[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] for [Music] e [Music] good evening School committee Workshop business executive session of March 25th 2024 will now come to order Madam Secretary will you please call the RO Ryan daglio Mary Beth Donovan Lori Keegan present Kristen Maxwell here Daniel shabila present Kenneth wette here may an Neil Perry here thank you all uh may I have a motion to accept the agenda is presented so moved moved by member wette seconded by member shabila discussion I'm on my game tonight MB welcome thank you all right hearing none all those in favor oh we don't have somebody here do we have to go roll without him here no okay all those in favor signify by saying I I I oppose say nay thank you that carries excellent now move on to the flag salute we doing it on our own we are that's okay helps us stand practice I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you has anyone signed up for public participation no no all right that makes this nice and short at this time we will close the public participation just a reminder if you can't make the meeting in person for public participation you can always send an email to MAA suroy at maaso meu. 12.ma.us before 3 p.m. on the day of the school committee meeting and Matha thank God you didn't watch last week because I completely screwed up and I said um your predecessor's name and I was like what the heck yeah um all right uh may I have a motion in a second to approve the Cooperstown baseball trip so moved second mve by member Willet seconded by member shilia discussion why don't we call the coach up have him take us through the process welcome coach ah thank you very much um so this has been mentioned I believe a month or two ago so we're just kind of have some finalization of the itinerary just so everybody understands that on Saturday April TW uh April 20th the bus will depart from withu in high school will take the roughly four five or six hour Journey out to New York to coopertown check into into the hotel it's the Holiday Express it's about 2 miles away from double day field they'll have a team team dinner um and then on um Sunday they wake up team breakfast they go to a double day field they play a game versus L they have lunch and then they come back um so this you know the coaches and chaperons are all listed on the stuff I gave you uh at all costs uh will be paid via fundraiser the milia family has stepped up to support the program our alumni game is dedicated to Devon Mia and his family wanted to use the opportunity to give back to the program that gave so much to their son Devon loved his trip to coopertown when he was playing baseball which is how this trip started to come together uh they are raising funds in connection with our alumni game to send our team to Cooper toown they've established an official account to raise funds and we're write a check for the total uh to the methan high school athletics that coach wanted me to read that so um it's all going to be funded by the the Mia Foundation standing um any questions from the committee just one member shilia how can people find out out about donating to the committee where are their events where can we go for information so folks can help out if they want um so I think they can there is a continued hope that they're going to continue to run that U alumni baseball game so I I would look for that uh ways to donate for that other than that I will have to kind of get back to you all right in terms of but I think there is going to be an alumni game again um and so they do post that on social media and I've seen that a bunch of times I almost umpire that came last year I might have to do it again this year um see if I they actually hit me up for it but U but anyways uh so there there'll be information regarding that awesome thank you any other questions from the committee can I come to seeing none okay there's a motion on the floor to approve all of us in favor signify by saying I I I I oppose say nay carries unanimously thank you coach enjoy the trip oh now I got to do something all right may I have a motion and a second to approve the energy proposal for 9 Branch Street and Marsh Lis school so moved move by member wette second second by member Keegan Vice chair Keegan excuse me um any discussion we want to yeah did you guys want to make a little discussion first yeah just real quick um as i' mentioned to the last couple meetings we had an energy upgrade over at the marsh UPA School Y where we've upgraded some of the systems to make it more efficient easier to manage Etc that just completed we just finished paying for it out of the ivac grant um now we've asked them to do the work to look at Marsh Lowa school so we can finish up that building as well looking at the Branch Street to see how we can make energy upgrades there as well so I've asked them to come here and um talk about the proposals probably answer your questions more intelligently than I can about HVAC um this is Brad passons and uh Rich Finn from FMC and I'll hand it over to them hey everybody uh my name is Rich Finn with energy source um we're essentially a contractor for both National Grid and ever Source um we work do a lot of work with FMC Technologies uh in terms of building automation so um as Ian said we just finished a project up at the March School uh so we have proposals uh together for second phase of March school as well as the nine Branch Street facility uh projects have been submitted to both eversource and National Grid uh they've reviewed the projects and approved uh incentives towards those projects um so they're teed up and and ready to go I'll if you have any specific questions questions from the committee yeah go ahead Willet thank you Mr chairman um in terms of the the warranty process it it looked pretty standard in terms of the labor and the one-year warranty beyond that it reverts to standard warranties do we have a