##VIDEO ID:6X2Hqs5Fu_c## all right good evening uh H welcome to the uh October 10th 2024 2024 uh meeting of the halls of the school committee um we are all here we're uh Dr Kus is joining us by by zoom and uh we have a lot to get to tonight but uh first let's just clear the consent agenda and then we'll we'll get to Mr list so he can get back out to his important official duties uh so um did everyone have a chance to read the minutes we don't have any gifts um um so I I'll entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda move by cythia second all in favor okay that uh that passes so moving on you're here for a few things um what should we uh what do you want to start on graduation date sure sure okay so is are we good for the for the for the eth that we had done that tely and do we agree that we need to vote on that is that I think it's appropriate we're just going to do it we're going to do it all so I'll entertain a motion to um officially uh set June 8th as the uh June 8 2025 is the date of graduation for the class of 2025 so second all in favor carries unanimously thank you um High schol school schedule update if you for that yes high school schedule so we'll go to the high school schedule update yeah um so thank you for allowing me to go first I appreciate it uh got the football game to attend to but this is also very important um we've started meeting as the uh scheduling committee uh members of uh the the teachers and uh the administration and Dr Jordan and um we we started meeting by um in our first meeting going over sort of what are what exists within the schedule what are the things that we need to address within our schedule um and we could all agree that there are some some definite uh barriers to to the values that we have as the the house and public schools for our students um we needing to address those and um our next step really is to start looking uh getting feedback from teachers which I know the the folks um uh from the union have started to do have different meetings with teachers to get feedback on on what you know based on their experience with our students what's best for them um in supporting them and um our next step really is to start looking at uh different ways to address th those those barriers that we talked about um I think you know I've I've come in front of the committee numerous times to talk about what those are um and we're hopefully you know moving on a a fairly quick Pace um to be able um to hopefully um come to consensus on something uh moving forward um and and as we've said no matter what there is some type of schedule shift that has to happen because of the extra 15 minutes so um so you know we really have to come together and uh look at all that but um we'll be meeting tomorrow um is our next meeting to really look at um sort of what exists out in other communities what exists that addresses um the the things that we've talked about like the access to um fine and Performing Arts um you know looking at the uh Ed programs for students uh the access to um more flexibility in those areas so it it's been really great conversation so far and uh hopefully we're able to move it forward and hopefully come back here in a few weeks and um with with more so does anyone have any questions I have one okay yeah so you mentioned teacher feedback are you Gathering student feedback as well yeah so what we're looking to do is really get the get teacher feedback start to build that in to hopefully something and then bring that out to to students and make once we have some more concrete um pieces really make that more public um I was able to last year Garner a lot of student and family feedback um when I started the process I actually have a lot of feedback from students and and and parents and it's it's across the board like you know you would imagine um but um really looking to sort of solidify some of the the structural pieces and then bring that out thank you and will you provide another update at our November meeting I'll provide one I'm going to be presenting on the 24th so I can provide one then um so question for me as you're looking at these different schedule options and you know obviously keeping in mind the current schedule that we have how are you thinking about it in terms of like Personnel teachers things like that when you're when you're looking to build a schedule so I mean what we do is we build with what we have um you know we have X amount of teachers in English x amount of teachers in math and science and so the ual that we build are within those parameters of who we have as as staff members here so so so any schedule that you build you're you're anticipating being using the staff that we have and not making not needing to make any changes to to staff that's how we that's how we build it you build it with what you have okay so no I I think that's important because I personally and I don't know about the other members of the committee or the administration but I you know I think that uh putting together a schedule that addresses a lot of the concerns we have is very important but in my mind this is not a a cost cutting exercise um that over time through natural electrition there may be ways to to to add programming in different areas but that for for this you know it's it's not obviously the budget is a whole other process but yeah I mean as far as schedule building goes I mean I I can't as I can't build with what I don't have so you build with the structure you build with what you have in place and so that's how we have to kind of move forward doing it I guess what my question would be so obviously block scheduling versus not obviously it's a big component are you leading towards removing the blog scheduling or building the 15 minutes in so I mean it's really so we're at the point now where so we've gotten um so we kind of came to consensus as a group on on the barriers that that exist within the schedule like we know that and so the the the the folks um the teachers on the committee um had meetings and spoke with teachers to get their feedback on it and now our goal is to come back together to actually start seeing what that puzzle looks like so I don't want to say like yes or no to any of it because I just want to be like it's we haven't had that meeting yet so we need to have I mean we're meeting tomorrow to sort of look at all of the feedback from the teachers look at um you know from their experience what has been most beneficial to students and then look at the again the barriers that we all know exist and it what is that then look like yep and I would press as we think about schedule changes to Dan's point if there are opportunities where there are openings because of how we change the schedule like introducing additional program that is being asked for right so like where we can't do programming today if we can do it in the future we assess that great this we're not cost [Music] cutting anyone else year it's it's moving and yeah look forward to hearing how the next meeting and and hopefully other meetings go after that um would you say for one more second we're just going to take another thing out of order and we'll just do the uh um can we do the the class sizes well the principal's here or do you want to do the well I mean I I I can do the the basic piece I mean this if this turns into a longer discussion um okay you know Mr L may have issues with what's going on in another part of campus right now so okay we may have some more questions in for you the 24th we'll let you we we'll uh we'll let you go all good thank you thank you thanks see you all right moving back to the uh the uh existing schedule uh reports from our our student Representatives um so last Friday was homecoming and it went well um for Sports in power rankings almost all fall Sports have moved moved up with boys soccer in second girls soccer and volleyball both in seventh girls field hockey in 30th and football in 20th um as we already heard um cheer and football are having their senior night game tonight against Dam and volleyball recently had their breast cancer awareness game where they raised around $2,000 we had the French exchange students arve last week that's going well so far um we're going to have a voter info session session it's going to be like we're going to have a head of a Republican and Democratic committee they're going to come speak to all the students one day during dsb in the auditorium yesterday we had an evacuation drill like for like a gas leak if we were to have one and it was on the football field that went well as well the PSAT is coming up next Wednesday and the class of 2027 is having an upcoming fundraiser on October 16th at Corner Market in part of the funds go to the class of 2025 07 great thank you very much uh school committee coming start all right we always start down there so last week uh I know we had a great session with Dr Monte Jackson and um Jerry L it was very eye opening of how we should think about Equity going forward um continuing our journey it was not a lot of new information but different ways of looking at it uh I thought it was very power ful and and areas where I think we have to dig deeper right the importance of data uh with the data dashboard thank you all uh digging into that further right and how we come up with Solutions um from an equity standpoint using data as the Forefront for me yeah I Echo your remarks and uh it was uh it it was wonderful to have an opportunity to kind of work with a consultant that the leadership team is meeting with as well um so kind of uh for that alignment yeah and that's it for me I have no comment I don't have anything either um I just want to say welcome to the French students I am hosting a French student so everybody better bring on their best behavior when they go back to France they have to say good things about us so um yeah he told me that he had a hot dog today and I said don't tell your mother listen I'm not bringing you McDonald's anyway um so that's for me I wanted to say welcome to the French exchange students I'm really happy that we're here and they're here and I'm glad that we're contining with this program because I think it's really important no com okay I will uh just remind everyone again that October 19th it's it's a Saturday at 1: p.m. will be the dedication for the uh Bob nemed or nemed Sports Field Complex at the high school so um hopefully there'll be more about that on online but I just wanted to reiterate that and town meeting oh and and yes there there's town meeting coming up uh on October 21st first 700 p.m. yeah 7:00 p.m. in the High School auditorium uh the schools have one Capital request on the the warrant but there's a lot of other very important things on there too uh but we are trying to get money to uh repair the uh the Rams uh roof which is uh uh need some needs some work um is there anyone from the public who wishes to make public comment there one okay we no but we do basketball but we all right um with that I will turn it over to Dr Bernard and her team wonderful um thanks for inviting us I'm really excited we have an incredible District curriculum team that's going to do a presentation tonight so Dr papis if you want to bring up the slide deck and placentino and Miller if you can come on up I know the committee is we've all looked through every single slide in detail and we have some very very deep questions so don't prepared be prepared okay they may not have to present you just jump right into question feel easy making you feel it was It was supposed to be sort of a joke of course I have the presentation I know the anxiety went up I think um so we're very excited that they're here tonight and they're going to talk about all the incredible work that they are doing at all the schools and um they will introduce themselves when they get to their school you can bring up the next slide please we have two different roles that they're going to talk about tonight and there are building based curriculum Specialists and interventionists and there's also a districtwide curriculum coordinator for unified Arts the first group that's going to come up is our curriculum um Specialists and interventionists and there really is a balance if you look at their job there's a balance between intervention and curriculum and really the the curriculum is collaborating with teachers and doing a lot of that important work an intervention is prepping his interventions and actually working with students and classroom teachers but in order to do that they have to dive deep into Data analysis we're using the data dashboard to complete that and they also are looking critically at what professional development that we should be providing our teachers to support them to be more effective for our continue to be effective for our students and to hone their crafts so they're each going to go into how they're completing their jobs so if PL placentino can start please hi everyone my name is Jenny man I'm the humanities specialist for placentino and I'm Christa Marino I'm the stem specialist for placentino so as you know placentino is our prek to2 building so we have the littlest Learners in Holliston um this is my fifth year in the role and and I really love it and feel so privileged to have this role um so we're excited to talk to you tonight about the You Know M multifaceted uh layers that we get to do in our job um so thinking about intervention and curriculum sort of as a dual a dual piece here um the intervention piece is really Dynamic and exciting because we still get to interact with students you know we're both uh former classroom teachers and so that's something that I I know we both really love and and enjoy um we also I'll talk more about what our intervention structure looks like in a little bit but we um supervise and plan and um some of the instruction that's delivered by our part-time interventionists um we are reviewing and monitoring data preparing materials um right now especially at the beginning of the year sort of getting everything up and running our inter the intervention side of our role is um pretty significant getting all those structures in place um we also are curriculum Specialists so as you all know we have our new math curriculum this year and so Kristen's been doing an incredible amount of work preparing teachers for you know in terms of materials and professional development um you know making sure they feel comfortable with that we're also in our um second year of our Ela uh primary curriculum review so looking you know our current materials and sort of thinking about the future that way um additionally providing professional development and then participating in our schoolwide organization team which is made up of Kristen myself and um our Administration our Tech integration specialist and so forth next slide please thank you um we do a lot of work in supporting teachers and I think that's something that we both really enjoy um getting to do some coaching whether that's in a more formal coaching cycle or modeling a lesson or you know catching a teacher in the hallway that happens all day every day right you know to talk about things that come up um questions that might arise um you know we we are teachers and we support teachers and you know there are there are colleagues and our friends and so that's something that's really important to us is that we're you know a collaborative we're we're their colleagues and we we work with them um we run curriculum meetings um which might have a different Focus this year as you can imagine most of them are focused around our new math curriculum um we run data meetings so next week we'll be having um data meetings to look at all of our beginning of year assessment data we'll sit down as grade level teams including special Educators classroom teachers administrators Kristen and myself and look at the data in a variety of different ways and determine you know where are we seeing the gaps what trends are we noticing which students are needing support um how do we you know best group them skill-wise things like that um teaching a a teaching teach teaching teachers excuse me how to administer different assessments whe if it might be a new assessment to them providing assistance in completing these assessments um we're using I ready this year which is a newer assessment to us and so you know supporting some of our little babies and getting that computer-based assessment completed um that's you know a part of our role as well um and then just like I said you know meeting with teachers on a regular basis on a variety of different topics supporting students whether it's a student who might need a a little bit of extra support in terms of intervention or student who might need some extension um you know we're we're here for for students and for [Music] teachers um we interact with all different um tiers here so at tier one we are um like I mentioned we might be modeling lessons um we're supporting classroom teachers in a variety of the different ways that I just spoke about when we look at data we're looking across the building and across you know a full grade level as opposed to just one classroom so that gives us a sort of interesting lens like a more um you know global view um at tier 2 you know we spend a lot of our time here providing intervention designing intervention supervising our interventionists attending sat meetings sat is stands for Student Assistance team and so when a teacher has a concern about a student they might bring them to the SAT team which is a group of Professionals in the building including teachers special Educators service providers ad and things like that and we're often you know sort of tapped to provide some suggestions for interventions in those cases and then even at the tier three level um we attend IP meetings um on a on rare occasions we can be uh service provider for an IEP if you know sort of a not often but if if that a situation were to arise that you know we were needed to provide that inter that um direct service we could do that um you know we we we wear a lot of hats I guess you could say um so our intervention structure um we have small groups that run um all throughout the morning um we have part-time interventionists for both literacy and for math um Kristen and myself Al also both provide direct service um this year we are implementing um a win block what I need that's what wi stands for um we've had intervention blocks in the past but this is a little bit different um the groups are the the length of the groups is a little bit shorter which actually allows us to see more students and provide really targeted you know um Dynamic instruction and we have intervention cycles that will last for 6 to 8 weeks and so we're constantly looking at you know skill-based groups how are students shifting in and out um making sure that those groups are explicit multisensory Hands-On um and in general we find that students really enjoy coming to both reading and math intervention and that's something that's important to both of us that it feels like a positive enjoyable experience for them and then you know of course there's always special scenarios for example students who have um a non-academic IEP or an MLL for example um who may not be available during that wi time we will coordinate with the teacher to find another time during the day when we can provide the intervention that they need um you know our job is to support everybody who needs it so that's something something we're passionate about and then finally our data for intervention so we have a lot of Assessments and a lot of data and it's something we're always looking to streamline and you know get smarter about um in math um CH go ahead yeah um in math um we're using a hidden number assessment which is um researched about number sents to 10 and subitizing and cardinality to check um the kids area and that which is the foundation for