##VIDEO ID:iir4L63uQoY## [Music] welcome to the September 18th 2024 joint meeting of the finance and curriculum subcommittees of the Brookline school committee um we will start with approval of the minutes the first item on the agenda is finance subcommittee approval of August 21st 2024 meeting minutes can I get a motion from person thank you Val do have a second I'm in a second it B how do you vote Yes okay Carolyn how do you vote you're not going off mute I'll take Sarah Sarah how do you vote Yes okay um Carolyn I will come back to you I guess and you can let us know how you voted when you get the chance to come off mute go ahead Suzanne for your part okay and I have a h c oh wait Carolyn thanks I was not uh I was not able to unmute or put my video on um yes okay great okay and I have uh minutes from I believe it's August 20th is that right Betsy yes that's correct okay for our uh curriculum subcommittee uh I will move the minutes do I have a second I'll just do it that way thank you Jesse uh Jesse how do you vote Yes and Stephen how do you vote Yes and I vote Yes as well great so we're done with that part yep now we're gonna go into the without further Ado into the school Improvement plans and Suzanne you said you wanted to make some comments before we start well this is a couple of things um just so people the audience knows the public knows that we actually aren't discussing particular items and action items um I'm thinking in particular the high school English nth grade English that will we will come back to that uh at a later date and have a thorough discussion of that the the other thing I if if it's possible I know they've done a wonderful job on the on the slides however we won't get through everybody in 15 minutes each if we everybody goes through the slide deck so if it's possible what we really want to know I think is what is unique to your school that we should know about that you're working on and what is the budget implications from that or or your plan in general so you really don't have to go through all the slides because I know they're beautiful we have those and most of us have looked them already and we will look at them again um certainly you can reference them if that will help you with your presentation but if you go through every slide we we're not going to get through everybody in 15 minutes each and I really want to respect your time does that make sense does that make sense okay okay I I think it does I don't think we want to throw people completely off of whatever they were envisioning right I mean they knew they had 15 minutes so if you think you can do it and just stick to your time really is the end of the story is the is the bottom line right and maybe we'll give people um a five minute warning so that they know to get to the point if they haven't because everyone has 15 minutes um do we have an order I I know Betsy you are coordinating an order I just don't know what it is um yes we do have a sign up list um Brian is first Brian denitzio and then next will be Donna finegan after Brian wonderful okay Brian you're up hello thank you everybody for uh for having me uh good afternoon gang uh if it is okay with you I promise I will stick to my time but can I use my slides just because that's how I'm anchoring myself yes sorry I didn't mean to totally contradict Suzanne but I was like these poor people have planned something and she's telling them not to it's my bad I'm sorry ignore what I said do your 15 just one quick question my bad go ahead Jesse Yeah for those of us who don't know how the people match up with the schools if ah yes okay principal Deno of Lincoln right right bety mentions a name if she could say what school they're from then we can I'm sure it'll become it it'll be in the slides too but yes we'll get there I know but you can't search through all the slides to find it some I'll make sure I do that thank you okay um Brian go ahead thank you uh so yeah Brian Denio I'm the principal of Lincoln School uh I'm going to go ahead and share screen uh and I promise like I said that I will move expeditiously through my slides so thank you all right so uh we can know it's Lincoln because the grade out photo in the back that's my front Circle you can see my clock tower over there at the top uh um so uh first I want to say uh a huge thank you to uh my school council membership uh Christopher blesson Sarah Jay and Sandra whisman uh they are folks who uh have long experience at Lincoln and or long experience working uh in schools and understanding how schools work uh and their input both as parents and as uh folks with connections to education has been hugely valuable um deeply appreciative to of my teacher reps Courtney lry Donald pet Gretchen Thompson and Alejandra TR um we have like a good representation of grade levels of roles within the school couple of Middle School folks Elementary e so super helpful uh real quick some celebrations from the past year continued growing our Middle School student council uh these are the kids who are uh really integral in planning a field day we held our third annual field day they help out with morning announcements it's sparing everybody hearing my voice every morning uh doing birthday shoutouts and telling them what's for lunch they plan spirit days and they organize uh our um uh a paper recycling program where they're doing the pickup and drop off um also um really proud of the work we were doing with our crossgrade buddies last year where we were having you know basically groups of kids from you know a second grade class paired with a seventh grade class there's benefit to being a k to8 but you got to work at it intentionally and these buddies are are one way of pulling that off um our life committee Lincoln Initiative for Equity planned our first annual culture Fest this was an enormously well attended and uh exciting uh evening we've already got this year's on the books uh coming up for uh in 2025 uh also want to be um putting an eye on some planning we did in the spring of last year that set us up uh for what I think is a more successful year already this year so allocating our special education Staffing we have a kind of a a growing number of students uh on IEPs and grades K through five so we shifted the number of special Educators working uh you know we shifted one educator away from middle school to our uh K to 5 band so that we're limiting the number of folks that um our genn teachers are collaborating with so we have a K in one person a second grade a third grade a Fourth Grade A fifth grade really limiting the number of folks that we need to collaborate with uh and that was a thing just done through an internal allocation um we've been intentional about our scheduling and Middle School where we have quote unquote pure teams so if you're a sixth grader you all have the same Ela teacher if you're a seventh grader you all have the same math teacher no more we've tried to eliminate sharing and increase kind of some coherence in the kid in family experience um and yes all right let me move along so budgetary impact of the things I'm about to share you know I've been uh the lucky beneficiary of a fair amount of uh Title One money that I've been able to use for funding things such as a sitewide Lexia license uh funding some um targeted support in small group work by teachers both before and after school um with some changes in our Title One allocation I can see utilizing some of my um discretionary dollars for the targeted before and after school support as one potential vehicle so uh our first goal uh in the coming year and I really want to underscore how helpful it was to go into this process with a robust um strategic plan for the district nesting our school-based goals under District goals we' previously been able to you know do that broadly but the really concrete goals spelled out in the um strategic plan were hugely helpful so in this goal our uh objective is for students to be able to increase their use of academic language to increase their capacity to make sense of and effectively respond to complex tasks texts and prompts um Suzanne one of your kind of points uh for us to emphasize was what's unique about our school I don't know necessarily if this is unique to Lincoln right now but I do want to share some context for that first goal because a big Target uh for this work is our uh growing e population so you can see going back to 2018 Lincoln's enrollment peaked about 581 and we had 84 El students fast forward to this year uh our overall census is uh like four I think what am I as of today 490 but uh we have more El students than we did then right 92 so we're looking at a greater percentage of el students uh a greater number and a greater percentage of our overall census and this is having an impact uh you know these students are getting some quality um English language development work happening uh with our great El staff but then are included for uh their time in um social studies in science and other contents and so we're thinking not just for this cohort of el students but really for all students we want to be focusing on um so articulating some academic language built from common tier two words uh the idea being we want to push our students all students not just to be memorizing and able to like spit back information but also to be able to use that to make sense of it to be comparing to be contrasting to be extending their thinking and so we want to leverage what we have uh with our staff using staff time both uh at common planning and also faculty meetings to get some coherence across grade level teams and then across contents in our Middle School of the kinds of high leverage um academic vocabulary we want students uh focusing on uh and so our theory of action behind this being that if kids are seeing it multiple places and if we're doing it coherently it'll be a little bit more sticky and language that kids can better utilize wi um we move from you know kind of that vertical and horizontal articulation of it into implementing into instruction that reinforces this High leverage vocab that puts more like we say in the goal more cognitive load uh onto our students so not just explicit instruction and drill review of vocab but like I said getting kids utilizing High leverage words and uh able to use that to make sense of and explain and push their thinking and knowledge of content um our second goal right goal two is uh organized and culturally responsive communication with families uh that provides insights into learning and establishes connections with Educators the parent and community members of my school council were super important in uh formulating this goal the first is just an understanding of the kind of the types and frequency of communications happening from our down to the individual classroom level to our Specialists to our middle school teams getting a sense of the kind of communication in the range and in some cases the um you know the discrepancies that can exist and the the feelings that parents can have that I'm getting this information from my third graders teacher but not from my second graders Etc so we want to understand what is going out and then uh this seems lowlevel but it's hugely important in the life of like kids and families and schools is the idea that our calendar and the way in which you're planning events particularly come like May and June is an absolute disaster we have so many so our opportunities to partner with families to invite them in the classrooms to invite them to work shares to concerts to performances is limited because of the fact that like we were not scheduling coherently and so we want to both look at what is going on and look at where our whole school our PTO events hour um you know fun events movie Nights skates you know at LS Anderson put on by the PTO also the scheduling of events when you know avoiding conflict so parents can be present and participating in all of the opportunities that they may have to come and visit you know there we had a fourth grade concert happening on the same day as a second grade work share with four or five families saying they had to make choices so we're trying to both like streamline and get our arms on the kinds of communication that are going out surveying families and surveying staff about the kinds of communication they're doing and finding to be supportive of partnership and then finally uh getting a clear and published early on calendar of events over the course of our year that are going on some things we know are coming up every year no matter what at Lincoln things like Pumpkin Fest or our spring musical but other opportunities that come up where like our PTO is uh organizing a read of the anxious generation right we want to get those things on the calendar early so everybody can participate in them and participate more uh robustly in the life of the school um and to move through to goal three as I keep an eye on my clock uh our goal three uh is underneath the district goal of developing and implementing culturally responsive Community um we want to create and nurture a learning environment that promotes feelings of belonging and support students in developing their emotional regulation skills we have seen and been been uh you know been proud of gains we have made since we've first begun implementing the Panorama uh Universal screener to see overall like rise in students in uh reporting feelings of belonging uh feelings of belonging are hugely important uh and strongly tied to feelings of efficacy and to kids feeling better and more capable of you know quote unquote doing school where we're seeing I think a plateau in our Panorama data though is around uh students identifying challenging feelings and being able to identify and work through those feelings and those are things that are too often you know leading to shut down uh or leading to withdrawal from social situations or you know preventing them from persevering when a looks feels or genuinely is hard and so you know we're not giving up the ghost on belonging that's still important and we still have discrepancies that we need to tackle across some of our socioeconomic groups across uh other demographic groups but we're putting a particular Focus this year uh on how we identify that challenging feelings will come up and how can we work through them and persevere through them and identify and use some strategies to be more successful those are going to be themes that we touch on you know being more intentional for example when we're planning the Buddies activities to you know not simply be you know some sometimes it's just fun and doing a craft together but there are other times where we want to be more intentional that where we plan to be more intentional in planning activities that help kids uh identify you know read do a read aab together about challenging feelings and identify strategies they can utilize to work through them so those are the three broad areas uh of our school Improvement plan of our three goals um they're very much in draft form right now uh we kind of work through in the spring uh following the full adoption of the Strategic plan uh these goal areas and then obviously you know they're built not with the last round of data from the Panorama survey they're built without necessarily the school culture and climate survey data that we got from families as well over the summer so I plan this fall to revisit uh what we have here and uh firm up and finalize with our school council Ryan you did a fabulous job getting it all in yeah you got about two and a half minutes left are you going to cover budget implications or um so I sort of Ed to do that at the outset right like the the reality for me is the idea that like the yikes um the budget implications uh are more driven by the like absence of Title One funds for right now and so I'm trying to see like we don't did Lincoln fall off of Title One eligibility not a question of Eligibility but I think the broad allocation of funds across the district we we know like I'm not using um some of that funding is I guess tied up in Staffing now whereas previously it was using it was available for um funding some targeted support here so okay um but so I guess my question is does any of this what of this requires dedicate like what of this is a budget line item that's I guess what I'm not quite clear on yeah so for I can Envision right now a path where we are you know under the goal under the goal about uh the use of AC the use of academic vocabulary if we're running you know targeted groups in the way that we were previously so paying teachers for prep time and then for contact time with kids before or after school uh that's one area where I could see there being budget implications out of the principal discretionary funds that we have um but that's the extent of it right now possib possibility as well if through staff work we identify a need for you know different more professional learning but those are the key are those are the really the areas where I would see it right now think we have another minute left Suzanne I presume we're taking questions if we can do so within the time we have yeah I think so we don't want to get too far behind yeah any questions within the one minute that we have left for Brian okay nice job Brian yes good job Brian you set a high standard here that's right um thanks Brian okay Donna you're next is that what I heard that's right Donna principal of rle school next thanks Donna and after that will be David ukis from Driscoll School hi everybody thank you for having me I am the principal at ronl school and I'm G to try to share my screen as well um and I'll just speak off the the slides but not necessarily go through all of them um um I did change the background Brian's still there because they were all linking pictures in this template so now you can see rle in the background as well um well well done thank you sorry sorry Brian I didn't want to use your pictures um and he's so skilled at using up all the time so there's no time for questions I don't know if I can do that um I too want to thank I have an incredible School site council at RL um we've been together some of them for the two years um and it's a big group we have one two three four five six um parent and Lynn is a Community member and the same amount of teachers who represent um guidance K2 middle school and our Rise program and special ed in in our um technology specialist so I do want to say that a lot of this school Improvement plan we had started last year and we worked on over the summer but I haven't scheduled our first meeting is in October so I expect that there'll be some a little bit of tweaking um over the next month when we meet with my first meeting with the school site Council and then moving on throughout the school year um in terms of budget the discretionary funds that the principles have is pretty limited it's a $10,000 line item um for RKA we do not have Title One I use those discretionary funds for things like um funding Homework Center after school um our GSA our young young scholars groups we use that money to pay for um directors for the school plays and musicals and then I also have a really successful sporting program not everybody gets excited about the sports in middle school but our coaches at RL have been able to include our special ed students um for years and including kids who have been in our Rise program and kids who are in um the the Learning Centers but in order to do that I sometimes have to hire extra staff to um go to those practices and run with the kids and so that's something that I might use my discretionary funds for because there's a certain stip and set for those coaches and then I might supplement that using my budget so that those students are covered um and they've done remarkably well like at the cross country meet it's to the point where I have kids who run with a with a with a middle school student matched with a middle schol school student to support them and then by the end of the year they're running by themselves through that Lars Anderson which is pretty amazing so I've been really proud of that um and then our percentage of high need students El students and students with academic based disabilities continues to grow like Brian said at RL as well um we are well staffed with special educations and we have over 35 par professionals at rle I probably have one of the highest numbers with f frr um for paraprofessionals um but in terms of budget that's how I use my discretionary our our supply budget we have highly skilled secretaries who make sure that money lasts through the whole school year um and without her I don't think I could do that but I don't have any other um issues around that piece let me just move your faces so I can read um our first goal is to increase