of specially design instruction our students with abilities we also have worked strategically in the area of prevention and targeted interventions to accelerate our students we have invested and I want to give a shout out to the Channing Elementary School to the school leader carlen P panto panto I'm sorry if I'm pronouncing her name incorrectly and her amazing teachers they were phenomenal we asked which school would be interested in pting um a methodology Under the Umbrella of Linda mubbel and she jumped right to the charge and said she's very interested we started last year we've seen some remarkable gains for us students um it involved a lot of video modeling it involved observations um her teachers took on this initiative and they have excelled um we had a chance to go back and observe what's happening in the classrooms and also with the outcomes it really focuses on the verbalization visualiz visualization but also the oral language for our students and helping them also with pheic awareness and also closing that literacy gap for our students and we know that we need to start with our youngest kids first right we need to start with our kids in an element Elementary School and a shout out to the Shannon school for the investment in the work and they're continuing that work this year another um investment that we have in the district that I want to also recognize as part of our prevention models and interventions it is mandated that every single School in the district has a process in place for screening students that may have characteristics of Dyslexia and that work is led by Sarah J and a host of several skilled professionals here in the district we're strategically making sure across the district that we're providing screening measures to identify whether or not a student may be at risk and or may have characteristics of Dyslexia and as a result of those screening models and at times based on tiered interventions as I mentioned before which can range from tier one tier 2 and tier three which is more targeted and more specific for students we then may end up referring that student for special education evaluation to determine whether or not that student may have or may have dyslexia as a part of their disability and as a result of that we're also working collectively with Mass General Hospital to strengthen our toolbox to make sure that we are providing evidence-based practices and strategies for those students we have provided and worked strategically with teaching and learning on a 12-hour professional development so I'm telling and sharing these things with you so you can better understand some of the resources and Investments that we have made as in District to address what we need to do to accelerate learning for our students as well as close the achievement Gap for our students as well and that has been um a a a a great asset for our teachers and not just students teachers of students with disabilities but all teachers across the district in the areas once again of the udl in terms of leveraging those tiered interventions and also helping teachers to strengthen their core and their practices to meet the essential needs of our students but also learning them how to differentiate instruction differentiation of instruction is not just for students with disabilities it's for all learners um we also have invested in high quality instructional materials as my colleague shared with you um earlier this um evening um lesie Miller talks strategically about looking at our Ela initiatives our reading initiatives and our math initiatives um and also we have partnered um OSS has partnered with M um we recently have a sheared person that we've recently hired to be that conduit that intersection between our office of multi Multicultural multi English Learners and office of specialized services and her name is Marissa M mcqueeny and she's phenomenal because what she's doing and bringing to us as she's that bridge because we know that we have a large percentage of students that are um English language learners but also are students that are um special education as well we also recognize that we have a disproportionality of those students and through that work um we're also going to be focusing on our cultur and linguistically responsive practices and making sure that what we're doing and what we're teaching in our in our classrooms and with our kids are relevant um to the content in terms that involves their story to their learning and that we reflect in our students cultural beliefs and their language and their background um thank you um also in terms of what we're doing around high quality instruction materials and lastly I would say that our investment for our students in the area of um their family involvement in the new IP process the new I focuses on our student but it also focuses on making sure that we're engaging our students in every aspect of their learning and we provided ongoing professional development for the district across the district but also in making sure that we're also reaching the needs of our students and our families as Partnerships thank you thank you everyone and thank you so much uh school committee members for your patience um we have lots to share but we want to make sure we take your questions thank you again um thank you all for your presentation I will speak for myself and say I'm completely overwhelmed but all of what I've heard tonight and we'll take some time to um take it all in but I will start with um member thank you m chair thank you for presentation I want to go to the point um for you last [Music] um for you presentation you the result the English learning students I think is the problem what what what do you think about what is the problem exactly in the point the English learning number one I'm putting it in your mind is for what is the the methodology of learning the process for a long long time the English learning the moral is English immersion right my question is is s when you see the result because it's very um in my in me me in my in my mou I think what happen if you you have lot of time you the result is not is not good it's bad what you think about changes the me the language okay the native language helps when you're learning English I want to say uh thank you for um hard job about it I think I think it's I hope if you the L of time for the result for the English learning is not good why not think about it the not n a language so again I just want to congratulate for doing this analysis but you have to um to think that to implement this that it's important to keep the native language of the students to help with literacy the their native language is the vase of learning another language there's a lot of studies that out there that keeping their native language on par to help English so I I'll start thank you for for your questions and I think we are are very much in alignment around um what is needed for multilingual Learners and number one we know from the research it is very clear that when multilingual Learners are learning in native language that is really the best scenario and so I want to start off by saying that now with that there are specific research-based models for doing that it is not good enough to just have someone who speaks the same language as the students but they need to also have academic Proficiency in that language and be able to use that language very carefully and strategically instructionally so I'll give you an example my first and native language is Mandarin I can speak Mandarin to people I can talk with my parents I can speak with other friends I could not teach and I should not teach in Mandarin as a formal language as a as a dual language teacher I don't have the certification I don't have academic uh Chinese to be able to do so and so we do agree with you absolutely the research is very clear part of that research is that we need to have bilingual certified teachers who have the capacity of the language number one I think another reason for why our multilingual Learners have not um achieved in the way we want them to is how we have not provided them access this is a systems problem this is not a single teacher problem this is a systems problem that the state um really delineated for us it is important you've heard hqm high quality instructional materials you've heard that all night and that really is about grade level materials I think there's some things that are quite simple if the mcast is asking students to demonstrate proficiency at grade level that means students have to have access to grade level materials and in many of our classes and especially in E students who are ELD 1 and two when they are isolated all day they are often isolated from not only their peers but they are isolated from grade level content that is another Factor around our students not achieving in the way they do that they should be based on what we are doing for them the other thing that I would say is in our history of