their math knowledge going forward um we're also going to be using in Eureka Mas they have topic tickets and they have module assessments so module is the Eureka version of a unit just so you guys know um so we have those tests they also have benchmark assessments um they're just not on there yet because uh we're working with grade level teams to kind of make them a little bit shorter CU they're very long right now so that's a work in progress um and then in both reading and math we're doing the I ready diagnostic and I think one more thing that's important about our the data that we look at um you know teachers are administering assessments we're administering assessments at various times of year whether it's a benchmark assessment given beginning middle and end or a progress monitoring assessment given on about a monthly basis um and so we you know we feel that it's really important to make sure that the data is comprehensive we all sort of own it together um and we're always thinking about you know what story does the data tell us so thank you do questions at the end yes I'm sorry I failed to say that but yes you could save all questions to the end because there's going to be patterns that you're going to see throughout all four schools so um somebody else might answer it or it might be a question for everybody thank you sorry about that hi I'm Elsa O'Brien the humanities curriculum specialist at Miller and I'm Ashley Bard I'm the stem specialist at Miller and so we will Echo a lot of what um Jenny and Kristen shared in terms of what happens at Miller um there are a lot of similarities and as we're talking we'll point out some of the differences um you know we're facilitating and administering a lot of our um assessments uh benchmark assessments three times a year um we are maintaining all of that schoolwide data so that we can look at that and identify Trends and needs um not just at the at the school level but also at the classroom level as well um and also trying to triangulate all of the data that we have um to then look at teacher schedules um student needs and our interventionist schedules so that we can develop those intervention schedules and groups and um figure out what instructional programs are going to work best for all of those groups um and it's a balance between intervention and curriculum as Jenny said the beginning of the year there's a lot more of intervention work that we're we're doing um but it balances out as the year progresses in terms of curriculum we're you know continually trying to look at how the grades align in terms of the standards and the instruction that we're delivering and supporting teachers in in that as well um in terms of professional development we're also trying to um facilitate or develop plan professional development for all of these goals um so supporting teacher is very similar to what placentino is doing um it's a constant relationship with teachers we're in plc's we're getting dirty with the kids and the teachers um they're coming to us asking questions we're implementing a new math program as Jenny had mentioned so there's been a lot of work in the math world around lesson structure and how to deliver lessons and how to tear instr instruction and meet the needs of all all of our Learners um so that's been a lot of the work right now as we're getting deep into it and working with special Educators making sure everybody is well vered with the new curriculum um we help with assessments and and coordinating assessments and Gathering materials to support teachers in our wind blocks we're looking at right now using all Learners Network to help generate a menu with with a the choice of options that are tiered so that teachers can have times to work with small groups as well as providing that enrichment for students who are excelling so just really thinking outside the box of how we can engage all students make them want to come to school and make them love math and literacy in different ways and using resources that we have to get there um for the data process at Miller U math looks a little different because we don't have the early developmental numeracy assessments but one positive about eure math squared is that all the grade level assessments are common assessments so students will take the assessment on paper for the grade level they input their data online similar to what you would do with mcast they have drag and drop they're learning how to use those tools and then the program spits out an algorithm that then gives you the level of proficiency for those students so we're looking at trends for students who are strugling I can help teachers identify what supports they need and what areas we need to support them in so that's been super helpful to have that commonality with the grade level so all teachers students are being compared with the same Foundation we also use the I ready Diagnostic and then the literacy assessments as mentioned before so in terms of our intervention structure we're trying to create small groups so that we can really Target those needs um we have a 30 minute Wind Block so um for both math and literacy um our uh small groups have either a literacy Focus which can be uh combination of phonics fluency and comprehension but it's typically targeted in one of those areas we are always trying to um include a comprehension piece in everything that we do because that's so important with literacy and in math um these are some examples of the beginning of the year Focus areas for those small groups typically our groups are meeting two to three times weekly depending on those needs um and they're facilitated by our full-time interventionists um or ourselves and we do progress monitoring monthly because we want to see how kids are progressing and if they're making progress and if they're not we want to be able to adjust our um instruction or our intervention to to support that and not all intervention is necessarily pull out sometimes we push in support the teachers support our students and work together and learn off of each other so it's a constant learning cycle I guess you could say m and we're going to turn it over to the middle school and the high school thank you thank [Music] you oh [Music] sorry hi I am Carla Krauss I am the ram stem specialist and I'm Casey conahan I am the humanities specialist at Rams oh we just go okay yeah cuz we're we're at the high [Laughter] school um so at Rams um intervention has started to shift uh for quite some time it's been one individual running the entire program and so in that regard the best fit was to really focus on Executive functioning skills that would be transferable to all subject areas but with the transition to having a stem and Humanities specialist we've been able to take a more academic concentration in our intervention and look specifically at math and literacy intervention at the Middle School level um so in doing that we've really had to build things from the ground up um and that's diving into a lot of the data specific to Reading Writing and math um and so we and we'll get into what we've been using um and then in doing that creating intervention schedules where we are looking at where students are at all different points of the day with different teachers on different rotating lead weeks um and trying to just uh figure out where we can access those kids um and we're now at the point where we're planning and we're going to beginning to begin delivering that intervention um starting next week next week um so we've just been doing a lot of the groundwork for these last several weeks um and then our plan is to review and monitor monitor the data we've been using uml for benchmark assessments for beginning middle and end of the year um and then we're hoping withl it will give us the updated um progress on how our students are doing so we can continue to look at their growth great so for curriculum we are supporting teachers um in planning and implementing new uh lesson formats different types of instruction um and co-planning to deliver instruction we are collaborating with our plc's and um speaking with our departments to figure out what the curricular needs are what resources we need what shifts are coming and how we can prepare for the shifts that are coming from DS uh from desie um we are also doing our curriculum review work um we are making sure that we are aligned both horizontally and vert vertically we're making sure that um we're not leaving gaps that we're we're closing um closing up anywhere that we' need to and just kind of being the the keepers of of making sure all of that is is um working together and then we're also um part of department meetings and Prof and planning so we're planning department meetings and professional development looking at Trends looking at um for example science has a lot of desie desie updates and changes and making sure that our professional development is aligning with those things so that we have our teachers are prepared with what they need moving forward so um curriculum in and instruction we we and are supporting teachers with the curriculum and instruction piece we are working together to identify what our department goals are what are what are we what are what is our big vision and purpose um what materials do we need to reach that and ensuring that the resources that we have are adequate for providing the instruction um we have some new resources coming in we have in math especially we have all Learners Network work and a new revealed textbook curriculum so we're working very closely with our teachers to make sure that we're getting the most out of those things um again the professional development uh we are looking to make sure that it aligns across the board with all our goals the school needs and Desi's um recommendations moving forward we are checking again for alignment it's really it's really critical especially in some of the finer points when it's when we're talking about skills and soft skills and some of the things that aren't necessarily content specific that we're aligning and building up um the skills that students need to be successful and we are also again making sure that it aligns with Des requirements as des's requirements changes change and the um best practices and some of our areas are updated for individual and grade level we are co-planning so that when we are going in to do Intervention when we are making some of these choices we are in and we are speaking with those teachers we know what their needs are we know what their concerns are um when we are providing intervention we know what's being done in the classroom we know where they are in their standards we know what the concerns are so that when intervention is provided it can be targeted the best possible way um and then we're also coming into co- te so for us our intervention and curriculum can kind of overlap a little bit um we're going to be co- teing and maybe modeling some tier one intervention practices we're going to be going into the classrooms as much as possible and supporting um Innovative new lesson and unit development to make it as engaging as possible for Holliston students um intervention we tend to think of as how we support our students but I think it also supports teachers in the sense that um we're attending their regularly scheduled team meetings to hear their student concerns um brainstorm with them about possible ways to support kids who are struggling and that really ties into that tier one or tier 2 model um that we're working on implementing in that some kids do need just a little extra nudge in the classrooms an extra set of eyes or somebody to sit with them whether that's us or we're working with other kids in the room to free up the teacher to sit with students who are struggling or that tier 2 intervention support where we might pull students out for Rams block um we also work with teachers to Monitor and analyze that classroom data um and use that to inform our decisions about what we need to teach what we haven't been emphasizing enough and where we're seeing gaps in our students learning um how we might differentiate for students who pick up Concepts and and skills quickly and where we need to emphasize that or build it more strongly for additional students um so our data for for intervention is coming primarily this year um a lot of our specific data I should say is coming froml so we've just started using the EXL program officially across the board in math and Ela and this is giving us first regular Benchmark data so we have three testing big Benchmark testing Windows fall winter and then it's going to be again in the spring and this is giving us very specific data per student uh per strand what they're struggling with we can track the Improvement that they're making we can look at it by teacher we can look at it by grade we can look at it in all different ways to to tease out where we can Implement that tier one instruction on a larger classroom scale and then when we're working with our individual students we have exact information about what it is that they're struggling with we can work with those students with the tools that the program provides so uml is our is is going to be more or less a really big go-to mcast gives us more generalized ideas um of um where our individual students are struggling and then we are also getting input from teachers because that can be really valuable when we're looking at the whole child and the whole picture on what's going on um for that particular student so with all three pieces together we're prioritizing giving each piece a certain weight and figuring out who our top priority students are to hit for each level of intervention and this is just a more spelled out breakdown of how we're hoping to provide intervention at the middle school um again tier one is more of a pushin model um where we will be going into classrooms where we've identified students who need some support but not that small group pull out support um where we would co- plan co- te with um the classroom teachers and um for us we look at this tier one model as kind of just allowing us to be a second teacher in the room um and hoping that students don't necessarily feel a spotlight on them but that we're really just part of the fabric of the classroom but able to really be that extra set of eyes that's looking at student work talking with the teacher about what we're seeing in terms of strengths weaknesses and how we might strategize to um Target those um areas for improvement tier two is our Rams block that's one 30 minute block a day at the end of the day um and that is where Carla and I will be pulling small groups of students to work with them um once a week to Target skills in um in a a specific area and so similar to Miller looking at is it related to phonics fluency comprehension for the literacy um piece um and then for math different strands and um kind of right you're using the strands onl on EXL um and then we are looking at a 6 to 8 week cycle of progress monitoring and deciding whether or not students would need to stay in intervention because they have not met the skills yet or they've achieved certain skills but they have new ones that they still need to meet in order to catch up to G level proficiency um so that's our our thought with Rams block tier three is um would be a unified Arts block and it would be really reserved for an intensive oneon-one um intervention period for a student who um needs kind of that significant um extra time and support um for me this would be a student who is probably still in the phonics stage of reading at the middle school level um and that really would benefit from one-on-one attention um rather than a small group and needs even longer than a Rams block um I think it's important to note that it's just Carla and I doing all of that um and so it's um it's been a lot of work just trying to schedule and prioritize and identify students to figure out how to get our biggest bang for our buck in how we reach as many kids as possible um and what our and that that's really where that tier one comes in to hit multiple kids in a single classroom in one visit um and really just try to rally around what our kids need um and then really prioritize the kids who need that ATT that small group attention most for our Rams block so is that our last slide believe oh I think I went too fast how do I go back oh sorry I'm Leah Barton the stem interventionist at Holliston High School hi I'm Joel stbridge Humanities um curriculum interventionist at at the high school uh this is my second year at hollison last year I served as the interim assistant principal this is Leah's first year and these positions are new to the high school and um so first of all I want to thank Casey and Carla for all of your help and helping us get up to speed and and our team as well and Ida who you're going to hear from next has been really um supportive of us as we're learning this um this role for um us and for the school so going to take you through a little bit about um how we're work working on this the high school there's some differences between uh the middle school and the high school that the high school has curriculum leaders in each department and so we're we're working and supporting them um also the high school has an intervention program that's um been running for many years it's more focused on the social emotional aspect and so we're going to be supporting more the academic um side of that and um the programs that we're going to be talking about today are in development right so you know we we're starting and we've been working on these but they're going to be much more robust in the future um so some of the differences is uh between what you've heard before is that uh principal list has asked us to be providing um to start with tier one interventions so that's pushing into classrooms um identifying um you know students groups of students um in classrooms and working with teachers on how to support um those groups of students in the classroom and pushing in on and the curriculum side I think I already mentioned we working with Department chairs uh again we'll be working with the um curriculum align in the review and um supporting teachers in similar ways that have been discussed already today so Joel and I have met with each of the Departments again I'm new I've been here for a month Joel has been here but in a different capacity so we're really trying to build relationships with the teachers and give them supports immediately so some supports that we had talked about was yes co-planning potentially co- teing um those coaching Cycles will come later on it's very vulnerable to have somebody come into your room and we're not there to to judge their teaching we're there to support them and build that relationship so we're really looking at what they need with their current classes and their students and how we can support that whether it's doing some data Dives with them whether it's looking at some um some of the curriculum resources at a deeper level so that's again we're in more of the infancy stage of that and currently we're prioritizing the 9th and 10th grade cp1 classes for those are the the mcast prep classes so for data points similar to what Rams is doing we are looking at mcast however that was a snapshot in time from last year so we are looking at the ISL data but also the Departments are coming up with the common assessments and regular assessments that they're using on a daily basis so as the kids are leaving class if they're doing an exit ticket their classroom assessments those are the data points that are going to be really helpful in prioritizing student needs based on not only just mcast but also what the teacher is seeing thank you thank you case so uh where we are now is uh working to gather that data and as open Architects um which is the data dashboard platform is coming up to speed um you know