##VIDEO ID:sLjeb6csDlY## ready all right welcome to the Monday September 16th 2024 meeting of the long meow school committee School committees and other public bodies may continue to hold remote meetings for March 31st 2025 under legislation enacted on March 29th 2023 the statute chapter 2 of the acts of 2023 extends Quorum reductions for remote meetings all votes while there is remote participation must be made by roll call vote our meeting is being recorded and will be aired later on lctv we will begin with correspondence K the following correspondence will be recorded an emailed letter from Miss Beth manises dated August 20th 2024 regarding the substitute pay R rates in the district an emailed letter from Sarah and Dean nbit dated August 23rd 2024 regarding the Middle School building project an emailed letter from Miss Laura Gart dat August 24th 2024 regarding the 2024 2025 school calendar change recently approved by the school committee emails from Mr Bill Dilo dated August 24th and 27 2024 regarding the Middle School building project an email from miss Emily gagan dated August 26 2024 regarding bus transportation Transportation issues michaa can we pause you for one second make you guys hear us at home yes okay we're good okay sorry an email from Mr Arthur to toan dated September 4th 2024 regarding the long medal High School orchestra's selection to be featured performer at the all Eastern Festival in April 202 21 great thank you welcome moving on to approval minutes we have a recommended motion I move that school committee approv the minutes to the August 20th 2024 school committee meeting as presented we have a motion do we have a second second thank you any discussion seeing none we'll move to a vote Julie yes Zach yes Adam y Michaela yes and yes for me as well um public speak we have no takers public has spoken we're moving on to business with guests and school committee announcements and recognitions um we have no business with guests so moving on to school committee uh chair report first up um please add to your calendars we have a date for our um joint school committee admin um goal setting session that will be October 88th um we have a meeting that night already but we'll plan on a late afternoon get together with admin um more details on exact timing for that and format um coming soon um other things related to the schools if anyone is able to make it we have our new playground so a big thank you to everyone who's worked so hard um to have our new playgrounds up and running um we have two that are open for business and a third one that is on its way very shortly um the first at Blueberry Hill um we'll have a ribbon cutting tomorrow the 17th at 3:15 in the afternoon and the next Center School is open and we'll have their own ribbon cutting next Thursday the 26th also at 3:15 correct I wrote down but I feel like someone said 3:15 okay just checking that um otherwise big thank you to everyone for all of the work that has gone into the beginning of the school year um for all of the different classes that are up and running and the back to school nights that are underway and the sports that we can hear outside and it's just nice to see the town kind of coming back to life with all of the activities of the school district so thank you to all of the community members and Educators and students for the work they're doing every day any other school committee announcements or recognition right seeing n we will head into uh other reports superintendent report you a few other things sure uh just a couple items uh to update the committee and the community on uh I wanted to touch on um school safety briefly um particularly in light of the stragedy in Georgia um we have kicked off our sort of school safety initiatives for the 2425 school year here um our first district safety meeting is tentatively scheduled for October 4th so we gather with police fire DPW School admin central office admin to to uh line up some uh safety activities for the year and identify Mutual concerns um we have uh reactivated our partnership with the Sandy Hook organization uh using their uh say something Anonymous reporting system so uh we're going through trading on that and hope to um uh raise the visibility of that tool to our middle in high school students in the days ahead uh the plan roughly is for us to conduct sort of a traditional lockdown at each of the schools in the fall uh and then in the spring we would look at more of sort of a dynamic um lockdown kind of associated with the avoid deny defend model uh so that those things are being planned um we're also looking at uh an additional uh tool to assist uh administrators and classroom teachers to more effectively Monitor and manage student Chromebook access and so um there's a tool that is an extension of securely which is a a monitoring system that we currently use but uh with this additional tool it would allow teachers to see thumbnail screen shots of the uh sites that students are on so and it would also allow teachers to uh feed and manage the websites that kids visit more effectively so um it might be some time before that you know we we go live with that but we're in the process of learning more about that and hopefully procuring it soon um this week tomorrow Wednesday we're meeting with um Town officials to kick off the feasibility stud to assess the viability of Synthetic Turf at the stadium field uh you recall that there was an award at the May town meeting uh to U explore the feasibility it came out of a Citizens petition so we're excited to kick off that process um and as Nicole mentioned the ribbon cuting associated with the playgrounds I think Wolf Swamp is getting poured the surface is going to be poured on Wednesday so uh they'll