implementing programs for multilingual Learners we have had great ver variation we have classes that are called a certain thing labeled a certain thing but if you go to each of those classes it's different so sometimes we have classes where you would assume that there is research-based native language instruction happening but that is not the case what Joelle described earlier is what she has done since January which is to make sure that we are expanding bilingual programs that are aligned to research that have the materials you heard her talk about creating native language materials that we didn't have before those are all things that are needed in order for our students to achieve so I think what I would say to you member palanco Garcia is that we have quite a bit of work to do there are some great things that have happened over the years in the BPS even when the state said it was illegal to speak anything other than English in a classroom we made a lot of wins in terms of how we tried to work within the bounds the parameters that we were given at the time it is true we have not fully as a system for the last decade um engaged in every aspect of the look act and that is what we are doing we submitted proposals on the 27th of last month to desie for additional programs that Joel referenced and that includes um creative programs that are aligned to research so that we can use native language because we do know that that is what is best for multilingual Learners if you want to add anything else I think you you answered um for what I would think um Dr Chen um yes so as you said and Dr Chen said as well too is just really building the educator pipeline really looking I think from within too in terms of our Paris we have a lot of Paris that do have the language capacity and so building that pipeline of Educators to provide services for for our students is is another key component gracias can I say something uh I I understand right it's one day one day at a time one day at a time so I I understand that part but we have to do it one Daye of time and the district has to do it intentionally so we need more bilingual teachers many many more teachers um the question is when when are we going to start you see we see the results they're not good and what are we going to do do about it CU at the end of the day the ones who are really affected are the students member um palanco Garcia you're right it is now it is now I mean even last year we were talking about building that educator pipeline we have the bilingual endorsement program with Boston College we've just taken on a new partnership with Stonehill College to create um a bilingual educator pipeline identifying B truly bilingual Educators people who are not just coded that way but actually speak and have the language capacity to meet the needs of our students to help build them to become Educators and also have um a master's degree so that they can be Educators in the classroom so those are some of the Strategic intent um moves that we're making to build Educators in the district but then also the programs that we've created we've been really intentional about building them with the school communities so we're looking at the data we're looking at the students we're looking at the families working in collaboration with school leaders to build and create a program that is designed essentially for that school community so if we're looking at the quiny for example um really has stated looking at their Heritage courses that they provided and how can we Elevate that and and and highlight that and create more bilingual opportunities for the students and so creating and Co constructing a proposal to the Department of Education that is aligned to the needs of that school community and doing that at the Blackstone as well working with the school leaders who've come in and to to uh build out a dual language program um to be in implemented next year and we're doing that strategically with each of the schools that we are expanding upon because we don't just want to drop a program in a school we really want to work in collaboration with that school Community look at the data to ensure that we have a sustainable program that we're implementing in the um school and then also looking at it from a district level systems level to make sure that it's feasible so that's why when we look at the data we look to see where could we um possibly develop a program a bilingual education program and then looking at the trends as students are coming into the district so looking at where we do need to create more s programs but really be clear about what the exit criteria is and the newcomer programs as I talk about the influx of multilingual Learners that are coming into the district how can we meet their needs how can we give them a sense of belonging when they first come into the district so that they're is joy for those students and so that they're not wanting to not come to school and then we have another issue with chronic absenteeism definit definitely this conversation need a continue I I want to respect my just want to respect my fellow members um definitely needs to continue this I have a lot of questions I have here I'll make sure to write it down and submit it by uh Ryden just want to respect my time and my colleagues thank you Mr Hi how are you how are all of you thank you for staying so late I I hope I can be as uh strong as you guys to you know to keep my my uh my clear-headedness uh as much as I can before I raise this the inclusion practice that you are implementing is based on evidence evidence-based research that somehow once the inclusion is uh implemented um totally than bilingual students students uh with uh different U languages will somehow be brought to the same level as regular students is that is that is that a fair assumption that is the um idea of the implementation and we have seen data that shows that that is what happens when we have strong rigorous instruction for our students I always like to highlight the the data of our um valoran at the end of the year when we look at them majority of the valorian are English language Learners multilingual students um when we have strong instruction provided to students we do tend to see the data for our ELD 1es and twos tend to be low but once students Acquire The Language they many times outperform their monol linal peers let me let me interject there so in another word we are looking at e students are students with certain kind of disability and we are trying to accommodate them we are trying to bring them to the same level as a recular student is that how how we should recognize them it in terms of the in terms of language yes it it is around making sure that we've had disparities in achievement uhhuh and the idea is that when students are included and have access to grade level materials and teaching that is the goal to make sure they're all at grade level okay or Beyond obviously grade level is for us the floor I hear you and I uh I I'm not going to say I agree or I disagree but I'm just looking at at the whole issue the entire issue given the fact that we have right here before our eyes the uh achievement rate of el students whether in bilingual or in regular class classes are nowhere to be uh satisfactory let's put it that way my question is before you implementing all this I I'm very sure what you are saying that you are looking at it as a as an evidence-based research have you ever looked at school districts like Houston where a large number of uh Hispanic students as well as uh Asian students where there is no bilingual program and how they how they turn out gangs me members of different different type of issues drugs have you ever have you ever looked at those kind of issues before you implement something that you think educationally the students will benefit but there are evidence out there Houston Dallas mobile Alabama where those are where the kind of evidence-based research that you are bringing to us don't support them my concern is is that going to be something that we have to deal with here if if we just Implement if we are just going to implement inclusion educationally without any other factors any other consideration would that would would that be something that that that we think will help the students in the long in the long in the long run I just wanted to ask for clarification um are you talk are you referring to other factors that are social in nature yes okay um I'm comparing I'm trying to compare students in Boston bilingual students in Boston and and students with a different kind of language um uh capability in Houston um after school after graduating or after leaving school students uh with uh bilingual programs in in Boston or in cities that have appropriate bilingual programs tend to be in the category that is far superior to students who are who were not afforded those but uh we're forced into or we we're placed not forced we're were placed because there's no program