##VIDEO ID:_GemUUaaCIE## e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e welcome to the Monday December 16th 2024 meeting of the Dennis jth Regional school committee please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you we will start with our student Representatives report Miss Powers and miss deel good evening everybody I figured we'd start off with our recent sports news at Dy so our girls hockey and basketball and girls basketball both had their home openers this Saturday and girls hockey won by a landslide and girls basketball played a really good fight and they were neck and neck right up until the end and our boys hockey opener is taking place at 4: at Tony Ken on Wednesday so everybody's really looking forward to that we also had our first official track meet last week against nset which we also won in the landslide so winter sports are off to a great start and they have another meet again tomorrow and also this upcoming Thursday we have our annual wave basketball event where all of our grades meet in the upper gym and support our unified basketball team so it's a really cherished tra Tradition at Dy and it's something people look forward to every year right up there with the pep rally homecoming Spirit Week things like that so everybody sort of counting down the DAT until that and that's what I have on Sports and everything else um we have interact Club just volunteered um at a community Christmas party and we are now uh hosting our annual gingerbread um making contest for all grades on Thursday um the Pauline Hopkins art galleries open for students all week and there's a showcase on Thursday after school to show off the talents of our amazing Dy art program uh voices heard book buddy program where we're going over to the um little kids school and you know reading books with them it's really fun um all of our English classes are busy preparing for poetry out loud which will take place right after break thank you so much thank you so much ladies um next we have our mcast presentation fore Elementary grades uh we similar processes we had last week with our middle school and high school and we are going to start with um the intermediate school with Mr Blake all right good evening everybody so I'm hoping this one's mine all right so last year when I came and met with you to be honest I think I gave a pretty sobering Outlook of kind of where we are and where we needed to go so the the good news for us as as we get through these slides if you look at it overall our MCAS proficiency is up that's in each subject in every grade um on the other hand though if any of my teachers were up here they would tell you the same thing that I'm going to tell you as well one of our internal goals is we need to be at least at the state average for everything and then going to set plans for moving beyond the state average so we're not there yet um when we look at one of our goals that's aligned with the district Improvement plan in terms of eliminating achievement gamps our results are a little bit scattered some places we're doing well and some places we still have places to improve so we're excited that those proficiency scores are up but we still have some more work to do this is the all right great all right so if you look up here on the left or in your packets um in terms of math in fourth grade um our overall mcast proficiency went up 4% and then fifth grade that went up 10% so that gives you the graph on the left um I put the graph all the way over there on the right I know when Mr deon's going to come up here he's going to speak to you a little bit more about average scaled scores so you can kind of see how far we are from the state in terms of average when you kind of get down into the nitty-gritty of that data though at least for us in our school that's a lot of dots of kids who are taking mcast so it's a little bit harder to pull out of there um so I'm just going to concent concentrate on the overall uh meeting expectations in exceeding we look at literacy in fourth grade our mcast achievement went up 5% in fifth grade it went up 3% so you can see that line moving up uh we still have more work to do but we're again happy that we're moving in the right direction when you start to break it down into groups so on the left is English language arts for students on IEPs and not so you can see with both lines there is Improvement and actually the Gap is started to decrease on the on the left and the right so both in math and Ela we do see improvements and in terms of achievement gaps and overall proficiency I'm not going to spend too much time here because if anything it's a gap in a different direction so our students who are on 504s are actually outperforming our student students who are not on 504s you want me to hold on a minute too sorry Mr Blake um that's fine our packet is not in the order so they have the same slides but for a different school so I think everyone was want me to like lather RSE repeat and do the whole thing again no we we we could see on a screen but uh we'll we'll catch up and we have the screen in front of us so thank you okay so when you look at students who are lowincome so if you look at the two trend lines they're moving in the right direction so in literacy you see they're moving up we like them to move obviously up a little bit more quickly and the Gap is about the same if you look at the one on the right again you see in you know Improvement in each group if anything though on the right hand side that Gap got a little bit bigger when you look at English language Learners again on the left hand side is literacy so you see increase for students who are not e students and if anything for students who are if there is an increase it's really really minimal so that Gap actually got a little bit bigger and on the right you see a similar Trend where our students who are El students improve but not as much as we'd like and that Gap actually got bigger because our students who are not eel Learners in math scored even higher hopefully I'm not the first person to come up here and say when you look at our results by race sometimes with all the different lines it's a little bit hard to kind of pull out what those Trends are um when you look at our Hispanic students in both literacy in math you see the the trend of improvement there so that would be one thing I think you can pull out of there and the second one would be our black students are not improving enough that's definitely something that you notice no matter how you look at our data in terms of race moving on to first language it's kind of the same thing some of those colors of those lines are a little bit hard when you look up on up on the screen so our two major groups would be English and Portuguese so like if you look at literacy you actually only see for 2023 and 2024 you see points there so when you look at for language being English and Portuguese and look at that Gap it got a little bit bigger and there students for first language of Portuguese they're not improving as much as we'd like so that gets into the achievement Gap how it needs to be better even though overall we see improvements in terms of proficiency and in Mast scores for English and math when you look at map scores what I did for what you're looking at up here so if I think back to when I was here before it's probably around this time so then I took from the winter when I saw you guys last into the end of the school year and that's how we looked at our map results so it's really from Winter to spring so in terms of literacy if you look at that Top Line That's growth so 41% of our students scored at the 61st percentile are higher that's that green and blue sections combined and if you look at the bottom in terms of achievement we would have liked our achievement to be higher especially when you're looking at those green green and blues that's the we're feeling like if those students are in the green blue they're more than likely going to be meeting or exceeding expectations so we have 44% of our students at that 61st percentile are higher but if you look at growth which would be the bar from the left and the bar on the right we only see a 1% Improvement when you put those two together keep going so math and the same sort of a time frame if you look at that Top Line a lot of green well a lot of green and a lot more blue so for winter spring we saw our growth of our students to be like 70% of our students at the 61st percentile or higher and in terms of achievement 52% of our students are at their 61st percenti higher and if you compare those two bars on the bottom you see a 16% growth and students are achieving of those two top levels from Winter to Spring all right so when you put this all together and kind of what are we doing about it here I'm going to read through some of this and try to explain what kind of looks like if you were to be here at school so I mentioned before our school Bas goal is really to get to that state average and then you know go right by it so when I say we completed a disaggregated data review beyond what is presented here so what that looked like in our building whether you're at fourth grade or fifth grade we looked at students who are e i AP what race they were and what language they first spoke so student teachers looked at like in fourth grade if you're an English teacher and would say you improved 4% overall did students who were El students also improve 4% did students who were Go Right Down the Line like did each one of those groups improve at the same rate that we did overall so the answer is no some more and some less so the reason that we did that is when you think of achievement gaps I think if you asked just about any teacher do you know what an achievement Gap is they're going to tell you you say if there's an achievement Gap in Massachusetts they're going to say yes if you say in would you see one in our district they'll probably pause for a second and say most likely but when you look at your own results and compare them and then walk into your class the next day that's a much different feeling and you can't do better until you know better so really a first step was looking at all this data thinking about their class because you can't do better unless you know better so that was our first big step so math I know we've heard this before in terms of last year you'll hear from all the different principles we get engaged in math leadership coaching which is exciting and from that coaching same if you heard my teachers up here they would talk about how we maintain our focus on math riger to ensure all students are engaged in a task that's going to really cognitively engage them so we have a curriculum that gives you a pretty scripted idea of what to do and from that you need to make choices and what I tell teachers all the time is if you make a choice that's not in there is that choice as cognitively demanding as what the book outlined for you like in a bad example if you're just asking someone to read a definition off the board is that really engaging 19 to 20 students and obviously the answer is no even though they can hear it and what we have laid out is a pretty rigorous curriculum then the next couple bullets our observational Focus so that's myself and my assistant principles what we like to do is to go into a math class and really focus in on that last half last half to last third of a lesson so by then the teachers have delivered their instruction and you just think when you were in school like now you're going to work on some problems so the idea is not just to say hey turn turn to page 42 complete as many as you can it's being what we call must do problems so they might the teacher is going to select one six8 and nine and that's the expectation for all the students so then after we observe that we talk to the teacher about why did you pick that how did that relate to really the last problem you want to give them before they leave so you can measure success and um did the questions that you pick highlight all the strategies they were supposed to learn in that lesson so it's really really intentional and getting kind of really granular granular in terms of the feedback we give to teachers and like if my teachers right here they would say yes this this is what we do this is when they come in and This Is How We Do It um and what we look at to for in terms of been a module assessment actually we had one of these meetings today so before we give the assessment we predict we look at the different questions pick the ones we'd like to discuss the most project how we think our students will do look at the results and then kind of predict what not predict then plan what to do next for example instead of just sometimes just seems like an easy answer oh we just need to retach something that they did poorly on we'll look ahead in that next chapter we're supposed to teach and when that same topic comes up to sit around and discuss how are we going to teach that knowing that we thought that kids might not do that well they didn't do that well and what are we going to do within this curriculum to ensure they have better success because sometimes the answer seems easy well just hey you just retach it and it's kind of like out of context but when it in context within what we're supposed to do I think we're planning to have better success in terms of literacy we did the same sort of thing so I'm not going to explain that disaggregated uh data review again one of the next things that we're doing as a schools establishing agreement on progress monitoring so we give map three times a year and B three times a year and we really want to have agreement in every classroom of what are we doing to progress monitor on the way instead of waiting to a bass and map again so we can adjust our instructional groupings also in terms of writing is where we need to probably improve the most so at least three times a year we're going to analyze student writing for common writing prompts so that's sitting in our PLC groups deciding a RH writing assignment to give them using an mcft rubric to grade them seeing how the students do and then making instructional decisions for them so what that might look like a common one in fourth grade and fifth grade is students often have time difficulty with summarizing they'll just kind of retell things so if you ask them to summarize the story they'll say first this happened second it's almost like they just rewrote the whole thing so we work on a common one would be summarizing and then what myself and my administrative team would do would be purposely walk around check in and writing lessons see what the teachers are doing and see if they're enacting that plan go back there we go um obviously asked the superintendent if we could put in science this year as well so in science they have that in grades five and grade eight and then in high school it's either nth grade or 10th grade as well so for us in fifth grade if you look at the graph all the way on the left in fifth grade our students improve 10% which we're really excited about um we still have some work to do because we want to get to State average and Beyond so one of the things that you'll hear from me again about what we would like to do is in terms of our related arts so related arts would be like PE Health all those classes we want to change up one of those to be include a stem staff member so for us if you go back to way in the weeks and days like we had two PE teachers a health teacher a library teacher and a music teacher we really weren't able to findi replace the health teacher with another health teacher so we used PE and health to make sure the kid students are still giving health so we're going to go from three of those teachers to two so really be budget neutral so the focus of the stem teacher will be the engineering standards and that's going to give 30 additional classes to our four fourth grade and 30 additional classes to our fifth grade in terms of science so having that extra time on learning plus that additional class time that we had when we extended uh extended day once we moved over here into the new building we're going to keep increasing our instructional time so right now we have a school-based group working with central office leadership to choose and fund an appropriate curriculum so we're excited about that and also with all that extended time that we've had uh we do have a stem a stem coach here in the building that's working at our stem Scopes curriculum we look at the common assessments we give how students perform and he works directly with the teachers about how we can continually improve so that is there's not another big slide after this but just it's not moving so questions thank you so much um we can go down the list um down the road if we like and if you have nothing you can continue Mr new thank you so I'm sorry I missed the first few pages because I couldn't find it in the packet and it's difficult at this angle to see the screen for me um first off what do you attribute the difference in the scores from 23 to 24 across the board because there's a huge upswing between 23 and 24 so I think there's lots of things some of the things that I detail in terms of the instructional focus and what we've been working on um the greater attention to detail the greater attention to our instruction so the beginning of the school year we did a basically an activity with the staff and kind of like resetting our values and about like where do we want to improve instead of me telling you gave it to the staff like where do we want to go I me the activity was a little more complicated than that but we came up with Reading Writing and tier one instruction so they really the teachers have been really focused and really working harder in their instruction so I think that's the biggest Factor um I don't know what slice of the pie you want to give but um moving in here was a little bit easier said than done and it does feel nice to be settled in this gorgeous building to be honest with you so moving in here and feeling really settled and feeling like you know it's like when you move into your home and then you feel like you're really part of your home um I think that's a big difference too okay because it is noticeable and I I would assume you know that your analysis is is correct um so moving forward what is the state average okay you're talking about 41% 45% 47% uh are the scores that we're dealing with uh so where is the state average in relationship to where we are achieving so if you look at math I know you said it was hard to see there and I'm going to tell you to look there again and try to take on and off your glasses to do so so I don't have the number but if you look at math like terms of proficiency levels it's a little over 40% um and we're probably somewhere what mid-30s so it's really go ahead so so what you're saying is there's there's a eight potentially 8% gap between State average and where we are achieving at this point I'm not going to give you the exact number because I don't know it without looking at my notes but we got that much to improve okay I would say what I've been telling my staff is like all those like different steps that we outlined of things to do those the ones that brings the numbers up so if I tell the staff your goal is to