achievement for all rle students by implementing tier one and tier two interventions to support a consistent high quality and challenging curriculum for literacy and math using evidence-based practices um why can't I move my screen that helped um so some of the things that we're doing to make this goal happen is obviously we're continuing with the things that already in place like foundations and heg um this year we're doing we're starting to train staff in literacy to prepare for the new literacy curriculum that's coming um hopefully that will be chosen in January and then implemented next September we had our first meeting as did everybody in Brooklyn yesterday with all of our staff um and then we want to figure out ways to engage the whole community and make sure that we're sharing all this information with parents because I do feel like parents um are sometimes the last to know when there's a change in the curriculum or or making these big decisions around what's coming up next um my second goal um around matching the district's culturally responsive Community engagement plan all rle educators are given opportunities to engage in cultural proficiency training and Implement culturally proficient learning to decrease the implicit bias and Foster Community for understanding differences um RL is really committed to doing this work we've had um in the past three years we've had two trained seed instructors who have taught over 45 rle staff members so I feel like in that's not that is no longer funded by the district um and it's no longer funded by the bef but I feel confident that we've trained um a significant number of teachers and we need to think about next steps what to do next um in this area um we've developed our Equity our Equity team this year um with guidance and two teachers myself and the um vice principal we just started our Equity cycle for Middle School um which involves the office of equity um educational Equity um Christy Hernandez has been coming over that started yesterday with our Middle School team so we're excited about that and this is all information that came out of the surveys that were presented that staff really wanted this PD and wanted to do the work I also really feel like we need to make a commitment at rle to work with our PTO and our Meco students and all of our um marginalized students to make sure that we're in including them and all the activities that are happening at rle because we do feel like the attendance at a lot of our events um for marginalized students is low and we need to figure out how to make that better last year we invited the Meco director Millie to come and speak to my staff and she was very well received um and um had gave us a lot of information about Meco that our staff didn't know and they wanted more information about how to connect Meco families to rle families and um not necessarily go back to host family but to talk about ways that we can make sure we're communicating and making those families fail included and this year at rankle we're starting plc's professional learning Comm um communities at our faculty meetings for half of our faculty meetings and all of those professional learning committee um are all have a Dei strand in them um they include data and student achievement building strong relationships with students culture and Equity um common grading practices in middle school and promoting a growth mindset and my third goal is to enhance family and staff engagement to foster a safe and inclusive community um and culture at rankl um wor my things we are trying we also have another organization at rle called Roar that was started two years ago by a group of families and that stands for um rung organization Against Racism um they're working with us to again reach out to all the families who feel marginalized and included we've had they want to know exactly what's going on and how we're addressing racism at rle we've already met with them um in September and we'll meet with them monthly and they they will be holding events for families as well um we're looking to improve our um Panorama data which actually in rle I felt like the families we had 84% of families say that they had a really strong sense of belonging here which feels really good um but I know it's not everybody um and so this screen just talks about all the different steps that we're taking to make sure all those things are happening I'm going to stop there see if people have questions I talk fast wow Donna you did a good job TimeWise I mean not do you didn't you didn't I I yeah you did talk quickly um questions I have two questions but they're they're things you brought up Donna which I would just like to request clarification on um since we have a little bit of time now one of the things you said was that you basically work within a $10,000 principal discretionary budget and it's my understanding that the sips are supposed to determine the budget as opposed to you fitting within the budget like and so I guess Susan could you comment on the how this is supposed to be approached are the principles supposed to get set amount that they work within or is the Sip supposed to drive their allocation yeah happy to answer that so in the past year um I don't and I don't just to be clear I don't it's not necessar how like what's the right way as opposed to the way we've done it right those are different okay principles are referring to is the way that it has been right and transitioning to a a site based model which the rest of the Commonwealth did quite some time ago and so um this is kind of the start of that um transition where the principls um work with their site councils to develop a school Improvement plan of course that nests as Brian said within the Strategic plan but there's also um you know challenges at each school that are that are different and so your focus areas would be uh perhaps different um school by school depending on what the student population and needs are there um and so though there's only $10,000 that the principles have have funded themselves in the past um we're beginning to shift that model to one that more is aligned with um accomplishing the goals in the Strategic plan as well as in their sips so so at what point feels a little bit like a catch 20 to chicken and egg at what point do principles articulate goals that don't fit into a $10,000 box maybe the box is smaller or maybe it's bigger well they're communicating now and we're going to develop the budget beginning um in another month or so for the upcoming year okay so their sips as they're presenting them now might get modified because the sips have been designed with their historical budget limits in mind um I don't believe their sips have been designed with uh their their historical um $10,000 budget in mind it shouldn't uh shouldn't be okay I won't put Donna on the spot to ask her but that is definitely something that will be interesting to me um and then I just have one more question and maybe Suzanne or Jody could answer this Donna you also had mentioned um that the selection of the literacy program was going to be in January for implementation next September and I thought this literacy program was being selected in the fall for implementation starting in January I well I'm just curious if the time has slipped it has whoops I'm it has changed Mariah we ran this through um curriculum sub we wanted to frontload um some PD this year so that when teachers have the materials they'll be full um able to use them correctly thank you not correctly because they would do correctly no matter what but fully be able to fully use them okay just if I can add Mariah to your point about the budget and school Improvement plans I mean I remember when I would have to present my budget at my school in Boston if if I had a program or something I I needed in my school I had to make a pitchure for it and and together we would figure out where that money might come from so it's it's a different approach from what we have done here in the past uh and uh we I think we need to kind of practice and give permission for our ability administrators to think in a different way um because they they haven't been allowed to do that in the past and so as Susan knows if that's where we're going we have to we we we have to kind of show them the way of how we might accept well that's the I think it's almost like scaffolding it for them too like making it making the space to have this happen as opposed to right yeah it's not just permission it's like Beyond permission and the way I interpret it right because it's like this machine never stops so the like the idea that the principal is going to be able to wedge themselves into the process at the exact right moment without support seems no they that won't work no wa exactly it won't work so okay good uh Carolyn I see your hand is up and I think we have like another minute for um discussion on this before we go on to David ukas great um thanks Donna that was great and uh I enjoyed hearing all the things you're doing and just specifically about this the your 10,000 and I was taking notes you talked about GSA Sports love how you're doing Unified sports um oh after school tutting so I was really I'm particularly interested in sort of of um academics um and the academic portion of the Strategic um plan so you mentioned after school tutoring um can you just talk super briefly about that and are there opportunities in any grades or particularly maybe in middle school for um enrichment challenge for students who are looking for something more or doing sort of um are there opportunities also for like high dosage tutoring for students who've been identified especially on the metrics and the Strategic plan who who need to be um helped out in terms of the budget item that I referenced in my on my slides The Homework Center is what is the after school um support that we provide for students and historically it's been hard to um staff that it's typically it used to be years ago teachers did that and got a stien now it's been par professionals who've stepped up last year I couldn't even run it because I didn't have anybody so this year I do have somebody who's interested and it's only honestly it's an hour after school for students who choose to attend it's not enrichment it's really support around getting homework done and under the supervision of an adult um but the in terms of the enrichment piece those things come out of like math um Math League sometimes you know the kids who do math League or math counts which are two two right da I'm looking for help with two different um math pieces that provide some enrichment but other than that that's not in my in my budget piece okay I think we're at time thank you Donna really helpful thanks guys and David you are next hi everybody uh thank you for having me um I am gonna share my slides let me see if I can and for those who don't know I'm David ukas principal of driscal school let's see who's after David uh we'll have um Hay School which will be presented by the vice principal ctan Patel thank you sorry I'm just having some trouble here sharing my screen all right just bear with me for a moment please oh it's telling me I need to leave the meeting David you you just shared it with me so why don't I try to pull it up here for you is that okay oh thank you appreciate it absolutely wonderful thank you Betsy so y so I did uh I guess everyone's been talking about their uh building I left the old building there so everyone could have a memory of the old uh Driscoll School uh we're so excited to be in our brand new school um I I do want oops I do want to thank our wonderful uh site counsil for all the work that they've done um over the last several years not only just in helping putting put together a school Improvement plan but um you all the thinking around uh this whole building project and moving into a new building and all the new processes that we have in place or that we're still putting in place um to uh help us move into this new space so Nicole mlen Scott and Anan uh Kyle Deo Lee Simmons um joined us last year and Jonathan golden is on his way out but uh he was also um instrumental in uh helping us put together our school school Improvement plan last year um we are uh we have not yet met as a site Council yet this year but we are certainly um looking forward to meeting as a as a group in October so that we can uh continue to add to this um School Improvement plan our teacher reps are Erica Sullivan mckeny snow and they've done an amazing job and I'd like to recruit somebody from our Middle School to join us because it's always nice to have uh that lens in our planning so as we move to the next slide before I get into um some of our budget budgetary impacts I do want to say uh that we've again very excited about moving into our our new building it took a tremendous effort of everyone just working together in the planning to move us into this space um right now we're currently finishing up our outdoor space uh and the kids are very excited to at least have access to the um a field that they haven't had in four years um and so there's been some planning uh that we've been doing as a as a school as a as a staff in preparing our students to actually play on a playground that they haven't been on in four years and actually new new playground structures new outdoor spaces so uh our teachers met on their first days back just to um uh plan and look come up with some expectations around um playground play uh we tend to forget about not things about playing safely on different structures so they've already met with their students and talked about these expectations and this required some planning from our our staff uh prior to starting the school year and then we're going to allow them as uh different sections of the outdoor space open up to go in and walk this the new space and uh continue to add to their guidelines for their students to help make sure that they're playing safely outside so we're very very excited about um and the students are very excited because they're watching this every day they're watching the transformation of a new outdoor space uh take place right in front of their eyes so it's very very exciting um we're very excited that beep joined us uh last year and they're wonderful part of our school Community we included an additional beep class so we now have four beep classes at the Driscoll school um we continue to celebrate our schoolwide events such as Arts Equinox uh science Solstice and um you know we've had all these celebrations uh some of these celebrations like our school picnic and our um uh juneth celebration at waldstein Park we've had to have our big celebrations off campus and we're really looking forward to having these uh wonderful celebrations that were used to be off campus back on campus again including our our picnic which is tomorrow night um we uh we we were excited that we celebrated our first graduating class last last June uh they were the first group and we've we've started a new tradition where we've taken large a picture of all of our students on the stairwell in the middle of the school and we're framing each of those pictures every year and placing them outside of our multipurpose room uh as well as our eighth grade uh play cast and so this is going to be a nice way to um make the walls look really uh really nice but also allow students to come back and you know we capture who they are um uh they can come back and see who they were back uh you know when they come back and visit the schools so it's going to be a nice tradition that we've started um uh also I just a couple of other celebrations I just want to say we also had a wonderful International night that we brought back uh that we hadn't had since uh pre pandemic it was an amazing out um outpouring of um families uh of bringing in all sorts of re recipes and food and it was just an incredibly Dynamic evening so really enjoyed uh sharing that and just um you know having a wonderful experience where we got to uh you know learn about different cultures in our school uh also we have an amazing Driscoll dragonian newspaper uh that that is now I believe in its third or fourth year and it's really an outstanding publication and that's run by um Zoe bordon who's our sixth grade teacher along with parent um uh volunteer um and we uh uh do such a great job with that publication and it allows our middle schoolers uh to uh actually go out and write stories and uh capture what's going on in our community and put that into our amazing publication those come out uh four times a year uh so those are some of our celebrations um and uh we can move on to the budgetary impact uh one of the things I put in in terms of and so this may kind of dovetail uh into um what you were talking about in terms of using our school Improvement plan to request funds um you know our Middle School I paid our Middle School staff uh two summers ago to work together to um utilize our um wonderful consultant an Larsson uh to help train our staff on consistent uh practices in the classroom and a lot of these practices are uh not only just good for our students who are in the lab program but they're good for all students and that's why we um we work together to come up with um you know different uh techniques and um processes in the classroom that are consistent from from class to class so that they're not having to uh learn the organizational system from a teacher who's in math and then a different organizational system to somebody in social studies we use the same organizational system and that really helps our students uh have some consistency so I paid our staff a couple years ago to really get together toight only talk about uh their learning but also uh they worked on code of conduct and um and also um um you know aligning their all the learning and teaching that goes on in in their classrooms and I'd like to play pay them uh again this summer uh to enable them to again work together as a as a middle school team to continue with this work because there's a lot more that you can do than uh just uh teaching students how to use utilize two column notes but you can go a little bit more in depth and ter in terms of uh implementing um test preparation um packets and those can be also uh consistent as well um one of the things that um as part of our work with Landmark we we do have these organizational systems where we have notebooks uh that uh each of the classrooms have to organize their work but they also have uh homework notebooks and so there are some uh things that we really require our students to have each year and it's important for them to have these and so we we have our parents usually uh put out the money for this and it's a um a hefty amount of money for these binders and our um organizers and uh Dr given and I have had a conversation about this in the past and and that is I'd love for this because this is something that we require all of our middle school students to have that it would be great if the district could uh pay for this and so it's cost us this year around $88,500 for grade 6 through 8 uh to have these binders that we need in the classrooms to organize their work and also to have a homework binder and our um that they bring to and from home um along with a dragon notebook uh that they use to write down their assignments so it really provides them this organizational system and structure that will help them keep stay organized make sure they stay on top of their their um assignments and but our all our whole Middle School team is uh all bought into the process of making sure that they do write their homework in their um homework binders I'm sorry excuse me in their dragon uh notebooks and uh and they St and they also stamp uh their notebooks every day so this is these are all practices that our middle school has bought into and they do such a wonderful job but I'd love for us to be find a way to um be able to pay for this for our Middle School families um also D I'm just giving you a f minute warning holy macro all right sorry so um we we uh we also want to continue continue pairing our um students uh who have not identified um staff uh as a a trust or need a trusted adult in school and we want to be able to um utilize like we got a BF Grant uh in the past for of $1 thousand dollar and we'd like to incorporate that uh work again this year so that students do have a trusted adult here at school so we can move on from there so again uh increasing our achievement for all um our strategic objective is to use districtwide literacy assessments uh using Dibbles and star data to plan and deliver targeted instruction that meets the needs of students uh in the foundation of literacy skills um I we have that as one of our uh strategic objectives and we also are ident we want to identify