e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e Welcome to the Monday April 8th 2024 meeting of the Dennis Yarmouth Regional school committee I move the Dennis Yarmouth Regional school committee enter into executive session to return to public session to meet or confer with the mediator as is find in section 23 C of chapter 233 we respect to any litigation or decision on any public business within its jurisdiction involving another party group or enti provided that any decision to participate in mediation shall be made in an open session and the parties issues involved and purpose of the mediation shall be disclosed and no action shall be taken by any public body with respect to those issues which are subject to the mediation without deliberation and approval for such action at an open session motion maen seconded further discussion we'll do a roll call vote Phil Tomas Marilyn Jen I I vote I so we will be back e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e welcome back to the Monday April 8th 2024 meeting Den reg school committee let's do the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you very much um we're going to go right to our student reports that they've been waiting so patiently while we were in executive session hopefully we're getting some homework done or running around getting some track practice in thank no me and Izzy were chatting it up some good advice um so a couple we haven't been here in a couple weeks so but we don't have too much to update you on so I think two weeks ago we had our concerts our um spring concerts we had a jazz band concert a regular band concert for both um the eth and 9th and then the 10th through 12th um and our bands combined with the New Horizons band which is a program on Cape Cod with um older folk who enjoy playing instruments so they collaborate usually like on Mondays but this time they took it further than that they took the New Horizon and they combined it with the regular day-to-day School band which um was really cool um and then we also had Orchestra they were same like day after day um and those are both great concerts and we have our spring um concerts coming up very soon we also have mcast so last week the 10th graders took their English mcast and tomorrow and the next day eth graders will be also be taking their um English mcast so I know it's a stressful time for a lot of students um so they've been encouraged to have a great breakfast you know early sleep just take their time on the test I know the eighth graders last week they did free cookies at lunch to encourage their peers to get excited for mcast which was a really good initiative um and then we also had an AP fair about two weeks ago which is a program that we do in the gym to kind of encourage students to sign up for AP classes so the students get to like walk around and talk to real students who are currently taking the class and they kind of just give you information and you sign up and you can Shadow the class which is where you will go when the class is regularly in session and you just sit in the background and you kind of talk to the students and you just see how the classroom operates and see if like that's a good environment for you and whether or not you'd enjoy it and see like what the teacher is like and it kind of just makes it easier for students to understand and see if they can see themselves in the environment because AP has talked about like very highly and it's like AP classes are hard stressful rigorous and like some people don't think they're like I can't do that but then when you go and you sit down in the classroom like you see the students you're like oh I know that kid like I've taken a class with this kid and like this teacher seems super nice and like the work that that they're doing doesn't seem too hard so it's a really good way to get students to um get more involved and take higher steps towards education so we also have spring Sports going on um we're about a month in all our teams are doing great we have lots of gam scrimmages all that going on right now and we're revving up for break so after break Games should get more serious um more like for example Spring Track has more meets like weekend meets that's when we're going to start up um and we also have the dolphin Dash which is May 11th so we're we're excited to see what comes out of that we know the proceeds go into user fees so I know a lot of students um are ready to participate and volunteer at the Dolphin Dash to make sure that they can get their peers more into sports and the Band program a lot of the money from the dolphin Dash goes into the band so I know a lot of students are excited for that going off of that we also have a ton of trips coming up for DIY in the upcoming weeks so on Thursday we have our apite kids and our IP program kids which I sort of touched on the IP program last time I was here it's like the healthcare Pathways program and we're all going to Belmont Hospital which is right outside Boston and it's a largest brain Bank in the world and we're getting to talk to a lot of researchers and it's the same researcher who had come to thei about a month ago and sort of had that meeting with us and everybody's so excited Mr hatch everybody's very like very much looking forward to I think it's going to be a great opportunity for us um we also have I think leaving Thursday morning is our Japan trip which is so so exciting everybody I know who's going is just like can't stop talking about it everybody can't wait I know Mr Hansen has done so much preparation for this so I think it's going to be such an amazing trip and then we also have next week during vacation we have our um Band program winter percussion I think is going to Ohio to Dayton to Nationals which is usually a yearly trip that they make and they're all so excited as well I mean it's such an exciting time for Dy coming up with these trips um and then also we just had a winter guard and percussion this is sort of like their main time so they have concerts coming up all week and then they're prepping for Dayton next week and then also so tomorrow marks the end of our term three so we're sort of in the final stretch of the year and then we have vacation week coming up which is exciting so grades Clos tomorrow report card should be around next week and then some new classes for the eighth graders and just finishing out the year strong for everybody else um I will add that um at a recent meeting Mark gave um Rosanna a certificate um at one of our meetings of for the her superintendence award for excellence and we were um Mark Maria and I were privileged to attend the dinner at Tech last week which was a lovely event put on by the students at the tech school um where she officially received the award along with uh the recipients from the other districts um again what I mean Rosanna is an incredible standout student and a great representative of our district and um I I don't want to share your news but we did learn that day that we had already she had already shared that she had been admitted to Yale and then the day the ceremony what Ros what happened Rosanna um about a week ago I also got into Harvard so I mean huge congratulations to you for the award and for your accomplishments and we can't wait to see what happens next so thank you so much and thank you both of you for being here and giving these awesome reports we really appreciate it um next is the presentation on the turf at the at this very school where we sit um so we've got so I'm going to welcome I just a brief introduction so um as the committee is aware and the and the members of the public may be aware we've uh been having some challenges with the turf field here at the new school um specifically around some of the drainage issues with the school so as part of working with our OPM uh PMA we contracted a thirdparty vendor uh from Halen Aldrich and tonight we have Mark kayy who's going to come and do a presentation for the public to share what the results were from that testing so I'm going to invite Mary up to the podium to do a presentation uh about what the testing and the results from that from those tests that were conducted a little while ago a few months ago are you just going to hit the bit button there thank thank you doctor okay we were engaged to do uh infiltration testing on the fields and also to measure the grain size of the material that was used to create the fields and uh let me just give the public a little bit of background around who Halen Aldridge is and who I am Halen Aldridge was founded in 1957 in Cambridge and we've now grown to 30 offices across the country we do everything in the geosciences which is geotechnical engineering and environmental engineering all below the ground and anything that happens to happen we do a lot of foundation work for new buildings we do tunnels we do infrastructure we do remediation site cleanup but we've also done a number of eth atic Fields specifically Synthetic Turf Fields we've done some of the first ones were done we've done a number of them for colleges and universities in and around the Boston area and in the University of Connecticut and in DC uh we also have done synthetic fields for middle schools and high schools similar to what you have here so we're very familiar with what goes into these fields and how you build a Fields I myself have been with the firm for 49 years and have been practicing in the geotechnical engineering are Arena but I've also been involved in a number of the fields specifically at Harvard University and North Eastern and Boston University with that I'll start into a presentation and this is going to present the data we collected and also a review of what was specified for this field from the designers from Perkins Eastman and terse Landscape Architects and what the contractor also built with that okay so we'll go through the technical documents first and that's what was in the contract documents to build a field we'll then go through and summarize what Halen Aldridge did in the testing program which we conducted at the site here in January of 2024 and then we'll open it up for discussion so just to give you some background the field is essentially is um a drainage material that is below the turf below the shock pad then you have a material that is placed as a drainage fill above which or below which is the what you see on the screen is the Triangular or angles shaped and those call we call that a herring bone of layout and now those Herring bones are a flat drain that picks up the water at about 5 foot uh 5 m sorry five yards apart it runs it over to a header pipe the header pipe is sitting along the edge of the field both on the plan North and plan south of this field on this one it flows out then to a infiltration Gallery that's under the roadway as you drive into the middle school there's two details I want to look at uh in the next slide that will show you what they look like one is at the header pipe and one is at the flat drain the upper one detail a is showing you that you have um a geotextile separate seating the natural soils from the base course and a finishing Stone which is 2 in the total layer of that is 10 in 8 in of of base and 2 in of finishing then the shock pad goes on the uh Turf goes on and the infill is placed in that at the very bottom of that right on top of the geotextile is the flat drain or J drain that essentially takes water once it passes through the turf down to the and through the Bas Stone it goes into the flat drain over to the header pipe which is on a detail B that then directs the water to the infiltration systems beyond the field the specifications called for two criteria one criteria was a infiltration rate of 30 Ines per hour and one called for an infiltration rate of 16 in per hour all both done in a similar testing manner which is called a double ring infiltrometer which is a test procedure that was developed in uh in Europe for these kind types of fields the initial testing was done uh once the field was the stone or the base Stone was placed the um contractor or the architect hired firly Sports testing and they came in and tested the field sitting on um