sense from the manufacturers like if someone installs a roof they guarantee it sometimes for 15 20 years do you have a sense from the industry what the standard warranty would entail for the manufacturers of the the products just to get a sense of it yeah uh hi I'm Brad Parsons uh thanks for having us um I'm with FMC Technologies over in chumford uh we've been around for about 25 years and we just do building automation systems um so we uh were selected by NG source to uh do the work here we already did uh Marsh upper school um but specific to your question the standard in the industry is one year materials one year labor um and that's what we have here as well so if there's an issue with um a component it would get um replaced if there's an issue with the workmanship and come back and do you know fix any workmanship issues um and the type the type of components we're talking about here are um smaller control components that for instance at the marsh lower School uh you have a lot of old unit vents around the perimeter in the classrooms um and some other HVAC equipment like fan coil units and now they have these really ill controls that are way outdated no longer supported by the manufacturer and it makes it so the equipment doesn't work so well and it's hard for the staff to maintain it um so the objective then is to go in and replace these old controls there's little control boards in these unit vents that we go in and replace them and we'd also Implement some strategies uh the strategies uh for Energy Efficiency and even more importantly to improve the indoor air quality for the kids and and and the um teachers uh what what we do is we'll monitor the indoor air quality and the CO2 within state of classrooms and then based upon the levels of CO2 we can open up the outdoor air dampers that are in those unit vents bringing more fresh air the old um the old controls just really weren't able to do much of anything so the unit vents themselves can stay in place you know the the fan coil units and that equipment can stay in place but we're able to kind of make it perform better with new controls and utility company gives really good incentives if you do these strategies whoop sorry these strategies and that's what we're going to implement like we did at the uh the marsh uh upper school um the other thing I'll say is the old controls were all proprietary they put in by companies and had to buy their equipment hire them to do the the work even to maintain it since then now the industry is open everyone's happy about that so the equipment we put in is uh can be maintained by us we have really good service organization but it could also be maintained by anybody else who's qualified to you know work on building automation systems so the the controls components actually get most of this stuff over the at FW web or something like that right so you don't have to go to the factory and you know pay these outrageous prices for proprietary equipment so so that you know these everyone was aware that's why we're in the positional area we do open systems and um good workmanship and that that the plan here looks like a great plan to do both the msh lower school and nine Branch Street questions member D so according to the proposal here work has to be completed by September 2024 in order to receive the incentives when would you see the actual work happening and how would that impact if it's not during the summer how disruptive would that be to learning y so it takes four to six weeks to do each project um we we get it done during the summer um we're busy during the summer we're scrambling but we'll get it done we we have our own installers sometimes we bring on uh some supporting third party folks we work with but uh ideally we'd like to get going as soon as we can and even get a jump start on some of this during a vacation uh most of the the equipment the components are off the shelf uh we have we have in stock as well so um we can get it done by then I know that um if things for some reason there's an issue uh we can probably get an extension from the utility company tell you the truth um but it's got to be by the end of the year for sure but that's not even as far as we're concerned we can get the work done uh in time before that um that deadline no problem but we do want to get moving soon she so focusing on Branch Street which is a little discouraging considering we just bought the building the units that are up there you said they're no longer supported but otherwise in good working order is it just this piece and is it lack of Maintenance or just outdated so that system probably went in in the 90s or something like that right 15year life cycle yeah at the very most and and um these components they were old Johnson Controls um controllers and they stopped being supported by the manufacturer in like it was like 2003 or something like like so long ago it's ridiculous and you know they're they're quality enough that they've been working but what you have there you don't really have the unit bench you have the VAV boxes in the ceiling and there's a damper in there to open and close to let in conditioned Air B upon the temperature and a lot of those at least like we wen't looked at them a lot of them aren working that the the uh control component that makes that damper move is is broken um so you're not really getting any good so what we do is the actual mechanical box itself in there with the damper is okay it's fine so we'll take off that old controller put on a new one with an actuator built into it and and then we replace the um thermostats with new thermostats put in some CO2 sensors um and and get it back working the way it should be so maybe for you folks maybe for Mr goling do we have there's nothing in here about a maintenance plan going forward and any HVAC project I've done in a residential setting that was always a purchase part of a ongoing maintenance