successful strategies that provide a a robust tier one and two interventions in math to increase um achievement levels for each student in math so we can move on from there so again uh you know we're very excited that we'll be utilizing um uh you know District provided uh assessments throughout the course of the year to help with our uh just analyzing data for our students um and for our staff to be able to look at that so that they can uh help improve their instruction in the classroom and Ela um and again those will be uh assessed throughout the course of the year the same thing for math we'll continue um to uh help uh as districtwide assessments to help us um identify the needs of our students and to help uh adjust our practice in the classroom um and on one of the other things that we put in here is um the discussion about paying teachers for some summer work to help produce uh grade level math games so that um students have some work to do over the summer and the parents can have that support uh over the summer our second uh objective is um to bridge the K to5 and 6 to8 communities in order to solidify our identity as a k to8 school and develop a connection from our Elementary grades uh to our Middle School next slide so again we want to make sure that we're continuing with our Traditions here at triso school because it really solidifies our who we are as a community and how we celebrate each other and celebrate uh the work we do have we have a Arts Equinox celebration science solers on our Jun celebration we also want to uh prepare students for the middle school in order to ease that transition from Elementary grades to the middle school and so um we have uh a time at the end of the school year for our parents to come in and learn a little bit about what Middle School uh is and uh what to prepare for our sixth grade team um in September they just held their uh evening meeting with sixth grade families to specifically go into uh what that uh day in life is like in sixth grade grade and uh just to answer any questions that they might have because it is a big transition moving from fifth to sixth grade um and then this year we also would like to provide more communication to Middle School families about what is happening in middle school there's so much that goes on from K to A5 from the those teachers there's constant communication and we want to make sure that we continue that for our Middle School families and then our third uh goal is to identify individual student needs and social emotional health we want students have a sense of belonging and feel respected and valued by their classmates and teachers and then by doing that our wonderful we have an amazing clinical team uh that reviews our Panorama data uh they uh meet on a weekly basis um and we want to just make sure that uh we are um making sure that students feel a good sense of belonging at driscal school uh our Middle School We are continuing to um use postcards these are postcards that are decorated by our uh Elementary grade students K to2 students and these are postcards that our Middle School team sends out to middle school families letting them know what wonderful things their students are doing it's a great way to let families know what's going on but also to uh provide positive U reinforcement for things that they are doing well um you know whether it's um you know study habits or being a good friend we really want to make sure that we're supporting our middle schoolers U and also we will continue to find one of the things I'd like to continue to do is find time in our Middle School schedule to build some sort of advisory for our sth and eighth grade sixth grade is built in but 7th and eth grade we're still uh endeavoring to find time to bring that into our seventh and eighth grade group and that's eight seconds left nice work David sorry I talked so long in the beginning no no no it was fine questions from the subcommittees Jesse go ahead hi David Jesse uh question about the 8500 for this um the transition or the you know the middle school stuff how does that align with the other um elementary schools you know and the two that came before you they didn't mention anything about this it like sort of an additional over-the-top need or that the parents are just paying so is this something different just to brisal or is this a um does this arise out of a a different need that's a great question it is actually unique to Driscoll um we you know we have the lab program and you know it's a lab it's a homebased program and um our Landmark has consulted with us over the years and they developed uh they helped us develop these organizational systems and what our teams have realized is that these again are good practices for all of our students and um and so over the years uh we have refined we've worked on and we've changed uh what these organizational systems look like like for instance last year they used to carry around these binders with straps on them but nobody liked the one strap and uh We've now gone down to just a a um a a sorry a binder like just a regular binder um and they carry their Chromebook separately it used to be carried all in one thing so um they're constantly refining this uh the materials and um but it's it's certainly unique to to Driscoll thank you Carolyn I saw your hand was up you got like 10 seconds okay well I would like to say there was a time when at least at the baker school at under Mary Brown we were doing the landmark stuff with this organizational um systems my daughter who's now a freshman in college experienced that my son did not um I see $88,500 to to me in my experience comparing those two kids and talking to others um that is priceless stuff Jody Michelle Susan I would love for you guys to note that um it's invaluable um the organizational stuff that that Landmark did thank you thanks Carolyn I forgot who is next school yeah K school and then after that we'll have um Vanessa Belo from uh Lawrence School thank you Kon while you're pulling up your slides oh you're so fast never mind I'll hold my [Laughter] question yes thank you uh I'm Kiran Patel I'm the VP at Hayes and um it's good to see many of you here today this um this we we we just put some pictures in um the start of the school year started with a renaming becoming official in the sense that the the front of the school was lettered you know the official title came up where it said Heath it initially and now it says Roland hay so some of our family members also did a nice mural or painted on the sidewalk a picture of Roland hay so that was a nice way to start our school year we've definitely had um some amazing celebrations last year and this year already one of the uh pieces of celebrating we did was just around some of the data that came back from the Panorama data that we gave out to parents to students and to staff and um it was nice to share with staff you know some of this wasn't a surprise but it was nice to see data behind kind of the feeling we have at our school that staff really feel like they belong that they're known that they're valued and we had great numbers on that I think our staff School belonging numbers around 94% of our staff endorsing either that they agreed or strongly agreed with that sentiment um students gave us around 83% score on that same sense of belonging which was amazing we've been doing some strategic and deliberate work to increase that since postco so it's nice to see um those efforts in in data form paying off and um teachers also you know gave us feedback as well as school leaders and we had you know good good results on that I think 88% of staff were endorsing positive uh endorsements for different leadership attributes um so those were some of the celebrations that I wanted to share we also asked students how much do you think you matter to others and 82% of students felt that they did that went up by 10% so we're seeing a lot of this growth in in the ways that we've been working in terms of our old school Improvement plan in terms of our new and what we continue to do at Hayes um the last celebration I want to add is we we were always a cell phone free environment but we went pretty strong on that this year with our school with uh the PTO in Partnership and um that's been going really well we've had great uh we've had Parents voice in saying thank you and we've really seen you know I've only had I think one cell phone that I've seen so far so kids are really keeping them away either in their locker or um at home but not in their pockets and and these are these are the celebrations that we've had uh for this year our School site Council we've had you know the folks that you see here I myself am not part of the school council but I'm representing Dr seelas here who wasn't able to join but we've had a great crew of team teachers and parents year after year so Dr selus Miss Anderson Miss Watkins Miss sag and Miss H are School reps and you know representing everyone from Principal to par professional and then our community and parent Representatives as well and all of these folks have been here for two years so they've really seen the school Improvement plan and given feedback um and will'll meet very shortly again to see where it's at for this year as well so big thank you to all of these members who have done um a very thorough job at reviewing and editing and looking towards the future in terms of budget um our school seeks to be a good Steward of the budgetary needs of the district and with the funds provided by the town state and federal government so all funding decisions are made with the best interest of children in mind and under the constraint set for set forth uh from the Town managers and our school committee so with whatever um that pot of funding that we have left at the school level generally all of that is going each year towards professional development and this year we're excited to partner with Aspire and MGH which we've done Consulting and smaller PD work through in the past years but really they'll be a partner for this entire year to um help us grow our inclusion muscle and also help us learn more about supporting students on the Spectrum and Beyond and then the remaining funds have been going towards creating you know student opportunities for them to belong to connect um during the school day and some after school such as our student Affinity groups aapi young scholars um homework club the school play model un and and and more more so as we look forward to the moving years we will expect more funding and Staffing and support needed to support the Rise program that we have at our school which is expanding and you know requires quite a bit of considerable support both financially and in terms of people and material and then our school is getting smaller uh naturally we're moving from a three section to a two section all of our from K to to uh third grade right now they're all two section uh grade levels so as that happens of course the budget um will reflect those changes and although we're getting smaller in that way uh the percentage of our high need students is is growing almost 1/4 of our students are on IEPs and as that number grows we also have our English uh language learner students that are growing as well um so these are the need areas uh for our school as we look forward to coming school years our first goal that matches with the district goal was using evidence-based literacy instruction to ensure that students in grades K to3 meet all their grade level benchmarks as measured by dibles and U the foundations of reading so that has been the work that we've been doing in hagri and foundations for a while now uh and that work will continue and what we're looking forward to continue to do is providing additional small group instruction for those students that aren't Meeting those benchmarks and then really having General Ed teachers partner with uh special Educators to ensure that students who do have reading goals are receiving both the structured literacy instruction and additional code based instruction um so we can meet that goal as well this is a area of need we will see certain students need more support here especially our English language Learners and for that reason um the other initiative will be around continuing to engage in data review processes and Cycles with uh the broader team our literacy Specialists the special Educators the El teachers and school admin to really look at um student by student who's where where are they where do they need to go next and what do we need to get them there and uh yeah we'll really keep an eye on that Dibbles data which has been great with way to really quickly see where are our kids and where are they going and where do we and how do we get them there so that's goal one our school our second School Improvement goal uh is around a positive increase in student data returns particularly for students with disabilities and our bipac students so that everyone can advocate for and access what they need and uh the work in this it it it's not new right this is kind of the bread and butter work that's been going on for for years but some of the initiatives that we're really looking to hone in on to see better returns in terms of data are teaching and practicing mental health hygiene such as mindfulness compassion empathy and the ability for students and staff to just show up as their authentic selves so a lot of that work is happening in the classroom with our student support team also pushing it so those are our guidance counselors our psychologists uh pushing into teach kids directly teach staff in PD and uh really developing from the classroom level up we also want to continue to protect and create create safe spaces for students to engage in their Affinity groups these are well- loved by students they happen during the school day uh usually at lunch or when so all kids can access to it which was very different from when I was a teacher and we did everything after school it is nice for kids to have access during the school day at lunch recess if they choose to not recess but lunch or most of the time uh win which is what I need block for students in Middle School to access this or homework support but those clubs are our GSA our Rainbow Club young scholars Rainbow Club is the younger version of the Middle School GSA club and in each you know support it's for grades three four and five and um each time every Monday where that runs we have you know 20 30 40 sometimes 50 kids per grade level going to that club with their lunch to eat and then engage in you know connecting activities and a little bit of learning at the same time um we also want to look at you know it's nice to see some lot of similarities between what's happening here and um I was only here for the Driscoll presentation but a lot of good stuff happening there and and here as well uh we're also looking at that trusted adult data I think it's so important to have people or have kids that are connected to a person and uh we're actively looking that in school culture climate setting in Middle School setting to make sure all folks are connected and as well as k25 and uh the last thing I want to mention regarding this goal is we've also we're also launching into our third year of our peer empowerment program which was in part funded by uh the bef which has been this pretty much a buddy reading program where older students buddy up with younger students to engage in character traits and also activities based on character traits like kindness uh advocacy uh and that data has been amazing as well in terms of improving people's sense of belonging and people's sense of connectedness with each other and especially for our bipo students we've been seeing good data uh on that as well and you've got just FYI three and a half minutes left and time flies when you're having fun uh our last goal is really about attendance and improving that so we do have generally great attendance 949 5 96% attendance but we want to drill down on uh our chronically absent students and this is data that I've been looking at for the last year and acting actively with the school secretary with our principal calling parents emailing parents checking in about what's happening we want to continue that work and also uh connect with families more to develop plans to get students here celebr students that are here support the students that need to get here it's a lot of parent work usually sometimes student work as well um so we want to continue honing in on that and improve chronic absentee numbers and lastly our fourth goal um is about the Rise program um we want to ensure that it continues to receive priority funding and uh focus it is a big part of our school it uh it's made us better and we need to continue to be able to fund it with people space funding materials to really do it justice for the way it needs to be delivered so those are our goals I won't go through that slide um and yeah this is the link to our full plan and it's on our website as well thank you questions or comments from the Committees I have one question um first off I thought it was great very informative um is there a amount for the financial impact the budget impact didn't actually listed amount and I know these aren't your slides also these are Asus so I'm the messenger here so yeah um I'm not aware of the exact number but I I want to say it's under 10k okay can I ask also since no one else is asking I'll just ask real quick can you talk a little bit about the Genesis of the fourth goal yeah uh so R so Hayes didn't have a subpar program for many years and all the other Brookline schools did so right on the tail end of covid um this was a new opportunity that we were given to build up The Rise program so we started off in kindergarten and currently we have student students all the way up to fourth grade and with that uh comes a strong focus in terms of professional development for our staff to be able to support students that are part of that program because it is also an inclusion program students are within the classrooms much of the day and then in Rise classrooms as needed so throughout our school we recognize that as a need for us to grow in and also continue to fund properly with people and and funding so that we can really make it the program that it needs to be um the students in there generally always have a onetoone rise or sorry onetoone pair professional uh they're pushing into the classrooms there's a lot of training folks need there's a lot of training gen Ed teachers also need to be able to support a student that's on the Spectrum so it's a learning curve for the whole school and I'd like to say we're hitting doubles and triples sometimes and sometimes we're striking out uh but to continue continue to you know have have that good batting average and do Justice by our students and families um we we really want that that is our fourth goal um because it is a big part of our school in many ways would you describe it as a concern or just a pro being proactive proactive and uh yeah I mean the concern every year is it requires a lot of people to be able to continue to that as we grow so um and each year we we match that with with the people that are needed um yeah so it it's not the it's not a concern but it definitely is something that we're always looking at to make sure we're ahead because it's definitely hard to run that program when you have you know Paras that might not we're not fully staff for example so getting ahead and really Staffing and getting ahead of the curve on that is kind of the intent behind that thank you Carolyn and then I think we probably don't have other questions we'll move on um thanks and this isn't a question it's a comment I'd just like to say um at Brooklyn day I was approached by a set of parents who have a child at Hayes um their child um is on the spectrum is not in rise and they are really really satisfied gratified grateful with what they're seeing and experiencing at the school and they feel that because the teachers because everybody is participating in Rise that that is is um impacting the experience of their child in a really positive way so just wanted to mention that thank you yeah Jesse and then we'll move on to Vanessa is next hi Mr R um so I I just questioned I didn't maybe didn't get from my Note what did you mention that the level of kids on IEPs are acrosses going into this year right around like 25% 25 okay thank you all right thank you all thank you next is Vanessa y from uh principal of Lawrence School and then after that we'll have Candace Whitmore uh principal of florita ruffen Ridley Vanessa oh she comes yep hi Betsy am I sharing my own slides that'd be great do you have them handy I do okay sorry there all right okay can everyone see this now yes all right thank you everybody for