before the turf the shock pad or anything else have been down so you now have the drainage flat drain below this field and you've built it up to the underside of where the shock pad will be placed and if you look at the numbers down below that gives you the infiltration rate that they measured four locations in the um on the lower field and four locations in the upper field and they varied from I think it's 21 to 35 the contract documents all o had two materials specified one was the crushed stone base and the other one was a finishing Stone so you first place the crushed stone base down and then you use this finishing Stone to essentially choke off the stone base but also to allow the contractor to grade the field very very closely to what they want they laser grade these fields so when you put down the shock pad and the turf you're relying on a very very strict CR criteria for elevation so that the field will play at at at the elevation you want so just to give you people a sense of what that means is the base Stone what you see in the yellow is the criteria that gave you uh an upper bound and a lower bound and what I've done is just plotted that in yellow on this showing what the base Stone specification was and the contractor submitted a sample which was done in a grain size test and plotted over this and as you can see it meets all the criteria falling between the upper and lower bound of what was specified by the architect for the base Stone the same is is done for the finishing Stone it's a little bit finer grain material and it the upper and lower bound is shown here and the the material that they submitted for the finishing Stone was tested in a grain size and plotted over this drawing also so when material was delivered to the site as the base Stone the architect looked at the base Stone and felt that they could use the base Stone from the top of the geotextile was placed over the sub natural subgrade and you and did not need to necessary place a finishing Stone one material was used to satisfy both criteria so but there was never a specification revision so I just took it as it had to fall somewhere between the yellow and the blue and it would meet the criteria for it there was also a discussion at the time whether or not they needed a geotextile which is just a material that separates a fining grain material from a coar gray material the material directly around the header pipe was a 3/4 in clean Stone and the question was asked do we need a filter between the two to separate those so that the upper material wouldn't flow down into the low material it was decided that that was not necessary to be done so it was eliminated what's shown in yellow is the geotextile runs across the subgrade down under the header trench and back up and meets the curb that runs around the entire perimeter of both Fields the material delivered to the site that I was indicating to you is um when it got delivered as the Bas Stone the architect looked at it both Perkins Eastman and the landscape architect and decided that the they could use that Stone from the Geotech from subgrade up to the underside of the shock pad this just gives you a summary of testing that's been done today is uh in January 2022 grain size tests from Cape cot Agri was produced and that was what I showed you previously on those two slides with the yellow and the blue in October of 2022 Fields a and Fields B was now been prepared and ready for the turf and and was tested by Firefly Sports testing and they did infiltration testing and also uh leveling of pity as they call it in infiltration testing in come July of 2023 the fields now finished and there was concern about the fields not draining Traverse who was the landscape architect who designed the fields uh engage Sports labs to do some drri testing which is double ring infiltrometer testing and I'll show you some photographs of what that looks like in a minute but they did some testing at the lower field and the upper fields and took some samples of the base Stone material for testing in August of 2020 23 um Traverse went back and collected an additional seven samples of this base Stone and what that means is you have to cut the turf you peel the turf back you dig down remove some material and send it to the lab they used Pine and swallow as a lab at the same time PMA the owner's project manager also collected seven samples and sent it to a different lab FEG to do also grain siiz testing so you'd be independently testing two types of materials Halen aldris was engaged in January of 2024 to try to determine why these fields were not performing as intended and what we did is we went out and took five samples at different locations within the field four of them were laid out on a on a from right to left on an angle across the fields we got some two tests in each field were along the uh where the header pipe was and two tests were on the actual field field at about the 40 yard line and both and then we did two other tests one in each field at areas where we had some questions of what we were seeing with the turf one was next to the curb and one was down by the retaining wall um at one area of the lower field so as I said in the post construction field testing this was uh by travar in August and September of 2023 they went and did a number of tests and you can see the dots up in the right upper right hand corner that sports turf tested the field but they only tested on top of the turf they did not cut the turf and test on the Bas Stone they tested on the turf and the results of that would indicate that these fields were would perform well uh at the same time they took grain size tests out of onea and then they went back and got seven more samples and the results of those samples are summarized in one slide from here but all the testing that's now been on the feels is in pink that's Firefly Taris Pine and swallow FEG and then the blue or what h& did most recently where we did triangular across the site getting some testing within the actual field itself whereas you notice on the pink all the pink tests are on the outside of the field field adjacent to the pretty much adjacent to the curve so what do you find when you take a sample of this you run a grain size which means it's just a number of cves or screens if you will and you place the sample in it and you the sample is then shaken and you measure how much is retained on each Civ you invert that to come up with how much past each Civ and you come up with a grain size that we have plotted here which in this material fits in those blue and yellow um upper bound and lower bound of what he had done before what we've added to this sample is the samples that h& took or halien alris took at the lower field we just super imposed them on the previous testing and if you can see that most of the testing all agrees with each other within a few percentage points but what it tells me is that if you look at the number four Civ which is just below the lower field the number four Civ is a demarcation between gravel and sand and these samples all would tell you that you have somewhere about 40 say 45% is sand up to 60% is sand so and that's important to note that is there's a lot of sand in this material that you're act asking to be a drainage material and as you can see it falls all within this upper and lower bound that was defined in the contract documents so the materal meets the contract documents per se this is an area where I saw a loss of ground next to the curb uh so we pull back the carpet there and we pull back the uh the shock pad and the shock PAD as you can see is that white black and white material we pulled that down and I excavated by hand down along the curb to one visually examine the material that was below the shock pad and trying to find find whether or not it met the detail that was shown on the contract documents there was some areas in the lower field that down in the uh lower left-and corner of the field it looks like they had been underdoing some repair I think that may have been somewhat due to what they were doing it when they were building out the bath house but there were a number of places on the field as you as I can walk it that field should be almost level and if you look at the picture on the right it's I'll call it wavy so that to me that indicates the turf is probably floated at one point in time these materials are are lighter than water so if you essentially flood the field they will they will float so double ring infiltrometer what is that it's it's two rings that you place in the ground you use the red handles to work it into the ground and then you fill the outer ring and the inner ring so that you get a wetted front in front of in front of going down into the ground because you want you don't want test material that is not saturated so what you want to do first is saturate the ground and then you measure in the middle ring from 10 m to 30 m so you take sorry that's millimeters so you measure over that 20 millimeter range you then calculate uh inches per hour for what this is and this was a surf uh from a European Standard that is used in the United States for measuring infiltration on these fields so when in Halen ald tests we did tests of the material as we cut out the turf as you can see we cut the turf out typically a 2X two square but we also tested immediately adjacent to that to see what the turf and shock pad would give and if you notice on the right hand side when you get to Upp a field five and six is the turf and shock pad is is in inches per hour is up in the two to 300 range if I'm reading that right on the lower on the on the upper field to the left side the first two tests we ran are in the 30 to 45 range I think is I'm reading that right and then as we moved to the right on this field at location four and five we essentially have material that is either zero or or 9 in per hour which is well below the criteria that we're presented for the field and we have done the same thing for the lower field and in this field however the results at one location we got to a nine but the rest of them once you got the ground saturated we essentially had no infiltration but yet the turf is is in the 3 to 400 range so it's not the turf and the shock pad it's the material below so we took as I said five samples in each of the fields and had grain siiz test run on them and they all follow within and as I indicated to you before this the demarcation between the gravel and the sand is of number four SI and you can see here significant portions of the material that is in the base material here is about 60% sand 40% gravel we broke it into the upper field lower field and in the lower field we found a difference in color so we took two samples of one test toll location but there's not a lot of difference that's the plot on the right hand side so but all of these are pretty much similar the one test that's a little different on the left hand side is at the the lower bound there that was taken directly next to the curb so near the curb we have more gravel siiz particles than we have out in the main playing field with that I'll open it up for discussion thank you very much for your presentation um anyone have any sort of clarifying questions based on what you've seen sat through your first presentation so that we could get a renewal of our knowledge base with the second one it's technical but it you explained it very well and brought people like me along with an understanding what has been your experience in situations like this with public response or request for more information the public will ask you questions that want to know more of and also opinions but if you notice tonight I did not provide any opinions I was just reporting on data that we collected and that was the intent of this presentation to get you up to get you and the the public up to speed on what we found in the fields thank you very much Joe thank you for your um I'm sorry thank you for your presentation it's um a lot of numbers and and whatnot but I I it's very well understandable um the question I had was a couple other companies did the double ring test um and you seem to and I understand your logic