improve 4% you know what does that really look like it's hard to say what what does a 4% increase look like but in terms of the different things that we're focusing on on I think that's going to bring the results that we're looking for all right and and so am I correct you you are uh assessing the students three times per year I mentioned that for writing that like we're like dedicating like hey as we're going to sit down give the same writing assignment I mean kids are writing all the time but in terms of like a common writing prompt and looking at it and doing it together at least three times yes okay and how many times uh for math so math in terms of the curriculum has there's about five modules per grade level and every every module's got an end of module assessment they have preassessment opportunities mid mod module in math there's enough assessments that we can look at um that I only if I brought another one to the table the teachers would say can we just look at the ones that we have okay and then uh you're saying uh there's going to be a change in related arts program Pro programming to allow more time for STEM Science so uh what are you speaking about with that comment what type of change are you planning on right now if you were 10 and kind of going through your related art schedule for the year you would be in PE then you'd be in library say PE music PE and Library so those are kind of the six ones within those PE blocks the students also have health so we're just taking out one of those PE stamps and putting stem into there and putting stem into there yeah okay and uh just a a side comment do you feel uh that the Staffing that you have for the coaches that are helping the teachers uh uh direct and implement the curriculum at an appropriate level is adequate I don't think there's any principle that wouldn't say more is you know in some ways can be helpful but we're very grateful for what we have um and I think we use them pretty well okay thank you Mr Martin Miss Landers um the first question has to do with the difference between students on IEPs and students with 504 plans and I mean this isn't specific to you in your presentation this is something we saw before and I meant to ask you know those of us who aren't you know so knowledgeable about some of these programs I think and myself included might not understand the difference here you know it's you've taken out the students who have IEPs as one you know population here and their performance is well below right average like re far below average and you know but climbing but but then the the kids on the 504 plans are performing better right correct and I think that's probably pretty consistent in right most schools yeah we saw that in another what's what is that all about I don't think I have a perfect answer for that one to be honest with you miss Lander so it's not like if all right I'll I'll bug Maria later to explain some of that to me um okay that's all right I just wondered if you I know it's curious the first time you look at the first time I looked at it I was like I mean 504s address different needs than IEP so I'm sure there's a really good answer for this but we should probably share it for those who don't know um and my other question has to do with you know when we built this building to I feel like I'm so loud right now when we built this a little bit me too when we built this building to consolidate Wix madak keys there was a lot of discussion about you know the pros and cons of bringing two schools together and the two different grade level you know the different grade levels and to me one of the benefits of putting everyone together had to do with sort of be collaboration and cross development and you know it feels very separate right now right we're getting we get we have intermediate and middle we get different presentations intermediate and middle and I'm just wondering are there not opportunities here and maybe you're you are doing this but opportunities for you and Mr bino to be sort of crossing over those lines and working with groups you know I feel like we have we've got some drop off in scores you know between the two levels and what can you and Mr bino and the staff be doing to you know bring teachers from the middle to work with intermediate and vice versa to try to keep some continuity here and keep these scores moving up does that make sense yeah some I'm going answer in a little bit of a different way that'll come around so I would say the first time I worked in a middle school that was 5 through eight um as a new administrator I was surprised being brand new that it was like fifth grade and everybody else so it really ran not like two schools within a school but even within one Middle School that was five through eight the fifth grade was much much much different than grades six seven through eight so in some ways I'm kind of leading into answering your question a little bit where some of the curriculum work we there's opportunities where we could probably be together more and there's some opportunities where I feel like with we were together to teachers be like it's so different just in terms of curriculum or even with expectations of students students that sometimes that collaboration would seem a little bit forced so I think if Mike was standing right here next to me he would say that there's definitely more opportunities than to do that than we've taken advantage of without a doubt um but I think the other reality is true too it is it's much different I mean I think you know I came from working with older students um it's different you know and sometimes it should be separate and should be different thank you Miss be Miss when I was looking at your uh slide for sort of what comes next I was looking at English language arts and you sort of you were highlighting uh writing which I understand because it begins to be a major emphasis and starting in the fourth grade but what about other parts of literacy reading uh you know vocabulary development though um and especially in the fourth grade as you are a transitional or receiving school what information do you get from you know the third grade transition so you know what interventions to make for those who may be struggling still with comprehension or sort of those fundamentals before you can write with fluency so from the teachers we have ways of kind of internally them getting all the information that you could talk to in a little bit more of a high level way uh we have access to their scores in terms of math we have access to their scores in terms of bass um teachers give us direct information we work with the administration from each school so a lot of that comes up um and then I feel like is when you're the receiving school I mean this works for every school unless you're probably I'm sure kindergarten would say the same thing too kind of when you put all the kids together in a little different format to see kind of how that plays out to be quite honest with you if you see the same gaps and the same difficulties and sometimes you do sometimes you don't I think in terms of of writing when you look at our scores overall that's we have places to we have places to grow everywhere with literacy writing is the place where I think we need to focus most of our energies because that's where our scores are when you think of like where the state is and where we are writing is where the greatest Gap is so there is work to be done in Reading there is work to be done in vocabulary and we do work on those things um but in terms of if I listed all the kind of different standards within literacy up there I think we probably all agree we got to start with writing the kids need to write more and we need to be more targeted with our instruction of where they need to improve thank you um you know one of the slides that I keep going into is the student Group by race in both math and Ela it's the one that I just kept looking at um you know the the one thing I do see is that from 2019 to now the numbers seem to start evening out so you know we did see some downward Trends but it seems like we're going up um some of the things we haven't seen at our last presentations were many things going up but what you know me drawing lines on 10% from0 to 50 the the white student is close to 49% and the Black and Hispanic are barely at 10% and it's just when we look at it by by race it's just a hard thing to to swallow um and it's just you know as we as we look at our students by all of the different metrics and we talk about it it's it's you know what are we going to do about it and is is our steps going to address all of those things and and I hope they are um and I know you talked about the the math leading coaching you know and I know that all of us received an email from you know one specific teacher and the concern about um coaching for students and I know in the elementary school we you know there was uh literacy coaches and they met individual students and I don't know what we have to be honest in the intermediate school for for coaches and how many in in ela or math on the student level do they do subgroups do they have other opportunities uh other than in the classroom so I'll answer that two ways one is first in terms of the data and where it is the the first Parts acknowledging it because it would be easy just to look at our mcast results and say hey everything is up smile and move the other way um it's a little bit more difficult to say yes we're doing good and that same success isn't enjoyed by different groups of students and we need to improve so that's really the first step because if we just said hey we're doing better I moved on then there really be no chance for improvement and that's why I said like talking about like reading an article about an achievement Gap is one thing looking at your own data is a second thing like as a school then thinking about the kids in your class is a lot different um so those are the steps that we've taken and in terms of coaching we use the coaches more with teachers than with students so we have two math coaches here that work with the different students different teachers so we break them up into fourth grade and fifth grade and we share them amongst the different other elementary schools so they're not here full-time um we do have a literacy coach who is here fulltime so she works with both fourth grade and fifth grade so that work is with Miss antini with my myself and with the teachers and they complete coaching Cycles um obviously some of the things that we asked them to work on are things that we just outlined here um and how those coaching cycles look are kind of based on our school Improvement plan the district Improvement plan and where we need to improve perfect and I know you know later on in our meeting we're going to talk about budgets and stuff like that and uh hopes and wants and there's a lot of things that we all think and know would be better to have but again and it's what we can en a to have and I see Mr new raising his hand with another question he found a slide he missed we're ready go ahead found a lot of slides uh um so uh trying to draw some correlation between the presentation from the last meeting to this meeting uh the 2019 cohort in 2021 had a severe drop in in uh their fifth grade scores MH and so looking at your charts here um 2021 was an upswing from 2019 and then I'm looking at the ELA Trends and then 2022 saw a severe downturn uh and then kind of status quo over the next three years so you know I'm I'm trying to tie tie last meeting's presentation with this presentation uh with the 2019 cohort that was being tested in 2021 so what practices have you employed or implemented from 2021 to this point that have uh benefited the overall student test score scores so I'll try and answer that a couple different ways so 2019 2020 2021 those are those times like covid and things like that that we really don't wanted to keep talking about where the state you can see like just in literacy you can see the Stak is gone kind of if you drew a trend line it'd be going down and our trend line while it was going down that first year was kind of going up so I know if you look at kind of I look at almost like my history when I was at wixon like you saw an improvement so that felt pretty good then we kind of shut down and you know we went down so in terms of what that cohort is like and how released to the last meeting um I'm not going to I don't know if I can even comment on it because I was not here I might have been in my office but I wasn't sitting right here to listening to it all um you know it it's hard you've seen you've seen how we had to change education affect different groups in in different ways so in in terms of how it affected that specific cohort of kids I don't know how much I could speak to it all right so maybe I'm interpreting incorrectly so your scores up there for 2022 2 23 and 24 those are the same class or are not the same core they're not the same class okay [Music] so got it thank you there you go all right other questions thank you so much Mr Blake and I think we're going to have Miss Kelly next on Station Avenue Station Avenue is not next in the packet so Miss Kelly's going to walk up slowly so slowly Mr new and other members can get to the correct page we're almost there I think we're good thank you m all right so uh for station na we started out on kind of a high note with math uh we are up 7% from last year and 177% from the state with 59% of our third graders meeting or exceeding which we're really proud of there was a lot of hard work and targeted focus last year on student data and I know that teachers in the third grade in particular um took it upon themselves to do individual or small group drills to close some of those skill Gap areas and we saw um a lot of payoff in that in those teacher decisions within the classroom for ELA we don't have the same happy story uh we're down 5% from last year and we're also down 5% from the state we had 37% 37% of our students meeting or exceeding this gives us important information on uh that a change of practice is needed and that um I will outline further in in this presentation of kind of what explicit steps we're taking at station AB to help um course correct some of our Ela data because this will match some of the trends you'll see in our subgroups to come for the IEP subgroup um and Miss Landers I can explain the IEP 504 piece from my interim World um students on a 504 have a life impacting disability but they don't necessarily have difficulty accessing the curriculum that's kind of something that sets them apart if you're in an IEP you need accommodations or differentiated instruction to access your education so students on 504 can access their education but they need accommodations for things like you can be on a medical 504 if you you have diabetes and you need access to snacks or breaks or just accommodations of that nature you can also be on a 504 if you're anxious and you need accommodations to have longer test time or scaffolded those sorts of things for an IEP you need the curriculum modified and you need um a learning disability to that extent so that's why you'll see a difference in presentation kind of globally on that account um and what you can be on a 504 is really wide ranging so when you have have a small group a small subgroup with a wide ranging profile for 504s you're going to see kind of disperate information and then it's not shocking but it is hard to see the achievement Gap in the subgroup because students with learning disabilities often because of their disability aren't able to access the curriculum which is why they're on an IEP but it still doesn't make that data easier so to that point for the IEP um math sub group we had a significant decline we had nine students um that represent that data point for 2024 which is 11% who met or exceeded and the year prior we were at 27% so that was a mark of decline but that's still is nine students versus 11 students which is a small cohort and those disabilities can also be wide ranging in special education not an excuse but hopefully it helps explain it um um for ELA in 2023 we had zero students meet or exceed um on an IEP for ELA which is why there is no data point and so we did have an increase for ELA um and so we had 11% of our students on IEPs meet or exceed for our 504 subg group this one is particularly difficult to look at um but I I think it does correlate with what the specific subgroups are in a given year um I'll start with the math side of our 504 uh in 2019 and in 2024 we had eight students on 504s with like I said kind of ranging uh qualifiers for those 504 in 2021 we had four students in 2022 we also had four students and in 2023 we had six students just to give a range of what these numbers repr represent in terms of quantity um but for math we had 25% meeting or exceeding um which was a big decline from the year prior and for ELA um we've had a trend the past couple years of a big decline for ELA with this 504 subgroup with the caveat that this is a really small cohort of students and a wide ranging reasons that qualify them for a 504 which can impact kind of what their needs are and how they perform but we are taking steps to address this and improve it which I'll outline a little bit later um in terms of what station AB specific action plan is for our lowincome subgroup uh 45% of our students in the subgroup met or exceeded last year and um yeah no I'm sorry 45% this year and then that was an increase from last year which was only 33% so we did make some strides of closing the achievement gap for our our low income with math um but the Gap continued in our Ela subgroup which was 15% I'm sorry which was um we went from 32% down to 25% for the low income for our did I skip the slide for E excuse me um for our matl we went up 10 from 10% meeting or exceeding to 7 17% in math um but we still have quite a gap there for Els and then for ELA you can see in 2021 and 2023 we had zero students meeting or exceeding who are El in ela um and so we had a slight increase in our we had 15% of our students in the ELA subgroup um meeting are exceeding the race subgroup I find this one particularly difficult to look at um for the ELA but for math there are some great positives um you can see our Hispanic and our black populations in particular had some nice gains um and big gains particularly from 2023 these colors are kind of difficult to to pick out but our students of black identity in particular over the last two years have had um kind of a market decline in ela and we've been doing a lot of work to dig in into why and we're doing a lot of work in particular to focus on our subgroups but also our achievement in ela globally at station AV which I'll get into in just a moment for our students in first language it almost looks like a finger painting the our data is kind of all over the place and these colors are difficult to pick out um our other subgroup made nice gains in math our students who are first language in English had a nice kind of forward and upward trajectory of note our Portuguese students for math did not um make it on to this graph and for ELA similarly our Portuguese just began to make it on um for 2023 but none of them met or exceeded in the Portuguese subgroup as a first language in 2024 which