because the high school has so many so complex with so many sections we're really hoping that we're be able to use open Architects to identify groups of students within sections to help us push in um so there's there's that work that needs to be done and then um as Leah mentioned we're U working with teachers uh and inviting them to uh work with us and um we've that's that's been ongoing and ramping up as teachers are becoming more used to our faces and U more used to um working with us in particular and then um we're also working with the guidance and the administration to to develop a more robust system of multi-tiered um uh supports for students and uh using the data and teacher information to identify students and then have good answers for the different types of supports that students will need um as we um develop a robust that that triangle pyramid that you saw earlier around making sure that we have really identified tier one supports but then um build out our tier 2 and tier three supports um that students would be involved with before they're entering the special education program I don't stay up here with you I'm sry you sure all right also in this transition I'd like to mention that my father flew in from Oregon just for this very night [Laughter] so there's no similarity at all are you guys really going to leave her up there alone that's all oh my God it's okay I'm a performer I'm used to but I'll welcome you um my name is Ida papis I'm the curriculum coordinator for uni Arts which is Visual Arts Performing Arts Wellness World Language and Library um so what I do is very different as you'll see um uh we don't have a ton of data as you know mcass is not really um reporting on our areas but that does not mean that it's not a very busy day for me um so I just these were just things that were on the top of my head of things that um I do throughout the district in my capacity um today I discovered I'm driving the short bus for the French immersion students uh to get to the elementary so it's always those kinds of like oh sure okay I'll drive the bus so um I think number one my most important uh position um is being an advocate for UA uh sometimes we can get lost in the shuffle um and sometimes uh what we do where there's so few of us in each of the buildings that they really do need a voice at the table um and I do that through sitting through many meetings at every single School through their leadership um meetings so um sometimes that's once a week sometimes that's once a month but you'll see me in every school as many meetings so that they can have their voice heard their perspective is heard um I do that through uh curriculum reviews so I just finished writing the report for uh World Language curriculum review which was last year um and right now it is uh in review with the committee and then it will be hopefully in your hands soon um but we have a couple last minute things that we want to uh clean up um I I acquire and disseminate tons T of resources sometimes it's uh the textbooks that we receive through World Language curriculum review uh but also uh a last minute purchase of instruments through some residual budget money uh we'll get a big pile of uh low brass instruments that I'm able to deliver sort of last minute um but also technology um that is definitely uh new in our areas and so acquiring the right apps and um making sure that we're also thought of in the budget um is kind of why I'm at the table um professional development so this is uh pretty new this year in that um last year I was able to provide a pretty robust uh professional development for World Language but the challenge was for this year to provideed for all areas Under My Umbrella so I have some really exciting things happening in PD very discipline specific because that's the one thing I hear from teachers is that they are tired of going to math or literacy PD that doesn't pertain to them as uh well as something that very specific to their discipline so I have um a lot of like topnotch people coming here on uh November 5th so Leslie gr who's nationally known as a World Language um uh PD provider is coming for World Language and um a 100 people from around Massachusetts is coming she's that good so that's one thing um Scott Schuler who is um he's a um an adviser for the Kennedy Center is coming for our our um performing in Visual Arts um and then desie has just rolled out some new um standards for wellness and I went to some really excellent PD through desie and was able to sort of scoop up a couple of their um excellent presenters to bring here but then I also discovered the first week of school I'd be providing ruler um PD which was really exciting for me because um I think anything that's being ruled out in the schools should also be carefully plotted out through UA as well so that was exciting um but that happened uh September 13th um curriculum meetings I go to curriculum meetings in the afternoons but I also do some early morning um because I'm in all four schools some start early some start late so trying to make it so that it's accessible to everybody um and uh i' so we're language is pretty unique in Holliston everybody wants to visit us everybody and they're I'm like the Ambassador now so I create schedules I ask teachers when they would like a visitor if they would like a visitor and then I just sort of coordinate whether they want to see Elementary in high school Etc so um I do a lot of uh a lot of that footwork um and then drive people around um and then I make sure that we're transitioning to our new standards um what World Language sort of came on board a little late um but we're fully um fully embedded in our new proficiency standards but uh Wellness they just came out last year so uh we're still working on rewriting our curriculum that way um I on board new staff um UA has a lot of part-time positions so I find there's a lot of new people each year um and it takes some careful sort of onboarding uh cuz they're one-offs they don't really have a team often and so um getting them sort of out the speed as to the schedule but also the unique uh courses that they'll be teaching and sort of provide some uh support for them uh to see their own voice in some of the choices um but not go too far off the path um and then I update all the curriculum uh documents my expertise is in curriculum writing and so this is something I take very seriously um the understanding by Design is revolutionized my teaching so I'm very much uh interested in making sure that new teachers particularly are up to speed on it um I collaborate with lots of Community Partners um the French Consulate comes to our place um our school very often um but we also have people from uh around the state who um also engage in the sealed by literacy coming to see what we're doing um as far as World Language goes but I also am partnering with the safe roots to school to help them uh inform our new curriculum in the the third and fourth and fifth grade um new uh Health units um then I also attend all the desie uh work groups and trainings and bring that information back uh in all those um areas four areas um and then I something that I think my colleagues don't uh don't need to do because the UA has a lot of um sort of community presentations um I go to a lot of events in evening to support them I really think as a teacher I wanted people to see me do my very best um to see me shine so I feel like it's important that I be there to see those teachers you know in their moment where it's all coming together and the lights on them and you know the students look fabulous um so I try to go to their performances the art shows um you know I try and and meet with them uh with the consulate when they come in ETC so I'm kind of a I guess I don't know a unicorn they say not like anything else so thank you you can see that there's a a lot of um similarities between a lot of the schools in the a people and then Ida has quite a different role um but they really have risen to the challenge this year and uh planned a lot of phenomenal support for both students and teachers so we entertain some questions if you have them it's hard to wait till the end you asked first then I asked we oh that question I'm good the question um two questions actually have where do you feel like you need the most help and where do teachers need the most help out of all this like what are the biggest gaps that we have and it was a vulnerable question while we're thinking of that right now let me just say something we all met today and actually our whole meeting was about what professional development they need so let me preface that it wasn't what Joanie picked out either they all contributed to the document so you guys want to expand on that look at this great so please anybody jump in but I want to say that was a theme today and and they're identifying what they need and who would like to go to it so that's why we're here I'll thr some some stuff out there so rolling out a new math program teachers in particularly there hasn't been a lot of math PD so there's a lot of work with special ed General teachers around a the math program but as well as understanding the mathematical practices which you know are haven't been brought to light for a while some teachers are using them some know them everybody's on you know a different page so kind of bringing up their math pedagogy as they're implementing this new curriculum and then as Joanie said she's supporting us as we're looking at different PD options and our strengths and weaknesses is and kind of figuring out what we need to best support teachers and I think with regard to literacy um especially at the Early Elementary level um in the past few years we've made a shift from balanced literacy over to structured literacy and that's been a really big change for our teachers and they've been really amazing in their you know sort willingness to put aside you know uh sort of philosophy that some of them have been using for years and years and really Embrace this new approach not actually new but sort of you know reintroduced um evidence-based approach and so um you know the past few years have been very uh literacy heavy in terms of PD and so we're really excited to see some more math um being brought in and teachers have been asking for that but um I think that you know this shift towards structured literacy is you know something that we're committed to continuing and and um supporting it as it grows so so Dr what is the um map PD plan so I'll ask you guys to jump in but we're also we're using all Learners Network for every single School this year and they're coming in to support us so every single school over the course of this year we'll have a full at least one full math PD day with all Learners Network and then we're bringing coaching in also we are also please jump in but we're getting supports uh help me out here with their resources jel and we were able to um we I appli for a grant and got a grant from have to continue the math work with all owners Network for a math leadership team which was awesome I'm really excited for it so we got nine sessions um for teachers right now are grade leaders who are our you know team our team leaders for each grade level we have n sessions where we're specifically using her name's Lily um from all Learners Network and asking her to help us in areas that we need so we just had a meeting with her our last grade leaders meeting and we talked about math menu and differentiation and how to meet all the tear of all the students in your classrooms your M mlls your High Flyers your students who are struggling and get them engaged and excited and build a sense of self-confidence and how that would also relate to literacy as well and kind of Bridging the Gap of you could teach all Learners no matter um what content area you're teaching so we're going to continue the thread throughout the year and we have the kickoff at the beginning of the year with a full dat PD and you can see that they have input into it and also teachers but if um Kristen you go next but can one of you also talk about the supports the resources that we're getting from all owners Network too if one of you can expand on that yeah and um at placentino we're also getting the 9 hours um with aln um however in placentino even though though we the Little Ghost guys prek through two that actually is a very big difference prek and K and one and two are working on similar things but also very different things um so we're actually splitting the hours um we're doing four hours for prek andk teachers focusing on building that strong number sense and then we're doing four hours for um the first and second grade teachers focusing on more of a student Focus so if I have a group of students who has a deficit in their math facts how can we support them this way using different sources of data to kind of inform that um but then also we're using that last hour and we're using it with our math tutors our math interventionists who see those tier 2 students along with myself um and we're going to get going to a deep dive with Lily about how to run a really Hands-On a really focused but also only 20 minute um small group and use the tools from aln and eure maath and kind of how can we leave those together as well as meet those small group student needs um because the three um tutors that I work with they are parttime um so they're not always there for the PD days because they are under they're also under the pray professional contract um so this was I thought it was just like a perfect opportunity to give them some very structured highly supported professional development from Lily who's lived her whole teaching career in prek through 2 so she has a vast knowledge to help support um the the placentino area um but also aln has its own it's like over 1,800 different resources and games and um lessons as well as webinars and PDS um so I I Ashley and I have both been like forwarding emails with if there is a free webinar that's tailored to our teachers like actually tonight there's a prek one um but the really good part about those two is the teachers don't have to be live they send you a recording afterward so I've been like I've signed up for the one that's going on right now um but I'll watch the recording after and then we kind of we can meet in those curriculum meetings which at placentino every month there are going to be focused on the math curriculum and how we can support Learners so every Tuesday and placentino I'm running a curriculum meeting focused on math but focused on what the teachers want so to kind of help answer your question um in placentino the teachers it's so Hands-On which is very different from enVision Math um they need time they need time to work with the materials they need time to set up the manipulatives um for example my favorite second grade lesson was taught this week where um you teachers take 1,200 popsicle sticks individual popol sticks and they in a dramatic fashion and you dump them on the rug in front of the kids and the kids have to count them but there's no teacher support they're just given a box of rubber bands and these 1,200 popsicle sticks but that's sounds silly but that takes time to count out 1,200 popsicle sticks and have them ready and 120 elastic bands so during a curriculum meeting um last month we I we all counted out rubber bands together while we were talking about how the the math is going and how they're feeling and what they need so time with the curriculum and time to prep and talk as a grade team is definitely something that they need and we're getting ex supports car can you talk about what we're signing up for through allers Network the extra um online support sure so um Ram's at a little different place too with the with the PD when all Learners network is coming in November 5th we've already had one full PD and we have teachers who are at various stages of implementing different pieces of all lers networks um lesson Styles and so when our presenter comes they're going to work with different teachers where they are at evaluate what some have done already while helping other people build some initial products um we are getting the aln resource subscription so that is going to give us additional intervention tools which I think is really fantastic um all Learners network has a philosophy of using High leverage Concepts so we can integrate those into our intervention work and our daily class room structures and then it also is going to provide us a lot of exemplars so teachers will be free to be able to create their own math menus their own launches their own pieces but all Learners Network also provides like she said there's over 1800 18,000 I think it might more it's an enormous number of resources um so that you know they can play around with trying some of their pre-made ones and and build and gaining proficiency alen is also work working with our teachers to implement our new um textbooks our our reveal curriculum into all Learners Network so hopefully all these pieces are are really going to help us take our math instruction to the next level and I just want to know it's high quality material as opposed to teachers going to Teachers Pay Teachers um so we're giving them high quality material for all students and also to know you know holl's a unique district and that we offer Monas and French and traditional so really working with those teachers in monu I'm teaching two grade levels what do I do I get hit all these standards and we've really honed in and we're using Lily for that and focusing her on monor or French I'm liming it in time because I have to teach so many things okay well how can we cut the curriculum back hit those High leverage Concepts and really make sure students get Within need to be successful moving into Rams so there's a lot behind the scenes happening with all the different structures within our building and as we talked about last year with all of you um when we were in math curriculum review the only materials that we reviewed were ones that were curate rated so they're Desi approved right so they're standards based tied directly to mass standards so that was the one thing was my caveat I said we can look at any resource you want as long as it's curate rated um and as long as it's meeting all the needs that we have identified in this group and are those resources also have monor and French resources for them I've been doing a lot of translating into French lately me and miss your Snider are even closer than we were before yeah I saw that they had to translate a whole book of just know whether or not all Learners Network had some access to so all Learners network does not but the priority of the all earners network resources are actually Hands-On materials so they're not handing those kids a worksheet or a language based thing to do um so that's actually the good thing about it is it can work in all of our classrooms um and Eureka Mass squared is actually very much aligned to the montau model of math so they're actually like the popsicle stick lesson that I mentioned that's very monor like let's give the kids a whole bunch of things and let's see how they figure out how many there are um so our montor teachers um are actually very pleased with the Eureka maath although yes they're still trying to figure out both grade levels and and doing all that crosswalk um stuff but they're loving the fact that it is much more Hands-On and much more based in student learning and that was a big I'm sorry a big caveat right from the curriculum review that we presented that everybody was saying it needed to be Hands-On student engagement all of that and that's we heard from parents and community members also I just going to say with the allers that choice of menu when we met with Lily that offers lends itself to monori because it's a way for students to have choice in their learning and really take ownership