behind it is you want to make that you want to saturate the soil um before you do the the actual test do you know if the other companies did that did they did do did they did they saturate the soil before or did they just pour the water into there and just test it I would assume because we use Sports lab also and they test all over the country I would assume they did infiltration but their numbers are significantly different than the numbers we got in January and I don't know exactly why but fired in both of their reports no one said how they ran the test and in fact when we got the results from Sports lab and they were delivered to us and said I was here I saw what you did I need that written up in the report and they were very difficult about not providing details of exactly how they ran the test which is what we would do all the time is because we want people to understand what we did but what I know that in the January testing we did we saturated first which is what I required because you need to test saturated soil not dry soil dry soil will give you a different number it will give you a much higher number because it's just starting to saturate what you want to know is once it's fully saturated is the water flowing through this material getting into your drainage the flat drains I talked about in they were only 10 inches down and getting that water off the field immediately so that you can play even in Rain events right thank you um the other question I had oh I can't remember what it was um was oh you had you had talked a little bit earlier about um it's not good down into there so what's in essence has happening is it's going through it and you can see it in the um the numbers it's going through the the turf going through the shock pad very easily and then it's hitting that um that the base the base level and not going through the base level but it's going horizontally across and that's where you're getting the puddling and things like that because all that water can't get down so it's horizontally moving to the sides um and that's kind of a good that that that's correct what you want to do is be these fields want to be very vertically drained not horiz horizontally drained because you think about it the field is a football field is 55 yards wide well if you have horizontal drainage it's got to go 26 yards or whatever before it ever can get into your header pipe so what you want is the water to go down and that Bas Stone needs to be then very permeable of porous to allow that to occur and for some reason it seems to be getting stuck between the shock pad and the drain right and I I'd like to keep things simple as I can and and I was taught at a very young age when I was working with a with a bu with a a gentleman who was a builder and and working in the district and his son was on the building committee also and and he always taught us as kids when you were thinking of plumbing and and drainage and things like that you think like a drip so that drip is not going down to where it needs to go that is correct and and just so we're all clear is the turf is a material that is it's a rubberized or synthetic hdp backing that is punched so it has holes in it the shock pad is in fact a material think of almost like a styrofoam that has all these little balls that has also High permeable they make this to have a permeable permeable rate of over 350 inches per hour so both of those materials are very very porous which is what you want because that drip is getting down there but we need to get it from there then down to the drain and that's where it seems to be plugged right thank you very much anybody else did either of you want to add anything to the all right um we also have representatives from PMA here if anyone has followup questions for them I mean for the benefit of the public we'll just say we've got all the right people in the room and we are we're working on this so Mark do you want to add anything to that no I would just just to Echo that last statement is that we're you know this was an important step and we'll continue to take this information and move forward with it we're working with ropm closely to figure out how to resolve this issue you know I think I've said to the committee this is not what the building committee or the building project was designed for was a field that didn't drain so uh we're working to make sure that we get the community uh what the community has paid for uh and we'll make sure we get a a remedy in place I'm sorry just real quick I'll you're mentioning PMA um they've done a tremendous job of being stewards through this whole project not from just the turf aspect but from the building and when they brought in the when they brought in that that um Stone they saw it and they had concerns for it so they contacted the the um the AR landscape architect and they had them come out and test it and check it so they were on top of it so they've been on top of it ever sense and I commend them for for being so diligent about you know making sure that the the the professionals did the made the right decisions but you know an estimate we see that somewhere along the line things just aren't draining in so I just I commend PMA for for being um diligent on it thank you all right thank you so much for your presentation for being here tonight all of you thank you thank you for your time good evening uh Mark your report all right Ross is just getting me queued up I'm actually going to hand out for you all oh you need this sorry oh you need the mouse or I probably I probably could have done that one two three four five six pass that down that one you have it but you can have it again all right so um you all have the detailed version of my report of Entry findings so as you all know I've been working over the last eight months or so as part of or doing my entry work as a new superintendent in the district and is one of my goals uh as well as a new superintendent or as part of my superintendent goal process and so you have the detailed report which is I know multiple pages and we're not going to sit and read through all the pages uh it's already a long enough meeting as it is but I did create uh a presentation just to try to hit some of the highlights and just to cover the the major themes that came out of came out of the report and the the the report itself uh will go into will be shared broadly and will become sort of a matter of record uh but again I wanted to do a Public Presentation that went over the highlights when over the themes and speak a little bit to what the report says uh so that's what the this is so a summary of just sort of what I've been doing for the last eight months as a part of this process and so it's been a multimodal approach been really trying to first start the whole underlying premise has been trying to as a new superintendent coming in really trying to collect and analyze data from as many different perspectives and from as many different data points as possible with the ultimate goal of trying to develop what are the common themes that come across all these all these different data points as I'm collecting them and analyzing them so how did I do that well I interviewed had individual interviews with a wide variety of folks I ran focus groups I conducted surveys as well as looking at existing surveys that were conducted by other folks for other purposes I reviewed a wide variety of documents that exist in the district I regular got out to hundreds of classrooms whether that was doing that with principles or participating in and supporting structured districtwide content focused learning walks I've been to a wide variety of school functions and events and then analyzed a wide variety of data uh including achievement data growth data financial data enrollment data Staffing data procedural data and and our policies and then that the underlying premise of that was really to try to get capture as many voices as possible in the district so I've really spoken to and listened really more more importantly listened to families teachers student groups uh school and District leaders staff union leaders Town officials Public Safety leaders Community leaders State reps and yourselves you know we all when I first started had individual meetings and then obviously we've been participating as a group uh for a while now at this point so the one of the first things that the report talks about is what did I what have I learned about the district as and and it's important for me to understand the district from like a profile pers perspective and just have a basic understanding in and I think I've mentioned multiple times I looked at like to look at things over p over time because I think having a a Time bound or or a trend bound understanding helps helps understand sort of where things have been and where things are going so you know I had more details in in the more detailed report but a couple of the big things that I tried to lift out because they've also come up in in our recent conversations is thinking about enrollment we've talked about this during the budgeting process that after steady 8-year decline decline declining enrollment we've actually seen a pretty steady increase in enrollment in the last three years to where we've actually had the highest enrollment we've had in the last 10 years this year that's driven a lot of digging into that sort of where are those kids coming from a lot of them are a lot of the kids are in the youngest grades prek in particular as our biggest spike in enrollment and the rest are kind of distributed still mostly concentrated in the younger schools uh like Emy small as an example uh has had seen a 177% increase in student population uh over the last since about 2020 since about the same time that Spike started but uh Ezra baker has also seen a very Sim similar spike in enrollment again a lot of that's driven by prek we've also seen a shift over about the same 10-year period in a 3565 Dennis to Yarmouth split to a much closer to 30 to 70 split and we've also seen the percentage of economically disadvantaged students increase from 40 English increase from 12 to 26% and the students receiving direct English language learner instruction uh increased from 8 to 18% % our staffing has been anywhere between 600 and 630 employees over the last 10 years and we've seen an increase over the last several years uh in in that number and as we've talked about during the budget process as you look back sort of historically there's definitely been some inconsistent Staffing models around class size case load size intervention Etc and then looking at from a finance perspective again looking at Trends and patterns over time coming out like if you go back to about 2018 prior to 2018 if you look at from a per pupil expenditure basis the district was behind the state on a per puple expenditure basis but uh some investments in the district over the last several years we've actually significantly moved past the state on a per pupil expenditure basis and and that shows you know good positive growth and obviously we're heading into a tougher time right now and we all know we've we passed a budget uh just recently heading into next year that is a $2 million reduction from a level service budget so while we're in a significant growth period we're uh you know heading into in a in a you know a more challenging time in going into this next upcoming year so as I looked through all the data meeting with all those folks there were themes that emerged from the from all the conversations all the listening all the looking and the they largely fell into two buckets right themes that s that talked about the strengths of the district and then those that fell into areas for growth and future future Improvement so the first area that was an area for strength is the theme that I labeled dolphins swim like this and it was probably one of the very first things that I noticed coming in which is that there is a ton of Pride within the district about the district and about being a dolphin it's very clear when you first start to meet people that people in the district love being a dolphin and beyond that and I've talked about