is an important thing to acknowledge so we can inform some of our action steps going forward similar to what Mr Blake had outlined this is our growth um as a school for reading we went U from the 54th percentile in the winter of last year using our map data to the 60th percentile so we had a nice kind of overall gain um but there's still informed work to do in these different categories our goal is to certainly have more kids be over the 60th percentile and growing similar to math um there were some gains we went from the 65th percentile to the 66th from the winter to the spring but our overall growth um we had 19% in the green and 29% in the blue we're hoping to shift all those categories forward this is a predictor for mcast as well and so now the now what this gave us a lot of important information about station a I think overall kind of globally it uncovered that we have some challenges systematically about how we are supporting our students who learn differently and so for literacy in particular we have a school Improvement plan which has a focus on early literacy which is also in alignment with our district strategic plan um we have targeted use of that additional 27 minutes and we using that for our Wind Block which stands for what I need we have our interventionists our El teachers flooding a grade level at that time to pull targeted small groups and we've been holding um Regular structured data meetings to look at student performance and inform what those intervention groups look like we're trying to elevate our practice of looking at student performance data to inform our tier one instruction as well as our intervention groups so miss bu who's here has been collaborating closely also with our instructional coaches as well as myself and and um in central office to look at our different data Platforms in specific with our um our data platforms within station AB with literacy and pulling out students who are performing below the 40th percentile and uh making sure that they have tier one supports in the classroom but also what are we doing about those students who are performing especially below the 25th percentile and um and I'll get into a little bit more about what we're doing for that El subgroup we're deploying new structures to our monthly plc's in literacy so we're focusing on that data alignment we're building off of a lot of great work that was started last year um but aligning our data with our instructional planning and coming up with a plan all right we have this amount of stud these targeted students in each classroom our literacy coach is going in to observe those guided reading groups we have um we've had a couple joint meetings with our interventionist and our El teachers just to increase that communication and see uh when we dig into our El data what where those literacy barriers are and what we can do collaboratively to address it we've been reviewing mcast data and conducting vertical alignment data Trends so going Beyond just grade three but looking at what our data is telling us within literacy and there's a lot to do about writing and writing about genres and so we're now carrying that down to as far as grade K and um working to adjust rubrics so they make sense in these different grade levels so teachers have something concrete to measure the growth of the writing we've been working to support a k screener committee that assesses students entry um with their entry literacy data and that can afford us more time at the start of the Year by having kids already screened and have form placement at the beginning of the year so we're not spending September or parts of October uh get just getting that basic kind of launch data of where these students are and and that way we can get the interventions started a little bit earlier we're also kind of trying to bridge more Community Partnerships with um folks like the um Cape Cod Children's Place they have a lot of early literacy grants and doing Outreach to local preschools um to get early families into our elementary schools earlier on and get that informed placement started we're enhancing our SEI strategies for our El students um this is a targeted Focus given the El subgroup group data and making sure that teachers are clear what these SEI strategies are as part of my entry plan when I met with staff I reviewed all their lure and um made sure that all teachers were SEI certified and folks who weren't came up with a plan with central office to help close them and most of our our staff were um but just kind of underscoring that this is a value and that we have to be taking this uh seriously with in all domains that we teach we are are increasing collaborative um collaboration between the interventionists and El staff as I talked about earlier but within our um we have a platform called elevations which outlines our access data and it really drills down into what our students are scoring in the four domains listening Reading Writing and speaking and some of our students are falling down in the writing and reading and there's targeted individual goals from that elevations data and so working with the El staff to support them so that they're calling on those when they're doing their El instruction but also if there are students who are not progressing are there ways that we can do a hybrid approach with El instruction and Ela intervention with our interventionists with reading Specialists and kind of um do that hybrid approach to really Target in a meaningful way for those students and get that growth up we have an A SAE leadership team that is uh A literacy leadership team that is also working to focus on that um writing piece and responding to our writing which has been a continual identified area for growth based on our mcast we're increasing opportunities for phonics based instruction on ID based on identified gaps from pre-tests so this year was the first year that we did for example the pass which is a phonic screener and we're using that information and we're doing that screener multiple times for um our kindergarten but also for some students in older grades who aren't making growth just so that we have Target in information about their Foundation of literacy we're supporting interventionists with pre and post tests to concretely measure growth during these intervention Cycles it's important to know where students start and where they've gone and without that pre- and post data uh I don't know that we're informed as as informed as we can be if the students have mastered those targeted areas so we're trying to work on um creating more data opportunities even in the short term and then we're also uh we just trained our staff on some updates to our student support team process which looks at areas of concern that a teacher will bring forward it's based in performance data and then we develop a four to six week tailored intervention plan this is an important precursor if a student is um to be considered uh for the eligibility process with special education or if a student is just not making gains and a teacher is looking for support from other experts in the building to kind of collaborate and grow that student forward some of these are a little bit redundant for our action steps for math but but um these are I put more intentionally for literacy given our achievement scores and to underscore that this is a priority area for math we've been working um doing some instructional leadership coaching with Eureka math squared with building Administration our math coach and central office we've been doing structured walkthroughs and um creating for example minimum success criteria for math lessons or just math look Force our curriculum is is really wonderful but some of these lessons are very dense and they can be about 15 pages per lesson and it's a lot for a teacher to digest so we're trying to find ways to scaffold and support teachers to make the Salient parts of each lesson more more accessible but also those learning objectives more prominent so they know where they're taking those students at the end of a lesson and that we have the data to um to inform our instruction as well our structured math plc's monthly are data focused in January for example example similar to what Mr Blake is doing we're going to be focusing on end of module assessments and drilling down we will have taken our our third module assessment by that January PLC date so that is three modules worth of Assessments to drill down teacher by teacher and to look at how they're doing and then what opportunities we have do we have to enhance our spiral review of certain Concepts or um or Target in our intervention groups we're trying to increase our Partnerships with families and to communicate opportunities U where they can reinforce some of our deficit areas at home two of those being our fact fluency and another being measurement measurement historically has been a challenge area not just for Dy but globally it tends to be a unit that comes up later in the spring and just given our kind of modern world students don't have as much authentic practice with counting and paying with things for money or reading analog clocks and so we're trying to create and um communicate ways for families to focus and practice that at home and as well as making that a targeted Focus um I just bought two grade levels worth of new rulers that go down to the 16th of an inch and match the mcast rulers so we're trying to make it a priority focus in a um targeted way observational Focus so we're taking a look at teacher responsiveness to data as well as their pacing making sure that they're able to get through these dense lessons in a timely way so that every student is getting an equitable educational experience but also making it through each of the important lessons of those around five modules per grade level so they're getting that Equitable education but also the full um we're analyzing the math Trends from our mcast and providing scaffolded opportunities to reinforce these skill areas and so we're finding where these deficit area and not pinning it just on grade three but communicating that information to K through 2 as well and um looking at curriculum opportunities to really reinforce that earlier on so they don't get to third grade with some of these gaps we're also conducting um data Focus faculty meetings where there's a lot of data available on our student performance and it can be a bit overwhelming so having structured faculty meeting time where we're reviewing what these platforms are and how to drill down into these individual math concept areas and how it impacts um student performance but also as a teacher how to analyze that student performance data and inform your own practice so just creating excuse me multiple opportunities for that so that teachers are accessing what's available within District in a meaningful way and I kind of touched on this one earlier excuse me the end of module assessment data review meetings and within these meetings we'll project Student Success and use the projections um and then later the real data to see how we should adjust our tier one instruction and when the standard is the focus of the particular lesson so it's a very long- winded action plan but it is authentic to what we're doing so any questions thank you so much Miss Kelly and I I know as the newest principal Mr de m m let you go first hoping that we'd get all we'd be too tired by the time we get to them but uh I'll let them know we have coffee and we'll we'll still be ready to ask all of you questions as well um but thank you so much uh start with Mr new thank you I understand this is your first year okay so my first question is uh do you have the percentages of white hispanic black and other uh I tried to write a lot of them down no I didn't write those down but I can get it for you that'd be great I because I think it's important to understand what percentages are and how they relate to the graphs that you're presenting to us at this point um obviously when you look at the charts there's a downward Trend um throughout everything particularly from 23 to 24 and uh most definitely Ela scores are in a downward path uh so I know this is your first year so implementation uh of programs and ideas is at this point what do you have to address the scores that you are now confronted with so as part of the school Improvement plan we're doing a whole focus on early literacy driven by what our performance data was um increasing our interventionists and how they're working with that data in a more meaningful way um I personally have structured for example our e instruction um they only had one instructional space that three of them were sharing for 70 children and so I cleared out two areas and got a partition and ordered three u-shaped tables so there's three proper instructional spaces similar for our um special Educators they were um off in a corner of a classroom or working in the in a hallway or uh in the cafeteria we're kind of over capacity a bit at station a so doesn't sound very um but I cleared out two storage closets and had them repainted and made sure they were compliant with Desi standards um so now there's two valid testing spaces for our special Educators to either perform or to either provide secrid that pull out service or to conduct that special education testing in a proper valid setting so some of it was facilities based and then other pieces of it are instructional based and um a big piece is um staff capacity I have no doubt that station AB is full full of a lot of dedicated Educators um and so a priority area this year is um focusing on their capacity and making sure that we're using the tools within the district as well as we can there's work to do but by going through our district platforms and seeing how we can analyze data to inform our instruction has been an important first step and I I believe the staff are feeling the temperature turned up on our focus on achievement um and they I think we are starting to see some growth in positive ways they're starting to share that out about you know um achievement wins in the beginning of their class so I think I guess it's three-fold data Focus facilities and then culture just letting staff know and bringing that Bell over and over again that we're working hard but we need to kind of shift how we're working to to change the achievement because I have no doubt that there station have is full of Staff who care so uh in line with that when is it necess when is the next assessment point where you will be given some more data to see what the growth is or achievement is U so that you can assess uh whether you're meeting your goals or not so for ELA and math there are three benchmark assessments that happen in all the elementary schools fall winter spring M and so we're about to head into our January winter Benchmark uh assessment period which will be important data for me in particular to see if we have been making if the changes we made have made an impact or if we need to continue to make other shifts and I think it'll be a mix of both I think we'll see some increase in achievement but I think there'll also be information about uh ongoing changes to our practice and so we'll be um repeating that phonic screener that we introduced this year that was new um we'll be doing our Benchmark reading assessment then we'll also be doing the map testing so there's kind of three different probes um for literacy in particular excuse me um that will give us information in the literacy front thank you I look forward to hearing what that assessment reveals thank me too Dr Smith Mr new just back to your first question just because I was able to look it up real quick so um at Station Avenue in particular uh the demographic by race breakdown uh for the 23 24 school year so the to relative to the data that uh Miss Kelly uh presented tonight so last year's enrollment uh 11.6% of the student body uh identified so this again not just the third grade this is the whole student body but um uh uh identified as African-American 1.2% Asian 15.7% Hispanic .9% Native American 65 % white and 5.6% multi-race non-hispanic thank you Dr Smith Mr Martin um I guess the the question that kind of bounces in my head it when I'm looking at these um obviously you don't want to see plummeting like we uh like you see on the the the 504 math and Ela um you don't want to see students on IEPs doing you know progressively worse but um looking like each graph is obviously you know one segment of the population but I'm wondering how they kind of correlate to one another if um uh like the the the results from um student group race for Math and Ela and first language how how do those two correlate together how many you know uh how many first language are uh are uh students of color um or you know how many come into like the English Learners or how many are on 504s or or whichever I would be curious to see kind of a cross reference between a lot of these to kind of see how what demographics you know whether there's um like how many how many uh kind of student or the student population that that requires more than one approach you know as far as that's concerned do you have any information on that at all it doesn't appear like that's been kind of a trend in the in these presentations but yeah so we had 11 students on IEPs in third grade last year we had eight students on 504s we had 70 students who were Els um that's about 25% of our population who were El's when you we were talking about this earlier at our leadership meeting when you get down to race it can get these are self identified by families as they registered and for example we have students from Brazil many students from Brazil but some identify as Hispanic some self-identify as black some self-identify as white so that race component gets a little bit harder to to drill down when you zoom out the overall trend is that these subgroups in ela in particular um um there's a growing achievement Gap so I've taken a look big picture literacy in um that station have in particular but then what are we doing specifically to close the achievement Gap within each of these subgroups M Landers are you able to pull out cohort data for these grade levels the way we were able to see it for other grades so it's challenging for the elementaries in that they only have third grade so they there's no mcast data other than they have the one grade level that they take it we actually met this morning or this afternoon rather um to uh discuss this data prior which it's my fault why your presentations aren't in order because we played around with the order this afternoon so I apologize after the packet was already put out um but um but we did have a conversation you know we're always sort of thinking about next year and so one of the questions we talked about is is these slides in particular I think next year because depending upon the school some of the numbers are actually really kind of small so you know a two- student difference makes a 20% difference so I think these particular uh some of the subgroup data I think we're going to zoom out and present at the district level because then the numbers are larger in um the outliers don't throw off the district data and the trends are a little bit more reliable that's sort of one piece but going back to your specific question um