having me here today um before we get started I just would like to give a um a thank you to the members of our school council Alice Wong Tucker Sally Madson and Jessica Ulan have been members as part of the caregiver side of the group for the last um two years so prior to me coming into joining this school this last year and Kiren Alper was the only um staff representative other than Dominique Ferdinand we were able to add Katie grenc so Kirsten is our educational technology specialist and Katie grenc as our one of our math specialists at Lawrence also joined the team so we are launching our elections right now for our new group we just wrapped up our last um we did actually did a meeting last week where I shared out the draft that I'm presenting tonight um with all of you so that we could do one final look through because over the summer there were additions and changes based on the pacing and progression of the literacy work in District so we wanted we had already planned we were going to do one more in the fall to look at the changes that had made so I really appreciate all of them getting in last week um to give final feedback to me before this presentation um in terms of celebrations I believe you all have copies of the actual School Improvement plan yes yes okay so I've listed um you know some of the great celebrations and highlights for our school but I think the ones that I'd really like to highlight that are very much carried through into this plan um moving forward into the next twoe cycle is really we started the work this last year of implementing a PBIS structure that was not something that was in place at all at our school so for those of that are not familiar with PBIS its positive behavior interventions and supports and we launched that work last fall as a leadership team Mrs Horst Dr Dominique Ferdinand and myself with the K through five staff and that resulted in us really putting together a behavior Matrix with the teachers and staff of Lawrence that has led to Common expectations and our core values be safe be respectful be responsible which is now really part of our core work and moving into this next year is going to continue as you will see as you read through our sip um some of the other highlights that really also are going to be carried into the work this year is that um we got to participate as one of the schools doing the pilot residencies with the office of educational Equity that was uh Christy Hernandez and CLA GA Jones they came in February and spent time at Lawrence and it was a wonderful way to launch into the equity cycle work that we are going to be part of this coming year um finally on a fun note but actually going to be very much linked to our building a sense of belonging and Community here that's even stronger than it already was was in the spring we um had some students actually around in the middle of the year come to me and ask if they could we could have a mascot and um so we ended up having kindergarten sixth grade and third graders sort of sponsor the three candidates and they were the leopard the Lemur and the lobster and ultimately had a full school election and we are now officially the leopards which will become part of our ticketing system and um give us more of a sense of identity for Lawrence there was a lot of feeling that it was a little unfair other schools had their mascots and and students were very much advocating with me that we needed to have one at Lawrence as well so I'm very excited about that um in terms of the plan I'm presenting tonight as you know the vast majority of money in Brookline um certainly in terms of school-based budgets is about Staffing positions so there we really don't have much control right now over um budget at the building level in terms of our discretionary funds particularly given that um right now we are the second highest level of High need students across the district um right behind I believe it's Lincoln in terms of high need students and so our percentage of high need students here at Lawrence and that would be lowincome English Learners and students with disabilities combined is stable right around 50% of our school population that means we really have to Target and focus our work on Intervention and intervention curriculum as we evolve into a true um multi-tiered system support model mtss um which we know is going to be really instrumental in helping our students achieve and grow socially emotionally behaviorally and also of course academically um and so a lot of the discretionary funds that we have right now and you'll see this through our um through my sip as well in terms of our our initiatives is going to be focused on what are the intervention materials that we need to use to support students um in tier 2 and tier three that comes with a cost and so I would imagine a lot of our money will be spent on that and also we do need to have a robust homework club to support our high needs students and that um is a big part of in terms of the stipended um and the money that we spend discretionarily a lot of it goes towards that along with our other stipended um positions we are excited to have model un at Lawrence this fall for the first time um and so that is another area that will be funded out of that we know that we really want to continue to increase the sense of belonging with our middle school students and that's another way to do that is increasing our clubs and activity options for our middle school students all right with that I'll go into our first sip goal and this is in an area of literacy I'm you know the district strategy well but at Lawrence our first goal area is really focused on literacy and the objective being that laurren students will demonstrate improved levels of achievement and growth in literacy is measured by building administered and standardized assessment so certainly if you look at our overall goals and benchmarks we certainly need to focus on our K through three students that that's a no-brainer that's where the foundations of literacy start and with us now having fully implemented the mclass Dibbles assessment and screening tool um we really want to be mon in our students and shooting High to have 80% of our students um K through third grade Meeting those expectations for those foundational reading skills um but that's just one area and in terms of I I've listed these as sort of key outcomes I've put the initiatives that are linked to this on on our next slides um but thinking about that specific goal that's linked to our implementing with Fidelity a structure literacy approach and we know with our hegy and Foundations those are going to be the foundations for that work um so making sure that all of our educators are doing that and doing that with Fidelity the way the programs are supposed to be done we do know looking at our data that that has worked very well for many of our students there's those subgroups pockets of student populations that we need to Target and that's really talking about Beyond tier one what are we going to do for those students um but the other literacy goals that we are going to really be focusing on is fourth through 8th grade thinking about writing now that we have star reading that is being implemented and we've always had our mcast we really need to Target and think about our students meeting and exceeding those standards both on mcast but also on Star so we have those measures for our students that we should be focused on and we need to link that with ensuring that we are putting into place both both a rigorous and a standards based tier one literacy program so we're going to be talking a lot about that as a staff what does that look like what are those standards examining it and examining the data um and going along with that making sure as we adopt a new literacy program that we are implementing that with Fidelity so this is there's two ways of measuring how students are doing both achievement star and um mcast look at that but also growth and looking at how well students are growing Compares them to similar populations in other districts and schools and it's a really really important measure I've always found um focusing on growth percentiles is is an important area for a school to focus on and Educators to be thinking about and that leads to our last one we know that we've had challenges historically across the district and certainly Lawrence is is one of those schools that has um had subgroups historically disproportional subgroups not achieving in making the same growth we actually need to have higher levels of growth so if you think of the the band for growth being 40 to 60 is the average band these historically disproportional groups actually need to be closer to that 55 in order to be starting to to close our achievement gaps um so that's really important and we're going to be doing this through that implementation of this MTS model I described high quality instruction in the classroom for everybody everybody being getting that exposure and then who needs more and really targeting um diagnostically through our data and looking at it to figure out what each kid needs to make sure they're all achieving um you have four and a half minutes left okay so um in terms of this key initiatives I think um I've sort of described these I think it really starts with a master schedule you'll see this um again in my math goal um but really focusing on professional development in terms of the science of reading practices we've already worked that implementing with um Fidelity our reading programs as they're rolled out but also really thinking about how we're teaching writing to ensure that piece because that's really where our student performance drops off is the writing area all right the second goal um this goal is really focused a little bit different um and as you start to examine and look at um mcast scores in a few weeks is that information is no longer embarked go you will see that Lawrence has done very very well in our math scores we're very excited about the progress um our teachers really have been focused on using assessment data already and thinking about um implementing our program with Fidelity this last year we made some pretty major changes in terms of scheduling to think about that tier one and we've seen the payoff already so we want to continue that work but we really want to think about differentiation using the assessment information to drive differentiation because one of the things I want to see is I know from our families many of them say our kids already know these things going into third grade what are you doing for them and so I want to really be thinking about all of our Learners including our students who need enrichment so this goal is now we're doing our math curriculum with Fidelity we understand how to collect data and information how do we use that now to think about what our students need um so you'll see that a lot of these goals actually are similar in terms of performance um but I am really focusing in on our disproportional groups in terms of both their um growth but also how money of them are hitting meeting and exceeding because the disproportionality is still there however our overall numbers look pretty good um so the key initiatives as I said we're really going to be focusing on working with teachers with our math Specialists on how to differentiate but then also in that tier two thinking about um how do we reach the students struggling with math um and especially utilize our systems already in place a math workshop model that's going to be a large focus in math all right so the last goal area is our culture and climate goal and this one is talking about the core competencies of social emotional learning um while fostering a safe and inclusive learning environment that emphasizes um respect and Embraces diversity and we're going to be doing this in several different ways um one we are going to continue to implement our tier one program k for five which is second step and making sure that our classrooms are doing that with Fidelity on a regular basis we know that's going to help our big goals are around increasing our sense of belonging for both all of our students but then also our um students who have historically been marginalized and we see that in our climate surveys that have been completed so um you start with a good foundation um but we also as I mentioned earlier we're really going to be focused on PBIS implementing the next levels of those strategies and that's going to be mostly Focus K through six 6 through eight the big work we're doing is I am partnering with um Christy Hernandez I'm very excited about this work as well as our Equity leads positions that you all funded um to implement the equity toolkit with our sixth to eth grade teachers it's a train the trainer model I know it was described to you by christe in um spring presentation but we are very very excited about this actually had our first meeting in the Train the trainer model um just the other day with chrisy and we are ready for our first faculty meeting in this work and then diving into the work of those 10 competencies that christe described so well back in the spring to all of you um so PBIS K through six the equity cycle work 6 through 8 um with some overlap in that four to six B band as students transition into our middle school programs um and then the last part of this is really just focused in on our mtss model again you're seeing some themes here but this is about students who are struggling social emotionally and behaviorally so again as we Implement our ticket system for PBIS that's for everybody but what about the students who need individual incentive plans how do you do that how does our clinical team and our admin team support students in those areas and really focus on the five competencies that Castle as an organization has described for um social emotional learning and with that I will give you an opportunity to ask questions okay we are at time so we'll keep this Snappy I see Stephen's hand is up uh thanks Mariah thanks Vanessa that was I thought that was a really um that was a really rich presentation just one really quick question um on your first on your first outcome your growth indicators were really specific uh um there there were you're measuring change by growth but when you're dis when you're measuring around disaggregated groups but the aggregate group is measured by a threshold those 85% marks can you one let us know why you're choosing to measure the aggregate Group by that 85% Mark rather than by a growth Mark and also what is that 85% Mark a growth measure what is the growth that 85% represents yep so in any group it's you're never going to reach 100% right there there's always going to be outliers for various reasons and so I have found in my time as a principal 85% is a very rigorous goal if you look at highest performing schools across the state um on so the the the 85% is achievement so those are the achievement levels just to to clarify I have goals that are both around achievement so 85% of Lawrence fourth to e8th graders globally we want to be meeting or exceeding the standards um historically Lawrence grades 3 through eight um in literacy you're seeing scores in the 60s in terms of 65 maybe 70% of the students and so a 15% growth over two years as we're implementing and um making more robust our writing curriculum in particular I would anticipate seeing that those go up so you set the bar high so 85 per currently around 65 to 70 depending on the grade levels um that seemed like a rigorous amount whereas the growth percentiles um so yes I have some both for the whole school saying that we want fourth to um e8th grade students demonstrating sgps of at least average right that 40 to 60 but specifically for the subgroup we want the growth to be on the high end of that average at 55 does that that perfect sense and that and that also helps me understand that that 85% um achievement Mark is actually a really aggressive goal it is a really aggressive goal if you look at the scores across Brook line historically not just our school um compared to districts where they are really top literacy scores um the very top in a grade level would be around 82 to 83 84% so 85 is very rigorous but I I believe if you look at and again I'm excited for you to see some of the data coming out of our work over the last year in mcast but we we saw some of this really tremendous growth in math and I would account that to um schedules which again if you look at some of my initiatives building strong schedules I believe is at the heart of making sure that we can implement an mtss model well um and so yeah we did that in math we implemented with Fidelity the curriculum that was put into place we had our Specialists pull in and we really focused on tier one giving all children access as much as possible to that that's what we need to do in literacy and then figure out and then what do you do for the kids who are still struggling how do you double dose what does that intervention look like how do you target it for the needs that they represent so in literacy if they need fluency what's the fluency program they need if they need more decoding we need to give them more decoding if their accuracy level is low if it's comprehension based it's going to look different so again that's that targeting what their individual needs are thank you yep thanks Vanessa I think we're we've reached time for you and we're going to go to Candace can you just confirm you didn't put a dollar amount in for your budget but is it can you ask you all are given the same discretionary funds okay so I mean there is something I mean I would say that that probably needs to be a discussion I I have mentioned that you know Candace is school at 888 I'm right now leg in leg with with Baker Lawrence and Baker you know size-wise should discretionary funds be exactly the same every school those would be questions I would be asking and in terms of you know in order for me to run a homework club with a school of 650 kids and 50% High needs are there different needs in terms of discretionary amounts I'm not sure but then other schools have specialized program and but then they also come with additional funding so just some things I would throw out there in terms of thinking about discretionary budgets thank you y okay Candace I think Vanessa oh there you go TR Mari we have Candace Whitmore uh principal of the florita Ruff and Ridley school and then we'll have say Ola principal of baker school all right hello everyone hi can you see everything okay yes yes we can right perfect just adjusting the screen on my side so I'm excited to be here with you tonight yes sharing all things for RIA Ren Ridley School and so I want to go ahead and start off in my presentation by definitely recognizing our caregiver reps um which is Aaron Meyer Elizabeth mevan um who's the co-chair V guani and V Shimon and then our teacher reps are Maran Grady who's our vice principal Daniel Lipton second grade yel Neiman Schubert who is our El teacher and me the co-chair and so um I'd like to start off by going into saying the highlights for one year one and one of the highlights is just the redesign of our School site Council team and reestablishing our members um and so we had an election process and so these members um are new and they have signed on for two years and so we had actually had our first meeting with our new members at the end of the year and then we collaborated over the summer a lot um and so our next meeting is next week actually and so we're pretty excited about um the work we started some other highlights from last year before we get into uh the Improvement plan um and I think it's important so you can see the Continuum of what we're doing for next year so we have our creation of our Middle School um student Council we have a creation of our welcome back week which iscl team comprised of teachers uh general education teachers special education teachers World Language custodians cafeteria monitors cafeteria workers um all of this team of teachers have come together or staff have come together to create an inclusive and welcoming environment for our students um intentionally being focused on social emotional learning for the first four days of school and so I'll talk more into that with our Improvement plan and then next we have our creation of our math investigations team um we are doing which is a part of my goals a investigations reboot of our math curriculum for our K5 and then we have a reconfigure of our academic schedules uh for K5 um especially with the shift with the World Language um we wanted to make sure we were maximizing those times with our time on learning um that we had this this past spring then also the creation of middle school activities this is based off of the