hopefully be using it next week cross your fingers uh and um mcast results are currently embargoed but I suspect it'll be in a few weeks those results will be available more widely available to the public and we'll be sure to update the committee on that at some point that's it all right wonderful thank you any questions or feedback on that being none we'll jump into other administrative reports do you have anything tonight uh just the transportation usual bumps in the road uh the new app that was rolled out uh for parents some glitches so it think it's settling down now into the third week so but you know we're still dealing with some calls occasionally on uh stops bus numbers and the like so all right um student representative report Andre take it away so we had the laner away on Friday the 13th um where all LHS clubs had the chance to Showcase their Club at a table poster and then students who came also had the opportunity to sign up for the clubs and also complete a scavenger hunt if they completed the scavenger and like the scavenger hunt was like you'd have to go around all different clubs and there's a question on the sheet and you'd answer that about the whatever fun fact about the club and then just for completing that they would every student got a free ticket to um the football game which was at seven and then they're also entered into a raffle for I think we had like 10 Dunkin Donuts gift cards um I believe we'll get the results of that tomorrow and then on Friday September 6 seniors had the senior Sunrise we arrived at the track at 5:45 um for a warning of breakfast and socializing out on the field and then approximately two weeks ago we had our first connect block of the Year where we participated in ice in Icebreaker activities to get to know our home rooms better and then also just good luck to all of our athletes has competition begin for the fall season all right great thank you uh other reports lpvc Zach nothing to report no report yet all right energy and sustainability forget who took that for this year I don't either okay we'll Circle back to that one um seal Michaela yeah um on September 7th there was a really great Mee greet at the Bliss Park um where Boomer came from the birds and a lot of families it was a really good event with reach out and um Nicole Paris Crow was there and it was really good to meet a bunch of new parents that are new to the district and for them to get right in touch and information right away was a really awesome time and then the next meeting is going to be October 16th and it's you can be in person actually here in this room a31 or on zoom and Dr OA will be presenting about the insights of the Middle School building project and um special education in regards to the district Improvement plan all right wonderful subcommittee reports Finance sub has nothing tonight no all right policy sub um who is going to be our policy sub report go for the policy subcommittee met on Wednesday August 21st and the subcommittee voted un usly to bring forward the consideration two revised policies policy J IE pregnancy and policy aab sexual harassment both policies will be po posted to the district's website for 30 days as required by the school committee policy bgb policy adoption to solicit public input all right perfect any questions related to those policies feedback there is a uh brief slide deck in your meeting packet that you're welcome to take a look at um nothing that needs to be presented tonight but you looking the background on on 9 and on the new policies that's there all right and as a reminder those policies will be posted on the district's website so if anyone wants to look those over and we'll bring them back next month all right moving forward um nothing for curriculum or evaluation sub and we are headed into ongoing business and the Middle School building committee uh yeah briefly on the on the middle school project um we are at an important stage but not a lot has evolved since our last meting we did um submit to the msba the preferred um preferred solution uh and that preferred solution is to instruct a new middle school for 665 students at the Williams Middle School site and so that uh report from the building committee will be reviewed by the mba's facility assessment subcommittee uh at a meeting in a few weeks we anticipate that that subcommittee would uh respond favorably they'll ask some tough questions about the integration of the design with our education plan uh and then it would go to the full board and assuming it gets the support of the msba board then we would um proceed into schematic design most of the designs that are out there right now are sort of preliminary Concept Designs um so this would really start to uh engage more fully the the work of the architect on on the actual schemes for the building um we continue to um work hard at addressing the needs of the abutters to the Williams site uh we have a meeting on Wednesday with uh the full design team Administration police and fire the hope is that we're going to basically stand around a table have a big map of the of the Williams site and really start to think hard about what the roadway design should look like what the traffic flow should look like uh and what we can do to mitigate the impacts um we're we're confident that we can design those roadways in such a way that will um really help traffic move efficiently and quickly and safely uh in an off campus so really looking forward to having that opportunity sort of in person with police and fire uh and the administration and the design team uh and we had a a table at uh long metal Pride uh this weekend and uh we had some new design boards and some handouts and had a you know a ton of great conversations with some residents