at the elementary level we started a conversation but didn't finish it about presenting some of the other data that we have that that is that could be cohorted uh it's not going to be amcast data but other data that we have internally that could be cohorted to sort of show patterns over time and how they correlate up to the mcast data so so the short answer is no because they only have third grade so it's always the third grade class and then it's a new third grade class um but we have already started about how could we look at some of our other data sets from a cohort perspective at the elementary level I mean at the pre3 level K3 level I'm trying I mean some of these are just so hard to understand like what's going on here obviously ly you know I'm looking at the student group student group St I race math and Ela and it's a little hard to tell what tell which line in the packet is which but so on the right hand side here we have black students right in 2021 at looks like what 30% and then in 2022 at 70% right so incredibly desperate what on Earth and but then drops right back down so is there is that is that explained by a particular cohort right I mean it seems like a complete outlier I'm you know statistics is certainly not my forte but like how can like this doesn't seem like a data point we can rely on in terms of Trends obviously so this has to be explained by something I've been trying to understand it myself uh I think there's a fair amount of transient population um in Yarmouth in particular I do know that Haiti in particular has faced I mean the last 20 years have been differing natural disasters but there has been an increase of families fleeing from Haiti um and so you know that can account for some of our students who identify as black but also are duly identified as e I'm not singling them out I'm just saying sometimes we have increases in particular populations that have um different needs I've been trying to dig into it and I think it it does vary by year and it varies by the students before us and I don't want to make an excuse for it because I think we need to do better but I've been trying to dig into what some of those cause effects might be if that makes sense yes thank you Miss beus I like your multifaceted approach even involving parents in the community um I'm wondering some of U the options you have used so far with the 27 extra minutes as sort of critical time and what you might do in the future sure so this year when we um I built the master schedule I dedicated a given Wind Block time with those 27 minutes that is outside of tier one instructional time and it was dedicated towards intervention and then I had our El teachers and our interventionists Avail themselves during those four uh wind blocks so for the four grade levels so that there was staff available to flood into because I found that um last year there was kind of a disparity in how those interventionists Andel teachers had structured their schedules and so some classes had very um had heavy support and other classes didn't see as much support so trying to create a more Equitable experience but also opportunity for those small groups to happen in a meaningful way so uh using and we might look at that differently and come up with the more targeted approach but right now this year we're focusing it on those students who are below the 25th percentile and what opportunities there are for the interventionist to be pulling those students outside of tier one time so that students aren't being pulled during important instructional time that that time is kind of sacred for that intervention but it's also an opportunity for students who don't need intervention to have an extension opportunity so trying to think about both ends of the spectrum for our students and use that time in that way and that's kind of how this year has been structured for that those 27 minutes um but looking we're going to continue to progress monitor that data across this year and if uh there are trends that reveal different Focus needs for next year then we would ship those 27 minutes to be used in different capacities great thank you um I I I had similar questions about the 27 minutes you know the that that 27 minutes sounds like a little when you talk about one day but when you carry it over the week you know you're talking how many minutes for the week and then you carried to the year and I know you know last year our budget was a tough one and a lot of it had to do with these 27 minutes and how important um those 27 minutes were to us and how strong we felt about the cost that associated with that to ensure those 27 minutes alerting that we did to the other schools years prior and to the committee prior to me um and getting to where we wanted to get the school day to be at um and you know for for those that help us get here I know that it's important to them to know we're utilizing it it's not an extra recess right it's not an extra 27 minutes to play outside whereas we we we do know at at that on the K to3 how important it is for outside time and and for recess but you know that we're utilizing this time for education and it's great to hear um that there's there's you know the targeted use of of that time for what's most needed um you know and to kind of the question Jenny was answering not I'm this is not for you this is out loud of you know trying to follow a cohort you know they're in third grade in 2019 in 2021 they're fifth in 2023 they're in seventh 2027 they're in 10th and kind of looking at their mcast scores in math and Ela and I know there's more mcast after that but to kind of see where our students are trending um and then we it's maybe it's easier to see of where we need the most help right um we all need to work on all the levels but kind of see you know what it it is and you know I know we talked about the disparity from 2022 that could have just meant that we had that many less students who were of that or we had that so less people and they all scored higher or we had a lot who were extremely talented that scored higher it's hard to tell because these are every year as a different student in this um versus some of the other schools that have it multiple times so you know it's a it's also the first time they're really taking a test that's being measured by people so I know it's it's different but you know I know my when my student took this it was a lot for him but uh just the whole idea that um just seeing where we are from year to year and it is great to see that you know in math we are seeing the increase but it it is it is scary where we are in ela in the younger grades and in the older grades um you know and when I when I look at the math scores later in the middle school and intermediate school I I continue to think the same thing that Ela is the cause for some of the math because you know I've said it before that math is not numbers anymore math is word problems and if you can't read the problem to know if you're adding or subtraction subtracting the numbers then you can't answer the question so you know I know we we talked about spending so much time on Ela but Ela and literacy and the measurements stuff are really going to be the things that help them get in both sides of it so um you know this this early this early learning is so important you know and I know the other teachers will will say the same thing as we talk about our buildings are already at capacity you know this building is at capacity and station have a capacity and later on we'll talk about um you know opportunities that we may have in the future and it's just it's a great thing to have but it it's you know making sure we have the tools for the teachers and then the tools and the people for the students so again this all relates to our budget and we'll continue to have discussions of what what is needed and what we should have and then we'll then it's our job to have discussions later on with the towns of what we need so Mr new thank you uh Not For You killing okay relax this this is for Dr Smith so trying to get a better grip on Baseline has Staffing changed over the five years we're talking about I mean yes we've definitely had Staffing turnover during that time has there been a decrease or not Oh you mean of overall St overall staff I know there's turnover obviously there's gonna be turn sorry I misunderstood the question that's all right so um last year would have been the first sort of significant Staffing incre or decrease rather prior to that based upon um the work I had done um in my entry work we were pretty stable and slightly increasing in Staffing from 19 to 23 so actually I guess really through 24 so this year going into this current year um is the first um there had been other Staffing reductions and I I have to go back I have it in a chart um so you know don't hold me to gospel but you know definitely through covid you know we at uh so 2020 the co funds would have come into the 2021 school year um and we added I think it was 17 total positions if I remember correctly it sounds about right um across the district but last year you know total reductions across the district total FTE was 35 and a half so your net 30 you're going to see a reduction yeah so this year as we currently fulltime equivalencies right yeah as we currently stand as a district we are fulltime 35 and a half less than we were in 24 but preco it it's about 18 and a half does that make sense makes sense to me uh and class size how much has that changed over that fiveyear span so it we I I don't have a ton of great class- siiz data Pro um I can tell you we leveled off class size going into this year so you had a lot of disparity you not a big change for through 12 but what you had was a lot of um disparity between the three k to3s um you might have had 12 11 or 12 at one school and you had 20 to 22 at the other school and we established uh class siiz um parameters as a district uh at the kada um three space at 18 plus or minus two so now they're all within that range 4 five is 20 plus orus two Etc and we have uh standards that we use for the for Staffing for budgeting now moving forward that we use building last year Staffing and that we'll use to continue to move it forward and then if my understanding is correct uh the uh time of day the time minutes we've had uh instructional time minutes has not changed until this year and we've added 27 minutes yes aun so um pretty sure the high school's been consistent because that's by Statute that it has to be 990 minutes uh Tim's going to have to help me here on exactly when they rolled it out at wixon two years ago yeah so the first phase was to add the time to the middle school and to so it would have been mes and wixon would have been the first two schools and I think it happened prior to moving in here yes so they added added the first 27 first phase was to add the 27 minutes to those two schools now this six yes four through seven and then this year is the first year adding the 27 minutes to K3 space so the so the 24 test scores reflected 27 extra minutes for the four five six s correct two yeah year a year plus of that yeah okay and so this year the 25 scores will reflect 27 added minutes to the K3 correct well third grade let's put it that way yeah third grade yeah all right so if my understanding is correct uh going into the testing cycle for the third graders this year staffing has remained virtually the same same with the exception of where was the emphasis in the reduction in staff over this year so we we um across the professional staff so across the teaching staff we leveled class sizes across the district so there were some um so by example I can't remember specifically what grade level it was at station a I know we had to add a teacher at Station Avenue in order to get the the class sizing the same but we made some class SI some class reductions at emys small and Ezra Baker in order to get all those class sizes within that 18 plus or minus two um and then we made did again some reduction in um our intervention staff to have our intervention staff match the um research says that intervention staff should make up 15% of your Staffing or or supports 15% of your student population so we made some reduction intervention Staffing we were we also made some reductions at the high school based upon some of the case load or some of the um uh class sizes there too we had under enrollment in several courses so we made some reductions in some of the Departments or a reduction at a few different departments at the high school um to get um to level out some of the course enrollment at the high school um those were the large across the professional staff and then we had a list I I'd have to go back to give you all the specific Det details um to where all the different 35 we reduced an administrator um there was a SRO reduction in the budget um again I can't remember all the specific right but from an instructional standpoint uh We've maintained a a fairly consistent Baseline of instructional staff and uh We've maintained U uh a less than number as far as support staff uh but we've maintained our um a PA of professionals I guess I would call them so so we we're less than PA of professionals we instructional staff is the same and uh support staff as in coaches and that administrative group has remained consistent as well yeah our strategy was to focus on we felt we were over supported in tiers two and three instruction and that we really needed to focus on tier one instruction so sort of going back to uh uh tomas's question earlier if I I understand sort of where the question was going uh instructional coaches support classroom teachers their main function is to support classroom teachers in their um ability to be as effective as possible with students right so it's about indirect effect with students as opposed to direct effect to students uh if if we to trade that coach for an interventionist as an example that interventionist could work with a certain number of students let's call it 20 or maybe 30 kids and would have direct in support for those 20 or 30 kids an instructional an effective instructional coach can work with all the teachers in the building and if it if that effective instructional coach supports the um helping each of those teachers improve even 5% then they're now having an impact on every single student in that building so um that's the where we decided to why we decided not to cut coaches last year because it was part of our larger strategy as a district um and then why we've invested in principal coaching because principles have the same ability to raise the capacity and the efficacy of their teaching staff which then has an impact on students if they're able to support their teachers in order to help their teachers grow and flourish then their teachers will be more effective with their kids and will have a larger impact on students thank you I'm just trying to find out the wise and and yeah uh information is is the best y balm for for what the wound is at this point yeah uh why yeah and so that's why I'm asking thank you I appreciate it m Kelly thank you so much for your presentation thank you a wonderful job and I believe next we have Miss maiti and that's going to be for um Emy small so as everyone's finding that in their binder and I'll first start off by thank you thanking you for being here um as we pulled up to the building there was nothing better to see then all of the families from Emy small um entering the building and the performance next door um it's a it's a great feeling um to have those families here um and we we in the future we'll talk about possibilities of them having a space they can enjoy too so well thank you more to come thanks for that um if you don't mind I'm going to just start with a couple of high points and that is one of them um I want to just talk about tonight's concert in the beautiful performance space named after our esteemed colleague Ken and to acknowledge our recent invitation to the eligibility for msba and I think both of those achievements really speak to the emys small community's dedication to giving our students and families the learning environments they deserve we don't have a space large enough to host our families so we got creative and we brought them to the best space we have um although we did all enjoy that walk to madaky and for the best part of a decade we've been trying to get a petition through msba and that has finally happened and as we look at this data I want you to bear in mind that that same tenacity we intend to bring to our academic achievement so this is our math Trends um last spring we had a 14% increase among our students meeting expectations on the math mcast it's the highest percentage of increase in the last five years and it brings us closer to the rest of the Commonwealth not that that's good enough as Tim said we want to surpass past that but we are on the right path in English language arts however um the news is not so pleasant a mere 24% of our students are meeting or exceeding expectations um since I'm the third person going when it gets into certain things that's already been explained I'm going to spare you that time time okay but feel free to ask me questions this slide shows the Gap oops I went too far ahead sorry um between students on IEPs and students that are not on IEPs and that gaps a little too large for my liking um in ela it's actually going going up and in math it's going down a little bit uh in your packet there's a slide for IEPs but I removed that because it's one student and I did not feel like that was a good choice for us um we're looking at the students in lwi income in math and Ela next and I want to give you the context that that is 65% of the emys small population so that's a substantial number and while I don't like the overall percentages I am happy to see that we do not have a big disparity among those students who are lowincome and those who are not oops I am really Sam want to help me here I'm going the wrong direction there we go um this slide I just want to celebrate this is our English language Learners performance over time and we're quite proud of this our Ela scores for our English language Learners is the highest in five years and in math we've actually eliminated the achievement Gap so I think it just speaks to our commitment to equity and it shows that our attention to giving an equal experience to our English language Learners is paying off yeah I'm noticing the same that our slides in our packet are not that's because I made a mistake I should have said that I repeated the same the lowincome one again in your packet so I will send you the corrected version thank you you don't have that the accurate information our this is our students Group by race um this is as people have struggled with before me um at Emmy small we had 49 students take the English language arts test and 50 take the math we had one student who was brand new to the country and therefore didn't have to take the ELA um the upside is that our Black and Hispanic students have had growth in both Ela and math in the last two years this slide I am incredibly proud of this is represents students for whom their home language is something other than English and for the first time in five years our Portuguese students for whom Portuguese is their home language have made