we're placed into programs that are mainstream or that are regular right at the onset and how they how they right after leaving school there there are there are problems and I I don't think we are looking at education alone as a factor in school so you know it's just a concern that's a big concern and I hate to see that we are looking at bilingual students or students with with with different kind of language and somehow perceive them as tuned with disability language disability so that we have to accommodate them with regular programs that's a wrong wrong wrong view in my in my in my in my way of looking at at at you know legally speaking in my way of looking that at at at that kind of perspective so so maybe I can clarify um are the work around um multilingual Learners is not we do have multilingual Learners with disabilities but certainly not every multilingual learner has disabilities and so it is it is not about accommodating language it is about actually um leading with their home language as an asset um in in sort of when we speak of for instance the Dual language space and I and I do agree with you I certainly don't know the intricacies of Houston and which programs multilingual Learners are in but the reason why we do have different types of multilingual learner programs here is because it is a way to meet the differing needs of students so Joelle spoke earlier about our s programming and that is for a very specific um group of students who are often older students coming to the US um not having much formal education and some of these students are also coming from very traumatic um parts of the world and so the kinds of needs that they have are much more comprehensive I would not call them special education needs necessarily but there are particular needs that we have to be able to provide so you may recall from the budget season last year the superintendent put forth a budget with additional s social workers because we know that it is not just the academic needs that need to be looked after but also the social and psychological needs that our students have so we want to in a nutshell we want to provide families of multilingual Learners with different options for bilingual dual language options or some of our families have shared with us they want their students in and English setting as well so we want to make sure we provide what we know as best practices and evidence but we also want our families to be able to make that educated choice for their child yeah just one modification when I raise this it's not that I'm opposed to the implementation of what you are trying to do in terms of um in terms of uh inclusion I'm you know I I reserve my my my my my uh position on that what I'm hoping yes of course you know we are democracy one way other it's going to be imple implemented what I'm looking at it is that right now what you are showing to us through you know these statistics and all that are just educationally related that's not enough that's not really enough for me to support it I want to see I would like to see I had to use the word I want but anyway I would like to see something that would honor the Traditions the culture and somehow they are also being brought into the program to at least the students or the bilingual students or the you know multilangual students can retain their identity e you know their family whatever hopefully once they leave school that going to stay with them looking at students at uh you know students multi language students from Houston El Paso I I I read I read and I look uh Mobile Alabama where are gangs of Asians uh gangs of Hispanics Youth and I'm very sure education had had something to do with it once they leave the school because you know that that that rais a concern and and I'm I'm hope I I don't I I I don't see that happen in in in Boston and I hope it won't happen but if we are going to implement imple Implement inclusion one way or another I I I see that it is going to anyway despite whatever we're trying to do please make sure the kind of issues that I I raise Traditions culture family respect you know uh things like that brought into the education equation not just math science language despite high quality whatever because I I am I myself have issues with that myself but you know despite all that we will do better that's my wish we will do a better job of describing also high quality includes it's certainly grade level and includes being culturally responsive and at another time we can talk more about Heritage language programs as well that that um get at some of what you're talking about thank you Hi how y doing thank you so much for the presentation um my I'm about to be sleepy like your laptop sorry I'm like trying to bring up my thoughts again so one of the things that Miss um member Pano Garcia brought up is the why especially when we're thinking about multilingual uh students in their in their families um I've brought this up before when I first came to the district graduated in kver uh 10th grade moved here um but my story is a little bit different right privilege English is is not my first language but I had a lot of access to it even being in G and having access to come to the US every summer and be able to practice the language with cousins and families and access to Internet and all of St all of that so I just want to name that I go to the Welcome Center I do the different placement tests from Portuguese to English and math I'm not placed in an ESL program at all I attend Burke I'm going to all of these classes where everybody else nothing special still doing great I become the valid loran that's fine but when I when I had to take mcast I struggled with science so like I've never took biology in Engish Eng and that was the first time that I realized oh I wish I was an ESL program cuz then I would get a dictionary and I know these are some of more of the state regulations so I think it would be good to learn what are some state regulations that sometimes become more of a barrier for our multilangual and dis and students with disabilities when they have to not only do the exam but actually do the prep because I also was not a ESL student I was not in a prep class for not only m cast but also SATs so standardized testing is hard regardless of what language it it is I just did a placement test in Portuguese and it really humbled me that it's been years I haven't engaged with the language so that is one thing the why so I think about the first time a newcomer specifically scumming is the Welcome Center there's so much that BPS needs to inform and orientate not only the the child but also the parent but I think mcast is one of like top three because without that they're not going to graduate I I had proficient but maybe just maybe if I was in the mcast sprp class maybe I would have had Advanced maybe today I would have had a I wouldn't have student debt and would have went to school for free in Massachusetts like things like that that I'm thinking how are we talking to not only the child at the Welcome Center the first day at on a campus about those three main things three is not it's it's it's more than that but especially mcast especially SATs when we're thinking about our students that do not speak English not only them but even their parents or caretakers their aunts Grandma's cousins whoever is now responsible for them because my dad didn't care to talk to me he everybody in America does MC and acts you'll be fine and I was fine but there's a lot of parents that really trust that the district know what they're doing and you all know what you're doing but there's a lot of newcomers that come in and sometimes they're coming in in the middle of the school year so now you're like oh you already missed this opportunity to do the biology mcast now now you got to do chemistry you never took chemistry but let's just have you do it and see how it goes and now there's record that the student didn't perform well because we're trying to make sure that they're on track and they're able to graduate with their friends or they're not like 22 and still in the district so how do we educate the educational part of why this thing is important and what are the points throughout their journey in the district from the moment that they're having a conversation with Welcome Center the moment they're sitting down with a family Le on or they want to go to the nurse office cuz they have a headache I don't know where are the key moments that we can truly talk about the importance of mcast what are the resources and services that are there to help them get where they need to get I think it's not just a mcast prep to me being in classrooms with other kids that or teachers that were just speaking English or there was no other CV student helped me playing sports helped me being involved in different progam prrs after school help me we got to look at it holistically it's not just about language I need to be able to celebrate my culture on a school