it here in in public session I talk about it a lot when I give have had to give different short speeches already in in my short time here that there's many different ways for students to ex achieve excellence and and demonstrate excellence in the district the our student reps actually already just spoke about a couple of examples in their present in their you know sharing tonight but whether it's through you know our Championship marching band or the honors the V the wide variety of National Honor Society offerings we have or whether it's through our Athletics programs uh a student that I'm going to talk about in my superintendent report later today you know rosanna's amazing amazing accomplishments there's just all these ways not only for students to pursue interest but to excel within their within their interests and then there's this idea of a a pre to 12 Continuum of being a dolphin I've worked in multiple districts and been in multiple districts where the the mascot isn't a pre- to2 Continuum but when you enter into DIY you are a dolphin from the very first time you walk in the door and that builds this Pride from the very beginning and kids are dolphins from the very way and they talk about the Dolphin Way in every school from the very beginning right and it builds this this idea that this is what it means to be a dolphin from the very beginning and and then that sort of builds onto the next bullet which is this idea that the people are what keep up the pride in the district so when you start to meet and talk to people you find the place is littered with returning grads people who have kids in the district or have had kids in the district and that it breeds this real loyalty to the district and then the last thing was you know I met with different uh focus groups and there's this real mutual respect between families and parents the parents talked about you know one of my questions was like what are the greatest essentially it was a strength based question and and I asked very similar questions amongst groups and the the family groups lifted up the teachers as one of the greatest strengths in Dy and the and the staff groups lifted up the families as one of the greatest strengths so you it just speaks to this Mutual trust and respect between between the two groups so the next is this idea that this is our pod right and so building off the pride people really celebrate and cherish the there's two different ways this shows up and the first is the school-based Traditions that build community identity and belonging so there's a bunch of examples again Rosanna spoke to one of these right the dolphin Dash but there's and I could have gone I could have wasted a whole slide just on listing the ones that people brought up but I just grabbed a couple of them SE senior last day the athletic Hall of Fame the third grade news show holiday concerts turkey trots staff versus students basketball game just happened last week uh all school meetings Etc there's all these things that happen within the individual schools that make those schools those schools and and create the identity within those schools and are about bringing that school together around a common identity and help bring everybody and give everybody a sense of belonging within that school and they're seen by multiple groups that I spoke with is integral to the identity of that school and as somebody who's gotten out to a lot of these events they are well attended by staff students and families and then folks talked about these District unifying events which are things that stretch beyond the school that actually bring us together in a prek to2 way so some things that were lifted up were the graduates going back to visit the school that they came up through the system in so you know going back to Ezra Baker or going back to their middle school experience Etc talked about the athletes and the musicians visiting and performing at the lower schools I talked about the work based internship program that has a lot of our high school kids working in the schools and talked about the teachers walking at graduation that they're these unifying events that again bring the district together beyond the walls of just the the one school and then the the next and the final uh strength that really kind of lifted was lifted up is this idea that there's this that each dolphin has their own path which really talked to this idea that there are all these opportunities for students to find their own thing find their own way to really pursue their own interest pursue their own passion so I don't know I think Joe you might even have mentioned it when you were driving me around for my interview like talked about the music and Band program was probably one of the very first things people talk to me about uh and so like that was lifted up as a strength and I've gotten to learn even more and it actually the next two bullets talk about this that there's it's not just about like you have to have played either the sport or played the instrument from the very beginning each has access points for kids at any point I was actually just talking to a student group a couple of weeks ago right before polishing off this report and the students were talking about you know it's it's okay if you didn't play an instrument and then another student talked about it's okay if you didn't if you weren't a soccer player like in the middle school you can you can play at the high school level right it's all about getting in and and they'll support you as you want to get into these programs right so there's opportunities for kids to enter almost at any point in the system and then there's as I mentioned before then there's the then there's also the pathway for the kid to excel right there there's just there's the these amazing opportunities for the kids to really like we just again just heard about going to oh was it Ohio right so I mean they're going to compete in like a national competition and that's not uncomp common right it's not like oh whoops it was the one off the robotics team is off competing um in the state level competition the the marching bands competing in national competition our athletic teams are in tournament play every season like it's just again and again and again and then there's diverse programming both beyond the school day so whether it's the diverse amount of clubs that are offered and then within the school day right there's just all these amazing course offerings and scheduling o opportunities for kids to take within the school day so you don't have to even go outside the B the bounds of the the school day to do all these neat and interesting things again um there was Isabella was talking about she talked about her pathway program at the last meeting and and talked a little bit more about it here that's just one micro example of that but the that that get lifted up again from all the different groups so [Music] then some themes came up around areas for us to grow you might be picking up my dolphin My Dolphin yeah context here so not swimming in the next dire they're not swimming in the same direction here was uh then was the first theme on areas for growth so there was definitely this idea around consistency that we could improve in our consistency as a district and there was two there were other areas that this came up but the two ones that I decided to lift up were around student behavior and how it's managed in the district and so the first idea was this idea that student Administration needs to somehow hold kids a little bit more accountable and I put that in quotes because that's like the the phrase that came up multiple times and then I parenthetical that because that needs more explanation because that's really literally the statement that was said multiple times without further elaboration so that that phrase more accountable needs to be unpacked because it could mean a lot of different things so that's something that we will have to explore some more together to better understand exactly what it is people mean by that um and it came from multiple places right so we have to really sort of unpack exactly what it is that folks mean but then another piece that came is both from uh multiple groups and through classroom walkthroughs we see inconsistent expectations at the tier one level around what it means to be a student in a classroom so from like a classroom management level like what is it what does it look like and how are is from one classroom to the next classroom what is a student experiencing as far as what it means to be a successful student in that classroom what are they they being held accountable to I talk about like one simple example is the the cell phone policy which has been in inacted at the high school level and at the middle school level but as you walk classrooms you see that that is there might be a schoolwide policy but how it's actually being implemented by CL in classroom to classroom is not consistent so if I'm getting a mixed message especially at a in a building where I travel to multiple classrooms I'm getting a mixed message as I move throughout the building on what it means to actually have this policy it's supposed to be a schoolwide policy but then way it gets played out from classroom and classroom is inconsistent um and then as we dig into the data we see a disproportionality uh in how students who are who's learning as supported by an IEP we we see disproportionality in in how those students are being disciplined so that's an area that we need to address uh as a school district and then we also then sort of next piece was around curricular and instructional alignment and so both within our core program we need to find more consistency in both in the implementation of our curriculum as well as in the instructional practices across those and then uh it was lifted up sort of in some of the program offerings so one simple example that was lifted up was uh World Language so if you go to Ezra Baker you have an opportunity to participate in a world language but you don't if you go to me small and you don't if you go to um Station Avenue uh but even if you do go to Ezra Baker then you don't have access in fourth and fifth grade and you don't get access to it for some students until they get back to sixth grade and seventh grade so just you know that's like one micro example of other ones that were brought up uh so that's like sort of a program offering option and then another piece that was lifted up was sort of the options for all Learners so on both ends of the spectrum so our accelerated Learners as well as students uh who have different learning who have learning differences so some concerns around our English language Learners or students whose learning is supported by an IEP and the students who uh are really uh accelerated and need that that that real push there was some concerns around making sure we have options for and are supporting the needs of all those Learners in a consistent way prek to 12 sort of the IDE the idea is lifted up that once you get to the high school especially for the accelerated learning Learners there's a lot more options but maybe we could do better in some of the lower levels the next theme and this one there's multiple slides this one takes a little bit more to explain mostly because I have some graphics to go with this one uh so this next one is riding the wave but not making the mark so I've the principles have come and and and talked about our achievement data specifically talked about the mcast and and the map data but if we zoom out a little bit and look at this not at the building level but look at at the district level we see and again if you could extrapolate the building level and not be surprised by the district level the district level data shows a consistent Trend uh going back for multiple years of of us falling below the state which was both in both math and Ela you see Ela on the top and math on the bottom that goes back prior to covid goes through covid and on the other side of covid and where you see roughly about a third of our only a third of our students meeting proficiency and then you see actually the Gap starting to widen