it onto the chart for meeting or exceeding um State Standards we want to work hard to increase that project trajectory for all of our students but it's I feel like a noteworthy accomplishment this is our map growth and achievement looking at fall of last year and spring of last year and in math although this represents the entire school it's interesting to see that the growth 14% is exactly what we had in our third grade math so we're making strides in the right direction in math our literacy D data spells out a need for improvement and I will speak to that next and one of the things that I wrestle with and I'm sure the entire District does is to balance the urgency for the students right in front of us to increase their achievement and the fact that change takes time so we've paid deliberate attention to being as careful and specific with a and committed to impactful use of our student and teacher time and here are some of the ways that we're doing that in literacy we have taken our additional 27 minutes and the entire school first thing in the morning at the same time has a phonics word study and spelling block at that time the um English as a second language teachers and the special needs teachers and the interventionist deploy themselves on a schedule into those rooms to support those students those lessons are Then followed up when they are pulled out for English language development or if they're staying in the classroom for their Ela instruction so it's a systemic schoolwide approach kindergarten through third grade in some basic fundamental literacy and reading skills and it is the time that our newer English speakers are in the same company as their English-speaking peers and learning the same things at the same time we much like our colleagues are focusing on tier one instruction um given our population this year actually 48% of the students in emys small come from a home where the the first language is something other than English and to that end we begin to work with our English language Learners in our preschool program we have um this is our third year we had a one-year pilot and then um this is our second year with full implementation where at each grade level our students who should receive 45 minutes of English language development do not leave their classroom room instead the ESL teacher pushes in and co- tees during writing our monthly PLC meetings as colleagues have mentioned we have usually four in a month and we have three focuses literacy math and then um looking at data and intervention and we are very deliberate about those times for example uh our recent literacy PLC brought student work samples at each grade level they looked at them against rubrics and then they made plans for how they might lift that instruction going forward um we also began last year what I call collaborative clusters and on our faculty meeting days when we don't have a district initiative to attend to we divide our staff by they created the groups and then they choose which groups they belong to we have one for our PBIS another one that pays attention to how we support our English language Learners in the full School Community classroom and Beyond and then our literacy leadership team for math I'm engaged in the math leadership coaching and that has really um for those of you who know me I was English teacher English major literacy coach so this math hat uh thanks to Kali and Betsy is fitting a little bit better we have as I mentioned math PLC meetings and in a math PLC they look at the preassessment For an upcoming module they look at the upcoming module and they think about at a grade level where they need to pay attention again we're focusing on tier one instruction and our collaborative cluster that focuses on our English language Learners in our last meeting brought up looking more closely at English language development specific to math so with the help of um kbal and Betsy and the math coach were really digging into that and again learning learning academic language a rising tide it will lift all boats but it's specific to that barrier that you mentioned earlier about um language and math and then in both Ela and math we are really deliberate about our schedule it's pretty much how I spend my summer and to that end every student has a 90 minute Ela block 45 minutes for reading 45 minutes for writing and 60 to 70 minutes minimum 60 Minutes every day of math instruction and also um I look at the grade level schedule so that there can be a special needs teacher that sees all students in the same grades so all first grade teachers aren't having math at the same time if they need support in there um and that is kind of what my grandmother would call the fox the chicken and the bag of oats and what goes over the fence first and it takes a lot of thought and deliberation and it looks very pretty on paper but more than that we keep lock step with that um classroom observations that focus on tier one instruction implementation of District curriculum and grade level standards this year a huge shift for us and this is really to the credit of Shannon Carlson our assistant principal is focusing on multi-tiered student support and really looking at who needs our tier 2 supports and looking at data once a month at plc's along with our interventionists students are for the first time really engaging in flexible intervention because it's very purposeful and when that skill is met they move on and someone else takes that seat and I think that's it for me thank you so much you're welcome we'll start Mr new thank you so my first question is uh does your demographic match Station Avenue or is it different percentage wise I believe it's different Mark you want to look that up no Mark doesn't all right yes he does I I thought about doing it when you asked Valerie and then I was like I don't want to be the person looking down at my phone so I didn't well that's all right sometimes I look at the book rather than the charts over there so it's uh some slight differences so uh again last year's uh enrollment uh for um em small for again for the whole building 14.2% identify identified as African-American 2.5% identified as Asian 16.4% identified as a Hispanic 1.8% identified as Native American 62 62.5% identified as white and 2.5% identified as multi-race non-hispanic so it's it's not that much different not it's it's fairly accurate but the percentages aren't but the student enrollment is a difference of numbers right some right yeah and that's based on uh yeah right correct all right so wonderful increase from 23 to 24 in your math Trends are there any best practices that you can identify that that reflected that that increase yes I think the eure squared this point 2.0 the um and the emphasis that we put on math and I think there was a a fresh curriculum and a real Buy in by teachers at each grade level who' piloted it the year before so there was a what we don't often find when we're bringing in a new curriculum a real hunger because their colleagues were so effusive about it and then it gave um teachers a chance to really be at the same point all together and then of course our work with our math coaches and maybe a little bit of um the leadership work with carali and Betsy but mostly the teachers hard work thank you and then I'm looking at the downward Trend 22 23 24 in the ELA um anything that you can identify that that is a cause of that because given that Staffing levels are virtually the same our demographics are kind of the same and the cohorts potentially are the same is there is there anything that you can identify that that would result in this my working Theory and that's all it is just my working theory is that um given our high percentage of English language Learners we they have sometimes not had the same opportunities in terms because they're learning a whole new language but so early on which is what spurred me to the phonics word study and spelling block Al together so we we'll see if there's anything to that theory but because there's just there can there's some experiences that are different and I'm that's what I'm thinking about um but I'm not sure all right I I'm just very interested in identifying the wise behind the test scores and then if it's something that is a positive you know let's let's let's find out why and replicate it and if it's something that's negative let's find out why and stop it or change it so all right those are my questions thank you you're welcome John Mr War MERS Miss beus for the 27 minutes of uh phonic word study and spelling block what curriculum materials are you using so we we are using our existing curriculum materials the found and panel word study spelling and phonics which when it was rolled into the 90 minutes I'm not sure how much of the specific phonics was happening so this is in addition to our readers and Writers Workshop and to the point of scheduling and being a bit overbearing in the lock step approach every classroom is on the same lesson at the same time because the special needs teachers and the ESL teachers need to be able to support that work when they have the students in another setting thank you is you know to Mr new's point about the percentages and you know it's just for having almost again my numbers are fictitious or probably pretty accurate 120 different PE less students than station have so when you look at those percentages the number of people is high you know for specifically the economically disproportionate um and and it's it's important that we continue to look at you know all of the different levels whether it's race or economics of how we're approaching and you know as much as the maybe the numbers are similar school to school I think it's great that the approach is different because our student bodies are different you know the this what were need to be done uh is different so it's it's good to see that we're individually looking at the data by school and and making approaches towards what's best for our students and every year it's going to change right so to again to Mr news Point something's going to work and you're going to do it again and something's not going to work and you're going to change it so it's just every year we're going to still have these meetings because every year we need to do better right right and for the three of us elementary schools we have to ensure that each of us in our own houses prepare students to move on together right they all need to be at the same starting point when they go to Mr Blake at 4 exactly so exactly as much as they're different they all have the same expectations of where they end 100% as all the fifth graders have the same expectations as they go into the middle school regardless of the same building or going from floor to floor exactly the expectation in our curriculum is designed in a way that all students should learn the same things and the discussion of tier one our change of concentrating on the you know used to remember the pyramid we used to talk about tier one tier two tier three when I first on the committee and you know working on the three is that you know starting at tier one and making sure all students are given the curriculum and you know the The Specialist or interventionist versus the coaches now two different words now now I have a better understanding of them by working on the coaches coaching the teachers to ensure the tier one instruction their better tier one instructors will then affect all of the students below so all the students will come up it's it's all starting to all these presentations are starting to make sense of what are doing and goes back to our you know our our district goals and then our stool our school goals um and in essence our hopes is that we'll continue to help our our scores go up right and you know I know there's scores but it's it's it's all about the education that our education exactly that what we're teaching the students is the highest quality and that all of our students are equitably learning right so that regardless of what any of our three k to3 schools because they all have wonderful um aspects of them is that they're all starting and ending with the same information and prepared for you know the rest of their eight years after that so so thank you you're welcome thank you and then I think we're ready for Mr deppon and Ezra Baker we've been talking about Ezra Baker and it's almost 90y year building 94 94 who's counting no one's counting oh who's like CR handdrawn crane so good evening everyone um we'll see if my plan worked toas figured me out um so here's what you need to know about Kevin deppen I'm very competitive so I'm going to speak the longest I'm not but I do watch a lot of food competition shows so and then you'll know Marilyn that when you watch food competition shows if you can use the ingredient two ways you get more points and so uh tonight when you see some of the data you'll see that I'm kind of showing the data in two different ways and I hope to be clear but I'll answer any questions and stop me right in the middle of I start to ramble Mark does all the time how do I move my slide this ah so here's our mcast Ela Trends and so if you look on the left we look at the number or the percentage of students who are meeting or exceeding in the area of vaa and you see that precipitous drop and and it's alarming and I know I was alarmed when I saw that and uh what that means when we say our percentage of kids meeting or exceeding expectations it's on the mcast test if their scaled score is 500 they either are at 500 or above or they're 500 and below so if you're at 500 you meet and if you're below 500 you don't need and so only 32% of the third graders last year as re Baker met 500 and so I was really curious about that and I wanted to look more and so I started really digging into the data and I started looking way over on the right um this is the same results the same data the same class but we're not looking at how many what percentage met or exceeded 500 we looked at their average so all the third graders at Ezra Baker versus all the third graders in Massachusetts and what did what did the average of Ezra Baker versus the average in Massachusetts look like and you see a different story so I was curious and so um it's good news and bad news right so in 2023 if you look on the left I was doing great I exceeded State average I'm like all right we've got it going on but if you look at the right you see that for the last five years of data at Ezra Baker we're always just hovering around where third graders are in the state sometimes we're a little below and sometimes we're a little above and that's not to excuse the fact that between 2023 and 2024 uh we did drop an Ela not quite as precipitously as the left graph would make it seem and that's something that changes the way we think about our data and changes our action steps which we'll get to later in the um presentation okay I blame the keyboard so our math Trends are a little different so uh we we didn't have much of a change between 2023 and 2024 but you see uh that we did exceed the state in the number of students who met that 500 Point threshold and if you look at our scaled scores on the right again we're slightly above the state in the average of all the third graders at Ezra Baker versus the average of all the third graders in Massachusetts so we're we're slightly um moving up in math and then we start getting into our groups now this is going to look different in your packet uh old Eagle ey Sher Santini noticed um the the graph that you had in your packet uh compared the state average versus the students at Ezra Baker on uh as identified Learners on IEPs this graph shows those students who don't uh who aren't identified with an IEP versus the students who uh have an IEP in place or are identified in third grade that was 19% of the third graders who took that test last year at Ezra Baker and so you can see uh that there is a gap the Gap is slightly smaller but that's only because overall we didn't perform as well in ela when you're looking first at those numbers of students students who met or exceeded 500 points again the second is still Ela that second graph and that is when we look at the average so the average of students on IEPs versus the average of students not on IEPs is a little bit closer similarly the very same is true in the area of math the bottom Green Line those students in on IEPs in math they're doing slightly better uh over last year but just slightly not quite as good as it 2022 and there's a large gap between the number of IEP students who met or exceeded standards versus the kids not on IEPs and math who did And yet when you look at their average score it's much closer and so then we get into other groups right so these are students who are identified as lowincome students that was 62% of the third graders who took that test at ASO last year uh 43 students I believe and excuse me and so um when you look at the achievement Gap first in ela you'll see that uh the Gap I said to mind the gap I minded it but not quite as I would have wanted because the students not low income who don't identifies as low income um had a bigger drop than the students who were low-income last year but again whenever we're talking about low income and talking about Ezra Baker most kids who took this test were low-income students 62% of them of of that grade um and again the second graph very very same scenario you're going to see time and time again that when we're looking at the average score for those kids it is much closer than it would appear by the number of kids who were meeting or exceeding in math uh the trajectory is is much something we're we're much happier with uh we see that our our low-income students are going up and then uh unfortunately those students not low-income students in math last year did have a little bit of a drop and again when you look at their a average score the very last graph there they're almost the're neck and neck they're they're almost there so it would show that there's not much disparity between those two groups so English Learners so um English Learners is a group in our district that continues to grow at Ezra Baker it continues to grow and the majority of those students who identify as uh English Learners at Ezra Baker are really um levels one and level two so kids who have very little Proficiency in English so far they're they're growing in that certainly but we can see that uh in ela the number of students meeting or exceeding an expectation has been going down year after year again these are different cohorts of kids with greater numbers of students this present year we have 88 uh English language Learners at Ezra Baker so it's a number that is growing um their performance over time when we look at their average scores again it's going down but again the Gap is smaller uh math tells a different story and this is a story we're seeing time and time again for the data R asra Baker so uh in all of these subgroups our students in math proficiency is going up and um and again the first graph is how many students hit 500 or above the second graph is those the average of the English language Learners in math and the average of kids who are not English language Learners math previews okay students okay so I I kind of split these um these scores up so again these