and generally very very positive feedback from anybody who wandered up to one table so it was it was great to there was a lot of curiosity um we had big you know two foot by three foot boards and folks had a real chance to to see up close and ask some really great questions um things that had my my wheels spinning for sure so um more to come but um we're we're at after sprinting uh in the month of August uh we're we're now in kind of the playing the waiting game of the msba so it's great stuff all right yeah any questions or feedback from others all right we are headed into uh new business we have a consent agenda related to some building and facility use requests Mr Man so there are four uh building use requests in your packet tonight they are annual requests that we received the first is from the national multiple scoliosis Society for use of the high school cafeteria in parking lot on Sunday May 4th from 6:00 AM to 1M for their annual Charity Walk to raise awareness and funds proceeds are used to support their research and local programming the second request is from the wol swamp PTO for Sunday October 14th Use of Will Swamp Road parking lot field and access to the building for their annual trunk Port treat on Fall social the third request is from the blueberry P for use of the blueberry high school parking lot um on Friday uh and Saturday or Friday as the initial date and Saturday as a rain date of October 25th and October 26th from 5 p.m. to 800m for their annual Trunk or Treat uh activities and the last request is from the wol swamp PTO for use of the wolf swamps Road school cafeteria Park lot on Saturday November 30th 8 a 8:30 a.m. to noon for their annual turkey TR uh 5K fundraiser all right great so we have all four of these bundled together in a consent agenda um just a reminder that if they remain on a consent agenda there is no discussion of items on a consent agenda if we'd like one or more of these removed from the consent agenda we would vote on that so there's possible motion if someone would like to make it I move that the school committee approved the consent consent agenda for the September 16 2021 school committee as presented all right any second we have a motion to we have a second we have a second sorry yes thank you that's okay um do we have any discussion related to this and or requests to remove an item from the consent agenda seeing no discussion requests we'll move to a vote on the consent agenda Julie yes Zach yes Adam yay Michaela yes and yes for me as well all right we are headed into our next uh business on the district Improvement plan Dray back to you all right well could uh just share a screen with you just to uh talk about where we are with the development of a new District Improvement plan and so uh we had a plan that um expired in June of well actually um at the conclusion of the 2324 school year and um excuse me one second um at the and so uh we have been busy with the administrative team taking a look at a number of data sources to uh start to put together a renewed District Improvement plan and one of the you we obviously this has included a review of educational data it's included um a review of a an extensive survey that we sent out in January to families um and we spent a good chunk of our administrative Retreat time over the summer uh reviewing that data and starting to identify some goals for the coming year and so before this is uh baked I wanted to be sure that there was ample time for the school committee to provide some input into the into this um it really is shaped by some of the goals of the of the previous District Improvement plan it's shaped obviously by the the the direction that we've received from the committee in the past um and I've also um been sort of taking this on the road to our school councils our packs and PTO just to get some additional feedback as well so you can start to see some of the some of the ideas that are starting to jump off the page and I don't want to present this as allinclusive but really more of a we'll just make this a little bit bigger for uh I suspect we will renew our commitment to multi-tiered systems of support I think the one of the big factors that will really drive it in the next few years is the implementation of Panorama Panorama is uh lack of a better phrase a data warehouse and it will allow us to um better monitor uh student progress and when you're monitoring student progress better you're obviously uh creating you're putting yourself in a position to create better interventions for kids um it will provide sort of One-Stop shopping for our administrators and and give administrators an interventionist uh more or less a dashboard where they can really review uh student progress uh effectively uh I think one of the other sort of latent or side benefits of it is that it will really align our MTS best practices to an even greater degree across three schools so ACR six schools rather if if all six schools are are gathering data in a similar Manner and if they're reviewing data in a similar manner then I think it will uh tighten up our intervention practices as well uh Universal Design for Learning has been a commitment but I think we're sort of at that stage where we've had some initial professional development but really putting it into practice where there's some uh Stronger expectations around assessment and lesson design uh tier one curriculum development mtss entrance and exit criteria so that you know we want to make sure that across all schools kids are having a a similar experience with the types of uh support interventions that that they're receiving especially level by Level Elementary Middle High um really working hard I'll jump around a little bit inclusive practice I think