between in in the wrong direction between us and the state uh in most recent years in addition to that in the same time you see some other achievement markers like at the N nth grade passing rate is uh an average of 70% over that same time period and the fourth grade graduation rate is just under 87% over that same time period now when we break that data down it's further depressed for students who are historically marginalized and it's really for pretty much all historically marginalized groups so I just grabbed a couple of data points points to illustrate this point but so going back to that four-year graduation rate so if we pull out students who are who's learning is supported by anap we see that only so before it was roughly 87% four-year graduation rate for students whose IEP is whose's learning is supported by an IEP it's 63.4 6% and there's one outlier data in there in 2020 that year that we we went out on the end of 2020 sort of everybody got kind of a free pass on the end from March to the end of the year so the graduation rate is really really high on that particular year for everybody so when you pull that one data piece out the graduation rate drops the average drops to 59.5% for that one group and then when you look at the mcast data you see persistent learning gaps for all groups and I pulled out some examples below the group on the left is your uh English language learners the chart all the way to the left is the achievement gap between English language Learners and non-english language Learners and the bar in the middle there shows sort of the proficiency level for English language Learners from 2018 to 23 so you see it's heading in the wrong direction and then the chart on the all the way on the right shows the gap between our black students and our white students in the district um their Proficiency in mathematics um and again you see a pretty pretty persistent and significant Gap in their achievement from 2018 to 2023 and then I grabbed a different type of data uh so the high school is about to undergo their collaborative conference for their neas St so they have to do some surveys I mentioned I use some existing surveys right that are done for different things so this was one of them or actually two different ones so the nas survey one of the questions on the N survey asks they do a survey of students and they do a survey of families and the survey asks uh the the same question which is how I should have written the actual question down but it's something to the effect of how challenging or or know it's a it's a strongly agreed to strongly disagree question so it's a phrase as a statement so the the courses that my child takes are challenging and then they ask the same question to the kid right the courses that I take are very challenging so the parents 77% of them said agree or strongly agree compared to the students only 39% of them agreed had that same perception right so that is a perception Gap there pretty significant perception Gap and then equal opportunities schools is another group that's been working with the high school for multiple years and they survey students on a bunch of different things and one of the things that they student surveys questions that they ask is ask the students a question about their perception about whether not the staff hold high expectations for their academic achievement and what you see is the colored bars there are uh broken down by race race and ethnicity groups and so that's the percentage of students who believe uh that staff either have high or very high expectations but then what you see are the little gray lines that are off to the right there those are the National normed averages that this group gets uh which is a large sample and you'll see each one of our group percentages are less than the national average so it signals that our students feel less um that they're have le less confidence that their staff that the staff hold high expectations or very high expectations than the national average again sort of signaling this perception Gap um that's consistent with the parent and STA and student perception Gap and and sort of the whole idea of riding the W but not making the mark lands with the last line there was which is I met with all sorts of groups and and I could I could sit up here and talk about our achievement data for days but as I met with all sorts of different groups really almost it was very rare that a that a group on when I asked you know what's a way in which the school district could improve was student achieve achievement really mentioned at all so it's a place in which the data is pretty clear but it wasn't really lifted up as something as a and any of the groups that I met with and then the last theme uh was this idea of swimming in another ocean so the graph on the right or the bar chart I guess on the right there shows school choice In-N-Out data for the last 10 years 11 n years uh so from 2013 to 22 it's the most recent available data on the Desi website and it shows a obviously a pretty consistent pattern the the darker shade of blue is the incoming and the uh lighter shade of blue is the outgoing and what you see there is a pretty consistent trend of somewhere in the ballpark of three and a half to four to one outgoing school choice to incoming school choice I dug into the data a little bit more just because I was curious and you see that school choice out is made up roughly of about 40% Dennis families so it's disproportionate Dennis to Yarmouth uh you know we figure only 30% of the uh um District population is Dennis and so I did survey school choice families school choice out families as well as ask the this question when I met with all sorts of groups like why do you think this is happening and so a lot of the topics that have been addressed around in my previous couple areas for growth themes were lifted up and then there was one other sub theme that came out which is this idea of the dolphin social story is what I named it U and the the the gist of that theme is that there are negative beliefs that are both created and perpetuated about the Dy student body and that they've sort of been there for a long time they come from both the negative press and negative and at this point negative social media uh and essentially that we don't do a really good job about telling our story all that great stuff that our two ladies were telling us about we don't do a really good job of talking about that we let other people tell our story and as a result um it's you know um negative stuff sells you know gets clicks tells um sells papers if if people still buy newspapers these days but um the online clicks for newspapers anyways and as a result we're letting other people tell our story and um and then and this negative uh belief system is about our students about our district is has been created and continues to get perpetuated I've worked in you know I put in my report I've worked in multiple school districts at this point and there's nothing you know I hear things you know I've grew up in the cape and I've heard all the things and there's absolutely nothing about DIY that quite frankly is true and about the negative things that you hear when you're walking around and um and I when I get to my next action items here we we thing that we need to do is is definitely work on changing the the the story so after I learned so then I started thinking about the the purpose of an entry plan isn't to move immediately into strategy supposed to pause but at least started thinking a little bit about what are some of the implications for strategy and came up with three things so one there are a lot of great strengths to build from and it's really going to be important as we move both as a committee and a leadership team into thinking about strategy and Strat IC planning to really think about how to leverage the strengths of the The District in moving forward and like I was just mentioning we have so much to celebrate here and I really do think we're going to have to do a better job of thinking about that and celebrating uh doing a better job of celebrating us celebrating our values doing a better job of communicate really how how amazing we are and helping other people really understand that the next thing is uh prioritizing students achievement it is our primary focus as a school district uh everything else we do really is in place to support that uh so it will really require a long-term Focus strategy so that it's definitely going to be an area for us to focus in the future and I really do believe the consistency as I mentioned I lifted up two things there were a lot more that were that came out consistent uh came out in my listening and my looking and my reading and my all my different ways that I took in the data but you getting consistent is really going to be a key to getting Equitable outcomes for all of our students at this point if you don't have consistency in your systems and don't have consistency in your approach it's really what allows then for people who know how to work the system to get advantage and we if we have Equitable systems if we have a clear consistent way we're delivering curriculum we have a clear consistent um way that we're that you were able to access opportunity then it doesn't matter where you come from it doesn't matter who you know it's about a it's about the the way that we're delivering and the way the system is working that's ensuring that um you're able to access that opportunity and right now I'm not sure that we're consistent enough to I think we're getting the outcomes that our system is delivering and we we can do a better job as a system to ensure uh more Equitable outcomes for our students so that is that and like I said you have the much more detail in the the full report um but that is my summary of what I have learned in eight months or so does anyone have questions for Mark right now on this report Joe um thank you jeny um yeah I not really many questions I just think and excuse the analogies and you know Mark does a great job at you know doing this but um and I don't know if it's an analogy from the turf field or if it's analogy from from here but Mark seems like he's getting his feet wet very well so sorry I needed to do that um but anyways a couple couple of things that I pulled out of this real quick is that the the staff members um the teachers and the staff members are engaged in this district and they go way above and beyond what I feel normal teachers do normal you know you go in you do your job and you leave well so many teachers and staff members stay after school they're involved in the the basketball games and things like that and I think that does that's a very good positive um you know for the district um one of the questions I had and I don't know if you looked at this is to see where you mentioned that the the dentists 40% are are leaving or that's the 40% number are they leaving to go East are they leaving to go I I and I can see that because you know there's somebody that lives in East Dennis or right near the harch line and it's a lot easier for those parents to send their students to Mono than go to you know ezure Baker or even here um I can kind of I can kind of see that I don't know how you get over that hurdle besides really you know um pushing the pushing the system um and it was really really nice to see that you pointed out the good things the positives and the strengths and then the um the areas for growth and I think that's where you dug a little bit into it but I think that's where you need to um really you know come up with a plan and I think that's where you'll you'll go down the the line um one of the things I I noticed too is the um under the implic implications for strategy is the um the need to prioritize student achievement I think if you prioritize student achievement you will build on that piece of that negative that negative um dolphin story you know if if we can really build on that student as you even see those numbers go up and up and up it's been a struggle for over 10 years um so I think that's that's a real thing but I think it's a thing that you've realized and I think you've put to