of their learning um which helps promote student advocacy and and you know just positive reinforcement that they can do this so that's a great piece that we're using Lily for is how to get these menus started how to roll them out without teachers feeling overwhelmed our resource is great because as Kristen said it has all these layers to it that we're already doing that is aligned with all iners Network so it's almost like a beautiful marriage they work very nicely together I have a couple questions um and first I i' would say like my biggest takeaway was how much you guys are doing in your roles I mean it felt like you were describing the role of like four people when you talked about all the things you're doing um but I'm curious about so I heard a lot about the reading and the math assessments and I'm wondering how we're assessing writing in the district so um do well do you want start we'll go progressively sure yeah one of the things that we're looking at at least at Miller um the past couple of years is to try to align our writing to have some common writing assessments so um for informational writing now we have common writing assess common rubrics and writing assessments um at grades 3 through five we still have more work to do um and you know we want to be able to see writing integrated into all our curriculum areas not to be siloed separately as this other topic but that it really needs to go across all the content areas so one of the things we did over the summer was to look at how we could help kids get better at writing at the sentence level and how we could use that in science and social studies and all the content areas so it was just sort of a bite-sized way to um you know an achievable um way to continue to boost that writing and with the math implementation this year of a new math program we didn't want to um overwhelm teachers because they're they're doing a lot right now and they're really working hard so um that's what's happening at least at Miller at Rams um maybe two years ago um we we created a common literacy goal across English social studies and Science and anyone else who wanted to jump on board um to focus on writing the expository explanatory pieces following the claim evidence reasoning structure um so we have a common rubric for the entire building that is um teachers can manipulate it to isolate certain skills they want to um assess within ex um expository writing and um so it it's all the standards for 6 through 8 and when you look at the standards 6 through 8 they're pretty much exactly the same except for some tiny changes um often happening from 6 to 7 or 7 to8 but um not every single year and so what the rubric shows is the standards across the board with little caveats for grade grade eight only um but that can be like a two-page rubric when you look at all the standards that are involved in writing an expository piece um with a research component if you really want it to have that so um we've worked with teachers to show them how they can simplify focus it on key standards that they want to assess and then it's the same grading approach across the entire building um we've had some great feedback this year eighth grade teachers are having students who started this in sixth grade and they're seeing some of their best fall writing that they've seen in the last few years um and so we're kind of continuing that and tweaking and revising it as we go and I've been playing around with a narrative one um to do more of a common narrative piece um but I think one of the biggest factors that mattered for us was looking at how to implement it outside of the English classroom writing is time consuming for students and laborious and many of them don't like it um and so to we know students learn best by lots of practice but to fit lots of practice doing the same type of writing in one class period is not feasible but now with students doing that claim evidence reasoning structure and expository WR explanatory writing in all their classes they're getting that repetition in practice and they're seeing those improvements um and we're we're starting to see that also come out in the m cast writing scores and at placentino you know we have like I like we mentioned our you know our youngest Learners and so most of our focus is on those more foundational skills in writing um it's definitely something that we are still working on and I'm looking forward to digging in in our curriculum review and thinking about you know how are we how are we meeting the the needs of all Learners and you know giving our our youngest Learners appropriate exposure to narrative informative opinion writing um right now grade levels have uh common assessments that are given three times a year in a variety of genres um with common rubrics as well um and it you know looks different because they're really at that early stage of you know even just handwriting or the phonetic spelling and the idea generation like there's so much at at our level um you know it's just a different a different um a different beast but um definitely something that we look at and I think comparing student writing across across a school year certainly but even just a few months and sharing that with families can be really powerful um you know as a teacher that was one of the things I loved showing families most was you know look at your child's writing from October and look at it in January um it's just such a a striking you know especially you know with our with our little ones um visual uh sign of progress so yeah and from teaching second grade for the last few years um the assessments that you talked about they're usually a writing prompt so we give the kids a choice of like oh can you tell me a story about recess today or can you tell me a story about um what you did at a birthday party um we try and Link it to their life so that they have that idea generation cuz that seems to be the hardest part at the younger levels and then we do we have a common rubric um that's based in the standards at the high school level say is grade level alignment so there's horizontal alignment around expectations and assessment uh I think an area of growth will be a vertical alignment and having like similar to what Rams has done like a schoolwide writing rubric that will carry through 9 through 12 it'll look different at 12th grade than 9th grade but some common elements there uh social studies is also um developing a writing rubric I mean um yeah a rubric for assessment for writing as well um and then principal list is very interested in as um I was mentioned earlier that it's not just the English Department that's responsible for writing but there's actually writing and and similar assessment um and expectations across all of the um all of the curricular areas um so my one more question um so I'm curious there's a lot of data that you have that we're using to monitor students progress and develop those um interventions adjust those interventions but I'm wondering how um you either as individual in your role or as a collective big team um are using the dat to monitor the implementation of the curriculum and the impact on students so I think um having open architect this year will be a really exciting way to do that um we've all you know at our own building levels you know had our own various spreadsheets and you know ways of looking at data but I think having open architect will be a common way for us to look at that Al together and be able to you know isolate it in terms of a specific math domain or um you know a specific assessment you know way that we weren't able to do before so I think we're really looking forward to that and um just to speak for the middle school and high school what's wonderful about the uml dashboard is you can look at it in all different ways you can look at it by grade you can look at it by teacher it will it will create groupings and it will specify where gaps are so teachers can use that as an ongoing tool and we can use that as a way to plan professional development and target areas of of Need for support one other thing to add to that too is that when we're looking at data we're looking for our kids who are at most at risk first but then we're trying to look at the data to see um where kids may not be quite proficient enough and you know how are we going to be able to get them to that proficiency level and one of the things things that's important to do is to think about what trends are we seeing that we could Implement at tier one in the classroom to help those kids move from that just below proficiency level who aren't quite at risk to get intervention but we want to keep moving those kids as well and then are we incorporating the EXL data into the other data dashboard are we sort of also carrying that over yes it will be I can't remember how many dashboards but once once thatl is built then it is going to be automatically feeding those other dashboards we have multiple dashboards now now we have one giant dashboard with multiple sub dashboards a lot of dashboard amazing amazing um questions from the committee yes uh if in a few weeks the voters decide that uh mcast will no longer carry a graduation requirement will that data point be looked at differently will you still use it what how are you going to tackle that well for math speaking with our new math program it spits out when they take the assessment and put the inut their scores online spits out for efficiency I think as people in our community um just having those strong foundational math skills is important skill whether it's tested in mcast or not tested in mcast um I think it's something you need in life to be successful and to pull from and just having that reasoning filters into any job or career you pick you know outside of school so just to build the whole person those skills are still very important whether it's tested or not the other one of the strongest things about the mcast is it tells us a lot about what we are covering and and how how well our students have learned that so it's less I think it's less helpful in determining at one time sitting of what a particular student has learned but across the school it's actually very helpful in US determining if there's a standard that we have not taught as well or are there strengths that we can use to bootstrap other um areas of performance up so I wouldn't expect us to look at mcast that differently because we're not using it to judge students we're using it to learn about how we're teaching and so in that way it's it's an important tool for us that's not going to go way whether it's a graduation requirement or not I would expect and I go to juul's point to further expand on that he's absolutely right because we use that to judge how well we are addressing standards right how well we are Teaching Standards and even if we do not have the mcast test we as a public school are still required to teach the standards and have students Master those standards so we have to judge how we're doing that right what job we're doing and where we're falling short and where we're doing well correct me if I'm wrong but you can organize your search onl based on the Massachusetts state standards absolutely and so we've got another tool absolutely in our kit to um evaluate student progress in those standards because one of my concerns is if they vote to not count it as a graduation requirement how seriously will kids then take the test and what does that do to our ability to analyze how well we're performing as a district so I'm grateful that we have L that we're using in a different capacity but that's still aligned to the state standards which we are required to address as a public school and so we can still have that time to reflect on our successes and shortcomings and I already does the same thing for the lower elementary grades so and I think multiple data points are always always important yes you can't just base it on one right um I had I was wondering if you could expand a little bit from the Rams just expand a little bit on the tier one tier 2 tier three supports because I was a little concerned about when you talked about tier three you said that those students with they were you know trying to work on even at a phonics level of reading that they would only get a 41 M minutes per week and I just wondered like do you feel like that is that in addition to the other 30 minutes that they would get once a week for the other students or is that I'm just concerned that is that enough or is it at one point do we just like decide that that's my concern too so at that point are we saying that that student should be evaluated for an IEP so these are often kids that have been evaluated and found not eligible and so that's I mean that's why we have them on our case load right so I think so there's that factor right um please keep in mind that what Carla and I presented is under construction I mean we are putting a plan together and then we've got to try to execute it and see what works and what's not working um Mr agor you asked what we need at the middle school we will probably find we need tutors that the elementary level has to help um meet the needs of more kids in that Rams block time because it is just us and research suggests that small group intervention be three to four kids so I mean we're very limited on WE size right now um well we had to whittle I mean we are whittling down our list so um we have three to four kids per Rams block for Math and then for literacy five days a week for all three grades all three grades yeah so it's one group so we can serve one to two groups of kids per grade okay I'm not meeting with sixth grade 7th grade and 8th grade on Monday I'm meeting with one group of sixth graders right so that's that's the reality of our schedule and Staffing around that um but we might find with the push in approach as well that we are actually to able to make really positive change and progress with our students um like I said all of this is being developed for the first time at the middle school and so when when we sat down to look at it we thought about it as like a service delivery grid on an IEP and where you would have push in or pull out those are our options and then for the tier three it's really looking at um in this case it's it's where I know that student received a lot of intervention at Miller and has shown that they have or have not progressed and so using back data and experience and just kind of identifying like what's the one other option I have to give that student more than a small group 30 minute Rams walk is a one onone 40 minute unified Arts block and stud those are the classes you don't want to pull kids from any CL and so that's the other bit is that you're trying it for a 6 to8 we stretch to see if it's making progress but you also don't want that to be a permanent solution um we are not pulling from wellness and health um by law students need to attend those classes we're very mindful of if students take band or course and attend that during Rams block or specifically are part of of a performance at some point that they need to be prepared for um and so it really comes down to then talking with the student of if you had to pick one class and it's terrible um to put a child in that position um but at the same time when you know the import or and I'm very biased but the importance of a a student's ability to read and write and be a literate you know individual like that's that then becomes the priority and that's where we're really reserving it for these special cases I uh having been principal of the middle school for a long time um Casey was with me maybe N9 years ago when we advocated for the very first interventionist uh back just based off of that heavy need so if you're hearing her advocacy and her voice um it's welld deserved there uh immersed in the in the the heavy work but I'm excited to see this group and just as we see think about the Journey of the child prek through 12 and having that intervention theme uh and thread uh that's tied seems to be tied together with this great group of people is is fun fun to see I wanted to thank all of you guys this is amazing I'm just going to say it cuz I have the table but we need a reading interventionist like a specific reading interventionist at the middle school um we have a Wilson tutor and then we have me right and then we have fabulous teacher teaches right and we're but when it comes to this explicit reading instruction at this tier 2 to tier three level that's where you really need somebody who's trained in that and you know it's I I've been saying it my entire career to different people that at as a middle school that's really an important role that is it like kind of baffles me that it's not a part of of what we have at Rams and and to no one's blame right I mean it's just there are there are needs every year how do you prioritize a position and and funding that and I get it right it's to no one's fault but that is the one thing I would I would say again and again to the top of the list for Casey conahan at least I mean I'm just so it's Thursday January 23rd from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. uh you know we doing priority needs so you know am I invited no did it is a public meeting but you'll have to sell your um so on that note I'm going to turn to something else that I'm probably going to yell at for but um it's not specifically on the agenda tonight but I know you're still working on the math study group yes but as we work on all the math and we're rolling out the new curriculum we we did vote last year to try to get to Algebra 1 for the full year starting next year so can you maybe just talk a little bit about how that what how working on rolling out the new curriculum while also trying to shift to that what what how that's being Incorporated in in professional development or in just the work that's being done yes so Carla I'll start off with if you want to jum I have to piggyback off of Casey conahan's really hard work because I am new in the role and she laid down beautiful groundwork for me to jump off from and um so with the all Learners Network that we're bringing in their philosophy is that you can have heterogeneous groups in the classroom hit depth for those who are excelling and and meet the needs of all students in each classroom so this bringing the aln in is specifically to try to achieve Algebra 1 in eth grade yeah it's having them look at um really help me out here looking at leveraging high priority Concepts and high leverage Concepts these high their philosophy is that if we look at these high leverage Concepts and we and we focus on the high leverage Concepts we should be able to get to Algebra 1 in 8th grade so we're putting in the work of piloting trying and teachers are really getting in there and working with aln and working with the materials to try and make this happen and they started that work together this summer you guys did a lot of the work absolutely so we started looking at um we looked at in fact we started June last year before we even got out by having all Learners Network come in and look at look at what we were teaching look at what our what their High leverage concepts are and seeing where we could condense move or shift things to try to make this work for hollist and that's all based on teacher feedback teachers that have been teaching math for a while giving their professional opinion and kind of like Carla is saying kind of um strategizing and piloting different ways of doing it this year and see what's going to work it is um you know it's it's a big shift in in pedagogy and it's going to require a lot of shift in how people operate in the classroom and so it's it will take time for teachers to build Mastery of something different and new but we're working have to offer professional development that looks at it has and so and we are continuing that professional development