are the students um Group by race we're we're looking at uh student performance by race and again on the left by how what percentage of students met 500 and on the right the average of the kids who identify in each of those race groups and again we're seeing the same story but but it it it's kind of really important here because on the left the number of kids hitting 500 there's there's a disparity certainly white kids and then Hispanic then other which is everything that's not Hispanic or black or white and then our students who identify as black are at the at the bottom of that graph when you look at the average of students who identify as Hispanic students who identifies as black students who are other students of white you can see there's three of them that are almost at the same average score and then the students who are black are are slightly below that but again the Gap is nowhere as great as that and then this is the same information uh in the area of math and so the left we can see each of those groups um by the number of students who met or exceeded expectations 500 and on the right we see um again the disparity is very close and we see that um I may be colorblind but I think it is my Hispanic students are actually outperforming each of the other races and then we look at this information um by by first language students who whose first language is not English and whose home language is not English and so on the left those students by uh Portuguese other and English um and we see that um for the first time uh just as m m said our students who are Portuguese speaking made the graph in 2024 um and so we we had a percentage of students who were meeting or exceeded expectations and on the right you can see when we look at the average of students their averages are very close so there's there's less disparity so white kids the average of all the white kids if we you know we had I think it was 45 uh students uh who spoke English and if we average those 45 and we had six students who spoke Portuguese and we get the average of those six like their averages are the same and then the same information but in the area of math and we see with the percentage of students who were meeting or seeding um on the left and their average scaled scores the average of how they performed on the right and we can see that my highest performing on this graph uh in math were my Portuguese students outscored uh students who were white and students who were other and then um on the left again you can see that those three average of those kids were were much closer so I looked at this this chart everyone has been showing you map growth so map is a different Benchmark assessment we give it three times a year in every grade um kindergarten for a second and third I know we do fourth and fifth and I don't know quite how high up it goes to um but I I didn't pull what we did last year I I am sort of looking forward so this is our live data for the fall of this year and so you can see for uh in area of mathematics for all grades uh the Ezra Baker School is at the 62nd percentile I'm starting the year there and for it's I br BR it down by grade levels down below so in kindergarten they're at the 67th percentile grade 1 62 grade 2 53rd and grade 369th so that's a sort of a a metric and forgive me if if I'm mansplaining something but so that meant if like if all the schools who took this test if there were a 100 um as a whole in MA in in massach as a whole the Ezra Baker School would be score higher than 61 others would be six 62 and so um that's uh I have some interesting information because you probably can tell I'm a little bit of a data geek and uh I got into this data as well I'll talk a little bit more about it in a moment we look in the area of literacy or reading it's really reading that they're me they're measuring as a overall in the school we were in the 61st percentile but for kindergarten 67th 53rd for grade 1 54th for grade two but 6 7th for grade three so that's really promising um NWA has a high correlation to mcast Performance um and so so we're we're encouraged by seeing that certainly the idea with these charts is not to stay this isn't this is just where we're beginning we want to move everyone over into the green everyone over into the blue um but it's um it's where we're starting interestingly enough uh 32% of the last last year's third grade um scored meeting or met or exceeded expectations on mcast that is exactly what nwaa predicted for them last fall so that's prophetic maybe and it's also a challenge as the building leader to say we should have grown that if that's where they started in the fall we should have grown that and I wonder why we didn't so uh my instructional Focus it's not like I'm less focused than everyone else well maybe but um you've heard you've heard a lot at this point but uh we've been talking a lot about the extended minutes and we took that very seriously at our level getting the gift of 27 minutes and what we did at asra Baker is we put those 27 minutes into the um into the literacy block and so um previously 90 minutes were allotted to literacy in every classroom this summer I I planned it and blocked it out so that two hours 120 Minutes were um were allowed it to literacy we talked about it as a faculty throughout the spring and we really made a focus on writing and so by that I meant we we did a couple of things we added a writing Benchmark assessment uh I heard that the Mr Blake did the same thing here at the intermediate school so three times a year every student is assessed on writing those are scored and we make action plans for how to strengthen writing um we revamped our tier two instructional practice so um we we know that our focus is tier one right classroom strong classroom instruction for every learner but some Learners need more about 15 % of them and uh previously uh we would put a child and get them in tier two instruction and then even as they met their goals for that we'd say we're just going to keep you in there Glenn because you know we don't want to put you back and have you fall back so we're just going to keep you for a longer amount of time uh We've really changed that practice and we've worked hard because anytime we're giving you a tier two you're not accessing tier one or if you're accessing tier one you're not getting independent practice time and all of these other assessments are independent so we want to make sure if you need tier two we're going to give you what we need we're going to give it to you for about seven or eight weeks we're going to make sure you got it and then we're going to send you back and if you need something again that's great but we're really going to be very focused with what we're working on um so you get to this other one so many words deepened understanding and strategic use of Benchmark assessment information so it sounds very scarly um and I'm not sure I am but what I did learn from looking at the NWA that map assessment is there are so many reports and if you're a data geek you look at all of them and they do this one report that's a quadrant and if you score in the 50th percentile you're high growth and high achievement and when you're the building principal and you see that Marilyn is high growth and high achievement I'm not worried about you right I'm that's great you're high growth you're high achievement you're going to do just fine and then we take the mcast and find out that we didn't so if you go through tons of reports you can find that well that's a little different for every state and we have a state with very high standards and a very hard mcast test and so if you really want to be high growth and high achievement in Massachusetts you have to be at the 65th percentile so what we discovered is that there are you there's a group of kids who scored 50 and not quite 65 and we think they're doing great but they're not going to do they're not going to meet or exceed on mcast so we have to look at those kids and I'm not saying they all get a tier two intervention but the kids are like in my classroom I'm really going to watch out what's happening there because they're they're strongish but they're not exactly where they need to be and those honestly were kids we were really not looking at before we were looking at those kids who were below 50 and that's in both math and reading um and and like all of my colleagues um increased observation and feedback and um accent if I could have bolded this I would have accented on the feedback because you know you know we're observing all the time both informal observations in the classrooms what we see but it's giving teachers that feedback that they can use it's not like oh you did this or you didn't do this but like hey this is how this can be your teaching can be strengthened and so that's really really important and it's very much the same in math um everyone has talked about our math coaching but only I can say that you know I've been a principal longer than forever um 29 years and I've never been involved in coaching like I have been in these last two years it's it's very challenging frightening at times not the person just the the expectations um but it's been very important and it's well though it's in the area of math it has also changed the way that I approach my observations in literacy one of the things that maybe smarter principles do is they have the curriculum so when I go in to watch your math lesson I have the curriculum I'm like oh you did that but you should have done this and now when I go into literacy lessons I say hey what lesson is that and I go back and say oh all right so again it's it's it's not like people aren't teaching the curriculum but there's like something often you can point out like you did this part of the lesson great and you skipped this part of the lesson and you know teach say I know that I ran out of time but so it's it's really informed feedback and and I see it making a difference in Daily instruction um this is our second year with Eureka math squared and as we see um for example one of the things that the curriculum did is they tried to simplify language for English language learners for kids maybe who have a language processing difficulty and we see that difference in in some of the scores I want to think that some of the up upturn in scores was because this new curriculum um again I'm I'm looking at that Benchmark assessment information and really making sure that I'm that I know what it's telling me and that I can help teachers know what it's telling them and then of course increased observation and feedback so that is the story I did not speak longer I did give you the information two ways and I'm happy to take any of your questions thank you so much Stephan start with Mr new thank you thank you for the charts and looking at it two ways and so the 50% versus the 500 it's beneficial for somebody like myself to see that and so what do you attribute your school achieving that 500 Mark so consistently are are there best practices is you know what what are you looking at as an administrator that says okay we're doing fairly well with this so again I have a lot of answers to that so we didn't achieve the 500 and so the meeting and exceeding I know you didn't achieve it but you're you're but we're approaching it correct and and so what that says to me a as an administrator and what I've really been thinking about is like like it it becomes a very different game plan so when when I saw that precipitous drop I'm like what happened did we forget how to teach literacy what happened and then when I look at it the other way I think to myself this is really a game of of inches I think that's a sports metaphor but I'm not a very sporty person so I don't know so it's it's making sure you make the most of each day for example it's making sure that we're not doing I mean I love recess but we're making sure that we're not squandering that extra minutes it's like one question or two questions for a few kids and those numbers jump up so it's really holding the expectation high for me making sure that teachers understand what a third grade piece of writing should look like because it's easy um it's easy to lose sight of that you know you have a class in front of you and they perform a certain way and you and you adjust your expectations for the class that has in front of you and it's like we always have to keep like this is what third graders need to do this is what kindergarten students need to do um we do a lot of talking about um um sheltered English immersion strategy so that's like what every teacher can do not the El teachers but you have students whose first language is non- English in your classroom there are ways that you can make um this material accessible to them and we we all learned about it but now we talk about it a lot more because it's important for people to know that there are things we can do every day to to make those changes and they're little things it's not like it it's making sure you have a a strong lesson plan in front of you it's you know it it's just important like every every move matters so uh another question uh observation evaluation assessment are all critical Tools in in helping the person delivering the curriculum to uh have available to them somebody do that for them um how many contact hours how many contact days uh between you the coaches other administrators you know curriculum supervisors how often is uh a faculty member the person delivering the curriculum how often are are they assessed as to their ability to deliver the content right so it it varies probably for individuals so there's a certain amount of time each day but if you're a newer to the field um so you're in your first few years of education I probably been in your classroom three times already if you're someone who's been there for you know 20 years and it gets good results I've probably been in once so far this year and so it it varies by the need of the professional there's sometimes people are struggling with something and um that that's just my observation coaching Cycles happen all the time both in math and literacy so are they on a weekly basis monthly basis a quarterly basis the coaching again I think it varies by individual teacher but um they are on a regular basis and feel the coaching is is an important and valuable tool uh within uh uh you know the context of of helping uh the teacher uh deliver the curriculum better absolutely because this is hard work like these teachers are working hard and and everybody thinks their level has it the hardest but I'm telling you elementary teachers have to be good at everything all day long and know keep track of everybody's coat and uh lunch money uh no lunch money but lunch box um and so um and so they're working hard and they need someone to to help them see the way because they know what they have to do but depending on any set of circumstances it can seem almost impossible to get there and then so looking at the data you provided you know there there's uh a definite drop off grades one and two you know kindergarten and third grade level your charts you know achievement is exceptional but then grade two grade one there's a drop off what do you attribute that to those no I'm getting disregulated I'm sorry no um so again so I I think you know the strength of our curriculum we have a very challenging curriculum our kindergarten kids they they knock it out of the park we have you know they''re done very very well I I just want to point out that if I looked at those numbers last year and I said that they were above 50% I'd be like they're doing great they they're in you know wow they're 53 that's better than half the country um but it's not good enough in Massachusetts and so I just think it's it's very challenging these kids are little they're six years old we have high expectations for them and we just have to keep working to get them there so my last question um have you been doing this type of assessment on a yearly basis over the over the many years that you've been an administrator here in the district they had an invented assessment when I started but so so certainly no we've been doing the NWA I think this is maybe our third year 202 all right so 2020 and we've always done different assessments and these are benchmark assessments right we're expecting that in every class classroom every week if not every day assessment is happening teachers are taking reading records or Running Records of students performance there are every day in math just about an exit ticket which tells you did they get this lesson or they didn't they have topic tests and module tests or like chapter tests so there's a lot of assessment that is going on these assessments give me a chance to look at the whole school Under sort of the same testing conditions I thank you accountability is is a huge piece uh of what we do I think in education or what you do in education uh and I think this is a way to provide us with uh data that that gives us that type of assessment you know so thank you I appreciate that thank you Mr Martin M Landers just be Miss I I just have some things to go over what everything I won't necessarily have questions for you one of it is you know from listening to the um District strategic goals there's been a lot of conversation about tier one which I talked about earlier and more emphasis on the increased observation and feedback and you all talked about it as did the other ones and I think it's been a great from what I'm hearing it's been a great opportunity for the administrators in all the levels the assistant principles principles and it has put more um you know levels of of what's going on in the classroom right you know we do have people that been there 20 years and some that are newer but we're still going in there and to your point of you know pointing out you know constant feedback is needed making sure they're at the same point as their other teachers are um and making sure that we continue to do that and it just seems that the goals that were set over the summer are really coming into play and you know I'm hopeful but again I'm hopeful every year and scores don't always turn out as we hope because students are different every year but um it's it's we just need to constantly see what we can do and then you know the ndwa we talked about you know the map testing I love this testing because there's instantaneously results um you get three times a year you have results that you can react on yes they project what mcast could be but you can Target what you're doing from the fall ones in the winter in the winter in the spring you know it's not that mcast is taken and by the time the results are there the student is someone else's teacher or Worse another building and it's backtracking what was missed you know this stuff is instantaneously in the year so you know that adaption the adoption of that is definitely something that I think has been a benefit to the district and I'm I'm hoping will continue to be something that we can constantly look at to see where in the year for the year what we need to do um you know you know and things that we've talked about before I know we started with the with the high school and not a lot of great news um with our scores but what we constantly read about and have learned about is how important that