the Forefront and not afraid to not afraid to say and it's just a matter of what we deal with it from there so um thank you for all the information it's it's helpful lot I think from a from one perspective this is very interesting of course you know what you've learned is interesting to us but what is also interesting and is you know really our focus at this point is the fact you know is the effort that you've put into collecting this data and writing this report um so you know I'm very appreciative I'm sure others are as well of the time you've put into this you know it's there's been you know it's a big learning curve uh jumping in and a lot has been going on this year obviously in a challenging budget year um and other things going on um to be to have this level of detail in a report and to be this um focused on your um your entry goals is really um impressive so thank you for this report um I don't know if anyone else has questions on this I know this is to be continued you have other um information to report out to us before we start working on our evaluations but everyone is welcome of course to start filling in those evaluation pieces as you go so that you know you're prepared these are going to be evaluations are going to be due back um May 6th I think is the date they're back in so start collecting you know information from this and from U Mark's future presentations on his goals so that you can have those in so that I can write up the final report so you know this is all with a goal in mind obviously um Mark's just not writing these for his own well for his own benefit they'll be helpful for this helpful for strategic plan yeah very helpful yeah there was one really interesting piece of data to me in there um which stood out which is that families agreed like 77 over 70% of families felt that their students were being challenged but only 40% of students feel like they're being challenged that's fascinating to me um I'm I'm going to go home and ask my own you know freshman what he thinks about that um if he's smart he's gonna say he's super challenged and not to worry about it but like we can we can push our students we can really you know you know really Drive our students um and challenge them even more and you know really um increase these achievement uh numbers I think so very interesting I would particularly agree with what you just said one of the reasons it is when you look at outside our environment of Dennis and Yarmouth or even Cape Cod the pressures against education and for youth are really seem to have emotionally seem to have grown uh it's uh one way to always get a joke is to say it's so easy to raise kids these days well it's uh it's it's not a joke and it's not funny uh but I think we can all of us know staff members both academic and uh project leaders who have brought students along the clubs the the sense of accomplishment sense of self has been a growing theme and even though staff and families move on the the evidence of it continues and that's I appreciate the summing up of that all right next Mark is there a presentation on the school choice or no yeah so it's just annual annually uh the committee has to take a vote whether or not they want to U essentially be open to accepting school choice children so it's uh that the committee just has to take a vote each year and this is the the agenda or the time of the year because then if the committee decides they do want to be open for school choice then I'll work with the principles to determine at which grade levels we have space and and and get that notification out to the public so that we can get the applications open etc etc etc so the Comm just need to have the committee take a motion to either yes there's a motion in there should you decide that you we want to be open I would recommend that we continue with the practice at this time but that's obviously the committee's decision right to be clear this is to accept students correct there's no way there's no way to out no there's no way there's no way to stop your kids from leaving it's about whether or not you're going to accept you do have the right to say no we're not going to accept school choice children move the school committee vote an approval of accepting choice in Period participate in the 2024 2025 school choice program yes second second okay um any further discussion on that okay um all in favor I it's unanimous vote thank you very much next is the student Opportunity Act all right so in your packet you have have a copy of the full application for the student Opportunity Act so I think I've mentioned uh on a couple different occasions especially when we were talking about the budget that we need to update every three years we need to update our application for the student Opportunity Act so I'm going to draw your attention to page nine in this of this of what's in the packet here because the rest is the first several pages are I mean we're welcome to read everything that you'd like but if we can in the essence of time we'll uh fast forward to the action sections so on page nine begins what we're submitting for action for the next three years so what we're submitting are two things that we're going to essentially what the the um the department is looking for is is how are you utilizing your student Opportunity Act funds so this isn't a grant proposal because we're not asking for additional funds like you do for title one or this is money that comes to us through Chapter 70 the additional funds David's you showing you the graphs and during the budget presentations but but they want to know how are you planning on using this additional Revenue stream that you're getting so what you'll see here the first is uh us essentially what we're doing is continuing stuff that we already have in motion so the first one is begins here on the bottom of page which is the implementation of a k to2 highquality mathematics program so we were going to continue so we've bought purchased the curriculum but then there's the the process of ensuring that the staff are supported they have the proper professional development that we have the proper leadership training the principles have all the supports that they need and we have the full structure in into ensuring that we have a full implementation of the these materials that we don't essentially throw money at getting the materials in place but we don't have a full implementation so that they're being used and we have all the instructional approaches in place to ensure that they're being used in the best way we really want to get the materials in place and then get the instructional PL practices in place making sure that the principles are able to support we have the professional development in place to ensure that they're actually going to have the impact that we want them to have so this essentially is a a ensuring that we continue with the implementation efforts over the next 3 years that's what that one speaks to and then as you turn the page to page it's the bottom of page 11 you see and it goes on from 11 onto the top of page 12 is the next uh big item which is the extension of the school day so continuing the implementation which begins next or finalizes really next year which is the extending of the school day down all the way to well really for us it's all the way down to well it's all the way to kindergarten and then there'll be some minor adjustments to pre it's not really a full prek cuz we're not because prek is already only half day so we're adding definitely adding a couple of minutes to pre keep prek but you're not bringing prek up to the same length as everybody else so it's it's a little nuanced in trying how to explain it to everybody but anyways k through 12 will all have the same length of day and preschool is going to get a little bit longer as well um but they're only a half day program but anyways so we're going to be adding the time uh there and then working to monitor the effect of that and you know we have we've already started some conversations with the K to3 principles and looking on how are we going to use those 27 minutes I really want to be intentional about how we're going to use that to going back to our uh student achievement conversation what ways are we going to use that to make sure that we're actually having an impact on student achievement and then we're also revisiting the way that it was used in 4 to 7 are we really getting um what we had hoped for from that additional time in 4 to 7 so it'll be an iterative process where we'll go back and continue to make sure we're getting the impact for the investment I guess would be the best phrase that I would use there so those are the two actions so what we as part of the submission we need a vote from school committee to approve that this is the direction that the committee agrees is the right direction for the plan Tomas I move to approve the 2024 student Opportunity Act plan submission as presented in the packet Mo motion has been made and seconded any discussion on that Phill I detect the fact that page 14 is blank you're giving us a chance to write out our recommendations individually y see how I anticipate exactly yeah we'll uh accept submissions for sure right um yeah Maryland uh once this is submitted is there sort of a a benchmark that desie provides you or how do you know you're making progress on a three-year plan yeah I had to submit um our measurement uh for for it and and they will provide feedback as well so it they will submit uh feedback on the plan so it's not it's not Desi approved yet yet um but they don't uh once it's approved so it's you're monitoring yourself they don't check in on you they're they want to make sure you have measuring your own internal it's like internal accountability is really the um the metric but you have to submit uh what it is you're going to be monitoring so we we have some student achievement markers in here uh to monitor our own progress but it is it is an internal accountability any other questions all in favor I that's a unanimous vote as well thank you very much and now MSB application for M Small all right so we are just about uh done uh with the msba application for em small and and that's duee on Friday and we also need a a motion a lengthy one for the lucky person who gets to read this one in uh for yeah in order to submit with with the application or the statement of Interest so uh we're making a couple of adjustments so let me back up just a a little bit and try to um kick me if I go too long I know the meeting is getting long but I want I do want to provide you with a little bit of context so we met with the uh rep Flanigan organized a meeting with the between uh David myself rep Flanigan and Julian seir right I'm trying to think if there's anybody else there and some representatives from msba to the main goal was to understand how we might be able to strengthen our application um was the gist of it so we learned some good things I've had a follow-up conversation with the SOI like leads from msba they weren't on that particular call so I had a different follow-up call and with all that then we've met uh with the T the um Carol M put together a group from um em small with some guiding questions to really collect some information specifically from emy's small staff on the building so we've taken all of that feedback and Incorporated it into our application and enhanced our our application and made a couple of adjustments so in those couple adjustments are really moving away from especially now that we've seen this building be open for a good year um and seeing the traffic flow call it flow uh and the number of people on this one campus really moving away from the idea of trying to fit another 300 plus kids and all that staff and parking on Station Avenue as an addition onto Station Avenue I just don't really think it's feasible um I know we've talked about that as a committee a little bit uh and we've seen like I mentioned we've seen a 14% increase in the student population at um me small and looking at the really try to enhance the application from a programming standpoint in the ways that it's really been facilities focused which there's