right and it we'll have scheduling ramifications Staffing ramifications there'll be a lot of different things that come out of that um but it's a good group of people that were looking at all of those things and then with the Rams teachers modeling and trying a lot of different things but we are hard at work okay forgive me though um because I'm I'm I'm not an educator and I could not do your job um and and have no interest in in because it's a very hard job but uh um a het but a heterogeneous classroom if I'm translating is a deleveled classroom is a deleveled classroom right yes and so what we but right now what we have is is is leveling in the eighth grade yes and the algebra 1 class gets through I believe if I'm remembering the from the picture of them is about 2/3 of the algebra 1 standards correct so how are we going to Del and get through a full level of Algebra 1 in the same classroom as you're having kids who are right now sort of only in the the traditional math 8 classroom and that is that is the big question and that is why we're looking at all Learners Network um as experts in that to make it happen um but but it feels like the decision to D LEL has sort of is been made by bringing in the all learn Network which is not something the school committee has so the ding decision has not been made um all Learners Network all Learners Network should benefit everyone whether whether regardless of what direction we go in this this method of teaching is going to reach students um where they're at regardless so it's it's a great pedagogy regardless of whether we maintain levels or Del but um it just depends on it it it'll fit in regardless of where we choose to go with the algebra 1 and eth grade it's helping us do it's it's helping drill down all the way to placentino on providing methods grade level methods of of supporting students in algebraic thinking and so it's building upon it and providing that structure can I help okay so yeah with leveling not leveling one of the things that we I think have agreed is is that we want as many kids as possible to have access to algebra in 8th grade at the same time if we start leveling before that you put barriers in front of children's opportunities to get to algebra in eth grade in other words if we recommend kids then on an accelerated path to take an Accelerated math 7 those kids are fed into algebra in eth grade students as sixth graders therefore need to show a Readiness for that accelerated path but we know that kids develop at a different rate and that making a decision about them in sixth grade is not necessarily fair to their eighth grade pathway right but just to be clear hold on we haven't we haven't said we wanted we want to go back to an accelerate seventh grade I'm not done though okay so the thing about all Learners network is that it takes a look at these high leverage Concepts and what that's saying let's think of it another way when we level classes we sometimes say here's the full extent of what students need to learn in a slower level class they get to 2/3 or half and then if we have even a remedial level course they get to a third thir or a quarter of that content by doing that structure you automatically close off opportunity to prerequisite material needed to go into that level course and so what all Learners network does is they don't say do some they say do all for every single child but the depth of that will vary so now we no longer see it as an arrow across at different lengths we see the same Arrow all the way across from September to June but some arrows are Pencil Thin some arrows are an inch thick and some are a mile because of the level of depth and complexity that can be added for each highle concept but what those kids are getting is exposure to the full curriculum and content and then when they are showing Readiness they can be pushed to that level that they're ready for and we are no longer than putting in a barrier of sorry you don't have the prerequisite content for this accelerated course in the next year because you didn't get to it because you just weren't ready two years ago so that's the goal of all Learners Network and the structure it provides it doesn't mean mean them that every kid is going to get into an algebra class in eth grade but what it does mean is we are not structuring our content and our instructional practices in a way that creates barriers to students when we know they all develop at different Paces how does it provide that depth is is the student learning themselves I mean are they is it is it your learning off of instruction on your Chromebook or how does it provide the so all Learners Network starts with its high leverage Concepts and it identifies explicitly what math content is essential as pre-algebraic Concepts those become the key Focus points for each grade level and they've done that from k through eight I and that's what they call the high Lage delivering the depth my question the teacher so then so then the next part is that they structure a differentiated menu model where then and this is the work that Carla was and and Ashley have been describing with the menu process around all Learners network is that we're then looking at okay here's this concept and forgive me because I cannot speak in mathematical terms about like what what let's say addition okay but we're all learning addition but some of us are ready to add fractions some of us are ready to add decimals some of us are still looking at it with manipulative right and those go from concrete to abstract ways of working through addition teachers have that menu created and so some of them are small group activities that kids are working on some of it's direct instruction and then breaking out into groups some of it yes is going on tol with targeted assignments that they need to complete and so that math menu allows for the differentiation with in those Concepts or the content that's being taught can I pick you back up you sure can and it's also looking at the lesson structure so your R math squar is very similar to what all Learners network does so we have a launch so that's the hook to draw everybody in for example dropping all the sticks right like what are you going to do and then the learn piece is where you take what you just did and you analyze different Avenues to approach that whether it's concrete whether it's pictoral whether it's abstract so you have all these different layers in to meet all the needs of your students and then applying it for the land piece you'd be applying what you learned in different Avenues so for my person who's concrete it's more of a foundational type application where my friend who's more abstract is taking that and then applying it and reasoning it with something else you did or bringing several skills together so their whole philosophy is teaching all Learners regardless of of where you are that high leverage Concept in your classroom and providing a low threshold so everybody can have access to that curriculum but a high ceiling so you can take it to whatever level you need to to meet your need and I think the beauty of it too is it's acknowledging that not everybody conceptually understands math the same way so I'm an English teacher for a reason but the more I worked with I mean Ashley would say you get this though right and so I don't have the math vocabulary she also attended the PDS I did but it's like but I understood conceptually what was going on and I just would show it in a different way but I learned hey I actually have a math mind it just is different it's not the traditional way of here's the teacher's example I do it with the teacher and now I'm expected to memorize what all that means and what that process leads me to it's more of thinking the why are you doing how are you do why is this happening what structures and it goes back to the math practices that I talked about before building those in to really reason about why you're doing what you're doing how you're doing it and then using that to apply it to another skill so it's not a siloed like I'm adding I'm adding I'm adding I'm subtracting subtracting subtracting then when you put the two together they're like I don't know what I'm doing so it's teaching more around the reasoning behind what you're doing as opposed to the actual functionality of that skill I I think it comes down to with this math question of levels that it's not really about do we level or not level because that is just a two-sided way you know it's it's oversimplifying it and really it's if we are trying to create math Pathways for students and we know we want them to get all the way or for kids to have the choice to get to calculus by senior year then really the question is what bear barriers are we putting into place inadvertently that are preventing kids from getting there and we do not want to create a system that Pro creates barriers and if we do such as levels and it's and not teaching a full prerequisite content to allow students to move forward then where are those opportunities for students to get the prere uh prerequisite content that they didn't get in the course because they want to push themselves forward right that's really the question at hand is how do we not prevent kids from reaching their fullest potential with the systems we set up while also keeping intact you know their selfworth and feeling of confidence because as soon as you put a struggling math student and a course that's you know too over their head I hate math I don't want to come to school I'm avoiding I'm going to the bathroom I'm getting a drink so thinking about the whole student social emotional health too while you're teaching so that you can meet the needs of all your students so they all can feel successful so first of all I want to say I I I completely agree we don't want to create barriers or we want to create Pathways to to getting if if a child you know sort of matures into something later can can can can accelerate I I and this is not a conversation to tonight i i b off more than I could chew um but um but um but as far as like you know the depth I I can I can understand that in in an English class if you're if you're doing a Shakespeare you know play and you you can separate people out who some and you can go deeper into sort of the meaning and the subtext and and all this for some and and some you're at a higher level and just sort of you know getting through you know shakes Romeo and Juliet or whatever right but with math I mean going deeper means building more blocks and and and so how do you start with with all kids at the same place in in a year and continue to have some kids going deeper as you go through the year and not have two kids exiting that class at very different levels at the different different very different sort of places in what their understanding of math and yet then starting in the same class the following year but kids don't come in even in English at the same level at the start of the year they come in with all different abilities and skills and what it is is we're identifying though that like you are learning wow this kid is at this point and this one is here in September but this is the year at clicks and they're able to take on more and you're able to provide those blocks and build on what they've learned I mean that's that's learning is building is looking at individual students and seeing what they know and can do and and building off of that and I think I understand that math is much more sequential and I think though what is exciting about all Learners network is it's showing that there is a way to not be so traditional with that and think about how that same con concept that we look at in a Humanity's classroom of kids showing up with all different reading abilities and writing abilities and that's September and and some of the the they all grow at different amounts throughout that year based on what they're ready for and what the teacher is able to provide and so that's what we're looking at for math is that we're going to still do these Concepts but we're going to give you as much as you're ready for and build on those blocks correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the curriculum that we just got and started supposed to modulate with the student so if the student is ready for more then they're you're able to of tailor those lessons in the homework for that student isn't that right but that's just m that's just just you could bring a a n i how are we test like I I get the depth and I totally agree with we don't want to if students in the more video class and they can advance we we're blocking them in but as I think about a class as all Learners how are you testing them on that knowledge right if someone's excelling or more remedial are they getting different assignments are they getting different tests they might be okay and the assessments are adaptive too so on Excel and I ready they yeah yeah on I ready they have what's called my path so they take the diagnostic and then it puts them on their own customized individualized pathway for Math and literacy so the program gives them something that's just right for you to feel successful and not feel that sense of I can't do this and like frustration to shut down and then it builds you up and on our end and the teachers end we're able to turn off different domains so if I want to just focus on Geometry you know to get that extra boosting it'll meet students where they're at so my High Flyers keep getting pushed and my other students that need that remedial support will get what they need and it will the system will flag if they're struggling for Teacher intervention and are we seeing any you mentioned small groups um does that create any issues within the classroom where you're separating out okay these are the the All Stars versus okay the average and the remedials or so speaking for Miller um students love to come to math support so it's like why can't I come can I come why are you taking them like when is it going to be my turn so it's not seen as like oh you're a smart kid oh you're not so smart it's seen as oh this is awesome I love this I get to go and you know I'm also pushing into classrooms like oh Mrs Bard's in today oh this is exciting so it's not a siloed thing it's more of like this is exciting and it's also during win time so no new instruction is being taught just from with reading just Dan stuck on reading no no but reading is the one I can understand most because I'm very black and white but anyway um if if you're not reading at a sixth grade level when you enter sixth grade right what happens we you get intervention right to to to pull you up to being to to reading at at sixth grade level are we saying that by 8th grade if you if you at the end of e8th grade if you don't if you're not uh full out you know able to to to get through a whole full algebra one class we're going to be intervening there and and and and getting I mean I because it a book it's a lot it seems a lot easier to to say you know what you're at a higher reading level so just go and and read this book for your for your reading assignment and write and and and write your you know your essay or whatever on that on a on a on a harder book math is you can absolutely differentiate just like you can for reading in math you can do that same thing there's different I mean help me out yeah I mean you absolutely can do that I know down in the little land it's completely different than the middle school but when I taught second grade I had kids who were doing math at a kindergarten level I had kids who were doing math at a third grade level maybe even Beyond um but it's all about meeting the kids where you're at now I know Rams you have a different schedule than we do down at the elementary and I think shorter blocks of time for teachers makes it slightly more difficult to differentiate whereas I had my students all day long but I to say during reading I had that child he was great on reading he didn't need that challenge but in math he was craving that challenge maybe during independent reading that day he got a Math logic puzzle that he was working on instead um during math time during the learn part the practice the Hands-On part I had kids doing five different activities during math B and it was always a math activity that they needed to work on but they all had access to the grade level instruction they all sat through my lesson and even those those kids who didn't want to because it was quote unquote too easy for them um we always had like a side conversation like this is our job we all have to listen to this lesson but then afterwards I would literally take it out I would say this is what you're going to work on and this is what the other kids are going to work on and it's okay to point that out to kids I think as long as they know that it's it's their work because that everyone gets what they need and I think that's important and I know Rams is different because you guys only have a certain amount of time with children than it is when all of us were growing up students understand that that they are getting what they need and you know it's not I mean I'm much older and and students knew you know who was slower and who was faster and all of that but now students understand that oh they're getting that because that's what they need I mean it's not it's just I guess my conc try to understand the differentiated learning is it sounds like there is a base lesson like that everyone gets what they need and then you differentiate into groups and it might be the computer that's teaching them or a worksheet that's teaching a higher level but different kids learn in different ways and there's plenty of High Flyers that need to be taught a lesson and there's still only 41 minutes in the day or or 41 minutes in that class so is that what we're doing we're doing a base lesson and then if you want to learn more if you want to learn deeper then you're relying on computer instruction or worksheets being to teach yourself it's um I think it t it's it's a little more in depth than that so with the math menu with these menu structures the types of activities vary and students can students can choose where they're so like you'll get you'll get get a main lesson and then when it comes time to do individual work you get a menu choice and you're choosing what's at your level and teachers can help you choose what's at your level cuz sometimes maybe you know someone will choose something that's a little bit more difficult and then the teacher can say wow how about you start with this one because this one is you're struggling a bit here so it's kind of guiding them to these pre-made choices that that um Can appeal to different strengths of different students and it's really open-ended I mean you could use different types of if you have a choice of four things there's all one day you could have a computer based a Hands-On based a um an escape puzzle a a different thing and the next lesson you'll have a different menu of four choices are at different difficulty levels the teacher is going to help students select what's appropriate for them and if kids are choosing things that are too easy for them they're going to say you know what I think this is you're you're killing this why don't you move on and and try this one so it's going to kind of allow students some movement and growth even within lessons and I think part of the beauty of that is is maybe you're terrible at ratios but geometry is your strength well in within the same class you're going to be able to when you hit geometry really like go as far as you can with that whereas in ratios maybe you're you're selecting something that's a little on the simpler side because that's not that's something that you need more work on and I'd also like to add the misconception of moving kids forward and plugging them in on a device or using worksheets all Learners network is