Community because that in itself like you said it's going to help the student probably navigate the academic a lot easier so my question just going back would be what are some state regulations I don't know if the DI not being able to use it if you're not an ESL program you're not able to use a dictionary at least that was true during my time not sure if that's change but we like to see if that's something y'all are aware of and y'all are taking that into consideration when you're thinking about supporting um El students with mcast or any like State sort of exams that is one um and what are some efforts that we can think of right when a student comes to us to really help them and their families understand what are these graduation requirements especially when it comes to mcast I'll stop there a lot of comments a lot of information uh I'm just as concerned as everybody else I think as we're talking about this proposal we need to really look at oh we got a lot of work to do no we got to do the work yesterday uh and y'all are doing a good job by starting to expand a bilingual program I salute you and your team and the superintendent of looking into the K Verdian kolu because that's been forever thing and I know you've heard about this plent plenty of times already but that is just an example of like moving in really moving in the right direction and we're seeing things happening where the community doesn't evolve understands your staff understands what they're doing so things like that that I would like to see more but a the urgency is there and I know sometimes we have to follow State timelines and stuff like that it is what it is but very excited about those efforts and just want to try and understand what are some state regulations that are harming more than helping even y'all to be able to make this easier for our e students when it comes to Am gas B I'll stop there thank you and and certainly the the piece of around um Family engagement and partnership is incredibly important um I know we're probably short on time but at another point maybe our uh my colleague Anna tares and her team can also we partner together around those things and I think it's important um there are a number of things that happen but I certainly think we can all do better and need to yesterday I agree um I think your I just want to make sure your question so we get you the information that you are asking for um there are some state like sort of regulations around who for of multi lingual Learners would be tested in mcast and what modif or accommodations they can have is that the kind of information that you're looking for yeah or what what resources or Services they have or they don't have so for example I could have been an ESL student but whatever the standards are for that test I placed out so now I lost opportunities so what are some opportunities as someone it's still a newcomer M but I wasn't place in ESL what does what does that look like for me because there were state regulations that said in order for you to have access to the St for mcast you need to be kise has a e and I wasn't right so I lost opport so I'm thinking about those cases because we're just talking about folks that actually got placed in the box but there's a lot of students that struggle uh because they're not in in E uh or like bilingual programs sure um we can talk additionally offline about some more of that but just initially the uh dictionary portion so because you weren't identified as a multilingual learner you didn't have that support that what is automatically um warranted to all of our multilingual Learners so um as a district we do help support schools by having c biran um dictionaries Pati Creo Spanish to help support um students that are multilingual Learners I wouldn't say that there are any necessarily um hindrances um in in that aspect but yes it would have benefited you because I ideally you weren't a multilingual learner but there were some probably some academic terms yeah I had to like go from doing biology mcast for like never mind just go do chemistry cuz you're taking AP Chemistry which is like you know I get it um not to cut you off but is the D the rule in terms of dictionary is that a rule only when you're taking the mcast test or is it throughout your journey at the school cuz that I didn't ask outside of that bet sure exam but as Educators we should Pro be able to provide supports to our students and so um yes on the mcast you can do it but also in their day-to-day as students are developing their academic language um students want to re be able to write high quality um products and so as an educator I would provide multiple sources of supports for my students so that they could um be able exactly so that they implement it in their work yes and then I did see I was a I was a teacher assistant for a little bit for Miss brto now retired uh at the Dan Jeremiah b High School um I remember supporting her with a bunch of newcomers K virin students from like different ages different Islands um and it was nice to see them all in a room it wasn't an inclusive mcast classroom but it was everybody that sort of were able to help each other out even when I was there I was like there's not much for me to do cuz they were actually like peer Co like peering each other and stuff like that so that is one thing that I would like to learn more as you're talking about inclusive education program what does these prep classes for like mcast will look like for that particular population as well sure we can further discuss this down the line but definitely it's those inclusive practices that Educators like Miss Britto that provided for her students that made um her students feel successful had a sense of belonging um that is happening across the district but we really want to be able to Norm and calibrate that so that happens everywhere so that that's not just a oneoff situation for students yeah I I have a lot of thoughts on this one um and actually I'll go back to my comment uh at the beginning of one of my issues with um mcass I think uh a I think uh Miss Clarkson showed a slide that showed for our multilingual Learners the direct correlation between English acquisition and their score in the mcast and so when you are a newcomer student and you're coming in and you are trying to learn English and you are trying to learn the content at an accelerated rate to be able to pass that test in 10th Grade that is hard and navigate a new world and navigate a new world right and so that is hard and so I think um you know this is an area where what we try to do is sort of identify best practices in the high schools uh like binka is a great example of that right where there is an honoring of native language and and culture at the same time there is uh acceleration of academic language in English and it is done you know with students knowing that they're going to have to sit for the mcast or for sat um I think Dr Chen mentioned like the need to make sure that the staff it's not just that they know the native language but that they can teach the content and I think we see this with special education too where you know for a special education teacher helping in specialized instruction at the high school level they are not a master of English History you know science that there's two different kinds of expertise that are happening there coming together and I think that holds to at the high school level um with how to blend ESL uh at the same time that we're getting content delivered so I think um you know dual language more you know we only have one dual language at the high school right now and so I I think this is an area that we want to explore at the high school level to see how we can use native language as an asset in this way uh but at the same time make sure that we're hiring teachers who know the native language and Noah content to be able to deliver that for students particularly in the areas they're going to have to test I think when we uh to M tron's question or or comments about uh who's really kind of in a hard position at the high school level are the students who come in who are 18 19 years old for the first time and they still have to pass mcast to graduate they're usually working right or living on their own school is not necessarily the primary right for those students that's the reason why we're expanding bada from one location to bada East because those students require a very special kind of support system for them that includes a lot of the life Rons that you spoke about member Tron at the same time that it's preserving language and teaching through native language and making sure that they can fill their academics to be able to get a diploma so it's really complex at the high school level at the end of the line because of all of the tensions that students have and I think you know one of the things that um Chief gamir mentioned was this issue of English and how ESL counts for high school students and like that there