plenty to focus on there but also on how is the facility not helping the educational program at that building and we're adding an element so there are priority areas under which you can apply and we are adding an element of priority which is uh enrollment increase so you'll see in the motion what we need is you as a committee have to determine the priority areas to which under which we are are um applying so our spike in enrollment is driven as I mentioned largely by preschool enrollment is largely and is of the two elementary schools it is largely at me small however as I as it says in our application as I mentioned at msba at the two different calls I had it's not just an me small challenge it's actually both Yarmouth schools because Station Avenue is actually overcrowded and as a result of the fa Station Avenue is overcrowded we have all of our subpar programs at me small we have and we have our whole preschool program in aty small and the way that or a larger being able to do a proper study and what would ultimately lead and I would recommend as part of that study doing some redistricting in the district we would be able to essentially even out things between the two schools have a preschool program at both schools or reshuffle with uh the subpar programs so do some different things and again Emy small has her highest English language learner population in in um in Yarmouth so you end up with our most vulnerable students in our most derel yeah build trying to find the right world right building it's really an equity issue for the town and so really trying to lift that up in the application as well um so that that's that's the gist of the application and why you would why you see a change in the priority areas from last year's application to this year's application hope I didn't go too long that's perfect thank you for that clarification that's important to know about the enrollment Tomas I move the Dennis shorth Regional school committee in accordance with its Charter bylaws and ordinances authorize the superintendent to submit to the Massachusetts SCH School building authority a statement of interest for for the margarit small Elementary School located at 440 Higgin Sr Road West armouth Mass 02673 which describes and explains the following deficiencies and the priority categories for which an application may be submitted to the Massachusetts school building authority in the future category four prevention of severe overcrowding expected result from increase in rollment uh need to read the rest or just keep going okay while the cap and islands has been experienced declining enrollment for close to two decades Dennis Yarmouth has seen a significant increase in enrollment in the last 3 years since the 2020 2021 school year the student enrollment in the district has risen 12.8% from 2739 students to 3, 91 students the change from 2022 to 2023 to 2023 2024 school year was an 8.2 increase in student enrollment this is the largest school en enrollment that the district has exper experienced since 2013 most of the enrollment increase has occurred at the elementary levels uh Emy small in particular has seen a 177% increase since 2020 2020 to 2021 category five replacement renovation or modernization of school facility systems such as roofs Windows boilers Heating and ventilation systems to increase energy conservation and decrease energy related costs in a school facility the margarit small Elementary School needs significant renovation work in all major systems the building's exterior components including roofs doors windows and masonary have all been cited as high priority issues the 2014 facilities audit and the updated study in February 2020 by Bureau Veritas identified the same issues along with the possible structural settlement of the loading dock interior air quality issues leaking sanitary and heat piping and the presence of asbest containing materials Additionally the building lacks fire suppression and has multiple Ada requirement issues category 7 replacement of or addition to obsolete buildings in order to provide for a full range of programs consistent with the saint and approve local requirements current capacity current capacity is reasonable however classroom layouts and floor plans with a size of about 840 square feet limit the kinds of educational activities that will reflect best practices for the grades and specialized services that must be provided within the school and hereby further spe specifically acknowledged that by submitting the statement of Interest form the Massachusetts school building authority in no way guarantees the acceptance of approval of of an application the awarding of a grant or any funding commitment from the Massachusetts school building authority or commits the dentist armouth Regional School District to filing an application for finding funding with the Massachusetts school building authority motion has been made and seconded further discussion Joe thank you um so Mark you're you're because of the enrollment you in essence want to Big build a bigger school to facilitate that larger enrollment is that kind of what I yes sorry yes so essentially to be able to study the current enrollment and the future enrollment because I have some wonders about where the enrollment is heading right right and so that would be part one and part two um [Music] to the it's not this math but for simple math let's assume there were a thousand kids in um Yarmouth and 300 of them are currently District to go to me small and 700 of them are district to go to Station Avenue and both are full then we need really like a 500 element 500 capacity elementary school so that we can take 200 kids out of Station Avenue and get Station Avenue to the size that it should be and can have all the programs in it that it needs to have because we need the classroom spaces to have the sub separate programs that's not that need to run a lot smaller and etc etc and we don't we're already over capacity just in running regular classrooms bases in there and to be able to distri distri distribute distribute yeah I don't know why that word sounded weird uh among the two elementary schools because between the two schools we have too many kids just a lot of them are crammed actually currently in station a right and so the msba you'll be allowed to well I'm we kind of did this here but be allowed to look at it as a districtwide thing and say okay we've got too many kids at station na too many kids at the school you know if we get accepted we want to look at doing a renovation or a new building so we can make it more Equitable and free up space at one to make it fit better yeah as I understood through my conversations and through the way when you pull up the section on enrollment is then they'll invite you in to do an enrollment study right uh and determine whether or not you qualify for that yeah was a little different than the school because the school was all all of them so thank you further questions all right um it's been made in a second I'm just looking in a note that I think I missed something a note from Eileen on a previous vote so um all in favor of this motion I that's a unanimous vote um there was a note here that I should have done the school choice vote by roll call so I just need to PLL everyone on their vote um this was on the motion to participate in the school choice program it was a unanimous vote but I'd like to poll everyone please on their vote um on how they voted on that just to be clear for the record so Phil you were a yes Tomas Marilyn Jen okay thank and I was a yes so thank you for that um sorry that was late in the process um our next meeting on April 22nd conflicts with um Passover I failed to note that when comparing calendars with Mark at the beginning of the year um so options are you all can proceed without me on that night um I have no way of knowing at this point whether Joe Glenn would be here so I don't think you would count on him so it would be five of you mark would be presenting his additional findings um or we can move the meeting to the next week the 29th so I was curious to your people's availability for the 29th Mark do you have input into do you have a preference on that it doesn't matter to me I'm at your I can call but the the only um right that caveat is just that it shortens the timeline so I'll present my uh evidence for goals and for the evaluation at the next meeting whenever the next meeting is you ultimately decide so if it's on the 22nd when it's regularly scheduled then you all have two weeks to complete the um evaluation writeups if it's the 29th it gives to a week now just before you make your final decisions I am planning this week to get pretty much all my evidence into the Google folders that I've shared with you and then in my weekly communication summaries with you all I'm going to email the link back out to you so you'll have access to everything I mean I won't have the presentation probably all buttoned up I'll have it pretty close because I am planning on taking a good chunk of next week as vacation so it'll be I I won't have presented it but the presentation will be you know the slide deck will be pretty much done and in there so you'll be able to preview it and you can start writing you could have started writing as you know months ago quite frankly but um so anyways just so you have all that information in your decision- making process does anyone yeah Joe yeah no I just just my input I think you know I do my best work Under Pressure so the 29th is fine with me right I mean would any does anybody really going to use use those two weeks or if you have one week you'll just take the one week I guess that's the question are people comfortable with only having one week to prepare their reports okay okay to move the meeting to the 29th yeah the only only thing with town meeting is what the 30th right day after okay okay yes okay so we're okay to move the meeting by a week okay all right we will take care of that and send out new um Joe can I assume there's no building committee report we've exhausted that thank you thank you um leaz on to the select [Music] boards no okay great mark back to you all right so uh three items for the superintendent report tonight so first recognitions of donations and acknowledgements so Mr bino wanted to spend or send thanks rather special thanks to the C to Cape hook designs for Their donation of t-shirts to support the staff versus police department basketball game it occurred last Wednesday was it speaking to the present earlier presentation it was just another great turnout uh from the community gym was packed but uh Mr bino just wanted to make sure sure that folks know that knew that Cape hook donated the t-shirts uh to that event I also wanted to let the committee know about the 20th annual through young eyes art uh exhibition that's taking place at the Cape Cod Museum of Art it runs from March 21st through May 23rd and several students from Dy High School from the Middle School from em small and Ezra Baker all have their work on display uh in that in that exhibit and then as I mentioned a few weeks ago I was honored to attend an academic signing for Molly gtis uh at Dy high school so I've never been to an academic signing before and so Molly received one of only two Founders scholarships which are which was awarded by the University of Dartmouth and it's a full academic scholarship to that University so one of only two and it's actually really only one of four that they University's given out so it's a new thing that they've done um it was really it was really they then they you know they set the whole thing up like as if she was you know a D1 athlete signing to go it was really it was really nicely done um and just congratulations congratulations uh to Molly all right uh fy2 update so just wanted to let the committee know where things stand so that uh on the town of Dennis side we have gotten the support from both the select and uh select board and the the finance committee the finance committee made a motion uh shortly after David and I presented I lost track of time was either last week or the week before but to raise and appropriate from