more about working with students so like partnering up having that rich discourse leveraging two students who are at the same level playing a dice game you could play that dice game at different levels so it's moving away from plugging in yes plugging in for the diagnostic 10 minutes every now and then totally fine because you want to meet those goals to increase your growth in your foundation but worksheets you're not going to get as much out of a worksheet as you are you know working with somebody at your level in your classroom with your teacher giving you a choice of what options to do what games to choose what puzzles to do what Sudoku like there's so many Rich resources that we have where students need to collaborate and work together to build their understanding as opposed to just worksheets of plugging in and it is a lot more collaborative so there's a lot of talking students talking things out together they're sharing how they're how they're getting to what they're getting to so it's you know it's funny too cuz you have to teach them how to talk to their peers because they don't know like how do you disagree appropriately how do you critique somebody's work without making them feel like you know you just ruin their whole day by saying hey Casey you're wrong like you don't talk that way so there's that whole social emotional peace built in that's why we partner with Jerel and all Network because it's building the whole to make these decisions to interact with each other and to really just build them build them up I think it's just also important to say when the middle school is in this strange place of needing to create a pathway to Algebra 1 for as many eth graders as possible and we're not wanting to start leveling at a young age all Learners networks structure gives us a methodology for how we can differentiate but let's be honest that even in leveled courses there's a range of Learners and capabilities and that differentiation still needs to happen on that note I think that's a wonderful way to wrap up and I just wanted to thank all of you guys for being here tonight and sharing all the incredible work you are doing at all our schools I'm sorry yes I I'm like trying to get those chairman alfer we have two contributions from the zoom public via chat okay how would you like to handle that two two comments in the chat about the presentation a question it's related it's related to the curriculum team so let me know how you want to proceed sure we we did public comment comment can they submit questions uh they're more than welcome to I mean I think you know it's not a so we'll we'll we'll they can email and we can we can get the uh we can get it out to there yeah exactly but but I but I appreciate this conversation um and your patience with me and um my questions and thank you guys for for everything that you do thank you very D you're more of a reading guy M I actually don't read very I actually don't read very well G math well thank you yes thank you thank you thanks everybody I think we're a little behind I you know I blame we're just 30 minutes over motion to a j I just want to after 9:00 right now we have a lot to get through we got he skipped we're good we're good we got we got Dan let's go we we've already missed the light so you know you got to go on Facebook there some incredible pictures all right all right good evening everyone um so how is technology um used in the arches in the Strategic plan this year 2425 so that's going to be the theme of the night so for Arch one there's a lot of uh initiatives we're leading two we're supporting three supporting in Arch four I'd like to share kind of a preview of the capital the 5year technology replenishment plan which I know some committee members may not have seen before so um it's not in your presentation but I'll show it and then happy to share it after the fact just to give you a preview what's coming there all right so for Arch one we have a lot going on um all of you I think believe have children in the system and you received a monthly student attendance letter recently so at the end of every month you're going to receive just a separate report on your child's attendance so that was in our department uh created that report so any feedback you have from that U more than welcome and then uh we also U implemented a new module in power school called unlimited contacts so the family structures are very uh Dynamic these days so this module literally can take we have some families with like 13 contacts um and that's you know friends neighbors who can pick up who who is custody and it's it's a very robust module so but implementing that was a lot of work still some cleanup happening so just know that um technology was heavily involved there and then merging Power School portals many don't realize I guess this happened but uh you can't see that cuz I'm not sharing I apologize um anyway I'll just anyway we put the annual student form within the uh public portal instead of a separate portal so again that was a a project to merge together and then the folks that just left the room there nine folks uh we gave them s'more licenses in order to collaborate with Joan on curriculum newsletter so we expanded our s'more usage so you're going to see more newsletters from the curriculum team [Music] go all right arch1 continue this is a big one this year um sorry sorry that's are you controlling from there I am controlling from here yeah um so uh data governance was part of the Strategic plan a few years ago so we have uh five major initiatives happening uh home content filtering you're going to hear about this very shortly we have an option now with our new content filter where parents can monitor the Chromebooks at home so for grades 5 through 12 um I'm going to be hosting Zoom sessions and then creating videos and then documentation if parents can't make those zooms where you can basically sign up you're going to get an email to join the portal and you'll be able to see your child's um activity on the Chromebook and be able to manage it above and beyond what the school filter does so for example the high school if and we do permit YouTube at the high school if you wanted to control that after hours you'd be able to do that with this new filter is that driven by Wi-Fi or they their actual device it's an agent on the Chromebook an agent okay so um it will not work on personal devices unless they log in with their Holliston account so it's all based on their Holliston account so but stay tuned for that that's coming um again AI was part of the update tonight so I wanted to share where we are there so I know Cynthia we've discussed in the policy meetings um about AI policy and we uh decided we need more staff feedback before we recommend a policy to the committee and so we're trying something different we tried surveys last spring did not get a ton of responses so this year we're trying listening sessions starting at the high school this week and then expanding to the other buildings but I feel like I'm going to have to get the band back together which which is our steering committee they met uh November last year and and I'm going to need their help uh possibly um recrating that policy uh to make it a little more succinct before we bring it forth to the committee so that might just be one meeting in order to do that after we get the teacher feedback uh cyber train so uh we have all staff uh designated for cyber training this is something I've been trying to do for years we've always been able to get 20 to 30 staff um enrolled in state sponsored training which is actually very good but there's only a limited number of seats so on January 17th we can get all 500 plus staff uh cyber trained and we're able to record that session for any new people that come in at any time during the year so it's going to be 90 minutes of cyber training on January 17th and then related to that uh every everybody here at the uh in the central office is aware this is happening we we're going to develop a incident response plan I always say it's not a matter of if but when Holliston is attacked you know what are we going going to do and we really don't have that plan in place but we we received a grant with Chris Mayo's help from the town uh he and I kind of share a grant so the town receives funding but we've received a lot of funding in order for this vendor to help us develop this plan so so for example they're going to interview all of our central office and principes to kind of ask these questions like if the Woodland campus loses internet you know what what are we going to do with our curriculum attendance All Those Questions we have to have that lined up and answer and ready Dan if there's ever a breach an incident where data is exposed is there Disaster Recovery being put in place as well redundancy yep that's that's all part of this plan so they're going to I'm I'm going to be interviewed heavily I I expect that fully um they're going to be asking at all of our systems our Access Control uh our backups for example much of our 99% of our applications are in the cloud okay but it's all about I'm sure they're going to ask me what are you asking those vendors about their backup system so yeah um have to be ready for all that and maybe also the uh just send the link of this the Cyber training to to the school committee so that we don't click on buttons just don't click on links you're welcome to come to these in January if you like no no no but you said you was going to be recorded right ah yes the video yes right it'll be a 90-minute presentation yes absolutely I'll send that can you do a f minute version I'll get AI to help me with that assume every email from Dan is officient sorry I had to delete it it's fair and then one more piece of this is uh the the central leadership team and school leadership is going to be part of this incident response plan along with Chris Mayo from the town but then we're actually going to execute that plan in January January 14th with the help of this vendor so it's going to be a tabletop exercise where we are going to you know act if we don't have network access or if one campus does not what is the system going to do to respond how are we going to communicate with families and everything else we rely on these systems Food Service Transportation all of it so we're actually going to do a tabletop in January all part of this grant all right Arch two I'll make this quick because you heard heard from Jerelle quite a bit but uh the technology department is supporting this in many ways there's actually one person in particular I want to um recognize that's JY Renee Harrington she's our data system specialist uh she's been responsible for making sure all of our data is feeding these dashboards all right swinging Arch three uh Dr manard and I meet regularly almost practically daily so uh one thing that is in our strategic plan which is um you heard the curriculum team and team everything they're doing we need to have the AI conversation with the curriculum team you know how do we get this in the hands of students and a responsible effective way because we know students are going to need it in their jobs so that's that's a fact that everyone's beginning to recognize is and so we need to meet with the curriculum team and have these conversations and then how do we deploy that to students and staff and it's not I'm assuming it's not just about teach about AI but how they can apply AI to even accelerate learning I would hope correct but not g learning exactly how do use it ethically and we we're hearing I heard today from uh actually another assistant superintendent you know higher ed is beginning to embrace Ai and we're we're supposed to be preparing for that so it needs to come down to this level how far down is unknown but it's we're at that point where people are embracing it so hollison needs to embrace it so how do we do that with the curriculum folks I'll be honest my two-year-old son already talks Okay Google so there is AI built in there yes shut it down I know all right and uh finally T Arch four talent and resources so um I want to credit our Tech integration specialist they they recognized last year our staff portal was not really great for staff so they made a lot of improvements over the summer but one thing that actually the um schools have done I really need to stop sharing but um hang on a minute because I have to show this One-Stop shop all right so now you can see my whole screen so Miller was kind of the leader in the clubhouse with this but this is what we're providing to staff is a One-Stop shop with all of the resources that staff needs at their fingertips and as you can see there's a a ton and other schools have hopped on this bandwagon of developing a One-Stop shop and so the Tech integration Specialists along with the uh building leaders have created these documents and it just makes life a little bit easier for teachers as far as finding things and then similarly Jess Bey has also made her own student services Hub yeah so again we we're sharing this with staff putting this in their uh deployed bookmarks so that again they could find everything in one place rather than having a 100 bookmarks which is kind of where we're at and then finally the tech Capital swinging to that um again just to give you a preview and I apologize for the size of this but I'll just try to zoom in quickly so this is our um sort of our water waterfall chart of the Chromebook replenishment plan so on the left here you'll see the uh graduation year and the grade level this year so 2025 being grade 12 and then if you scroll over you can see the age of devices they're using so one means first year uh 2 3 4 five but you can see 2425 the highlighted year that's the one where Capital funding is going to be requested from me uh going through you obviously um but that that price tag is going to include 100 iPads we're finding um the iPads have a niche in Holliston for sure we're up to I think upwards of 300 and so we have you know 3,000 Chromebooks but we have 300 iPads too and it's only growing for example today at Miller we did a learning walk I I saw two students who were multilingual Learners one was German one was Portuguese both had iPads and one was using it to translate documents and read those documents back to them and the other one was using the iPad as a translator and I actually was communicating with the student because they were struggling with one of their questions and we were both using the iPad as the translator so it it's was really cool to see that use case for that iPad but again that's that's the thing that's happening is we our iPads are reaching their end of life and so we need to refresh those so the 100 UC is for the Rams in the high school 60 is Miller 70 placentin the price tag is only 74,000 because we're not including Chromebooks this year if you recall they were funded by the uh emergency connectivity fund which by the way has saved hollison $279,000 so far so that was a covid grant that has saved the district uh close to $300,000 so so anyway spring 25 there will be a $74,000 capital for iPads mainly staff devices uh thanks to your help and town meeting we refresh the teachers administrators and counselors but we have pair professionals um and school health front office uh folks need to be refreshed and that's about 78,000 and then finally infrastructure you can see um our basically our entire Tech inventory here but for 2425 sorry for the scrolling we have Rams and high school Wi-Fi that needs to be upgraded and then the second phase of our switch project and that that's just a forecast 250,000 and that's because that all has to go out to bid because it's all erable so for those that aren't familiar with e- rate it's the uh fcc's uh 40% contribution of hollon in our case to reimburse any major infrastructure technology upgrades so does that 250 include that or does not include it will likely be 40% it'll likely be 60% of that because we're going to get 40% back uh but that money goes back to the town as most things do so we have to make the full request and then the town gets the reverse Keith chime in if I'm wrong on that so no that that's correct I just we'll see we'll see who wins the election in November whether that still exists or not true it the president does dictate a lot of what the FCC can and can't do great Point um so just to summarize again this is just an early forecast uh I'm expect anticipating about 396,000 in the spring Capital requests coming for technology and I'm sorry to do this for those that been around we still have the High School auditorium lighting project which is sitting on that back burner and so what's happening in the auditorium is we have a really old dimmer panel that if it ever fails we're not going to be able to get parts for it it's that old we've asked this question and so again that's going to be a case where if that dimmer panel fails we'll probably be moving um performances like to the middle school until we get some sort of emergency funding to replace that well if it happens it's a quar million now I I can certainly you know reach back out and revisit all that get new quotes but I do know that one panel in there I believe is like 75,000 to replace that price tag is probably not going to go away yeah we we did work on that just after we opened and um yeah it's it's a significant piece of Hardware which again basically runs 247 would it help if it started flickering on Monday the 21st the cost would go down uh the other piece of that project is we are not on LED lights except the house lights so all the stage lighting is old school and so that's part of that4 million doll upgrade is we're we're using really old bulbs which which again are harder and harder to find so it's just a a project that we're no one's fault it's being kind of pushed down the road at some point it's going to hit us efficiency grants for that at all no bumer yes it's it's neither enough bulbs nor is it um I mean the issue with with replacing that piece of lighting is the infrastructure behind it not the bulbs so as opposed to when when like we did all you know this whole school actually we did all the schools ourselves um that the infrastructure was in place we just had to change bulbs Acquired and change bulbs so so anyway this number the 396 is independent of that um Auditorium lighting project so if that was ever added back again possibly at a reduced rate then I could certainly take that out and uh get some vendor quotes again yes we need to look at that okay we'll certainly do that so that's uh if if you have any questions on this happy to answer or anything else would you just share that with us as well of course yeah and it's still a little bit in flux with that like the 250k is just a forecast it'll be put out to bid so and that will come back in mid January or so those bid [Music] responses all right so um just to review these are the uh again areas where we're supporting the Strategic plan this year any other questions love the theme and the animations man great M doesn't do that we're changing from a panther to whatever that is yeah it's a fo a mushroom exactly that's my point why is the it's cute should be there should be a bunny than the foxes oh my God eating okay um before we get to the Dan you're I'm Al okay great thank you very much yes no questions before we move on to the C stuff I do I I Jason Jason has been waiting patiently so why don't we just uh uh skip up to the uh uh discussion about the hon youth basketball uh gym usage you can either come up or we can have a conversation but obviously we had you you uh came to public comment two weeks ago um we've had some conversations with Dr kuska and Mr R we we could yes before you go into your field so well I just I have some concerns about it as we're looking at changing the bus scheduling and how if that ends up pushing us later does that mean that our Athletics