third grade is and you know a lot of the things we read about how important our literacy needs to be in that K to3 and how that will affect the graduation rate seven years later right the 10th grade test store you know the graduation in in grade 12 and how important it is that we take the time because if we miss it in this young age it's it's starting to be too late by fourth fifth 6th sth and if they haven't gotten by Fifth because we missed it earlier it it's going to really start showing so you know we appreciate all all that's done in all the levels but it's it's just you know where we're putting the focus at at each grade level to ensure that we're covering them through their whole time with us right and it's the prek right so we have two schools in our district that are prek to three so we have even younger students that we're working on and as as miss m talked about you know starting with them with the with their families and their understandings of things to help prepare them when they are into the kindergarten level um and it'd be perfect if we had the space to have more prek um I know that would be something that would be amazing um I know we're not there and I don't know if we'll ever get there but uh the fact that we have that opportunity um to have that is is a great thing and it's something that we hope to continue so that we can start earlier in that education so so thank you to all of the administrators today and over the last couple weeks Dr Smith anything before I move forward or I know it's a lot I think the only thing that I would say is just um really just to Echo um I there was something Miss maiti said which and really just something that I said the after the last um last round of presentations which is you know that change does take time um and um just to reiterate something that you were just saying which is that what I see from my seat is a lot of a line effort um you know that these aren't just presentations for the sake of the committee this is also very much aligned to the work that I see going on their buildings um that's aligned with the work that I see going on um in central office dayto day uh and you know it's all built on our theory of action which is really centered in our strategic plan and I I it's really the work that we believe is going to is going to turn and and I think you see the math data is trending in the right direction and that is really sort of a a microcosm that's last year while we were really spending a lot of time together as a leadership team learning and learning each other and learning and Diving deep into the district that's sort of the one place that we did some real kind of focused work at K to5 uh and and now we're expanding that strategy across the district and and you see some of the early signs of success there and so we're hope not only are we just hopeful right we're not just like I don't know foolishly optimistic I don't believe I believe there's there there is some data that's suggesting that we are on the right path we have the right strategy and now I think I think to m a couple things Mr new said earlier is you know not only do I think it's just common sense a good strategy but there's actually a lot of research to support it you know look for the right spots right find the things that are working well and then how do you replicate those so I think we've seen some signs that the strategies that we're using that we used at K to5 to support math are showing us some positive signs it was showing up in the uh in the map data at the end of the year last year so I was glad to see it also replicated in the mcast data and now how do we expand not only within mathematics but how do we push it across the other subject areas and that's sort of been the focus of this beginning part of this year thank you and then the the last only comment I'll have is that I've appreciated the work that the teams have done together I've seen more teamwork between grade levels or grade uh building leaders between buildings together working on projects that you've assigned or that they're working on for presentations like this or things in the beginning of the year so that their presentations are the same you know but getting them to work together um throughout the district has been a good thing to see as well so thank you uh next thing we have is the school committee lead the board of Selectmen anything from the town of Dennis town of Yarmouth did have a an additional special town meeting last week in this building um for two items and then um bard of selectman had some discussions so we'll talk about further on that miss m mentioned already about the msba so we'll bring that up later uh K PB collaborative Mr uh Morris was unable to attend so we will push that off to our January 6th meeting uh School building committee all right so um a little bit of an update which to give a little bit of um context for the motion that we're hoping to get from the committee so you know we've been reporting a little bit uh in brief sections to the committee that we've been working let me back up a little bit further so the committee authorized uh David and I a while ago to put out an RFS uh for design for the field project so again just for the edification of the public for the couple of people that might still be watching um the the yeah they're all asleep right um that might watch later on the recording the the um right the you know the fields are not working the way that they were designed to work um and the yes and the um and so we need to rep repair and replace the fields and we have a um we have a separate uh legal uh issue working we're working that through a separate legal Channel but we also need to fix make sure the fields are are operating in the way that they were that the school district uh wants and they they were originally intended so essentially the water is not draining through them so we put out we had the school district put out an RF or we were authorized to put out an RFS to get a new design so that design was created um and the original process was we were going through the existing general contractor for the whole project so uh and they were then seeking subcontractors to do the site work um so last couple times we've been reporting was we were we had gotten subcontractor bids and we were working with the general contractor and they're going through this process called leveling sheets where they get it and they try to get all the prices to match and quite frankly we just weren't really comfortable with where the pricing was coming in um and we kept trying to work through the contractor through the subcontractors to get the pricing better and we just didn't we didn't feel like it was in the best or we don't feel like it's in the best interest of the district to continue down this path for a couple of reasons one we don't feel like it's the best pricing two that should we find ourselves in some type of illegal um battle down the road that we properly have done our due diligence and that could make the leave the district vulnerable um and that's really kind of the one and two those are really kind of the the the two heavy um lines so then uh through internal conversations plus conversations with our OPM so that's PMA um they're the owner's project manager trying not to use too many jargony terms um that we our recommendation is to take the take that project and put it out to General bid so we would get an entirely new general contractor that would do this project we believe we'll be able to get better pricing because we're not going through our general contractor to a different contractor you know you essentially you're getting markup when you're when it's coming back to that way and and oh that was the third piece the third piece is um the subcontractors that are coming back to us don't have as much expert expertise in specifically building turf fields as we believe we're going to get interest if we just put it out to General bid um so those are three reasons why one pricing um so I guess really just yeah one pricing two to protect the district should we find ourselves um in a legal Challenge on did we do enough du diligence in enough due process to find the best price and three to uh try to attract some more uh contractors who have a longer history in this specific type of uh construction am I missing or anything no that that's really it just a you know further the um Nezar engineering our designers they were trying to dig into why were we not getting some more competitive bids as a subcontractor through Commodore on this project and know kind of hearing off the Record that you know companies who do this for a living meaning install fields this is primarily their business that they do quite honestly didn't really want to be a subcontractor of somebody else like if you bid this and it's our project like we do 95% of our other projects whether it's at a college University High School yeah we'll bid the project oh you want us to do it as a change order as a subcontractor to a big general contractor at another site contractor do work they didn't want to be you know the third or fourth Cog in the wheel so on the advice of the owner project manager and the designer and quite honestly talking with those legal council are we doing our due diligence making sure we are getting the best pricing because if it ends up in court someday we want to be able to prove to the court and the lawyers everything that this is a fair price that we didn't just take a price off the shelf and have an inflated price and by doing this it can be the design that we want and potentially get a subcontract of that again this is what they do for a living and we felt we've gone this far down the road we're in December this is going to add a few more weeks at this point which a few more weeks if it's going to get us the contractor who can do the job at a better price thank you looking for a motion I move to authorize the district to publicly bid the repair replacement of the turf field at Dy IMs as its own separate project second we have a motion to Second any discussion okay do we need a roll call Vote or can we do a no nor call so all those in favor say I I any opposed any abstained motion carries next we have a policy subcommittee first reading okay I'm doing dja uh what's different about this is again is going to say Regional School District in the title the first couple of sentences are sort of just clarifying and revising and the last two sentences are new here here's how it reads Authority for the purchase of materials equipment supplies and services is extended to the superintendent through cost centered appropriation as part of the District budget process the purchase of items and services within the cost center appropriation requires no further committee approval except when by law or by committee policy new contracts may be entered into for a period of up to three years contracts of longer duration may only be entered into by vote of a duly called school committee excellent so that's the first reading and then we have us any questions on that yeah is that an msba recommendation to do the threeyear yes okay thank you any other questions we have another first reading for another policy yes this will be for or uh a brand new policy um uh filed K DCB District website and social media um reads as follows the school committee wishes to ensure accurate delivery of information and as such the Dennis Yarmouth Regional School District will maintain a district website and such district and school social media accounts as authorized by the superintendent all such online platforms will be maintained by District staff acting in their professional capacities in order for Public Communication with the school committee and District Personnel to be responded to in a timely manner in line with the legal requirements for Public Communication commenting on all district and school sites will be turned off every school and District site will clearly indicate this policy and will direct those wishing to contact the school and District Personnel to use the appropriate venues to do so unauthorized use of District or school name is prohibited a high priority will be placed on such platforms being accessible frequently updated and userfriendly great again this is a first reading any questions The Source on this says does come from the mass Association of school committees on this so it's a recommendation from them as well yeah and I can just add a little context and so this was brought by our new um Communications and community relations uh position uh staff member and uh and tied to both our strategic plan and tied to one of the superintendent's goals around consistent policies procedures Etc um and identifying that we don't have a social media policy um and in doing some of her work she's noticed that as an example there are several social media accounts that exist out there that are us utilizing the Dy um logo utilizing Dy name Etc um and so this would give us the policy cover that to then establish some um guidelines um for how we operate as a district um you know there's some specific things laid out there that we'll have our District page have the um um the the comments sh off but then also sort of there's the line in there around the authorization sort of who you know unauthorized use is prohibited so then we're uh we we will then put some procedures in sort of regulatory pieces in on a process for requesting use of the DIY logo and name and how we track and monitor who's out there using the Dy um name on social media Etc um so this this gives us the policy cover to allow to place um procedural safeguards in place for the district from a communication standpoint along with other things but miss lers so there are a lot of sites I mean mostly in my world right Facebook pages and groups that use the district name or and school names so you know I'm just curious what the conversations have been around and enforcement of this policy and how onerous this is going to be or not on our staff to regulate these um and how proactive they intend to be on going out and searching out these pages and what the protocol will be for trying to enforce this so you know again so working with Leela it's been a conference she's already started to search out and find you know a a significant number of them some some are you know people well-intended people doing good stuff some I have an alumni like Dy alumni page with like thousands of people in the group and it's so part of it is just you know us knowing knowing who are the person having contact information for the person and having author so we're going to have to sort of work backwards to all the existing Pages who's the who's the moderator of the page um are you you know again are you using official Dy name Logo Etc um and if you are have you been authorized and then who's the contact person for that page um if it's being run by a student we need you know we talked about policy piece like who's the sort of Faculty advisor that we're going to attach to that piece and then sort of some policy guidelines or not policy guidelines policies your realm some some procedural guidelines or sort of expectations right so if you're going to use the Dy name here's what we expect um because this is what it means to represent Dy wherever you're going um it's not going to be with the Wild Wild West um and so like if you want to use the Dy name then you got to you know live to these standards so to speak um and so first will be communicating with everybody who's currently using the Dy name and um and then go from there and then anybody new who wants to then there'll be this request process and so this is a sample policy from masc yeah and that's straight from that that policy is straight from straight from Mas so obviously been vetted in terms of constitutional issues freedom of speech all of that right interesting yeah and I think you know we'll have a lot of control of what individual student groups and staff members are utilizing I think a lot of it you know was looking at that and then you know the things that are unaffiliated with us but you know I think you know a lot of focus has to be put you know will be first on what's affiliated with us and what's being posted by our by our staff members and student groups and then you know going from there right I think making sure we're consistent on what we're doing as a district and then go from there but yeah and there's a difference between a you know a parents page that's Loosely connecting itself to us versus you know uh I'm not trying to pick I don't want to pick any one particular group out here so a group that is you know there are several pages right now that are literally using our logo um and are tied to one or more than one of our schools using our school address um but are run not by a faculty member or are run by a faculty member but is not run officially by the school right so it's like getting our hands wrapped around all of that um you know um like I'll put myself out there I have a Dy superintendent uh Twitter page right so like it's I should have to go through this process just like everybody else um because if I'm going to put myself out there as the as officially representing the district I should have to follow the same guidelines as everybody else um but there is no policy that says that that's even a thing um right now that there are expectations that and that there has to be an approval process for representing Dy out in cyberspace that anybody can say that they're Dy right now you know Tomas could start a a page and say that he's Dy high school if he wanted to and we don't even have a policy that says he can't I think there's a lot of work that needs to be done but I think the first step is if this policy moves forward and is approved that we will have plenty of work cut out for her any other questions perfect these are first readings so we there's no vote on this um next we have our finance subcommittee Finance subcommittee met prior to this meeting um the two top ICS that we discussed today were the 2025 budget update we discussed where the fiscal year 25 the current year we're in is trending and there's currently no specific items that we're over or under in uh we pretty much seem to be on target obviously things don't come things aren't build or money received monthly like in other businesses things come in quarters and lumps but from what David said there's nothing that we foresee to be um outrageous or under or over in any particular area I where did that correctly thank you I won't make you speak David and then the next one we talked about our preliminary budget projections um we've discussed budget numerous times a lot earlier than we have in the past um we've already had several discussions with towns um the number you know has changed from September 1 to today uh you know looking at some of the items it's a tenth of a tenth of a percent 100th of a percent uh difference but again we're still talking about a little over you know $3 million difference from September 1 to now as we're looking at where we are um but again as we all know nothing is really definite yet and we won't have anything until the um Governor's projections which will be in January so a lot more discussions to happen uh we have talked last week last meeting about our