are definitely some areas of advocacy that we could do I think with the state around this particular issue on behalf of students um because you know students taking ESL taking English taking you know all of their content areas they hit a tension point where if things can't count in a certain way they can't do Mass core they they can't it's hard for them to fit Early College like and so and so to me that is where when we talk about access and we talk about equity for multilingual Learners it all comes together there so I this is one that warrants just a lot more conversation I think particularly with the high schools I think we're already seeing the tension point with mass core particularly for multilingual Learners who come in later in particularly for special education students who require a lot of um Specialized Service last comment I think think the only thing with staff until those jobs are a little bit more desirable when it comes to salary it's really hard to recruit and retain I've met maybe like three BPS Educators that not only left the district as staff but they left the city of Boston yeah and and are living in Central Falls now just just as we're thinking about this like everything else that we talk about oh staff educ yeah we need to put the money though where it's at because there's many proposals that we can have if we're not investing on the folks that actually have to do the labor um then we're going to have all these vacancies so just wanted to name that and thank you again yeah thank you guys actually I have a read AI at work and it just gave me feedback for using you guys so I'm going to not say you guys thank y'all um so thank you for the presentation I have a few questions I guess sort of more focused into the data I guess I'm I'm curious that we made a decision tonight to not show the data aligned to cohort so we're looking at the data comparing last year's third graders to this year's third graders and not following the trend of a third grader to fourth grade fifth grade sixth grade um which we would have there is a way to look at the data that looks like we're actually seeing proficiency decline so the eth grader today the eighth grade class today is less proficient than when they were in third grade in ela and in math is that true is that the right if I'm trying to sort of play with these numbers in the right way is that accurate and then where else are we seeing cohort decline because the numbers as a baseline feel concerning but then when you think about proficiency decreasing as a BPS student through your journey we have le you're less likely to be proficient from third grade to eth grade that also is concerning so I'm curious about the intervention but I'm also curious if I'm understanding the data correctly yeah thank you for that question so I think you know a lot of decisions go into what we present to school committee and part of the way that we do this presentation is so that we're looking consistently at the um data year over-year and so what we do is similar to what we see in you know State and other board presentations which is looking what does the performance by grade level within a given year look like that's also where we have some of our instructional moves that we can do we can look at the third grade we can look at the sixth grade and so that tells us like what does the instruction look like for that grade and what are the what are the units what are the skills that we need to um address in that grade we do in other areas look at cohort analyses um as you know within BPS we do have um mobility issue and so which students we're serving in one year versus the next year we do end end end up having attrition especially when we have to make those decisions are we looking at October 1 are we looking at June 30 Etc so when we look at our map data internally we will look within a given year at the same students from fall to winter to Spring and that helps us to understand within a given year what this performance look like o over the year um with our map data we're able to see in increase in um skills from fall to winter to Spring and that helps us to understand how a a given student or class of students are doing within that year I'm I'm only cutting you off for time but I I appreciate it but is it a an appropriate I don't know if it's true in Massachusetts I know in New York with cohort data if a student leaves the state they're no longer in the cohort so they're not counting they're not part of that Baseline but maybe that's not true here and possibly even irrelevant but I guess I am asking is it an a right understanding that we are seeing proficiency decline for a student moving through the years like that analysis of the the 2008 third grader it's 10 o'clock at night so I don't know if I'm actually doing this right to being in eighth grade for the 2024 calculation that would show a decline is that a trend we're seeing in other grade levels and then what do we do with that yeah I think that's a good question we've looked at it in other areas so we've done like in previous years looked at what does el performance look like at that cohort level we're also looking at what what do Co cohort analyses look like as we're thinking about our graduation cohorts and you know where students are and what the requirements are um to graduate as it relates to mcast the closest thing that we did or looked at this year was I I don't know if you remember last year's presentation but um grade seven we were really concerned about and in some subject areas grade five as well um we saw similarly low performance for grade eight this year throughout like the ELA mcast science and so at least at that grade level for this current time that's the cohort that we've been um focused on and thinking about how are we supporting them as they're going through those Middle grades cool I appreciate it for whatever it's for you were about to say something I was I I just I think um me Hernandez the the question is can uh you know Jaden who is a third grader who then becomes a fourth grader fifth grader sixth grader seventh grader when you look at Jaden's test scores can you use the mcast as a way to Norm that to be come to a conclusion like Jaden's proficiency went down and I think you can answer that like in terms of what the intent of the mcast is as a testing [Music] instrument I might not be able to answer that so for a given student you're either going to be proficient or not proficient and then every year that'll change so if we're looking at like the percent of students who are meeting proficiency we would have to do that at that cohort level that's right um and we haven't specifically done the cohort analysis for the cast um looking over time so you can conclude that Jaden in his seventh grade is less proficient than the rest of his peers but you can't do it as a cumulative over because it's a it's a cohort year to year but you could see the Baseline of kids in that cohort so I had 100 kids in third grade take the test 22% of them 40% of them were proficient and I could then see in eth grade we have 100 kids taking the test and 20 of them were proficient somewhere a loss along the road we decrease proficiency yeah the likelihood though is the kids will be very different between one coort to the other CU our churn is in 30 percentile so but what I will say that we are doing that I think will be of interest to you is we want to from a high dosage tutoring investment we do want to look at students who have been and say a transformation School 3 years collectively or a transformation school that's declined 3 years to be able to narrow uh in more Target the supports of like high dosage tutoring acceleration acmy summer Extended Learning so we are doing that piece it's an interesting it is a question that I'm is also on my mind and it's one for us as we soon will move into budget season right if only a third of our kids are reading on grade level I could I'm Cuban so like you know I come from a home where it's like we don't worry about what's happening in somebody else's house so like I'm not worried about what's happening in Worcester I care what's happening in my house like if 30% of our kids are reading on grade level wouldn't it just on a governing level like everyone I mean the majority of our system needs intensive literacy support if we're talking about language acquisition for L's like need language like are we making things too complicated where it's like shouldn't every one of our summer programs be around accelerating literacy skills and I'm sure in your work in driving high quality instructional materials like maybe that's a dream right like have we just over complicated it or tried to soften the thing we know which is like your health outcomes and the economic outcomes for subit ly like is it's devastating every dollar we have should go to addressing I mean I want you to play kickball till the sun comes up but like I don't care if you're playing kickball if you