Panorama survey which is theal survey for students which um just provides a little more Hands-On and a little more collaboration with a small group with a clinician for these students to give them the skills that they need and then last the equity cycles that we've been partaking in with the office of e educational equity which we're continuing to do we've already started um but this included even having a restorative Str role with our Middle School staff last year led by Miss Hernandez um and so those are some of the highlights and so now with the school Improvement plan this is where the school is moving um and let's see all right so our budgetary impact so of course we take into consideration the budgetary needs of the district um that's provided by the town State and the federal government uh we know these are made in the best intentions um with our Town managers in our school committee and so any funds that are dedicated to the school like our discretionary funds that go directly toward our professional development um which this year is you know also stiening our math um leaders we have our El that are coming to provide professional development which is our English language learner teachers um and then also our homework Center which we will be having um in support with our parent Council um we're having after school every day from 2:30 to 3 in our library and then of course our GSA um young scholars our school plays our athletic coaching positions um and then also the discretionary budget may be used to support some of our items for our therapeutic Learning Center as you know F frr we are unique because we do house a therapeutic Learning Center um and so many of these things many of our skills we also try to Branch into our general education class classrooms and so one of the things this year is just creating spaces in the classroom um like with giving kids like creating I say like a take a break or just a thinking space it depends on what grade level how they articulate that space But it's just um a charts of about zones of Regulation it's also Bing bags it's also little fidgets it's just things to give kids tools of how to stay in the classroom um and also be able to take that break that they need um and not miss out on any instruction and then of course last our percentage of high needs um still exists we are a title one school we do receive Title One funding um we have a large we have the largest amount of English Learners coming in currently our numbers are 168 coming in and then we also have students that um with academically based disabilities which we are at 159 and Counting um and so all of this continues to increase and so just looking at the budget looking at what our therapeutic program may need um we're definitely getting more students into the program but the number of Staffing hasn't changed um and so it kind of changes the way we support and so that's where um the focus would be on the budgetary impact and then next our first goal our sip goal and so we have the district goal so I'll go into our strategic goal um Educators were ensure a comprehensive and strategic approach to implementing math and reading curriculum with a focus on professional de development data driven instruction and continuous monitoring to boost students achievement and So within this we have our different initiatives and so the first thing is just providing professional development that focuses on the science of reading this is digging deeper into to the phological awareness the phonics fluency uh vocabulary comprehension and just the different parts of the brain and how students are activating those in order to read um and so we also we had our first PD this week uh had a great turnout and so this will be bi-weekly as you know this is a districtwide goal and so of course our benchmarks is all K5 staff they will participate fully in the literacy training and then the new curriculum training beginning in February next we have creating opportunities for teachers to collaborate in learning communities focused on literacy allowing them to share strategies review student work and discuss progress toward goals so prior to me coming to fidia referend Ridley um teachers were collaborating but there were there were special Educators there were English language teachers many many people the speech therapist they were missing from being at these meetings and being at the table and collaborating together and so this year we were able to reconfigure the K5 schedule to allow for one consecutive block a 30 minute block each week for all of these Educators to come together and each week is focused on a theme and so one of the weeks we have is our literacy theme which is the third week of the month um and so with this our hope is by the end of 20126 we see an increase in our percentage of students that are meeting and exceeding grade level Proficiency in l literacy and this will be looking at our mcast at our dible scores um and so next we have provide targeted professional development for our investigations yes we're having investigations for reboot last year with meeting with teachers and meeting with staff and our math Specialists we realized that we had a lot of new teachers on staff and a lot of teachers that were not able to fully engage with professional development due to covid when we brought in the math investigations and so with this we decided to get a team together to kind of leave this Forefront get teachers on board do some instructional rounds go into classrooms and seeing how other teachers how we can support without it being evaluative um and so with this um we have we've actually started our PD on this I believe last March um and our next one is the off weeks of ela and so I know this is a big load for our staff but I know how exciting how excited are to kind of engage in this and our new staff our new teachers are like really excited because they're like yes everyone is in it with me and so we can learn together and so I'm not afraid to lean on my co-teachers or my grade level teachers in order to um fully understand the curriculum and so with that sorry the typos so staff will participate in the math trainings and there's also um we're looking Atmos with with middle school and that's the curriculum for Desmos 4 68 we're looking at to see how we can kind of tie that in um the specific investigations curriculum like different pieces of it that tie into Middle School um and so last we have incorporate differentiated instruction strategies to be the diverse learning needs of students within the investigation framework this is are we giving students hands on are we letting students think are we pushing our students that are excelling are we pushing them to contined high order thinking um so this is where this comes in with that differentiation and then by the end of the 26 school year just seeing an increase in our percentage of students achieving Proficiency in math by 15% on our state and District assessments this is also looking at um our unit assessments and collaborating each week and so Math teachers our math Specialists meet with all of our um grade level special educators on week two of each month so next our district goal um so all fidia refen Ridley educators will provide open consistent accessible communication channels to strengthen the relationship between families and schools um I think this is a really big goal because of course last year coming in to the school for the first year finding out how teachers are communicating with families who's communicating with families how often are you reaching out it varied across the board across from kindergarten all the way to 8th grade and so um talking with the school Improvement plan I mean with the school site Council the parents we were like let's come up with something that with a system that it's going to engage parents and make sure that we know that we're reaching out to families um and so that's where our next goal to create a clear and structured communication plan outlining when how the school would share important information I know that our kindergarten teachers send home daily and it looks different for our eighth grade teachers that are like hey let's send out a once a month newsletter but it's been consistent um and one way that I was able to kind of see uh where we are was looking at our parent coffee that we had last Friday and so I asked I had over 150 parents and so my question I raised to them was hey raise your hand if you've contacted your child's teacher or teachers yet and so just looking at the number of hands that didn't go up reminded me to bring it back to the staff meetings like hey this is our goal this is what we're doing and so continuing to do that checkin will help um with those benchmarks and then by the end of the year just seeing an increase in parent and family engagement in our school activities then also organizing workshops for our families um I know one thing we decided from our school site council is that we we need to have um these conversations and workshops teaching parents about digital literacy about cell phone usage about homework mathematics how can we push our kids at home and how are we using the school's core values at home as well um and so of course this is measured by just an increase in family engagement and then the use of multiple communication platforms email text message rooc call newsletter social media school websites um I will say that last year I wasn't accessing the social media um part of our school and I parents let me know like hey we normally look at this and so that's added on to the plan just to make me more cognizant of it and allowing my teachers and staff to be more aware that we need to use multiple communication tools even if it's printing out a handout and sending it home uh so that is my goal number two and sorry if I'm talking fast I'm I um forgot to push my timer but I think you're around five minutes left maybe four okay that's sorry about that thanks all right so our sip goal number three and this is my meaty goal here we've got a lot that's embedded in this goal so it's good to have five minutes so I can take my time and kind of go through it um and so this is Educators at floridia Ren Ridley School where create a safe positive inclusive learning environment for all students and community members that affords them a high high sense of belonging and celebrates our gangs along the way and so with this our first is our creation of our schoolwise cell phone policy that clearly outlines when and where students are permitted to use cell phones and smart watches um this is also in collaboration with my St my school counsel where my PTO actually funded our cases for students to put their phones in in the morning um so that phones wouldn't be a distraction and um just getting feedback U looking at the various articles and news out there I feel like more districts are leaning toward this and so it was kind of great to Pilot this for our sixth through eighth grade this year our three through five they just have the um what is it the away phones away policy so the phones are off and away and 6 to8 are actually dropping off their phone so that's a different change for this year um and so with this is we're looking at reducing the classroom distractions and improving in student engagement by 20% and how we're using this data is just our um minor and major infraction forms that we have created which I'll get into with our PBIS but it's how often are students being logged in for having phones out or how often are we seeing students having phones in the hallway um and so that's how we are yes engaging in those goals and so next we have refine our schoolwide positive behavior interventions and support which is PBIS uh this promote positive behavior and improve our school culture kid culture classroom culture and adult culture um and this is getting everybody on board with our bees our implementation of our Infamous bees um and then rolling out um this week just by clearly stating the expectations and if you come into our school you'll see our matrixes and our chart and our expectations throughout every area of the school and so we really were intentional with teaching these expectations and then awarding students for when they're displaying this and this can come from receiving little bees um PTO fed us a nice little beehive where the bees go and we just highlight students for being caught doing what they're supposed to do and then they're called on the announcements for bees of the week and then we took it up a notch year for our middle school with our mvbs and so uh yes and so if it depends on how many MVPs you get you get your own you can create your own incentive um with our middle school vice principal and our clinicians so next oh and my goal for that is by the end of the school year we reduce our disciplinary referrals by 30% and improve our overall student engagement um and then we we have our integrated restorative practices into PBIS to address conflict and behavioral issues focusing on repairing relationships and promoting accountability this is with our residency with our office of educational Equity we're teaching all of our staff um to be trained in restorative practices to use with students and so this will involve the teachers actually being in those restorative practices with all of the students and one of our sixth grade classrooms uh were for they got to model um a restorative practice for other students or other teachers to see and so with this we're also hoping to reduce our disciplinary referrals and then last on here well almost last our welcome back week this is with our in our emphasis on four areas of focus um that we focus on students on self-identity appreciation for diversity for peers strengthen our sense of belonging within our school community and so with this we had a weekl long celebration where we come together we talk about our expectations our community meetings um we even had binon Henry Institute here giving us um mindfulness tools for the students to use throughout the year um we had a big um assembly at the end of the week with our bees just highlighting our unity and then also our staff we also had a staff roof deck kind of celebration of just coming together for the year and with this it involved us introducing all the staff it was so amazing to see our custodians get on the mic and introduce yourself our cafeteria workers saying hey this is me and so the students just come in knowing every adult and knowing that we're all there for them and providing a welcoming environment um that's welcome back we there's more to come we still have Community meetings that we've aligned each month we also have social emotional themes that align which I'll get into our implementation of our evidence-based curriculum second step and then the implementation of our team um which we kind of wve together with our welcome back week and so we just make this a focus um for the whole entire school and of course our data is of course looking at the Panorama data and gauging how students feel about entering our school how families feel about sending their kids to school how teachers and staff are interacting with one another and I think this is a big part of um just creating that culture of belonging and care and trust that we're looking forward to and so I think this is it so I give time for questions I think we're almost we're basically at time so thank you Candace for that if there's any burning questions we'll take them and otherwise we will thank you for the presentation all right okay thanks all right thank you felt like I was on Shark Tank for a minute get it all out you did it you did great um Margaret are you next uh next we have S Ola oh oh that's right thank you principal of Baker School hello everybody how are we Candace you made it a Candace it's hard coming after Candace on this on this night but uh I'll try my best um I'm going to try to share my screen it's been a minute since I've done this so bear with me um all right can you all see the SC uh my presentation yes we can oh I don't want to do that don't want to do that all right so again good uh good evening I'm s Ola the principal at the baker school um and here is our school Improvement plan for this uh coming year um first off I want to thank our uh school council members Gareth Lawson Scott Litman Dylan Rossy and Leslie Toman also I neglected to put on this list our amazing Vice principls Josh how and Allison Henry uh who have been very instrumental in providing feedback and information on um all things Baker that are uh important for me and us to know um similarly to lots of other principles who have spoken before when we think about our uh budgetary impact actually let me take a step back and actually talk about some of the things that um were were great and to celebrate from last year um one of the big things that I love about Baker is that we're steeped in Tradition and we have a lot of um Regular Community assemblies that have uh that happen every month um we just celebrated our or just had our first uh convocation to officially open up the school year that happened uh last last Thursday so it's great to see everybody all on the blacktop outside um hearing from our eighth graders talk about our our school motto of work hard be kind help others and build relationships and what that means for them um we have lots of performances that happen as well so we've had um our bugs play and our Carnival the animals play that happens in the spring we have our Middle School play uh that also happens in the spring in in in around March um I think I've seen some of you out there um at at that per performance um we also another thing I'm really excited about and also Taps into some of our goals that last year we did a faculty book read on zoretta Hammond's book culturally responsive teaching in the brain um it was a great opportunity to really think about how do we uh make sure we're we're reaching and teaching all all of the students in our classrooms how are we scaffolding our work to make sure that they are ready for rigor um and uh we also you know on a logistical level have also uh brought in and implemented a staff resource guide that has all things that anybody coming to Baker needs to know about processes procedures and practices so with that we'll jump into the our budgetary impact um so as you know we uh we take into consideration the needs of the district um with the funds provided by the town state and federal government um all the decisions are made with the best interest of children in mind uh that is how we make our decisions at Baker uh we are I I've tasked all staff to be student centered um any decision that we're making is this the best thing for uh the students that we are talking about um as previously mentioned by other principles there is some small discretionary funds that are at the disposal of each principal and that goes towards either professional development and stiens uh for staff who are supporting act activities uh we have a number of different student Affinity groups um we have the plays that I mentioned earlier and then a number of athletic coaching positions uh similarly we also have a high number of uh High we have a increasing number of high need students um over the course of the years that number is slowly creeping up to towards 50% we're just underneath that right now and uh we have special Educators and Par professionals that are here to support that and that need grows so um we may need to be also able to provide additional supports for that um also added to to this is um the the fact that the school population is also growing and um and and given that Bakers uh an older building and we're we're thinking about how do we make sure we have the space needs uh that we are able to meet the needs of the building given the space that we have so that's another thing that we are also thinking about and trying to figure out contingency plans for that as well um next slide is so our our school we have three goals here that we're looking at uh the first one in line with the district goal of increasing achievement for students we are going to be working to implement consistent progress monitoring and data analysis uh mechanisms for students to make sure we are able to identify who needs uh Intervention when they need that intervention um and looking at that we're looking at a we're going to continue with our hegr uh implementation and fundations uh we're going to provide Prof development for educators to talk about the the foundational underpinnings of the literacy program that the district will be selecting so this is the um the bi-weekly literacy meetings for K5 staff that uh many of my other colleagues have talked about so we just had our first meeting this Tuesday we had a very large