and other things that are happening at Rams also gets pushed later so what they're asking for is so what they're asking for is a year or sorry is is for this year at least for now and so just for this year my thinking was to to do a pilot if you will um to to see how it okay well doesn't say pilot anywhere I didn't know that well I I'm not because we don't have to vote on a pilot the committee could say we want to just make it permanent permanent so I'm not you know okay well yeah I just I'm just there's so many moving parts right now I'm just that's my conern there's a lot of mov Parts if we say it's forever and they're like the other thing is just I think that you know given that that time is closer to the day there could be things that we might need the gym for so I think that any agreement we have I think there should be way ways for the schools with with appropriate notice to say you know that day just isn't going to isn't going to work we'll have to we'll have to pull it but how often was this ICT from last it was November 12th to beginning of March okay but every day right every yeah Monday through Friday y oh okay yeah so that's the only thing I'll say is that the thing we're going to request is that there's good supervision of the children there um just because again being that close to school times we still may have going on there and we can't have kids running around the schools I think we have to have some sort of formal agre right but we'll let the administration s that out we'll have to work that out but again I think as a pilot program right for one year also to the a great point about all the the shifts in schedules uh or potential shifts in in in the scheduling um yeah and we're just we're looking at things like after school child care and things like that so that might impact Rams too in part of that discussion sure but right now if we if we just look at this year yeah that makes sense people think for this year it help Tak the pressure out for this okay um so then I didn't a motion to sort of um approve use of the of the gym from from 5 to 6 plus whatever they're they're they're currently using it for for the hollon Youth Basketball Association subject to you know sort of final kind of condition set by for the 24 25 year for the 24 25 years subject to the sort of the some conditions that the administration needs to to get them comfortable move by John second by Sarah all in favor okay thank you I didn't realize it was going be that quick um done long time than thank you all right we'll move back uh we'll we'll uh pause you um so in your packet tonight I'm like last time no it's short um jesz no um yeah I got to read it or somebody else can read if they want to um I'll let Sarah read it um so it's this is our first read of um policy ik this came forward from Administration who was looking for um some support around promotion and retention of students um actually at the lower level not necessarily at the upper levels although some folks were reading this as a something to kind of replace the um early graduation piece but it's not um in that in that vein so um this is our first read so please get back to me after we have the reading if you have any concerns questions comments please reach out to us our meeting is on the 23rd and I'll hope to move it forward for the next meeting thanks Sarah okay how about it uh the school committee is dedicated to the best total and continuous development of each student enrolled at Holliston Public Schools HPS the professional staff is expected to place students at the grade level best suited to them academically socially and emotionally in evaluating student achievement each teacher will make use of all available information including results of teacher made tests and other measures of skill and Content Mastery standard oh sorry standardized tests and teacher observation of student performance the principal will direct and Aid teachers in their evaluations and review grade assignments in order to ensure uniformity of evaluation standards students will normally progress annually from grade to grade exceptions may be made when in the Judgment of the professional staff such exceptions are in the best educational interest of the students involved exceptions will only be made after prior notification and explanation to each student's parents guardians but the final decision will rest with the building principle I have to finish the masc review y so my only question is why do we why now do we need this like what you know what it came up as alert and um we just sent it down to the administration to look at to say what are your thoughts around this and it came forward from them to say yeah we we need to have some support around retention of students and promotion of students I think sometimes there's been issues where um parents have either tried to hold their kids back or push them forward um against the advice of and so we didn't have a policy stating that this is how we it's basically codifying our practice okay that makes sense y okay but again comments questions just forward and over to me thank you okay any else no okay uh we will we are thanks sir an hour late but uh we will get to the central office administrator update Dr C hi I tried to comment earlier but it was hard to oh I'm sorry I didn't I just wanted to say I I really impressed and thrilled about how our communities teams as well as our UA support coordinator moving forward it's exciting for this work we've been trying so hard to work on these interventions and curriculum work as a community as a district and I really feel like this team is really coming together so nicely and thank you Joanie for the work that you're doing with them as well I also wanted to mention that we had our first administrative learning walk today at Miller so the leadership team was at Miller and we've worked on New initiatives and new training that we've done together to calibrate and and try to identify areas that we can work on as a leadership team so it was very successful and well received and it was wonderful to be in the classrooms of all of our teachers at Miller today so thank you very much and then I also wanted to just mention that we are holding our next Coffee hours as a PK to 12 plus team it's typically the principles and myself but sometimes other leaders will join us we'll have parir coffee hours on 10:21 and 10:24 we heard people at our August parent coffee hour that some people were concerned that it was during the daytime what are we doing at night we've offered by Zoom at night but we are going to try to do the 10:21 is at 9:00 a.m. at the high school and 10:24 is at 5:00 p.m. at the high school before the school commit meeting we try to come up with ideas to engage in person but we're willing to explore doing advice the future as well so I I just think there's a lot of great things happening in the district and I'm excited to continue to move forward in in the alignment work that we're doing thank you great thank you um Dr I just wanted to thank the team that came tonight and I'm glad they got to inform all of you to what's going on that's great that's it okay uh Keith or Dr Jordan I I'm on six times later so y to you um just I I I meant to say thank you to the to holl youth basketball who contributed to basketball goals to Miller uh that were installed um and finished yesterday so if you're ever down by the Miller playground uh they have the two two brand new uh Grill goals that are there um that are fantastic that they uh they donated to the the schools um also just uh breakfast program is going well uh anecdotally uh although I you know I we would be looking to to kind of assess this as far as the impact is that students teachers are expressing that students are are showing energy and are not coming to uh classes hungry um and that you know our counselors that their times where they're dishing out snacks is on a alltime low so they're kind of being able to fill that um and then our use uh of it is on the rise I was just over at the middle school and we have about 200 students that are that are participating in The Breakfast down um at the middle school um there were some mentionings at a prior uh fincom meeting concerning some tree trimming at uh Miller um and that has been completed on the outsides of the building uh but they are looking um at a later point in time this year to uh when school is out to work on the interior um interior uh area where the trees have gotten up on top of the the roof uh specifically there were animals that would climb on one side of the tree scoot across the roof and find their way uh into the courtyard and you don't want a raccoon who got lost uh who can't figure out their way out to um in the in the courtyard um so uh that's that's what I've got other than playgrounds are in good shape uh recently they were kind of finishing up the BMS and adding the last bit of mulch um to the area we just need the the first big winter storm to see how that goes don't wish for it no no not at all Dr Jordan did you say Hon Youth Soccer it was to youth basketball you basketball donated two basketball goals to Miller right right in front of the Bas the playground they had like the old ancient ones this they they go up and down uh Dave K will be in possession of the crank so that you know your average middle schooler who that was our concern it might uh take advantage of a lower Rim uh but you know we'll have the ability to lower and lift them up but most of the time 99% of the time they'll be at 10 ft uh but when they need to which was the initial request they could lower them to 8 ft for more age appropriate basketball dunk or try atast um thank you I'm on the wrong agenda um all right reports to the subcommittees communications um we did put out just some little recap to the PO reporter that basically had a link to the video recording of our last school committee meeting and then just like time highlights so if you were interested in any one topic you could just go directly to that and watch it which I don't know we'll we'll keep doing that Jo's GNA we see whether or not I it's kind a bum you can't really see like the hits on it can you um I looked to see if there were any comments on it but like you can't there's A's there's a counter on the there is on the there is the coun on the YouTube okay so you can check the YouTube to see how many people clicked on it yeah just you know just see whether your efforts are worth doing or not oh me again me again great I know it's fascinating um anyway so we'll just keep doing that and um great if anyone has any you know yeah it's a good input or it's just keeping it kind of short and sweet so that we can let people know what's going on without having to sit it's only 9:34 it's only 9:34 we're just getting ramped up okay um my policy meeting is our next one is October 23rd at 4:15 at central office so Wednesday and in budget we had a meeting on October 9th we went over the yes yesterday uh we went over capital projects including the status of the High School auditorium while we went over um the October uh 2024 town meeting budget uh or Capital requests and um Dan and I also attended the fincom um Capital meeting on was it Tuesday yes yeah subcommittee meeting so so it's we we got the green light it's it's on the the warrant now we just need to make sure that there's enough free cash uh to pay for everything um all right um superintendent evaluation um I sent out to the committee just the calibration rubric just so you could kind of get familiarized with that so that when we do put out the tool you will know how to calibrate your responses um I did reach out to Dr Kusa she's going to work on her goals and hopefully we will discuss that at the end of this month hopefully um and then have a meeting so that we can finalize those Cynthia do we use all 32 standards no okay good 31 31 sorry 31 we learned a lot of char in the course Joe Hill so are you want it on the agenda for next not next well we could start reviewing them over at next meeting the 24th is the end of the month so I just oh that is the end of the month okay um yeah I guess that would make sense let me know you yeah let me yeah let me get back that okay um so now we get into the really the good stuff um an uh update on the bus start times advisory committee oh yes who wants to give that update we'll let Mr start we let Mr start the answer boom um what I learned is that um many those folks sorry I'll let I'll let Keith speak in a minute I was I miss the first meeting I apologize you weren't there for the first meeting I just said that I wasn't there for the first meeting but I did learn that there's a number of folks that were in that meeting that were unaware I don't know how that um we are not we are extending our day by 15 minutes so yes next year each additional en for the entire year going forward forever I minutes yeah okay anyway so um so that was an interesting uh thing to learn and I think it's important for the community to know that yes in fact we are adding 15 minutes to the school day not it's not rolled into it is another 15 minutes that we have to fit into that day either at the beginning of the day or at the end of the day so that both I want mine in the middle okay yeah I hear you so um I would say that we hadn't get any real consensus yet although I'll let he speak to it go ahead keth sorry we actually did last meeting we did 7:30 is the ear 7:30 is the earliest okay that's all we got we got nothing Mr chair can we not say seven anyway okay go ahead Mr so we've had two meetings um the first meeting was much better because we had less people talking um the Cynthia is right with regards to there's been a lot of information dissemination um at this meeting and whether it be related to the 15 minutes and how 15 plus 15 plus 10 actually equals 40 not 15 or things of the nature of of how the bus routes work and and so it's been actually a big informational yeah heavy lift my lips aren't even moving how am I doing this but um so again we we it it's been good for that for the people who' have been there um I will say that at some level um we've heard pretty much every possible opinion that that's out there with regards to um we I I figured we'd start out with the three bus run cuz easy like low hanging fruit check we're done two hours completely just to that's this is the the emergency backup planet for some reason no but I just think that strategy wise that's and I made that clear I but but I'm making it clear to everyone watching now when hearing maybe like could come to the meeting though it's one them next Tuesday but as but as the public as the public oh no we don't want to hear so so from that from that um we did reach at you know as Frank was saying we did reach a consensus with regards to we're not there is under no circumstances we going to start any earlier in 7:30 regardless of the number of buses regardless of the number of runs regardless of anything else right how that plays out we will see but again um you know we're going to uh uh you know the next phase that we're going and I kind of came up with an idea on how to make the meeting a little more efficient with regards to we're I'm going to put out a survey of the of the four scenarios and basically rank them from one to four ask people to to give their opinions on um on why they chose what they chose they don't you don't have to tell everything but if somebody want to offer why they like this one what you know and just so we can really hone this down more quickly so um because again the the thing that we need to do the the the when looking at the three bus running it was trying to figure out do we change the order of schools do we you know do we try to bundle it somehow differently so that's what we talked about that kind of ran over time wise in the in the two bus run it's which two schools do we put together and when once we put figure out which two of those we put together which one goes first and which one goes second so that's the that's the next phase so that's I'd like to Hope think we could wrap that up in a meeting but you know I don't get it done two meetings worth in like 10 minutes so the one thing I would add and I know we explicitly said this cuz we're just open up a can of worms but as we get closer to a I most ideal scenario but not fully there is let's consider the efficiencies we can get outside of just when are we starting and how many buses we need more like discussions we had around a radius around the schools number of bus stops I don't want you don't want to start there but let's get to a position where we like this but it's not ideal perfect and how do we tighten it up I agree with that I I think I think when folks are getting too immersed in the weeds of like efficiencies and we haven't made a big decision about like like some firm thing things um it we get a little lost um because those are not going to change it fundamentally right but we may say we don't like Miller and placentino to be 55 minutes apart how do we get it to 40 as an example but also I think I think having you would want you would want lot I think you would want other admin rators involved and different people involved who are in like deeply in involved in like how you tighten the window a little bit and what we're talking about is the runs are at 55 minutes was built into the structures that were provided we run our current runs at 45 minutes but we're trying to account for breakfast and for the issues that we've seen recently um and if we are looking to kind of improve how we do or how our runs are running in our in our bus is showing up on time um you know it's 55 minutes if we do nothing so and it's not just stops and things like that as David I think was alluding to it's things that we can do internally whether it be the way that we do dismissals within the schools how long we wait for the buses before they leave the schools again minutes and up that's why we need to land on the most ideal knowing there's possible to get even better by all right we can come to a solution that we can do now and then work towards incrementally imp yes and again but we need that overall structure for it we need to know certain piece of the structure on where to go with so so part two of the tel Noella will be two bus runs next be clear there two bus runs is the goal with three is a back of it for some reason we can't even get a bus company to give us CH I'm just there that may not even be recommended I have to say what two bus rooms correct based on the discussion in the room well we haven't even started I'm just saying I still want you to be giving you the update I will about I'm going to I'm looking forward to hearing from the advisory committee but if there's not a two bu option that is recommended I'm going to we well we've also made it very clearly certainly I have that this is a school committee decision on where this goes that this is an advisory committee you're not making a final vote this is not you know etc etc the Democracy end of things is the seven of you not the 17 of them but but I think everyone needs to understand as we were going through the override process we we made certain sort of statements of what we were expecting to to to come from this and that is a two St time what the what the committee said we wouldn't just post the recommendation without the reasons why either so things can change between June and now and even in the future we foresee that the recommendation will include a why okay it has to be and a two run Sol no no from June from June until now things have changed significantly s with to hollon and our driver situation and and how things are looking um we didn't really have any bus driver issues before that's become an issue even if it wasn't more have time to solve we do have time to try to come up with solution buy electric buses we're going to bring it on us all right well electric bus is $400,000 but