I assume that there's something you folks recommend on how we manage this to keep it going for the next what this one got what almost 40 years out of it so I'd like the next one to go that long too yeah um we we offer service agreements like I said it doesn't have to be us but you know a service agreement um typically the way it works is uh for us we have uh people at our office if there's an issue they would call and we try to uh fix things remotely if it's just kind of a question things don't seem to be working do a little investigating um if that doesn't work you know we'd roll a van or have a truck come out and someone look at what the problem is and and correct it um so typically it's we we would propose a service agreement we don't typically do it up front um these projects but we certainly can and um you know the terms are available it's usually you know annual service agreement couple couple days someone on site for preventative and um remote support is usually you know sufficient these things working and one last question the rate on this the 200k number it looks like it's pre-approved by National Grid to be on the pro rated over five years is there an interest rate for that did nothing was stated in the the National Grid yeah that it's interest free they call on Bill repayment but it's it's uh interest free for up to five years awesome all right that's it thank you so I just have one question it's actually for you enough it so thank you very good good okay I'm assuming this is a response to an RFP yes no no no so what is this this falls under what is the chapter 45 yeah speak to that you want to speak to the go so essentially as a contractor to National Grid ever Source we've went through a bidding process to to be a what they call a project expediter yeah so chapter 25A basically allows you to do projects up to $300,000 without going out to bid okay yep okay it would still have to go before city council though for a vote it we do yeah for the the on board just want to make sure we're all on the same page yep appreciate it yep now actually before you said so the one thing that Dan mentioned that I saw is uh on the clarifications we've not included repairs to existing H vac or control devices scheduled to remain so so how does that work where you're going to be replacing some and you're not going to be replacing others I just don't want us to get into the world of you know chasing lost cats right so right we call you and you say oh the device is working fine right now we got to kind of hunt down the yeah it's it's a good point but uh actually we're replacing all the controls components right it's kind of a blanket statement and then but um you know if there's mechanical like I said the VAV boxes themselves and the unit vents uh that's mechanical equipment uh sometimes we do find some issues with the damp or something and what we we'll report back and say hey might want to get a mechanical company not us you know to correct those things but we didn't see anything major thank you I just want to make one comment I think um you brought up a good point mayor the way this all started was actually getting all um departments on the same page meaning we had uh these folks come we had our maintenance staff we had our technology staff because of that exact reason right what is the best way uh our current platforms technology doesn't always talk to what should be talking to so this is really what got us moving uh we had big sites I think two years ago to do this uh in the entire District uh this is massive in the district our size so uh we're we're trying to do this like you know pieces at a time yeah um to not feel the amount of cost and having it Bill be a um bill on site what's it called on on sorry yes the on Bill part for so we're not paying all up front at once it's part of our Billing System is also what was a non-negotiable for us got it yeah appreciate that y thank you anything else from the committee ready vote all those in favor to signify by saying I I poos say nay the eyes carry unanimously thank you gentlemen appreciate that need to stop flipping through my package and look at the notes um uh superintendent would you please start the report out for um strategies for district Improvement plan year three quarter three yes thank you so this is a quick turnaround time because we did this a month ago but we told you we would do this because we were behind um so I'm going to turn it over to Dr golovsky we have U Mr Crocker here too so we're really focusing on two and three there was some information that uh I think we're adding to this that would I think is ful to the school committee and to us um for goal three and Dr golovsky is also going to update a few things that have uh come to light that we didn't have when we were able to um communicate uh objective one so while the focus is two and three tonight because we did a lot of uh our work with objective one she is going to update you on some new data new information for uh objective one and then we'll move into again two and three and Mr Crocker's here to talk more about the data for number two without further Ado Dr golovsky okay good evening good evening um so as Dr kuang said this is our quarter three update um and whereas last time we talked we went over the screener scores we have new information um from objective one um which is our literacy objective that um you may be of interest to you so in early February we had tntp come through and visit our classrooms again so as you recall tntp is our partner Consultants who we uh originally met through The Gleam Grant which focused on grades 6 through 12 we've since expanded our partnership with them to span grades three through five as well so in February we visited 48 uh grade 3 through five Ela classrooms and 21 grade 6 through 8 classrooms and 11 Grade 9 through 12 classrooms um we enjoy these visits because the administrative teams at