um uh show up um I think about everybody was there which was great um we're going to continue to utilize uh mclass and star Universal assessments tools um with with the goal of also in the next year of being able to increase that to grades seven and eight right now that's in four and four through six um we're going to continue practicing um the the continue practicing monitoring Middle School achievement uh of students um this the idea of looking at report cards and progress reports and seeing how students are doing um and are there what are we putting in place to be able to better meet their needs or where are we falling short and how can we uh fill in those gaps uh we have a great a we have a great opportunity for teachers and school counselors to meet to talk about how students are doing what our challenges are going up want to continue this practice and potentially bolster it if we need to um and looking at how we can um communicate with families with relation to that um our second goal we're looking at this idea of cultur responsive communication and engagement with families um at Baker we're going to look on we're going to look at cultivating this cultur responsive practices and providing Ed Educators with the resources and supports so that there is an increased feeling of connectedness and engagement uh among students families and staff so one of the things we want to make sure Educators have the ability and feel confident is their ability of addressing and integrating any cultural addressing cultur cultural diversity in their teaching and their in their practice um I mentioned earlier that we did a faculty book read on culture responsive teaching in the brain so new staff we have a a um about 10 new staff members join our school to this year so all of them also got a copy of uh culture responsive teaching in the brain this idea of having a a educational pedagogical Baseline uh that all teachers at the baker school understand this concept so that when there are when there are future conversations about how things are going in the in the classroom we can refer back to that it's a resource uh to refer back to in terms of how can I better meet the needs of students um who else can I reach out to to to have that conversation and that we're all using the same language another thing that I'm really proud of at Baker is that we have an equity and diversity Committee of of parents to that uh have put on a number of different events throughout the year uh most notably is our culture Fest that happens in May um this is an opportunity and place to be able to discuss opportunities and professional development for families to engage with each other and with the school around um this idea of um feeling connected and valued and seen um in a third goal uh we're looking at this idea of connecting more with families and the community to promote the sense of belonging this is how we're going to So what at Baker we're going to do is we're going to continue to um enhance the communication structures that exist so that everyone knows what is our practices and procedures they feel seen valued and um and safe and we're all using the same language so what that looks like is regular communication with families that shares information about what's going on in the school how do I um if I need to know who do I need to reach to if I have a a concern about my student who do I reach out to um what how often can I expect um uh a certain communication from my teachers um we also want to make sure those Communications are provided in the Lang in the preferred language of the family so we're looking into how can we make sure that happens uh there's a number of different uh newsletters that offer translations how do we make sure that families get that also is email the best option should be looking at um text messages should be looking at um different modes social media how are we able to communicate with families so they get the information that they need when they need it um connected to that is updating our website and also our handbook um I've noticed that the handbook that we had hasn't been updated in a number of years years so we're going to be working on updating our our student and Family's handbook so that way it includes all the practices and procedures that uh families need to know students need to know um and um they know how to best engage with us as a school um and that is Baker School and I I think I might be overtime but I'm not sure uh no nope you're good you got five minutes left so we might CLA back sometime yeah are there questions from the members okay I guess I yield my time to the chair thank you s for a shock and awe that um that made everyone speechless so we appreciate it there we go a great night have a good night is is Margaret yeah Margaret art our principal of the Brooklyn is the high school next or who's who's next after after that will be Anthony at the high school and then uh Jamie from Pierce okay so we're running a little behind uh we've kind we're kind of caught up on Margaret was scheduled to be at six so um we're three minutes behind okay great all right good evening everyone thank you so much for having me here this evening I'm so excited to share the draft of our school Improvement plan for beep let me share my screen uh here we go hold on all right there we go all right can you all see the screen two thumbs up all right all right it's great to see you all tonight all right so here's a draft of our school Improvement plan we have not yet had our first uh site council meeting this year we'll have it in October and I'm really excited to begin again this year um these are our School site council members we have three parent Representatives um from the variety Pro of the beep locations and then we have a few um educ ators including our physical therapists and a speech and language pathologist so it's very exciting and a very diverse group of people as part of the bite Council I'm going to highlight I'm not going to read these out to you you can all read them all later on and I put some links in here if you're interested in learning a little bit more about some of the work that we did last year in beep um but you know the most exciting thing that happened last year was that we opened three classrooms at trisco um the most exciting thing that happened so far this year is that we took over the Driscoll school by adding some more classrooms there um where back at the hay school we have two at um Ridley and one one at rule so we moved at a clock we're sad to see that go but we're very excited to be back at Hayes um and uh be part of that Community again um and I would encourage you all to mark your calendars for May I don't have the date on here I probably should have shared it to come to our beep inclusion fund run I am wearing the beep inclusion fundr run matters t-shirt designed by the children you can see the design right here little says love in Sign Language um and we have a great little fun run at the Lynch Center and kids run around the Lyn Center and they get little medals and they they feel like they um they won the marathon of course one of the biggest highlights from 2023 2024 was the decision to move beep to a school day schedule and we have been implementing that for the last couple of weeks and thumbs up to the children and the adults who are implementing the schedule so here's the slide about the budgetary impact be beep is obviously different it's its own little unique um entity in the sense that we have a revolving fund so always you're thinking about the revolving funds and we're going to be revisiting with the finance subcommittee what the tuition will be for 2526 as we look at the revenue for this year and think about the budgetary impact of moving to school day having a small extended day program materials and supplies um combination of General funds and the revolving fund so that'll be something that we'll be talking about in the near future um and these are just some of the things that go into those things to consider the curriculum materials professional development and then building the costs for music and art into the revolving fund which we've done for the last two years so we aligned our goals for our school Improvement plan with the goals of the district's um strategic plan and so our first goal obviously is aligns with the district's goal of having high achievement and engaging curriculum evid based qual uh evidence-based instruction for all children for all students and the way we do that in beep is to have a solid tier one curriculum across all 24 classrooms in the in the program and so you will see as we go through the slides and you can click on some of the links that are in some of the slides what are those evidence-based curriculum that we're using across all beep classrooms and how are we measuring progress monitoring progress for all of our students and if you go here to this slide you can see that we are looking at a v we are using a variety of ela curriculums that align with the ones the district is using so heg and Foundations are the two that we use for ELA we are looking very closely at the focus on prek curriculum out of Boston which I included the link here if you to go in if you it's really an engaging curriculum and I encourage you to go look at it it's really well done and well thought out and it's free to all um programs in the Commonwealth and really provides a really solid tier one base for which you can build a curriculum we use second step in beep which is a social emotional learning curriculum as well we also use the pyramid model which is part of the PBIS that Candace mentioned and we are also part of that you will see in our third slide we use we playay which is out of Northeastern which is a physical fitness activity curriculum um that you can use and we have developed a PD plan that will go over the next two years that came out of a survey that we did with the teachers in um June of 2024 and you can see how we're going to monitor these goals over the next couple years and many of these curriculums have their own assessments attached to them hegerty does foundations does we created one to combine the two of them um the pyramid model has one teaching pyramid observation tool and so does we playay so you can use those assessments to gauge how you're implementing these curriculums and monitor the progress of children through that what's really nice about weed flight is that it is purposely designed for inclusion to support um the inclusion of students living with autism in physical activities and build build peer relationships with their with their um um their classmates our second goal aligns with the district's goal of making that big um Community engagement plan and of course at beep we have an advantage here because we um we um are the lead Agency for the coordinated family community engagement Grant and through this grant it provides many OPP opportunities for us to engage with families and to affirm their role as the primary Educators in their children children's life right and so through the activities that we do with the funding that's provided with these grants we support parents in developmental parenting we model for parents activities that you can do at home to support literacy to support math to support science and particularly the language that you can use with children to support the development of social emotional skills and here's just a couple examples as you look through here we offer Saturday programming we offer weekly play groups for families in the community we have the parent child plus home visiting program for the children that are younger not able yet to come to school and we use normed screening tools to support parents to see like where might I my child need some support in what developmental areas and that tool is called the ages and stages questionnaire and we and we also use family surveys and in beep the Panorama survey that is used by all the other programs so um this grant really gives us a lot of opportunities to build these early connections for families not only with beat but with the district and that's a really nice um thing that we can do this year we're going to offer five family cafes that address family concerns and this came out of our site counsil from last year along developmental milestones and how to support positive behavior at home and then our last final goal in terms of our strategic goals at align with the district school is to really continue our work with the pyramid model and our Desi coach we have a coach from desie the Department of Elementary and secondary education she works with us monthly and we have been working with her since 2019 we've been holding on to this grant um this pyramid model through the pandemic it hasn't been easy but you can see that there's a lot of really wonderful objectives that really align with the district strategic plan in terms of fostering inclusion social emotional developments belonging practices addressing disparities right and then there are actual ways to measure those things um through the benchmarks of qualities right and we have some actual I'm going to go to the next slide so you can see when you go down here you can click at that on that link and it will take you to the actual tool that's used that we use in the that we use in beep and this graph should have shows you how we've kind of progress towards meeting those benchmarks since 2019 you can see that we dipped a little bit in the green last year so I I I I need to figure out how we went down in that but we'll we'll get to that part eventually but it really is a wonderful um opportunity to be part of this and to have um a Desi coach to be supporting the work as well so we feel very lucky about that and our last goal is school day beep it is not tied to the Strategic plan but of course it is a very important goal for beep because it requires us to really think about how the whole school day implementation is going and and the impacts of that on the district and so you can see here that I just put some some basic initiatives like the implementation of it we're going to be thinking already about the enrollment for next year and Lottery considerations for next year we have to think about the budget implications and we have to monitor the enrollment and the cost and see how that's all playing out over time we have to think about after school options because this continues to be districtwide a need for families right and and if we can continue to run our own be program and what does that look like in terms of impact for budget and that we're having enough revenue from that and then of of course it's the on ongoing um conversation around deep spaces right and the leases and classroom spaces and what does that look like moving forward um I would like to thank all of you for supporting this initiative um the first couple weeks of school have gone really really well um I I'm grateful for all the sunny days because I think sunny days and warm weather make everyone happier but the children are doing well the educators are doing well the parents are doing well um and I I really feel like it was a great move for the for the program and so I'm very grateful your support which was you know obviously the way that it happened so um and that's the end of my presentation and the slides um I didn't read too much from the slides because I figured if you had Direct questions you could ask me I'm happy to chat a little bit about enrollment right now if you have any questions about our current state of enrollment for beep and I'm going to stop sharing right now so you can ask any questions you might have members I hope that was enough what numbers sure we are at 2 no I said members hold on but you can oh members okay yeah I think I think Suzanne was gonna ask a question I had a couple of questions marget what yes ma'am where are we in terms of capacity are we underc capacity over capacity in terms of enrollment so we are currently at 272 students right so we're at a good number and if you look at the district enrollment sheet which I printed from yesterday um you can look at at each location where the enrollment is we were very low at putterham when we first started but now we're up to uh 4 students which is just a little bit below the 53 that we have at Drisco so any openings that we have right now are really special education openings that we might be holding um and we do have some students have applied looking for some seats through financial aid and so that so that but we have 197 tuition paying students right now um our goal to meet the cost was 190 so we're seven above that right now so I'm excited about that and we enrolled another family today we have 35 financial aid seats right now and we have um the number of students receiving the whole program which includes our sub separate program through special ed is 40 and then we have other students that receive Services only and also receive just services in the program so right now the enrollment is looking strong and good yeah thank you you really know your numbers I appreciate well I I knew you might ask I didn't want to like not could you just say a few words about the literacy play group what what is that yeah so the literacy play group is run through the um family community engagement Grant so Jenny true is our uh the coordinator of that and she holds two play groups each week families come with their children they read stories and we talk about dialogic reading ways that you can support the development of reading skills at home but reading stories and how you focus on vocabulary and and how you focus on Words and and and it's in a very playful way and then those play groups also have music so the the goal of those play groups is really to support parents in that area in early literacy development same as the parent parent child plus right in a parent child plus they actually get books and materials that support those skills at home and then you measure those progresses Through the Ages and stages questionnaire and through data that you can take every month and that you have to submit through the department of Early Education and Care so it's really supporting parents in developing those skills of conversation and vocabulary development at home with their children but these aren't students that are enrolled in the beep program not yet no they're they're a little bit young um some of them then will graduate up into be yes and then the the program that we offer the weekends the art and the science those are um preschool age children across Brookline not just beep students but anyone who wants to attend yeah yeah thank you so much Margaret those a great program you're welcome yeah before I call in Perry can you just clarify one thing on the numbers you mentioned Margaret yes you said that we have 40 tuition slots but we only ended up actually filling 35 of the 40 did I understand that correctly yeah we still have some that we could offer right we have two out still right now I think the hardest part with the financial aid piece is getting the loc that you're looking for I see but you're talking with BHA as well and other partners to exactly oh yeah yeah and in fact I have some really good news can I share something really good news with you guys of course the trust Center for early Learners now accept some vouchers oh good that's great yeah so that's a great Perry go ahead and then I think we'll be we'll move on to the next one after you sure uh great thanks Perry gr benman the advisory committee uh school subcommittee um I just wanted to ask um you said the ex full day program is not connected to the Strategic plan but it seems like it could be or it would support bringing all students up which is part of the Strategic plan right thank you for pointing that out that's true I just didn't when I was thinking about it I didn't like weave it back into the full strategic plan but that's a very good point thank you so much for pointing that out to me okay great thank you thank you thank you okay thanks Margaret thank you guys I hope you guys have a great rest of your night and thanks for having me appreciate it thank you uh Anthony great hi everybody uh thanks for having me school committee members and District leaders how nice to follow Margaret um to do the bookends of the public schools of Brooklyn um so I want to begin with gratitude uh and an admission um so thank you to my school councel um they've been for the nine years I've done this work been a really wonderful varying iterations a wonderful sounding board and partners amidst a building project thinking about access to high Lev courses school safety and access control um and focusing on school belonging I also want to acknowledge I did not nearly as regularly convene my school council last year um which I