um in house we don't have the infrastructure Built Well I don't think we should dismiss bringing it in house okay then I need flag field back sure oh parking lot perfect it's G to be a basketball court um we can park on the basketball that's right that's what I said all right anything else about the uh the start times uh when do you meet again Tuesday and then the following Tuesday Tuesday okay so before our October 24th meeting you will have met two more times right correct you're going to have something for us October 24th we would hope that we would at least have firmed up a lot more things and if we can get through if we can complete it by the 24th you know by the the meeting on 22nd yes we will okay great that would be my goal I look forward to a two uh start time Solution on October 24th anyway U moving on uh we don't have need to talk about the October uh town meeting request to revoted because we so at this moment we'll post before town meeting just in case something comes up but at this moment we don't have any anything else that we need um we voted graduation do we put I don't remember putting the update on the the H Coalition but uh Dr K if you'd like to give an update if you have one yes so I did um finally get we were trying to get community Representatives because a lot of people um either didn't sign up last year or people have changed so I was able to get the group to finally get together with the names of the people that are going to represent each department and we sent out the invitation for October 29th at 6:00 p.m. to the representatives that are be attending and we are going to hold the first meeting at High School in the library going to rotate it we also want to make the first meeting about getting people to commit because a lot of people have good ideas but then when it comes to putting coition we weren't getting a lot of support for that we would like to plan a couple of community events that are more widespread but we need more support from the groups that are attending the first meeting to see where we're going to go and how we want to move so the first me is going to be setting the groundwork for that for the year and I think I sent that out to Frank and Sarah as well so thank you okay any questions about that should we vote or accept thing before we discuss the process I feel like check off some box I don't know where that gets us but we certainly can I mean you know say the best for that okay um so we need to I need a motion to to appoint Dr Kusa to be our uh representative to uh accept for the 24 doing the 24 25 school year move by all in favor congratulations um and then we you'll send that letter to uh to accept all right would you where where should we go next oh thank you you're not a member of me I didn't say anything yeah didn't say anything before all right should we do the Surplus vote sure yeah let's do it Dr Jordan yeah uh since for for a long time I you know how we want to go about this but there is more more of a summary um in that link document that's the spread sheet Surplus list um that might be more helpful to look at um if you are looking at but these are a little bit about a surplus process um any excess materials old things that we don't use we have some textbooks from 1965 that are stored in our building um old chair yeah old chairs that we don't uh utilize um uh and other materials but the our schools went through uh all the items that that um haven't been in use uh for a number of years and are have been kind of like permanently put into storage um and uh these are not if they're curricular materials they are um either out ofate uh curricular materials that we have uh or it's a methodology that we've moved away from so whether that be like our old math curriculum uh material in textbook because we just bought a new math curriculum we would be now uh Surplus with the old math curriculum um similarly uh Reading Street and some of the other reading materials and the methodology changing and that we've done there um and some of those materials okay um this going a random question Dr Jordan sorry but um some of those like books do you remember there was a student that did a project for service learning yeah last year two years ago um where she was bringing books to the P the local prison is that something that's still active do we have any idea and whether maybe these were not even appropriate for that but I don't know what I do know that like the they're um these are hollon public schools materials and as far as like what the regulation is on okay you me well what what it is is that we have to go through uh the disposition of of of assets go falls under chapter 30b of procurement law and we have it has to First be declared a surplus has to second then be be offered up if nobody takes it nobody takes it um at that point so it's doed as worthless then it can basically go the way of the doo whichever way it whichever path it takes to get there so be it um the proceeds from the auction actually do go to the town because the town acquired the asset not the schools it's under our care and custody for those assets until we are done using them just like when we turned over the Andrew school for example or the Wilder School to the town um we we no longer had to use for it so was up to the town to determine what to do next so just a little Municipal law we're going to get a truck and put everything on the truck I'll text let's not do that look at has been involved is it's an Auctioneer that does this for Public School Systems um and comes in inventories post the posts the items and handles the process there's an okay so the motion that you need is to authorize you to essentially go through the auction sose process you ask to declare it a surplus okay so moot so I'd entertain a motion to declare this entire list a surplus and let them do as they will with it so sary all in favor okay piano you have your Surplus fish tank this is he's really clean in house before he gets out of here huh Keith are you going shopping or was you know there's an ear model there will be an auction there will be an auction that you can go to cool from I know um okay moving on to the last item on our agenda uh it is the high school uh class sizes and I think you said you were going to do a full sort of presentation of where class sizes land for the rest of normally we do the enrollment report the second meeting in October just because the first meeting is usually too too close to the October first report and not everything has been cleaned up so again we had a request um to give some information about the high school class size is sizes because of some information or rumors that are out there or some facts that may be out there as well so um you know the the uh the 390 some OD classes that are in the high school I'm going to describe each one describe how many children are each one the purpose of the class how many assessments we're going to have the number of meeting dates each one has and then so okay go for it I got nothing better to do so um uh this was obviously put together late got into the package late that's why I did paper here if people want to ask any questions I'm going to go through things relatively quickly between the hour the time of day or you know just in general because again to try to pick things up now it may be difficult but um please know that send questions if you have them to me um if you know it's before the next meeting and then we'll see if we need to have principal List come back to give more you know direct explanations a lot of the things I can talk about Dr Jordan as well as as being a principal in this in this District as well can I can you know address some of the challenges that he knows um Keith is this the as of this week data and who enrolled in it as of this week's data so sometimes there's fluctuations like kids may move down from honors into a CP class or may also convers which is which is a second semester thing I mean a common common occurrence is that while I'm showing what second semester classes are now that is not they will not be that com you know come to the end of January because either students will be unsuccessful in something and then either maybe not take a class even in that subject or whatever a a class potentially May dwindle down to one student we may choose not to hold it and they have to go find something El so again it is you are absolutely correct on that was this week literally this week's data um for this report okay um the the the high school built their schedule this year the the first challenge they had was as I think you know cuz principal list did mention it when he was here one of the other times is we lost all the data during the summer the system crashed and we had to rebuild it so some of the some of the re the rejiggering of where classes go and things just was impossible to do TimeWise they he was very confident that that children got in the core areas the classes they wanted to get so this is this is why some of the classes are maybe a little higher than they would be typically but in general a lot of these classes would fall in the 25 26 27 range that's not unusual for us so you know from that the the challenge is obviously so if you have two classes that are at 28 you are you going to what gets moved around to make that three and what gets lost because and the reason we do it in a fashion so that I show all the high classes which they are 61 sure you sat there account I I don't I just see and I know 61 and then um and then the the lower classes again the lower classes you can see there too and and and if you see many of the lower classes are not in the core four and so the challenge is is that if you are trading off and again it's not just about Staffing it's also about time yeah and and the students can only fit so many things in their schedule so if if they're trying to squeeze something more into their schedule or you know or whatever it it it forces us to move some of these classes possibly either away or into something else is this being consider those part of the schedule changes I'm sorry because these numbers could change the classes could change if we change the schedule so absolutely and these are some of the constraints with our schedule because whether you have three term APS that leave a one hanging chat a term class whether it be the fact that they they have one Wellness class they have to take every year so that's another one-term class uh freshman have to take a one-term uh essay writing class A one-term foundations for 21st Century Learning class these are all these one-term classes that when they get populated in the schedule you know it it breaks things apart and makes it more complicated so again reworking the schedule we know um as administrators and most teachers know the challenges that with the 4x4 block presents so um you know again these would hope these are the types of things that we'd hopefully alleviate with a new schedule you know so for Contex I don't to answer this but maybe we're having a discussion next time how many classes total are there so when you tell me there's 61 I don't know how many 3 and again this list does not contain special needs classes this this do not contain the internship classes the senior project classes or the online classes I'm sorry so I I 91 I would have gotten there it was 390 something but again so it doesn't include those classes cuz they're very specialized classes and they sometimes meet off kilter off schedule not every day type of thing so again it's the online it's obviously the special needs classes internship and senior project so what would we I mean what would we expect the reduction in size of the the second semester or the term three what I'm saying is that you could have a few students drop down so the higher the level class the more likely it is to drop down okay and Dawn's correct somebody may go from honors to to to to cp1 if it's a if it's a follow on class you go from an honors math class the following math class after getting you know possibly a poor grade you may move down to the cp1 level I would also add I would also add in um with the kind of the power school challenge that they had and and Keith mentioned not having the ability to kind of like move people around um the high school I don't know this but the high school May and I know the middle school would have like now with this new time between that and the next course we use that even though it's showing these numbers might be behind the scene on in the sandbox moving them around already um so that those class sizes you're seeing at 28 might be much smaller by the time we get to right you know what one that I heard that there classes with 30 plus kids and what this is showing is that there are no classes with 30 kids that are currently running I don't see unless I'm missing but in semester two in semester two means that are currently running so therefore possible they may they may not be they won't go any higher the question is why did we allow a schedule to be built with 30 kids in again as I said before they they we have a situ we had a situation this summer where again the schedule so we normally don't do we would not be normally doing 30 but to sit but I I'm not going to lie to you to have 27 28 sometimes 29 we would have that there's no question about that because again we're trying to meet student needs and we can't open up that third or fourth section without something else going what I what I again I don't know the the intricacies of like what happened with the high school but I can say that when we run at the middle school we and and we have far less constraints on our schedule than the high school does but when we run our schedule the first time you wouldn't want to see what that looks like so if they were running the schedule at like with limited time you're going to see these big numbers and then you have to hand schedule the rest to balance it um and I imagine this is also like this is doesn't have the balancing that you have to do um in order to kind of place place different students which may include the difficult conversations of opening up another section in a class where in courses where you see 30 students which also might mean you're looking at an elective that maybe has five students and you have to go to those five students and say we're not offering that course because we have to open up another section of X yeah it's a balance and that's that's all done by counselors and that's that's leg work that's not a system that does that MH and and at one point I'm not going to name the classes but at what point if you have two or three kids signed up for a class they don't have they don't hold them in in in the the difficulty and I think you heard uh uh principal list I want say David because we got 40 of them um principal list um uh I'll kind of bring it up today is we we have a combin of Interest by students and a staff that we need to give assignments to and sometimes you may end up with some lower numbers because of either interest the way it fits in a schedule or the fact is we again the teacher needs a schedule um so you know it's there there's no question that it happens but for those kind of classes you look at whether there's a way to redeploy and again if especially if it's a second semester class you may see a child who decides I'm not going to take something you know the big class you know uh uh uh semester 2 introdu introduction to business oh that's it's an elective class Etc it's a semester elective class but I I mention that and I'll end up in you know uh semester to um I'll end up in our two honors I only got seven kids in it so put a shift it it is it but you know what let's do it you may you may need it so you look at like I think it's it's Keith's fourth sheet um on your your overall class SI average class size is right around the 18.74% 74 and you walk into every class and you see 18 19 kids are in completely heterogeneous classrooms where you don't have ch choice of things so we have these choices and by doing that you're going to have these polls that exist and again if you look at the last page you'll see at 13 we hit 24 classes that are in that range and it bounces up to about class of 26 where're almost all they're very close in that 20ish range and so you know again that's our sweet spot you know 13 to 26 students and so you know that's I mean just where it is I'm just impressed there's so many kids that want to take AP micro um micro's awful I think there's nothing education that's awful Dan it's all enlightening I've taken a bunch of micro it's got to take it multiple times I'm a macro guy but anyway elasticity um yeah yeah what was the count all right so um again if you have specific questions please please send them along you know we'll make a determination in the next week or so whether we need to have principal list come or further explanations based on your questions you know I don't want to say it is what it is but I mean some of these things are obvious you can see just looking at you just looking at the the classes that are there I mean you have a class like Ceramics Ceramics is a very Hands-On class we got plenty of workstations in the classroom two or three students can work at a workstation a big table there easily so again it's a perfect class to have a larger class size right you know it's it's you know for example the PE class is the same sort of thing a lot of those work out well you know with large class sizes you know but my only thing in and it's kind of difficult this year because especially if we're going if we're going to end up changing schedules it sort of moot but you know if there's any sort of needs that come out of this to that would that would get put into the sort of the priority needs um you know again the the the challenge is is the 4x4 does not Embrace uh uh a lot of the unified Arts right because there there many if not most are are term based our term classes which means it has to fit in that hole where you have another place to go and so it just from from a scheduling standpoint it's it's it just you know it's hard on the term-based classes so really we need to know what we're looking at as far as the schedule for next year before we can make any kind of determination absolutely and that's and that's what principal L at yep okay anything else y I got 391 classes to go if you want me to go I got I got my notes we'll talk Cynthia can I move on to the next subject um sure items of information yeah then we can just adjourn okay so um we have three sets of minutes from the policy subcommittee uh thank you for for those um anybody else got minutes they want to submit do we have submit our minutes yes we are supposed to submit our minut no no no I was asking we've approved a bunch um yeah I know but but okay no they're not in here to disseminate them yesin three meetings or 30 days ever comes latest I know it was North Adams and you're going to make me suffer for it but I attention Okay so our our our next meeting as we've talked about is October 2 is it 24th it's 24th yes October 24th um we are now going to journ from uh open session we do have a uh executive session so I will entertain a motion to adjourn from Open Session to Executive session for for two purposes to conduct strategy uh related to um negotiation with nonunion Personnel um or collective bargaining sessions or contract negotiations with nonunion Personnel or and secondly to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation if an open meeting may have a detrimental impact on the bargaining or litigating position of the public body and the chair so declares um from which we will not return um is there a motion move by Cynthia second okay this requires a rle call vote Frank uh yes Hillary yes Joe yes Sarah yes Cynthia yes Don yes Dan I'm yes uh we stand a journ thank you very much good night and if there's still the Aurora go enjoy it for