upcoming budget dates that we have on our calendar so more to discuss on that Dr Smith anything I missed uh just that we'll have our for First full committee presentation uh at the next meeting on January 6th perfect and that moves into superintendent report all right thank you so um just there are a couple of items that are uh that came up kind of last minute over the last uh bit of time that are not on the agenda so I will be adding a little bit to the superintendent's report um here so uh starting with acknowledgements um unfortunately I need just I really need to start with acknowledging a significant loss uh in the district um over the over the weekend uh the district experienced a significant loss uh on Saturday Dy High uh lost a student Jillian uh better known as Jilly Andre's passed away uh Jill's been a student here in Dy uh for nearly two decades uh starting with us at the age of three during her time here in Dy uh she uh she had many uh personal and deep connections with uh several staff um and all those that worked with Jil had a very deep and um personal connection and we're enriched by the experience of knowing Jill and and H and and and having jilli in their presence she'll be she'll be dearly missed um I was able to meet with the staff and students that um most closely work with and spend time with Jill um now at the high school and it was evident from that meeting um how much Jill meant to them and you know there was there were definitely tears there were some smiles and and rethinking and reliving some of their favorite memories there was was a fair fair amount of Taylor Swift being played apparently that was Jill's uh favorite favorite music um and I just want to you know say that our hearts our thoughts and our prayers go out um to the entire Andre's family um as they navigate this tremendous loss um and we offer our deepest condolences as a district um as fellow parents as fellow caregivers and just as fellow humans um it's a terrible loss and I can't imagine um not only just the loss but the time um to be experiencing this loss so um as as as a district um our thoughts are with them there's no segue from that but trying to seg away from that uh we want to thank um there are some donations or a donation that we want to thank um I want to thank Miss uh Deborah Benassi uh for a generous donation to the Middle School um she donated two Bose headphones to the Dy Middle School um which will go a long way to supporting students um within the district uh on the agenda there is an Miss Mai mentioned um Emmy small so uh as she mentioned on Friday the district was officially in invited uh by the msba board into the eligibility period uh our eligibility period officially begins on April 1st 2025 uh and that'll start our clock for 270 days you all have in your packet um some DET more detailed information on what the eligibility period involves and what the specific steps are that the district will have to go through um some of us on the staff uh myself David our facilities director Miss Mahi will be attending a training early next week um to get more details on the eligibility period but big picture the big kind of first the big couple of steps on there a lot of it's paperwork stuff um and meetings that we'll have to attend but a couple of the big steps is we'll have to form a building committee um so I'll be um a planning at the end of this week to have a press release and and to talk uh and to sort of get the word out and at least plant the seed about a building committee and then I'll have a process a little bit later about that and then the other big piece will be um getting uh local authorization for funding for the feasibility study because that's the next phase is the feasibility study but we'll have to um get uh funding for the feasibility study and so that really sort of leads to I think something for for the the committee to be thinking about and uh Tomas mentioned that the garmouth select board did discuss um um this a little bit because um the Town Administrator I had let the had invited the Town Administrator to come to the meeting on Friday so he had let the board the select board know and I think you know we're obviously going to have to this is a Yarmouth specific Project based upon um the way the regional agreement is constructed and I think it might be a good idea for the committee to think about some type of a joint meeting with a board of Selectmen fairly early in this process to discuss the process um I know that they expressed some interest in that or at least a couple of the select board members did um and you know if that's something the committee is interested in I can start to work with the Town Administrator to organize that um and if you all want to you discuss sort of what that agenda might look like or um you know I'm happy to take Direction on that I'm happy to pause here for questions I've got a couple other items but I don't know if you want me to get all the way through the report or pause here for stuff on me small or move forward Jenny I we definitely at some point we'll need a joint meeting with the select yth select board I just if we do it too soon there's just too many unanswered questions so once you have sort of critical mass of information from msba then I would definitely support a joint meeting thank all right all right moving forward um so the next uh is the competence and determination so a couple meetings ago I mentioned uh that you know we had the passing of I already forgot which ballot question it was too maybe uh yeah the so the the department of Ed released on the 11th so I think that was last Wednesday um some updated guidance and then on the 13th the Su the the superintendent Association the state superintendent Association retains legal council so the legal council provided an opinion on what the uh the uh the department Ed had released and the new guidance is going to require both the school district and the school committee to take some action and we're going to have to take some fairly quick action uh because we have to put some things in place for the class of 2025 when we do not have a lot of Runway um and and we're going to have to develop a plan we're going to have to communicate that plan and we're going to have to implement that plan all uh for our students who have to graduate this spring um and so I don't have a ton of details for you but I can share with you what I'm pretty confident that I do know so what I'm pretty conf or what I do know based upon the guidance and the interpretation of that guidance by legal counsel is the following that the the CD and the local graduation requirements are not the same thing under the interpretation of the law so we can't just say we'll use our local graduation requirements as the CD so that's not those two cannot be the same thing um we also cannot decide even we can't decide to use the mcast right so there was a question like oh well can the school district just decide to vote to use the mcast test no legal council believes that that would be violating the spirit of the what the ballot question was um and that it would really position the school committee to be challenged legally and I think that makes a lot of sense um the CD must and this is what's written in the law is that the CD must quote show Mastery of the skills competencies and knowledge contained in the State academic standards and curriculum Frameworks in the areas measured by the mcast in the high school test described in section one administered in 2023 so it's we have to have a system that shows competency in the math test and the ELA test and the science test from 2023 so those specific standards so we can't be just sort of dig you pass English it's got to be like something specific to those specific areas um we also need a process oh and then the process whatever process we come up with um will need to be approved by this body so I'll get to the next steps in a second but um and then as another fun layer is we're going to have to have a process for graduates uh who feel that they have met whatever we process we come up with but didn't earn their CD under the old system to be able to come back and to for us to determine under our new process do they get the CD even though they didn't get the CD under the old process which involved the mcass if everybody's following that one that one's a little clumsier there's no guideline on how many years I would say and since maybe the mcast as a CD was put in place question mark um so what's next yeah um um so next steps is I already have a meeting scheduled for when we get back from vacation with uh High School leaders including the department heads um specifically those that are in the content areas most affected curriculum directors Maria and myself and so what we'll do on our side is work on developing a sketch of a plan or really developing a plan because then we need to get that in front of you all Asa AP uh because you'll need time to review the plan discuss the plan either vote to approve that plan or send us back to make revisions to that plan um and we need to get all that moving in enough time because I think what I failed to metion mention is or I think I failed to write down to myself is we not only we need to communicate the plan we have to have it available multiple languages so like we're going to need to and get it out we and like it obviously has to have enough time for like let's just say I'm going to make something up right now like that we determin that's a particular course like a 10th grade course that that's a Lynch pin to um getting your CD because that's the one that we determine passing that one is one that meets um one of the requirements of the CD and we have a a kid who graduated um who's gonna graduate this year but and didn't pass that course so then what's the process or is there a process or are they just out of luck I don't know like those are all sorts of things that we got to figure out in very short order um because it again it can't just be their graduation requirement where we just say yeah you you got you got all your credits that's that always was in place this has to be something separate than that um that meets the same level of this CD um so again more to come and that's what we're going to be working on um internally as a team all right next um so I shared with the committee in email on Friday U and this ties back to all the presentations today so uh we've seen pretty consistent decline over the last couple years in our Ela uh data and the committee is aware because I shared with you in an email um and the general public may or may not be aware um that there was a lawsuit filed in Massachusetts against two uh major curriculum developers uh ftis and panel and Lucy ckins um and Founders and panel happens to be the literacy curriculum that we utilize in as a district in K 5 um so you know I've gotten a couple emails from parents um questioning you know are use of uh this Resource as a as a district and so what I guess what I would say is we have a plan and we had a plan plan in motion to address um so I don't want this to be as if we're responding to the lawsuit um however I do feel like it's necessary as a district to make sure we're communicating out um at this point um we had a I had a plan for communication and this is accelerating my plan for communication so um I want to give a little bit of context and sort of tell you about what's what's coming next um so prior to the news of the suit um we had begun work um as a leadership team um at the committee may remember uh one of my goals was to um analyze barriers to earlier liter early literacy so and this was really focused on the trend in the data had seen the trend in the data and wanted to figure out what what some of the challenges to that might might be and uh so I started earlier this year by pulling K to5 principles together um and appropriate central office staff that that support that same um range of students or the same age range of students and we had started to dig into our data we we begun evaluating our existing curriculum resources um started to establish some common values and expectations for what we wanted to see in a literacy program and we were doing all that work and then the news broke around uh the the lawsuit so the the that kind of accelerated our process and and it's getting late and I want to give this the amount of time that it deserves and be conscious of the time but just from a change management standpoint like I really it's important to me to make sure to to do change right so I was working to try to bring everybody and bring consensus among the leadership team before working out to a larger scope then like I said the story broke so it's really kind of accelerated my change process with the leadership team and so Sherry and I had a conversation Sher San director of humanities and I had a conversation and we're really gonna sort of now accelerate um I I had a superintendent say to me a long time ago never waste a good crisis so this this has created an opportunity to um move the change process forward a little bit faster um and so our plan was and now will continue to be and again just moving the communication of it forward a little bit faster uh to put together a a larger team now uh to investigate the appropriate or investigate a new curriculum resource for us as a district now I think it makes best sense to put this team together late uh winter early spring this team will be made up of uh a wide um spectrum of teachers that represent that are representative of the K5 space are representative of the different folks that impact reading instruction as well as um key leaders across that space and they'll work uh so we just part of this too is like I think or as you know in the um strategic plan part of the the second strategic objective is all around consistent processes as a district so we just created a curriculum resource adoption process there wasn't really a clear curriculum resource adoption process in place prior to maybe three months four months ago so I think you and I have had this conversation before at previous meetings it's like all these things are seem disparate but they're also really connected um um so we put um so the this team will follow that new process and it's it's meant to be a thorough process to ensure that we have a resource in place that will meet the needs of our kids that's rigorous that's standards aligned um Etc so this team will work through the spring um and by early next fall will'll be ready to make a recommendation and a decision on what is the best resource for us that is so that then the leadership team can take that decision and start to work on an implementation plan and be ready by the FY 27 budget process because this will not be a small ticket item but from a from a budgeting perspective will then be able to come to you all with a couple of funding options so you know here's what a full K5 onetime op implementation looks like with all the training because we have learned things about the training from the math about what's needed to really do a proper implementation and there's the resource adoption like the purchase of the stuff is one thing and all the training and support the sum that we can do inhouse and the sum that we need help with um and that has a cost with it too right um so you know they'll they'll be sort of here's the Allin we do it all on one year cost you know here's and this was sort of what I've mapped out with Sherry here's the we do it over two years here's we do it over three years um and lay all that out because there like I said there is a budget impact um so that is that where we sort of stand on that process and I think that's everything but there is a plan there was a plan it got accelerated a little bit and then oh and then I guess the last bit is I will because I don't assume everybody's going to be watching this um planning I was I was going to do an internal description of this to the entire faculty my plan was to get it out today then we had the um you know we we had Jiles passing which I didn't feel like today was the right day to share that information so this week I'll do an internal messaging around this as well and then I have I'm scheduled for a superintendent message at the end of this week so I'll include um a summary of this um out to everybody as well um so that folks know know what our plan is as a district um in my superintendent's message on Friday questions comments M Landers so the lawsuit against ftis and panel was filed by parents so it's I haven't done a lot of research yet but it it's not a class action suit I don't think that we could join in but maybe at some point it is a becomes a class action suit that that we join in or maybe other districts intervene in this case and become plaintiffs and I mean if we're going to have to buy a whole new curriculum and you know maybe there's are there going to be damages are there are there going to be I mean this is a consumer protection act case of some sort so so I mean I'm hoping at some point I mean maybe there's you know some money here for us to to offset this cost that we're gonna have yeah you and maybe you and I can have an offline conversation because you are speaking a little bit outside my wheelhouse um but I um I know I remember something reading something in an article about potentially structuring it in a way so that it could be but it's not currently structured that way is my understanding but again it's not my area of expertise I'd have to lean on legal counsel for that one M um I I've been tracking this since the governor made uh literacy a a focal point and a lot of money um which was last January's budget and um so I'm hoping there are incremental things that we can do for the current third graders or the current fifth graders or those who we understand may have some gaps um now that we have updated information um and you know I've been digging around a lot uh on the desie website and there are grants now granted they're already committed up through uh this school year but I hope we begin to look at those because they seem to I know they're going to continue in this Governor's budget um I also think there's incremental things that we can begin to do that are just easily available maybe try it out maybe a little piloting not a big investment through the mass Literacy Council and I suggest we start doing that now great thank you a lot of information um next we have our school committee business consent agenda which includes the donation from Deborah benasi of the Bose headphones and the minutes from December 2nd 2024 move the consent agenda a motion do we have a second all those in favor any discussion all those in favor say I oppos abstained okay bills requisitions and payrolls been passed around calendars um there is no school from December 23rd to January 1st we will return to school on Thursday January 2nd um and then following that we'll have our school committee meeting on January 6 which will include the first budget presentation and public comment there's no one left in the public so I will skip that anyone raises their anyone raises their hand the camera will not turn to show anyone sitting in the public um so we'll move to the last part anyone want a motion motion to adour all those in favor say I I oppose abstain thank you everyone