realize is a responsibility of mine so I feel the need to share that with school committee members um and without excuse uh but with a promise to be better this year so uh I have reached out to my school council members Shar the draft um that I'm sharing tonight um uh so that they know what we're sharing um so let's do celebrations um so many uh Performing Arts we just always have Myriad performances I would just say Chicago the production of Chicago was incredibly incredibly good and well attended last year we won a second straight cross country Championship clubs are a key part of belonging at Brookline High School and we've moved our club Fair earlier the last couple of years and brought it into the quad so if you're anxious about tight spaces and lots of people it's a little much but to see that many young people encouraging others to join their clubs creating new clubs it's it's really really powerful um and then I would just highlight faculty and staff collaboration I'll speak to it a little bit more later but we identified a couple common practice areas around attendance and tardies uh and around peeds and are really trying to get teachers uh on board with engaging in um similar the same practices so I'm grateful and want to celebrate that work um let me just make sure so Jody rightly asked um for us to share a few key goal areas so Priority One is within teaching and learning um and you know we're going to continue to work on the ninth grade uh responding to LIT Humanities course so that unleveled uh English course and what we're trying to work on this year is to add an earned honors model to that so that there would be a pathway to honors um and I don't think think just a a preview of what is to come probably later this year and we can provide more Focus uh within curriculum subcomittee or the entire school committee I don't think that we're going to bring back to school committee a proposal to fully expand um the pilot I think where we are now is we're working on a really good course we believe strongly in it and we believe that um over time you know one students vote their feet and you know sign up for courses and so I think our plan is to continue to work on uh our ninth grade English courses but not bring it back to school committee to say we want to do full roll out um so we'll be working on that ninth grade English course happy to to come to curriculum subcommittee and talk through that as I think we've um discussed before um one area that I think is really important Anthony can I interrupt you I just want to make sure we're not supposed to be seeing a presentation oh my gosh I thought that okay that's what I was like no I thought Joe I thought we had all of our presentations I'm so sorry I thought that we had submitted our presentations and they were on a slide deck oh my gosh um you're not showing it so like if no one else is showing it so if you're talking to something we can't see whatever it is you're talking to okay I misunderstood I thought that I thought that um the presentations were going to be um they're posted online as long as you're okay with it not being shared on theen yeah I'm so sorry I misunderstood that's my bad um well you're not looking at what I think you're looking at um but do you want to pull up what you think we should be looking at I have them on two different computers right now so if I have a 10 to 15 minute window I'd rather just um sorry to interrupt I just no you're you should have interrupted because I imagined there was something um that you were all looking at um so one thing that has been hard to move forward is our vision of a graduate which is a look at our graduation requirements and what we want from all Learners and and neas certainly flagged this as an area where the district needs to have a vision of a graduate that isn't just graduation requirements but is a you know CommunityWide districtwide conversation about uh in the end graduation requirements but throughout the experience what do we want kids to know to be able to do how we want them to be able to think how we want them to be able to manage their emotions develop relationships so I think um that is a part and a distinct part of the Strategic plan and um we've had meetings our NES uh accreditation coordinators and um uh Jody and Gabe to talk about moving that forward this year um a second goal area that you're not looking at that I am is around community and connections and it's really about communication we've tried to you know I tend to think I'm a decent communicator and we're decent communicators as a school but adding more that automatically gets translated into many languages and goes also you know to all district students including students who are in outof District placements so we're building on that with a ninth grade newsletter that astred Allen and Lisa reading began last year um I would also say we're looking carefully at our interm progress report so we have four times where we are supposed to give really good feedback uh to students and families about their performance the reality is some families don't open um the intern progress report and so don't have that feedback and we need we can identify open rates and determine who is not um opening their iprs and I mean it seems odd but we could Al send an additional email or have additional interventions to try to make sure that families who are not um opening the iprs know especially in the case where um a student might be struggling um and then another component of that is working with our faculty who are generally expert but I think especially for newer faculty we need to give them practice and support in writing good progress reports like for instance I don't want to hear a description of a course for a year we need to have specific feedback for kids that is actionable about how they're doing what they're doing well and what they need to do better so we're using some faculty and staff time uh around um iprs I think the other thing I would just pull back the curtain and say that during covid we had an additional structure to sort of as a safety net called critical updates and it was a source of conflict uh within the faculty and staff because we essentially added new work without taking other things off the plate and so we're not providing critical updates and we're trying to lean into really good progress reports and following up and trying to be transparent about what the actions the student support team or educators will take um when kids are struggling or they have um say quick descent in a course and suddenly are doing poorly um we will continue to focus on attendance both on tardies I mean our numbers uh were amazing how many tardies we reduced um our tardies reduced last year and I think our attendance across the district is generally pretty good if a key indicator um so we'll be focused um on that as a faculty and staff and with families um just looking and seeing and then I guess the other area that I would talk about um is faculty and staff collaboration with School administration um we had a collaborative process between our faculty Council and our administrative Council and then brought it to the entire faculty to say what are the three priority areas that we want to work on and they are probably not surprisingly communication workload and morale and so we're trying to lean into those um in some ways the removing of critical updates was a um a move towards workload um and then communication varies it's last year our faculty and staff struggled in some ways around hot topics around the world and feeling comfortable communicating or being communicated with and supporting like feeling as though they were supported and so we're adding as scary as it might sound some uh open comment periods within meetings in smaller groups we're having our administrative council members facilitate um what we call Community tables and faculty meetings I'm having office hours each week so the idea is let's talk about it let's not write emails on our conference and then drop the mic um so um those are some areas and again I'm sorry for not having the presentation shared behind you um what questions could I answer thanks Anthony we have I think about three minutes left before the next presentation Jesse go ahead hi Anthony um I had a question for you that's come up through listening to the prior presentations um this evening this afternoon and evening most of the elementary schools that we've heard from maybe with one exception reported close to 50% of their students on IEPs and growing what do you see when these students get to the high school and how does the high school respond just to clarify I think it was 50% High needs which is a mix of IEP English language learner and L right I think I our overall number would be somewhere around 18% I think well see that's a great and huge question I mean I think um the beauty of having so many wonderful feeder schools is that you know there are specialized programs across the district we have a tremendous amount of programs and programming and staff I mean the support of the school committee um and District leaders has been huge so we certainly you know I mean the the reality is I worry that our standard level classes have a much higher percentage of students on IEPs uh than our honors and advanced level and so trying to figure out how we can support and that's a huge generalization obviously um there is a spectrum um I think you know I think a concern that that we have discussed within the district is there are times when students in Middle School are being pulled out to receive services and being pulled out often times from World language classes that's going to be different given a different world language structure but I think I worry about kids losing opportunities for support they need but that schools in a pinch pulling students out from instructional time and so we see that as an issue within World Language again that landscape has somewhat changed um but overall I feel like we have so many wonderful programs and such a huge um community and a community of care that I think we're well set up to support um the many different students with many different needs who arrive at our door each day yeah thank you and I would guess Robin Fabiano could give a more pointed answer too and I'd love to continue the conversation Suzanne yeah thank you thank you Anthony Anthony could you just if you don't mind just say again a little bit about your your thinking going forward on the uh English ninth grade CL program sure I mean I think I we did not do a great job we did not do a good job of um communicating potential changes you know communicating about the pilot I think the teachers did a wonderful job I think what I one need we heard from some students and some parents is the the um an honors designation and so we are interested in developing an earned honors model so that you could a student could take a responded to Humanity's heterogeneously grouped class but still have an A pathway to honors doing x amount of additional work or a different type of project um so the idea is to develop that model and have it um you know work work on it this year so that that course would include that moving forward I think the idea is actually to try to do it this year many schools with an earned honors model so students wait say a quarter and get a sense and hopefully there's lots of messages of you can take on this challenge you can do this work and then beginning in second quarter they say you know what I'm going to go for the honors uh credit and so I'm going to take that menu um so in some ways it's a natural progression from a heterogeneously grouped class and we're interested in exploring it and I think what I'm not saying yet is we're sort of putting a pause on reimagining ninth grade um and that doesn't mean we're not going to continue to think about and work on access issues we absolutely are but I think we need to slow down um and make sure um we have the community support and have educated and supported our our community in a way um that helps them be ready for um for for change thank you I appreciate it please um Anthony can I just ask really quickly the the elementary schools and I think we heard we're moving away from this model but historically they've had sort of $10,000 in discretionary funding for the principal does the high school also have $10,000 or what do you that was my question too look I was puzzled by that component of the presentation tonight so I don't I don't really know what the $10,000 of discretionary funds are um hon and that could be my own ignorance but I don't you know we reive some some a small number of um PTO monies that we use towards certain events and and supporting students um but I don't know um about the $10,000 in discretionary funds where that lives okay I feel like also you have a lot more like designated Student Activity accounts and things abut yeah way more than it's happening in the elementary schools so I should say thanks Mariah for the um QE um certainly our Student Government through the budget gets monies each year and then distributes them to clubs who um make requests or advocate for those funds so agreed that we're well funded institution and I feel like um you know we also have the Innovation fund a very large PTO be BF supports everybody um but I don't you know okay stop Carolyn last question before we let Anthony go and turn to Jamie you're on mute thank you um thanks for all of that Anthony um and this is sort of a broader budget question question but because it was a major piece of the uh School committee's guidelines for the budget development for fy2 um and recognizing that the dust is still settling on kids moving classes I wonder if you can just give us a snapshot on whether um the budget has is is satisfying what you need in terms of um your Staffing for keeping class sizes where you want them thanks for asking Carolyn and thanks to everyone um here and to past school committee members also for um voting in support of 7.0 additional FTE I would say our class sizes are certainly much better than last year we do not have the 35 student um Cal BC class or 33 in um one of the advanced Spanish classes we do have some larger classes but much more I was I was meeting with our science coordinator at interm science coordinator today and looking at course numbers and there are some larger classes than I would like anatomy and physiology at 28 um a couple of those classes but much more the sections are 20 in honors biology or honors chemistry more like 25 26 24 so things look much better for what it's worth I have not knock on all wood that you can find uh rece received a flood of emails of concern and I have not been copied on them to school committee members so I feel like things are better you know some teachers are anatomy and physiology teacher is feeling the pinch of a large class and things are shaking out right now as students are able to move but in general we built a good schedule um uh we started earlier we were ahead of the market in terms of or at least at the right time to get really good teachers I feel great about our new teachers and I feel good about the the funding and support of FTE so thank you thanks for that update you're welcome have a good night yeah thanks so much everybody have a nice night Jamie last but not least hi everybody thank you so much for um for accommodating my late time we had a open house here tonight for our kindergarten through fifth grade that started at 4: and ended at 6 and it was 6:20 before I had the building clear um so I will share a slide Deck with you in just a minute but before I do I want to take the audience time to give a shout out in no particular order to the heroes who got these buildings open and running this year um as you'll see in my presentation a lot of our time in the last couple of years has been spent even through our school Improvement plan preparing for this move and without our custodians um Karen and Sarah uh the teachers who put in so many hours of work to make their classrooms beautiful and welcoming um parents who have been breathtakingly flexible as we have adjusted to All Things split campus including buses and walking kids in some cases quite a bit further than people are used to um coordinating child care in two different locations all incredible um also to our hiring managers this year who really helped to push through hiring so that we were able to start the school year nearly fully staffed um and that made a huge difference especially for us split between two buildings and then to OTL who has been incredibly supportive these last couple of weeks with with a couple of lingering Staffing things um that were unrelated to anything anybody could have done differently um but I really felt everybody's support showing up here at Pierce including Margaret and who I see still sitting here who has shown up to to help me with a couple of things already this year and I am deeply grateful so that said I will share my screen it's been a minute since I've done this so all right can you see the slideshow is the question yes okay I can see your faces so bear with me here um wave or shout or something if you need to get my attention and can I change slides okay so um our school council did convene last year many times um I think probably every month we convened and I am so grateful to Bernardine Molly Brad Susie and Emily who are our parent reps and then to Tracy Dave Beth and an who are our teacher reps I am the fifth staff member to get us to that five balance um we are doing elections this fall um for one those seats so one of those people may turn over um in terms of budgetary impacts um some things to know that um we do require some funding to do the summer work that will support action planning to support our struggling students that will give grade level teams time to co- plan for both win and integration with our new curriculum um and then to review student data that work was originally in our plan for the summer of 2024 but we did not have the funding for that so some of those items were not completed and were shifted into next summer um we also want to name that rebuilding a meaningful practice of instructional rounds will require substitute coverage beyond what we can staff in house so as we give teachers the opportunity to participate in instructional rounds we'll leverage administrators and other support staff but of course um a a string of absences on a day can bring that all toppling down and you hate to have teachers plan and prepare for instructional rounds only to be unable to cover them so um we would need some funding in the future for substitute coverage there um I am going to continue requesting additional Workshop funds to support staff attendant specifically at PLC trainings we do have a pretty robust line for professional development at $3,500 and that um is significant but conference costs have escalated quite a lot and so while I used to be able to send people for $150 or $199 a person to a conference that number is now much closer to$ four or $500 per person and that's for a local one day conference so they've really um increased in price significantly um and then I'm also hoping that we can secure some funding to support some school day busing of students to a joint location for an annual whole school connection while you will see that we are going to be proposing or planning for a lot of um evening and afternoon and weekend events not all of our students can participate in that so the only way to truly bring our community together is to do it during a school day and that will require some Transportation costs um so in terms of our school Improvement plan we actually have two strategic objectives identified that tie with um the district goal I'm actually going to pause and let you read them because a I'm tired and B you are all capable readers so if you were here last year you'll see that these are um a continuation of the work we did in our last school Improvement plan we are making steady progress toward both of these objectives but they are still areas where the data tells us we need to continue our Focus um so I highlight three of the Strategic initiatives that appear in this past or this coming School year as a part of the school Improvement plan so the first is providing structured time on those Friday collaboration time meetings for teachers who want an opportunity to meet and think about using data to plan their instruction um and then also leveraging our Tuesday faculty meeting time we did that several times last year we had hoped to have some summer funding for this year that was not available we have moved that to next summer um and what we want to see obviously is increased evidence of state district and classroom data being used in in for instruction um we