is something that we will remain committed to uh the Decap is a revised Decap is a couple of years old this is a district curriculum accommodation plan and at the you know to sort of take the jargony spinoff of the Decap what this is meant to do is just to uh really articulate clearly the types of uh accommodations that are available to all children in all classrooms you know things that uh accommodations that teachers can make that don't require a 504 or an IEP necessarily uh embedding the vision of The Graduate really staying committed to our interest in creating formative and summative assessments I think we're sort of past the orientation stage and we really want to see bog practices reflected in in particularly the assessments that teachers are involved with school climate um as well um we heard loud and clear from uh families that they want to be sure that we're really tight in the ways that we address uh bullly bias across all of our schools um and so Andrew mentioned the connect blocks at laj those are a new initiative that probably will get some additional refinement over the next three years um I thought it would be interesting to see um this part of we had asked as part of this survey what is the single most positive aspect of the district relating to our efforts to improve to support Student Learning and Development uh what came out um very clearly was the appreciation that the community has for classroom teachers uh and for the the resources that we make available to kids um but you'll see some of the themes that jumped out on that question creating the the suppor of uh resources the diverse and challenging curriculum communication and feedback and then the availability of extracurriculars however I I do want to show you the other side of now when we ask families if you could change one thing about the district what would it be and and we many respondents talked about you know effectively addressing bullying and student safety uh rigor the just the phrase rigor came up time and again um from uh survey respondents and so U there was some particular interest in seeing what we could do for students who are ready for acceleration um supporting teacher Staffing and consist consistency so that kids have a similar experience across all classrooms uh enhancing equity and inclusion we saw strength was noted as communication it was also noted as something that we could work on and so what we're trying to tease out is what type of communication is it that that would benefit um staff and kids and families I think what we're what we're Gathering is that it's it's I think our schoolwide our classroom wide hopefully districtwide communication is is strong but the type of communication that's happening at the at the at the from the the teacher to uh parent level you know what can we do to to bolster that so that that seemed to have sort of jumped off the page um there was some other sort of you know I I don't know I wouldn't call them one-offs but other notable suggestions um preschool I've heard more and more families talking about the availability of of preschool and child care before and after school athletic feed uh teacher professionalism the of course you know the the access to the Arts and non-port activities extracurricular seemed to be something that that um folks really wanted to see us do more of and then career and life skills education the idea that we're preparing students to learn how to learn uh as much as we are uh preparing them to understand specific content um on the on the positive some of the um the notable positives that we heard uh related to the focus on seal the availability of technology and resources through grants uh and kind of similar to what we saw and what people hope to see more of the commitment to preparing for students for Life Beyond High School through initiatives like the internship and advisory program so those appear to be things that we can continue to focus on and perhaps grow in the years ahead so um stop there I know we have um a placeholder for an admin school committee Retreat on October 8th and maybe we can dive into this a little bit more then but I really want to make sure that you know the direction and insight of the committee is is reflected in this three-year District Improvement plan the hope would be that we would bring it to you probably in uh early November um as you know to have the plan finalized by that time so feedback from the school committee feedback from school councils I'll seek feedback additional feedback from staff so we're sort of thinking about this as a iterative process where we go back and forth we we develop some key ideas we test the water with those key ideas and then go back and and refine the plan further so uh that's where we are with our our district Improvement plan and if I'm happy to answer any questions or take any feedback that you might have uh certainly some of it can be reserved for our our meeting on the E as well I'm s all right open up to discussion feedback questions all right I think nothing now um I like that we've got some familiar themes but sort of rejuvenated and ready to move forward into the next bit of time all right wonderful so we have come to a moment where we are going to pause um we are going to go into recess and we'll be reconvening at 700 p.m. um across the in a15 um and joining the select board for interviews for a school committee vacancy um so I uh have a motion here for us to recess I mooved that the school committee recess to reconvene at 7M in room 8:15 to join select board we have a motion do we have a second second thank you any discussion seeing none we'll move to a vote Julie yes Zach yes Adam y Michaela yes all right and yes for me as well we are officially in recess