each building join us along with the Consultants um and we debrief after each visit so as a reminder these are the three core actions that tntp focuses on um which is in line with our philosophy so the first is that we're looking for lessons to be focused on high quality texts the second is that we're looking for lessons to employ questions and tasks that integrate the standards while also building students comprehension of text and its meaning so content knowledge is important to us there as well and when we talk about the standards we're looking for grade level standards um in core action three um we're looking at our students doing the thinking in the classroom so not just doing the work but are they being challenged to think critically so so tntp after visiting the classrooms um and collecting samples of student work they get back um to us with a report and so these are some of the findings from their report um and so they titled this the bright spots so in grades 3 through eight so at our k through eight buildings um they saw that students spend time in the text student engagement is high students work together in pairs for groups on tasks that are largely text dependent most students respond with content instead of skill and students have access to exemplars to make expectations concrete so I'll say with that second last bullet most students respond with content instead of skill it may sound a little funny when tntp first came through this year and they would ask students what are you working on what are you learning they'd often respond with what they were doing I I'm writing an essay um I'm writing a sentence I'm answering a question and what we really want them to do is to respond with what they're learning about and when we came through in February that had changed so students said I'm Lear learning about Henry Ford and here's why he's important and while they were also doing the writing they were taking something away um in grades 9 through 12 students spend time in text students extract text-based evidence to support their ideas students are frequently prompted in class discussion to share text based evidence and student tasks and graphic organizers reiterate the expectation and provide exemplars to students so those were some commonalities and I'll need to explain this chart to you that tntp provided um so it goes through the three four actions so uh the the darker the color or the brighter the color um the better it is the more things are happening so in the first core action um in grades three through eight the lessons predominantly focused on high quality text so in the first visit 91% of the classrooms were found to do so in the 2nd in February 92 um occasionally when we wander through rooms and are there for a short period of time it may be the point in the class where a text isn't out or present and if it's not out and students aren't actively engaging in it it it isn't counted um for that item um for core action two this is the one where we're looking to see if the questions and tasks align with the standards and build content knowledge um in the first visit there were 2% of the class classrooms got a yes um and then we saw that 40% of the classrooms in the first visit mostly did that in February we see that we're shrinking that not yet and that more classrooms are doing this to some degree um more are definitely doing it um and then more are somewhat doing it and then in core action three who's responsible for the thinking and who's driving the thinking um we can see in site visit 2 that there was an increase there as well so um we are on track to continue improving in those areas and core action 3 is very much tied to coreaction too so if the tasks aren't challenging enough um or the questions it's really hard for students to get deep into thinking and to create so there's definitely a connection there and here's the methan high school version of the same items so 9 through 12 and we can see that um it's pretty similar in core action one and core action two with the questions and tasks there's Improvement in the classes that seem to have made this part of their routine or the norm by mostly are definitely doing this um and then in core action three um we saw more classrooms again again mostly are definitely doing this so when I did the debrief with the Consultants um on a virtual call we were talking about how some of the classrooms in grades 3 through eight were working on the end of unit modules for the E curriculum which is what is supposed to be happening and it's the curricula we're implementing but because the text wasn't out in the way they expected it to they couldn't rate that particular class and that was the case in some situations at the high school although text was out it wasn't used in the way that we thought was most fruitful in some areas but it was predominantly High marks at the high school so here's just a little bit more on core action two which is where we're really focused right now um and again it's not just that the tasks are on grade level and are challenging but it's the order in which they're presented to students can have a lasting impact as well so this just speaks to some of the pieces of what we're looking for um so for instance it's one thing for students to include details or Supply evidence but when they're supplying evidence to drive their own idea or they're asked to to um make a thesis statement or a claim that's derived from their own thought instead of one that's provided that's a much deeper level of understanding um author's craft is something that we talk a lot about too so it's one thing to notice figurative language being used in a text but it's another to think about why the author would choose to employ or integrate that type of language in order to communicate their deeper message okay I'll pause there before I get into the next part of one uh going back to the bright spot slide