also know that our mcast data is very predictable but so is our data before mcast and so what we had hoped to do this past summer but really hope we'll get the funding to do next summer is to bring teachers together to create plans for our third grade students who have already been receiving intervention and who based on our internal assessments are at risk of scoring not meeting on Ela or math and the hope is that through the creation of those action plans and then implementation of them our inhouse assessments will show an increase in student literacy and math skills during the 2025 2026 school year so this is a target for next summer if we secure the funding for that work um and then continuing to provide professional development to staff to support their confidence using student work at the center of plc's to discuss student progress the new curriculums we're rolling out and also pedagogy and again what we're looking for is increased comfort with staff-led plc's so those professional learning communities are really integral to teachers being able to have thought Partners teaching while a very very um public practice in many ways is also very isolating and so giving teachers opportunities to work with other teachers with the appropriate training and support is really critical both for their feeling effective and also for student outs next we have our second School Improvement plan goal which is focused on communication as you might imagine um during a move communication has been super super important so this has been in our sip for the last several Cycles give you a moment to read that and then here we wanted our families to all feel welcomed into each new building um so our Target was to make sure that all of our family members were invited to no fewer than three events between August and November of 2024 um tonight we actually hit our third event so that was really exciting and we do have a fourth one planned for later in October um so a huge shout out to the PTO for helping with some of these events as well it's been really powerful to have families together in our buildings um we also want to make sure our families and Staff feel informed about the Pierce renovation um I have been and will continue to send Communications at least monthly um I do want to say transparently I have been less engaged with the um the building project itself in the last month or so um it's been a lot getting two buildings up and running and I am looking forward to dipping back in but I trust the project team is managing things well and will reach out to me if they need me and of course we have Helen their spearheading things as well when I'm not able to be there um and then the last um strategic initiative will be coming to families later this month which is just making sure that families and staff have a way to share any logistical challenges that are lingering after the first few weeks of school so toward the end of this month we will be sending out a survey so families can share their challenges as can staff and we can continue to try to be responsive to those and then our last goal is also tied to the move I I'm sure you're sensing the theme Here We want everybody to continue to feel like a United Community and to feel like this transition is a really positive one and so we have two things that we're focusing on in terms of strategic initiatives this year first making sure that regardless of which school our students are at they have a sense of um both School communities we are leveraging our recorded morning announcements which we've just been able to get back up and running this week the hope is that we're going to get announcements from both buildings so we've um been integrating some early math announcements from Tara wasburn and we've had our middle schoolers doing some announcements as well about some cultural celebrations and we want to make sure that we're leveraging those we also are continuing to plan events between October and June that span both campuses and welcome all of our students staff and family to attend and then of course we're also concerned about our teacher health I I've had the privilege of talking to a lot of principles who've done this um split campus thing in other places and what we know is that it's critical for staff to maintain connection so we are making sure to provide monthly opportunities for staff to connect off- campus both professionally and we're also really making sure to create more outside of school staff fund opportunities for people to participate in and with that I will stop sharing and take any questions thank you Jamie questions from the subcommittees Sarah do you have a question or just going just walking okay okay thank you Jamie that was easy yeah isn't that nice when things are easy you deserve easy tonight um okay wonderful thank you so much have a good night Jamie now um I think um many folks may want to step away at this point the finance subcommittee has um some additional business to keep going on so everyone's welcome to stay but we are going to turn over to the finance subcommittee Suzanne is there any closing remarks we want to make on the I just from curriculum standpoint I just want to give a big shout out to uh OTL Jo Cody and Michelle and Gabe I I thought the presentations uh were so focused you know and they did it within there a lot of time so kudos to them um I love hearing about plc's and um collaboration and professional development so just a real shout out to OTL um for giving the template I think that really helped us to stay focused on on what the challenges are yeah agreed Carolyn thanks um yeah that was super interesting um so there be and I was interested to hear that there seems to be sort of like a a nebulous shared question about the discretionary spending and sips and budget impact so what will be the followup to these presentations Each of which was meaty and and deserving a followup on their own but also maybe from the budgetary perspective which is I think your question like for now I think we need to docket that for a future conversation to explore yeah a little bit and we will talk more about the budget book and the practice so I think we need to um come as a subcommittee together with Susan and the team to talk about again that that sort of um as you described it nebulous question great I'd be I'd love that to happen Okay I also want to Second what you said Suzanne is thanks to everyone and I thought the presentations were great and although it was a huge overwhelming session I actually loved listening to them back to back to back because you get such a sense of the um overlaps in the symphony and the just all the different things that are happening it's very nice so and to you Mariah for keeping us on track so thank you well we're running late now we're five minutes off schedule so we won't talk anymore that's right now we turn to the finance business so I'll say thank you to everyone and anyone who wants to step away go for it um quickly and I don't think we're going to get through all of our finance things much though I wanted to the first item that we're going to um take as a finance subcommittee is um gift acceptance there were two gifts for $250 each um from Caso oko and Morgan and Rita daily um one the first from Casto OKO to Brookline High School um for the outstanding speaker series and Morgan and R daily to base um so those are very generous and can I get a motion for acceptance so moved thank you and I'll take Caroline as a second Sarah how do you vote Yes Carolyn yes B yes and I vote Yes thank you and thank you to the donors again the next item and we're doing a little bit of a change in practice which is exciting um this is a not a request for Grant acceptance but a request for Grant application approval and the good thing about this is this avoids the scenario that perhaps staff might submit a grant that then school committee later on um does not want to accept and so nothing is accepted or nothing is submitted without having this sort of pre-step um so there's two grants that are under consideration um and and I just want to say that this is actually a really big deal because getting all of the paperwork together to this point to be able to put together an explanation of what you're applying for before the due date is it's a lot so I'm grateful to that so the first one is um to desie for $50,000 and um Gabe do you want to give a quick like 15c overview of what's written here sure I'd be happy to so this is uh primarily driven by Mindy Paulo our director of eel uh pre 12 and essentially it's to improve curriculum um we had a uh work for our uh program review a few years ago and one of the findings was that we needed to kind of boost our curriculum that's been challenging to do from a financial standpoint and um actually our title three money which funds a lot of EL support has gone down in recent years through to the way the federal government calculates that funding um and so this would be a really good boost it's a kind of unique one-time opportunity to uh work with the consultant who did our review she's been a really great support and then support teachers to develop that work that curriculum alongside the consultant great so this is is this a new program or just new to Brookline applying for it it would be a new as far as I know it's a new funding source for us to take advantage of they have um a few different categories and we're not eligible for most of the categories but this curriculum development category we are eligible for okay and is 50,000 the max we can apply for uh no they actually have not stated a maximum which is highly unusual for desie but Mindy did um some rough math and she thinks that's what it would take for the right team and um in collaboration with the consultant okay so they're they're aiming at that because they think it's like the sweet spot of yeah essentially it's enough money to support us but also not so much that we can't actually use it uh we have to acknowledge staff capacity okay um thank you for that are there any questions on this one before we move to the next one um the next one I uh is it's for Noah National oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration which is a Federal Grant and it's $110,000 um Gabe do you want to give another 15sec overview and when you do you mind talking specifically because my question was what is the specific under or historically marginalized populations that this will be supporting because I don't think it was articulated in the materials yeah so this is a this is really an individual Grant so Victoria Kavanaugh applied for a grant last year through Noah this is a little bit of a different structure that they're offering this year so it's for her as an individual teacher um to support her learning and um from my conversations with her I think really it's uh she's a teacher at F frr and so it's a combination of students in the SE success program right who live in public housing but also um students in the TLC who sometimes overlap um so she's really looking at the students in her class and kind of the direct support for her and she teaches all seventh graders science at frr so it says she's math is she not math she's science I'm sorry math yes okay I'm just thinking about Noah and um I see what is the TLC it's the therapeutic Learning Center so it's a specialized program ATR it's excel at the high school basically um and you said that she applies individually but it still goes to the district that the funds are awarded to the district not to the individual um so yeah they would go through the district for her to access okay okay um is there a motion for approval of submission Grant submission I'll move okay I'll second Sarah how do you vote Yes B yes Carolyn yes and thank you so much Gabe these both look great and I vote Yes as well and I want to say thanks to Gabe and thanks to Susan for getting us ahead of the curve I think this is a great opportunity for um handling grants um better so thank you for that the next item that is on our agenda is um position and it says position approvals but when Susan and I regrouped after our previous our August meeting one of the things that was a question at that point was is this approval or notification and um although this says approval I believe Susan and I agreed this is actually notification because um as we heard a week or two ago HR is doing an amazing job of accelerating the hiring cycle to allow the district to be more competitive in it hiring so if the if this was an approval then we would have a issue with retaining that accelerated hiring Pace that is desirable so this is actually a notification and what we talked about is that this isn't really necessarily about any one position this is really about a trend of this is what Susan and I were talking about it's really it's it's a really about looking at a trend so if we see that you know there's something going on we have the opportunity to discuss trend as opposed to um approving or disapproving any individual positions so I think that's a way for us to provide input and public transparency on hiring while also um um honoring and appreciating the work being done to actually hire people Susan did I accurately capture that she's on mute so I'm going to say that she probably agrees with me that I did um this seems to have updated Mariah the uh extended day did it and I I didn't get the chance I have just been so busy I didn't get the chance to look at it all in detail I thought that the Early Childhood was still at four but now I yeah it is it is still at four so it didn't update and one of the the items that we added was funding type so that if you look um second column uh from the left funding type now tells you uh where the source of uh uh of the expenses being charged so um at times it's going to be grants and you know in the case of beep it would be through the revolving fund um and so now you'll have a better understanding of uh you know how the um Position will be uh paid for not only where the funding resources located but also the fund type um so we thought that would be helpful also I think that's what was updated no I'm sorry I think that's what was updated Mariah that I was looking at was the funding source I oh okay general fund last time um the other thing um that we I think we actually I don't know that this captures all the things we talked about Susan because I think we talked about having like the I'll have to go back but there was like a question of like um showing the the real cost because if a JW if for example like the first row that one as I understood our conversation from the other day but we're we're still working this out would have been like a zero because it truly is like it's a net net neutral so even though it technically costs 880,000 it's still it's still zeroed out because it's just shifting one place to the other whereas like Row three that actually is an additional cost okay I once but um yes I can certainly make that adjustment so if it's what we're calling one a realignment so if we're realigning a position one school to the next then I guess it's it's an In-N-Out scenario versus a new position that's requiring new funding as in the early childhood uh which should be one word uh um aids would be new um as the grant funded ones so okay yes yeah exactly sorry yeah I can update that for the next iteration also I left it as approvals because these are the ones that were approved but if it's if that makes it confusing I can just say uh new position PCN report yeah maybe report is a good word because yeah I don't yeah like there's no vote happening here we're not approving like we were the other things no no the ones that were approved since uh you know each in between or or like our August meeting these were the ones that had been approved uh internally um and then these are the ones for the September meeting I.E tonight um yeah okay the other thing Susan and I talked about was basically start so there would be like the most recent month sort of at the top although right now it's not the top yet but then the the year-to date cumulative would sort of queue up so anyone who wants to would be able to see the whole um annual position um in one you don't have to go back and like find all the documents it would just be a year-to DAT document and some of these you know uh will not be required moving forward right some of this is again around our um developing uh resource Acumen within our organization and so for example as we put the budget together hopefully this year for those um positions that are associated with uh students uh Rising let's say up to the high school we would do that as uh the natural part of the development process and so therefore they'd already be there and not then have to be shifted so uh but but there's a lot of learning um um even as we look at the nature of some of these um um requests you know and then how can we uh improve our practice and uh continue to provide you know transparency in how we manage our resources you know when when folks from the public will look at our budget document and they'll try to compare um you know what we approved last year um and what the numbers will look like when I present them this year Well there this this helps people to understand there's a lot of changes that happen in between planning and implementation and so when I present the budget I will um provide information on on what the you know the plan actually is and then um our best understanding of of what it will look like in the upcoming year so this helps to kind of uh bridge the gap uh so people understand um throughout this year that when they look at our budget next year that there has been um a lot of adjustments that need to be made because we're trying to focus on uh providing programming in real time um to S to students as presenting um their needs to us so before I Call On You Caroline I want to ask uh one question so there was $244,000 positions charged to the idea grant for starting in September was the Ida Ida Grant under allocated before or what was shifted off of Ida or to to make room for those two positions um I have not seen uh the the final version of the grant as it was written so I can't necessarily um answer that directly but I did ask uh Deputy superintendent OK Connell um if if there were additional resources allocated to us this year and she said that there had been so I'm I'm looking forward to uh seeing the final version of the Grant and hope in time for uh the quarterly report so we should be able to see it more clearly then okay thank you um um Carolyn you had a question yeah it's sort of a statement just to sort of um build on what Susan was saying about what is helpful about this I agree it is helpful and to extend where I think you were going Mariah and as someone who is not nearly as in the weeds or as familiar with all of this which would be the vast majority of the public um and with respect to how useful this is and and and will be and and can be for the public um I would agree with the notion of somehow indicating you know like just basically did this cost us more than we thought it was going to and then I think that'll also kind of be informative um to the question that I guess is sort of continues to be a question of whether we hold staff Reserve funds so um so that was would be helpful for me as like a dummy to understand that and I think that's exactly the kind of question that that the public has like did we spend more than we thought we were going to and it look looks here we didn't but it's super interesting to to know how all of these shifts happen within the budget yeah and I think also changing the column that now says cost to net cost yes Mak sense why some are zero right um as opposed to additional costs I think that will also help uh people understand yes y That's great um okay so thank you Susan and um I think what we're going to do is not do the guidelines tonight because we're already five minutes past the hour and that will be that should be a more extensive conversation what I would like I only received comments from Carolyn so um so I think maybe what we really need to do is I I would hopefully get some more comments from other members so Betsy maybe if you can also ask other members to comment on the draft that was circulated that would be really helpful and then we can maybe just take it up next week at full school committee to try and maintain our Rhythm even though we are like I would have loved to have it come to finance I just don't want us to lose a whole month um on this so okay so so we'll do that and um I think that's it for tonight right Betsy we covered everything except for guidelines uh that's correct we covered everything okay thank you everybody thank you thank you bie thank you have a good night thanks Susan bye thanks Susan