can't read and you can't read on grade level and then we're wondering why we have chronic absenteeism and I'm former High School principal like I'm the believer like my kids who were chronically absent were usually my lowest skilled kids in high school there are kids who like were like peace this is no longer fun I can't keep up so like I think because we keep moving the kid forward we see this data in third grade and then you know what you get where I'm going like how do we how do we come together like that is all we are focused on I don't know Miss I'm obsessed with Mississippi everyone knows this or actually I'm also obsessed with the UK like we saw that in the UK they were devastatingly low in literacy and in 10 years became third globally but that they focused only on literacy every dollar every program every effort went to to very clear instructional materials developing those teachers and then summer programming on yeah I mean I think I think that's in fact what the team kind of put a stick in this right into the sand I think that's the expression I like it but uh you know that in in in saying you know if kids aren't getting access to grade level material and high quality instructional material and if teachers aren't prepared and supported and trained to use those so there's a lot of actionable pieces that I think the team's done around the literacy I think the intervention side is the part that was sort of in the classrooms now looking at those tier 2 and tier three interventions and as you know being a high school principal as kids get older there's a different from math yes there is a complexity yeah the the to literacy fun exactly like you can't hand a third grade book to a ninth grader so that's the part right now that we're sort of looking at to sort of say what are those individual intentionalities I think on the summer piece you know this is it is also about students coming and this is like where I think it's so important that there is some balance with the whole child because otherwise the students don't come they don't engage in particular as kids get older so I think we're we're trying to find that through line with the programs both in quality and then how we can get them the academic supports with you but it still goes back to me and I brought this up when we were spending covid money I would much rather you learn to read and pay you to learn to read than for you to have a summer job where you are not building those skills and I think there's like a real sober conversation for us around resourcing it's like I I I would love for you to be a cashier all summer but like a third of our kids are reading on grade level and like we have to put the resources to closing that Gap and I think summer jobs like make us feel good but again those are like adult things it's like what's going to really make me feel good is you being on grade level we're also seeing the pipeline of students who were very little when their phonetics would develop coming into the testing grades which I think is happening Statewide so there's a lot of there's just a lot of complexity in the data set which I think is why we saw such broad decline line Statewide I mean it's I think everybody's grappling with it I think if there's there's one really powerful slide though it is The Chronic absenteeism because it's super clear that there's a 20 point deviation to students who are chronically absent versus those that are not in terms of the performance piece and when you look at it at the high school level it's like 2% or 3% of the kids are proficient who are chronically absent yeah and they were probably proficient all along so it's sort of this is and it can be a chicken and egg right which you're calling out right kids do avoid but I think we have a just everywhere nationally we have a deeper issue to ask ourselves about chronic absenteeism that's more than just kids don't have the requisite skill and I think Chief McCarthy was referring to that the layers of complexity of chronic absenteeism right now between jobs caretaking mental health issues right all of those things and that's what we're trying to like unpack back I'm curious on a few pieces as well I think I'm trying to figure out how to ask it quickly I guess like you pull out exam schools in our high school proficiency which we don't there's a few ways to show this which I think for next year or our next presentation is helpful we're making a big investment in Hub School what are we seeing in Hub schools right like if this is again back to us like governing on a budget like if that is where we are putting our resources what are the outcomes how are they showing is there a different level of growth I think the same is true as like we sit through a lot of conversation around exam schools we pull out exam schools from the data and how are which inherently have higher levels of proficiency just because we screen kids who are are typically proficient at entering so in a system that screens that way which we are and values that which we do then what does it mean for our non-exam schools like if we're 42% proficient what is it what does it really mean outside for our high schools how are our high schools actually performing our unscreen schools doing that's a question I don't know if we can answer it today and then I think at the same time and I'm thinking about this cuz there's a unscreened school in the mix of this next question like in East Boston high which like the results are incredible like what are we learning from region one which is telling a very different story from the rest of the city like why are they doing it and doing it well and you know and we're seeing that that trend is in existing in other places so I guess there's two pieces like what's what's the real story happening in high schools if we if we take out exam schools and then what's the story that's happening in region one that we're trying to uplift and learn from yeah I think we can get that to you in a more polished way um I think last year we tried to pull out the exam school and non-exam school especially in those Middle grades and so we can do that just for the high that grade 10 um for for the committee um and then similar similarly with region one um we can look to see where do we see successes um in at the high school level um the one slide that we did have on kind of like how schools with schools across regions were doing um you know we only pulled out um economic disadvantage but the the regions are geographically based and um also based by like Elementary grade groupings and secondary um grade groupings so they're not like uniformally Equitable um at the outset and so they all the regions the mix of schools within each region within each region they have different needs and so um we can pull out like what are some of the successes at East Boston but like also knowing the geography of the school and knowing what it means to get to East Boston and like where where that is in the city I think also helps us understand like some of the challenges that you'll have in different areas of the city makes sense the last thing and we may not have it for this evening um I am curious and this again is just a data point and a one that I think is important for us to have as we make decisions for the future have we looked at and this is the conversation from our teachers who showed up tonight do we see different uh growth outcomes in classrooms that are uh collaboratively Team taught or have integrated classrooms with multiple teachers in them then classrooms with special ed kids and do not and I think like I'm curious actually I'm thinking about region one just because it's one of the schools I visited like when I see a classroom that has an ICT model or is is team taught has multiple teachers in the room is that classroom does that have a higher potential for growth or than a classroom with a single teacher working in a team who is for the most part single teaching with supports outside of the class class room and I think it's yeah I just think it's like an important question for us to ask as we're in contract negotiations as we're hearing this conversation like CU two things can be true it could feel good to have a team teaching a teacher right like teaching is a the loneliest job I've ever had and but also like does it actually net results faster and we're in the business of trying to move the results faster you know so I just want from here ing this correctly it it's it's both the how do classrooms that have two teachers full-time differ in outcomes than those that don't yeah and of those that of those classrooms what's the makeup of those is is a is a question I'm hearing also I'm actually less interested maybe in makeup and because that might just go we might be going too far and I don't want to make people's lives more complicated like can we see data on two teacher classrooms is there higher rates of growth like I I'm yeah I think we really need that data understand the