available funds so we won't there won't be an override in Dennis in Yarmouth both boards have also supported the school committee's budget uh however the there this will include them asking voters to approve a ballot question for an override uh that override will be for 880,000 the we've got from the finance director what this will equate to for tax rate so for a tax rate it'll be 9 cents per thousand and for for Lay person like me what that translates to is for the average single family assessed value home in Yarmouth it's $55.20 per year and then what we have for some up coming dates as uh somebody mentioned just a minute ago I think uh Tomas mentioned so the town meeting in Yarmouth is April 30th the dentist town meeting is May 7th and then because of the um the fact that there's the override then we also need have there'll also be a ballot question so the town election in Yarmouth will be on the 21st and then the third item is transportation update so as you all remember presented uh our transportation can syr uh I think it was just the last meeting might have been the meeting before that so we uh David Maria have been and with the help of the principles have been looking closely at the numbers of ridership and it does look with the numbers that we can make a two two tier system work so I said that was sort of the first thing we were going to figure out is can we um the next question is should we um so if we can there's a couple of things that the school committee will maybe need to consider so I'm going to pass out just for some things for you all to think about which is right now the the number of bus stops that we have versus the number of riders we have is very different and part of that is because we send a bus to every stop and we for every kid but not anybody's who's been outside this school or quite frankly outside of any of our schools at the time can I just pass one down uh around arrival or drop off notices that um several people opt to drive their children to school right that there's no problem with that other than we're sending buses to places that nobody's there to pick get picked up and and so if we decide to go on a two-tier system we're going to really need to consider getting a lot tighter on who's actually riding the bus so that would involve getting some policies in place around ridership so I just went and found a couple of ones from Bill R which is very very detailed once from barnable it's a little bit less detailed but something that would be supportive to the school leadership team on thinking about some things that would allow and facilitate this around sort of how close to a bus to the home should a bus stop be you know do we have them come to the end of a culdesac as an example um and you know again the bill r one gets very detailed on it's like by grade levels there's some variation um but some things for the committee to S to think about because they're those are would be established as policy which is definitely within your um governance Bailey Wick um but anyway some things to to think about what's going to happen next is and Maria are going to have a meeting a follow-up meeting with the bus company uh to to now that we've run the numbers and we really need to really start pushing on them on the timeline I'm going to be working on a a community survey to understand the issues from the broad Community if we go in this direction and then we actually have a student group that's planning on coming I can't remember if it's the is it the next meeting or is it the May meeting May meeting the May meeting to come to do a presentation on their perspective on the um transportation as well to give the is that the presentation on start time yeah it's all tied together yep um so that's what's coming that's where we where we sit so we figured out the if we can so now we're going to be transitioning to the should we um and that's going to be the next step with the with the bus company and getting Community input uh FASTT tracking some community Comm input and making some determinations Mark um can we back up for a second to your second point which was the budget override um so maybe for people who haven't been through this before um you know we can all we will all be optimistic that the override will pass in Yarmouth and I know that you know our teachers union and others will be out there supporting it and we'll all be doing our part to you know encourage arm voters to support the override but um what's the what's the plan B if there's an issue there so um let me I'm going to ask David just to talk a little bit through the the financial side of what happens if the override doesn't pass so just if you can talk to them then I I think I'll get to your question a little bit so so so as you know Mark mentioned the town of Yarmouth the finance committee and the Selectmen are recommending as we said $80,000 override so in the unfortunate event that that didn't pass the effect to our budget is not 880,000 because being a two Town District it needs to be then reduced proportionately so if yarm's assessment were reduced by by that 880,000 we then need to divide that by their share which is the 69.0 191% you know the part of the formula of the fiveyear running average that assesses dollars well if it's being decreased it means to be decreased proportionally by the same percent so when you divide that out it's actually a net reduction of the budget that would be required of 1 million 273,000 because again the 80 880,000 would represent 69% roughly 091 and as you saw in the earlier one from where we were and you recall from January the true level service to our recommended budget now is already a $2 million reduction and not to we beat this horse but you know the net reduction of 33 35 positions reducing principles assessments for not assessments but allocations that they can use for supplies by $100,000 this next 1.2 73 million would really be a much deeper cut should we have to go down that road and hopefully we won't have to with the support of the community and the Selectmen and the finance committee but the reality of that potential has to be stated so yeah so I mean specific details we don't have that presentation ready for you today we could put something together for the committee if that's what the committee would like um but um high level I would say the um um the 1.2 million you know if you factor or consider the idea that we've talked about where we are now we've been able to get without really attack you know in any way hampering programs right we've we've we've done this a lot through right sizing really looking carefully about what's been effective and what hasn't been effective we can't do another 1.2 million U we really would have to look very um carefully at the district and really have to protect protect the core program like the core institution and we would really start to have to get at I'm trying to even find the right word but we'd have to get at the stuff on the I don't even want to call them the edges but you know you you we would start at Reading Writing math arithmetic right and then work our way out from there um another one point . 2 million would be really really devastating um you're talking so it was 33 and a half position so we we would have to we'd start by removing all the positions that we haven't posted for yet probably right so um and then we'd have to go a lot further from there so you're looking at somewhere in the ballpark of the same number of positions somewhere in the ballpark if I was roughing it somewhere in the ballpark of 20 to 30 but I we can get more detailed we can run some numbers and we you know we it's probably not a bad idea for us to start that process just in case I mean I don't know if I want to get all the way you know to actually um like having my principles start to think but we can at least give you a sense of the showing that where you would look yeah I guess Joe yeah I I agree I think if we just get something it doesn't need to be a full-blown presentation but you know a few slides of just kind of where just like what David just presented um would be good the other thing we need to think about too this in the armouth it's not only just at town meeting it's at the at the ballot at the ballot you know okay so yeah so you but if one doesn't pass it doesn't pass so it's you know we need to remember that um we need to keep those strengths you know because a lot of people go to town meeting they vote okay yeah I am and then when they get behind that curtain it's a different story so we need to make or they don't even go or they don't even go so yeah um and you know I I liked that you had the numbers broken down that for the average household it's $55 a year so those are the numbers that I think families need to hear like you you know $880,000 you know but broken down to $55 a family you know so if we could all you know think about that as a a talking point I think that's important questions comments on Mark's report I have a question about the um bus passes and um I don't know Barnes I'm sorry bus passes I know barnes's a bus pass system is it now do you know if Bill riet is as well or are they I don't know I could find out okay no I can look at it too I was just wondering because just thinking about how they have everything outlined knowing that there's other requirements to it as well families pay $200 and there's more no no no no no no but I'm just saying that they can get more they know like which kids are taking the bus Which kids are not taking the bus and they can really break it down a little bit more based on the passes that are given so I'm just wondering with Bill ricka and having such a huge policy if that's something that they enforce as well but I can look that up yeah and we've we've had some preliminary conversations about ways of um as you know talking through if the committee wants to go this direction even just using our our student information system from a blanket request um for a bus stop and so that if you don't need one then you don't need to request one and to get a hard count essentially it's like a bus pass but we don't have to charge for a bus pass yeah because we we can't uh to Jenny's point but but to essentially use that as a way to get a heart cuz yeah cuz right now we just do it by here's every kid who's in the district here's their address create a bus stop um I'm sorry no yeah I was going to try a minute and you know an affirmative know from a parent that knows that they're going to drive their child 99% of the time is is greatly beneficial as well because then you know you can kind of take them off especially say if they lived in the neighborhood where there were no more the kids and that parent says yes I drive my child every day anyway well then you can just cross that neighborhood off the stop list so it's not necessarily the pass because you know there are some people who might not respond but the the no responses as well are also very helpful is what I'm getting at and just try to make the stops more efficient so again just to reiterate it wouldn't be a bus passes and there's no charge for anybody but it's more affirming yes I need the bus no I don't need the bus and help narrow down the routs and quite honestly just sticking to Safe walk zones and then sticking to them you know we're not going to go up and down every street of the captain you go up and down the main roads and if you go on the side Spurs you've got to walk to the corner and quite honestly just not giving into that if if the parent complains just to keep the timing as efficient as it can be if we W go the through enforcing the distances from the schools and all that okay all right [Music] um consent agenda I think all that is are the minutes of the of minutes of two different meetings um March 6th and March sorry this isn't working for me and March 13th um I think that's all on the consent agenda does anyone move that I'll move the consent agenda printed all in favor I bills have gone around calendar is enclosed next week is school vacation okay um I don't see anyone for public comment unless tomas's son is uh all right anyone want to adjourn motion to adjourn all in favor