impact you well I mean I think one way you can look at it is there's several schools that have a co- teing model and I would say looking very quickly at the accountability I would say that wouldn't be a hypothesis to offer up um that said there's lots of factors you can have resource and that resource doesn't get leveraged right you can have resource and it takes time to provide the training and the PD for that resource so there's so many factors that go into it which is like but just on first blush if you were to just say like a pure co- teing model I just I don't think the accountability data shows that but I will defer to miss Clarkson Because she is the expert yeah I think we would pull that data for you we'd we'd identify the schools like similar to your previous cohort question these questions are interesting but the reason why they take so long is because like the intentionality that you have to put into like who you're comparing so that their like actual true comparisons are important but I wrote it down as a question that we can explore I appreciate it yeah and I think for us superintendent too like it's I don't NE I don't really have a hypothesis in that it would or wouldn't but it's such a big Financial question for us that like we should make it not from a gut but from some Anal every decision we're making budgetarily should be focused on trying to close these gaps as fast as possible not being okay with like well the state's moving at a shitty speed as well pardon my French you know like and I and I would I would actually also I like I'm going to like I'm going to follow up that request with one extra which is can we look at what that growth looks like by the specific population so for instance do special education students in a two in a twers classroom do better than special education students that aren't do English language Learners who are do regular education right because I think you can have a situation where regular education students can benefit greatly by having two adults in the classroom but special education students may not see that so I think that would also be helpful than Mr uh thank you thank you for the presentation my questions I had asked ahead of time and I appreciate that you included them in the presentation and the following questions I had were asked by my fellow members so I will pass on fur the questions but thank you for the presentation I like my fellow members cannot emphasize enough the urgency of the data that is shared in the importance of improvement and I uh particularly Dr Ryan Miller I really appreciate when you if I had your name correct I hope I did right I'm oh okay I apologize um where you talked about curriculum versus professional development versus implementation and the and the focus on implementation I agree with all my fellow members who have said literacy is job one right now and we can't be teaching other things until we get that and agree with the fierce urgency that is needed M thank thank you thank you um I started by saying I was overwhelmed and I still am overwhelmed um overwhelmed with the complexity of all of this and the importance I think the thing that continues to resonate the most with me is that in spite of all of the efforts that we make and we make lots of them our students carry the burden of our failure um and you know I've often looked at the fact that you know we have a system that has a number of Educators many with great skills but my question often becomes back to are they the Educators for this are they the right Educators for the students that we have to educate um I often say when people compare us to other places that say Boston's not educating Welsley students our students are much broader differing than that yet we're hold when we look at the mcast data we are held to the same accountability as if all of our students had what Welsley students have and maybe if we only were comparing our exam school students to Wy students that would be true we are a district um that is a majority of students who speak language other than English come from cultures that are not necessarily the US culture Etc we do not have a teaching body that does that that reflects that we are putting a lot of dollars into educating our Educators to try to educate our students we don't evaluate whether we are being successful or failing at that because you know you know as I said we you know when our grants I mean you know I would like to see in our budget this year how much money do we put into teacher supports at every level we we support teachers to pass their tests the mtels you know we're not you know we're not putting that same effort to put our own kids to pass the mcast if that's that measure of success at the end of the day if they don't get their diploma it's because we didn't give them what they need needed yet all of our teachers whether they make it or not every week a paycheck is delivered into their account and nothing is held back if you know things aren't accomplished so it hurts me when I look at the mcast data it hurts me because you know our students are the ones who suffer um and when I see 27 and 37% and that's where we are you how many years later with how many excellent Educators how can anybody look at this and say it's okay 30% is an F 50% is a d i mean and and and and we're and we're somehow thinking Statewide that 50% is okay but it's not okay for our kids and so I guess the the question is we are putting forth a lot of efforts but when we look at our outcomes something isn't happening and you know I trust that you all know this too but the question is where aren't we being honest with ourselves about the district that we have and what we really need to do if we believe that you know our kids deserve an education in the city of Boston with some of the best riches in the world yet Mississippi is doing a better job they were at the bottom and they felt like they had nowhere to go but coming up and so they are doing some drastic things that say we're not passing you we're going to hold you accountable I don't know what they say to their Educators but you know we're not being fear of our kids you know Mr O'Neal is Right literacy is our number one issue you're right we should be paying kids to learn to read I mean we're we're spending a lot of money but we're not getting the outcomes for our efforts we've got to be honest with parents you know this is not just this BPS problem this is the city of Boston problem at every single level whether it's our infants and toddlers all the way up to to our graduates um you talk to many of our students particularly our high school students who are newcomers to this country and they are hungry for education and learning and I'm amazed sometimes at the things that I see Educators accomplish because they have a student that wants to do that and then when we have a system that all of that effort that those students have made you know in one small test can take it away from them because they couldn't pass this one thing um um is hurtful but we've got to figure out how we're holding our own selves accountable IR regardless of an mcast to say this is not good um and how we put that effort back to our Educators and all because everybody's busy you go into classrooms people are busy but the business doesn't equal the outcome and that's where I'm confused um with all the materials with all of the supports with the number of people that are in and out of classrooms um you know are we asking teachers more clearly or are we looking at the teachers who are being successful and asking them what are you doing that's different you know what would you suggest that we do sometimes all of our help is falling on deaf ears because they can't take it in and we're not being being consistent enough from one time to the other you know but I look at all of you tonight and all of the efforts we put into this but at the at the end it's still a failure so how do so where do we need to step back and be honest with one another about what all of this is and who's got an answer a simple answer or a simpler answer about what we truly need to do um to make Boston's children as successful as the word that comes to mind for me um even before this conversation is certainly confirmed is is really focus it it is really a need to have an unwavering Focus um on this work around literacy because it is um access for students for success and I do agree as as the the team and I've been sort of reflecting the over complication of things sometimes it's really just let's really focus on the literacy aspects of this work um it is very fundamental to everything that we do if kids can be successful reading and writing they can be successful across subjects and that's actually where we began this work and um I think sometimes we are challenged by the other complexities and and those those things need to be true we need to um look after the other aspects of it but I think there has to be a concerted focus on this work we're not going to be able to raise every and I'm not saying we're not going to teach math we're not going to teach science but our focus and priority has to be in the literacy space because it has overreaching impact into all the other subject areas and to life skills so my last question is what happens tomorrow I mean I I'm assuming all of the schools have gotten their scores by now and teachers do teachers get back the you know the the testing from the kids they had last year um and then what happened how do they look at this this information so I'm thinking if I'm a third grade teacher do I get back my composite scores of my kids do I can I probably and I can link in my own head who got what do I look at what were the skills that my kids had the most difficulty with and am I talking to the fourth grade teacher to make sure she's picking those things up so they don't continue with that Gap and am I looking at the kids I got this year to say make sure I don't I I make sure they have the skill set am I talking to the teacher in the second grade I mean how will we all this is just not my stuff but how am I linking this so that we're closing the gaps in our own teaching and learning from the feedback that we get from our kids so that we would hopefully see something different in the outcomes next year yeah I appreciate that question question um the teachers are some of the first users within the district to receive the data so when we start receiving data back in the spring around may we have an mcast dashboard that shows the student level and item level performance for all for all students in the district by classroom and so starting in May they're able to really understand what are the skills that their current students are succeeding on um in May they'll get back the results for ELA um and then what are the skills that they're um that they haven't yet mastered and so they're able to start looking at that data from the spring as results trickle trickle in from the state we then upload them to the dashboard so throughout the summer they're able to see how their students from sy23 24 um performed our central office sees the summary scores later in August and that's when we're seeing some of these the data that we presented today um I would say the other piece by September were able to show teachers both how did their students in syy 2324 perform and then how are their incoming students for 2425 how did they perform last year so they're able to toggle between those two class classes of students to understand what's the work that they need to do um there are two other pieces around like the data use that teachers are using so like in the fall we have our professional learning communities with school leaders and that's when we have them dig into the mcast and accountability data and then think about what are the priorities for their instructional learning teams um those are their um teams of teachers uh both the instructional leads and the cpts in terms of like what they need to focus on based on that mcast data and your question about what are schools what are teachers doing tomorrow we are just finishing up with our fall map data and so that is the next series of data that our teams are going to be supporting schools with and so we're moving on for from mcass and accountability and we're now looking at for the students that we've had for just over a month like how are they doing um what are the skills that they're entering in the classroom with and where do they where do we need to focus those map um assessments are map fluency so for that K2 to third grade level really thinking about their fluency and literacy at the 3 to eight level we're looking at map growth both in reading and in math but then where is my accountability um at the end of the day so I've done this I've gotten all this in and then the next year my kids didn't do any better where's accountability back to the teacher saying we gave you this support we gave you this information you did this but in the long run the kids didn't do any better I mean because that's what we're seeing every year when the test comes back so we're in this is there who's accountable for the for the outcome even with as I'm saying all of these efforts and supports but at the end of the day who's accountable that Johnny still can't read even if we've put all these things in place yeah I mean I I think that the the test results uh lie with the student in the current way that the system is built and you know that is something as the adults in this we all have to take a real deep look at I also I just want to also just say that um just a couple things I think one is this conversation is happening all over the state right now in every District getting those results right this is something we're I think in public headed right now we're trying to figure out particularly on the literacy side particularly on The Chronic absence side so I'm happy that we're having it and we all feel kind of collectively responsible for it I also think that this team as it's come in in the last two years I think are trying to pick up pieces of a lot of instability in The District in so many different places and for the first time really create something that's systems based that we can all move forward with and we know systems work is hard work and does take time to get rooted so I I I think it's uh there's no there's no harder workers than the people that are here and I share Leslie's optimism that as this continues to get routed as teachers continue to get the training as we start to build in more tier 2 and tier three and as we start to really look at The Chronic absenteeism and engage families as partners with us in making sure kids are in school it's all of those things that are going to help us be able to have students be able to perform on not just on the standardized task but in the kind kind of outcomes in life that we want to be able to see at each of the grade spans um so there's there's you know you have our Collective commitment in this right to like unturn every Rock I do want to also say that many of the structures that we are trying to do that with have existed here for decades decades and that is deep systems work transformation work that has to happen and we need to stay focused on that and not do what has been done many many times here which is to Veer year after year change it up change it up change it up because the scores have not radically changed over the last couple decades here and in fact post pandemic for everyone they've gone down down so we have an opportunity right now to learn from the last couple of years to be better to make those changes to add in additional supports and resources but we need to stay coarse with a lot of the big pieces of the plan and I think the high quality instructional materials the Equitable literacy work that we're doing the reading intervention work that we're doing for the for our multilingual Learners like you heard Joel say more than in the last 40 years in terms of bilingual education here getting these programs up running most importantly calibrated so that there is a clear expectation for Learners and for staff like every aspect of what we're doing is going to take a little bit of time to root that does not mean we don't let up in in fact it means we go stronger but we do have to recognize all together that we're here in this situation like many large urban districts because the Gap has in fact never been addressed that is just the sad sad fact so that is the work ahead of us that the work this team's committed to that's the work I'm committed to a superintendent making sure for the students for whom that has held true in this District and in other districts and that that's why I'm proud of these guys that that they are using CU it's some of the best Minds sitting there and like I get to work with them every day which is my privilege so I'm looking forward to digging in deeper to the work listening to the Council of the school committee because you all of your passions and your interests and you care about kids and so together this is the work we have ahead thank you thank thank you all I know it's late and you've all got to be up again early in the morning but thank you very much for all that you presented and I know the hard work that you're doing we greatly appreciate it and look forward to continuing conversations as the year goes on thank you Miss parvex um public comment no public comment that's great new business no new business okay that concludes our business for the evening and the next hybrid school committee meeting will take place in person on Wednesday October 23rd at 6 p.m at the bowling building um there a motion to end the meeting so move thank you is there a second is there any discussion or objection to the motion is there any objection to approving the motion by unanimous consent hearing none this meeting is adjourned thank you all and good night I want to tell you about something e