did they that that's I like that they call out all those positives all sounds fantastic but did they leave recommendations for our non bright spots yes our non our non bright spots center around core action too um so here um and so it's important because they're also our PD providers so what we focus on in PD and what we focused on most recently on Friday um was derived from what we saw in this February walkthrough we talked about Cor too okay um the core action slide there was saw the first one no the the chart with the the bar graphs three through eight yes well um both of them okay there's Improvement on I think generally all of them um did they leave any inclination of what Improvement they would expect to see are we on course with what's expected are we are we ahead are we behind yes we're on course with what's expected and they give us incremental goals as we go throughout the year this is our last year with tntp so as part of this year's contract there's um three half day sessions which are spending with myself and the humanity supervisors so we can make incremental goals going forward and we can continue to use the walkthrough tool and think about how we're going to maintain the effort two more um how far apart were the visits um the first was Thanksgiving fall Park is fine I don't need dates november-ish um and then February so and they'll be back again all right um so when you say not used in the most fruitful way do do we have a a cap in place to address that corrective action plan sorry okay thank you for that um well I will say that sometimes the texts that are used are part of the curriculum but they're supplemental pieces that might be used in the wrong setting so for instance um if we see a teacher using um a text that's focused on a particular standard that's meant to be a targeted intervention and they bring it into the main Ela lesson when it's not necessarily the time to use that they wouldn't get counted is using the high quality text so we're so thinking about the time the place the order um and sticking with what's provided in the curriculum I think um is are all things we've been reiterating also at some of the um common planning time meetings tntp has done some um really targeted um virtual sessions with particular grade so teacher across the district can log on and hear that message again I guess for me something I'm always interested in seeing is when we're noticing I don't want to call it a deficiency because it doesn't I don't think that accurately portrays what it is but if we have something that is let's stick with your words not the most fruitful if we have a corrective action if we have a plan on how we're going to how we're going to get it into our little Cornucopia of fruit that way it's we have a plan and we know how we're tracking you know it's measurable and attainable and all that good stuff that's that's just something I would love for in this situation and really any other situation of a similar nature but I'm I'm I'm good thank you anybody else M Keegan when tntp sorry when tntp does their walkthroughs do they look at any of the special ed classrooms where they're doing small group kids who have small group reading on their IEPs for ELA um are we looking at any of those classrooms for um improvements and suggestions or are we just looking at classrooms um we go through a number of inclusion classrooms um where special ed teachers are co- teing um when they first came in um to the district we did go through some reading enhancement classes which are separate we did go through some English learner classes I'm not sure when they first came if we did subpar classrooms we have not gone into subpar classrooms um with tntp it's really focused on the General Ed curriculum in classrooms and usion so we do see cuz we've been there so we do see uh I know a couple of the walkthroughs we went on you see the small groups being pulled out there is there is tntp will go and visit to see as long as they know that's happening from the same class does that makes sense it does yeah so if they see any any um uh co- teing happening or small groups being pulled they will inquire okay in those settings yep is there just based on our numbers for special ed classes and their reading rates can we get them to look at the special ed classrooms to make suggestions to improve those reading rates because we're seeing deficits a little later on in the in the packet I think for for us that would be our one of our next steps is to actually look at English learner pull out and special I pull out because those focuses are not going to be what you see here this is a little bit different because it's looking at the whole Ong grade level curriculum what the expectations are right so we really have to set the stage with them what are we looking what do we want what are our goals for them to actually help us um I'm not even sure tntp is the right group but that is something I think when we talk about the S plan that's the deeper dive we have to make in the next three years with those two subgroups for sure what is it we're looking for and who can help us sort of map that out if that makes okay you're welcome oh sorry I'm asleep thank you Mr Mayor um so I love hearing about all this data and how everything's improving um just coming from my perspective is when they mean by uh expectations student provide evidence is that for checking for understanding is that because where I where where I teach um providing evidence expectations that's us calling for checking for understanding so I'm just trying that's why I wrote the note earlier um to see if that is what they're trying to see like they understand how they were the teachers are teaching it they can provide where whatever it's just content or slideshows or whatever they're providing that that is their checking for understanding the material I think um that's a byproduct of doing this is certainly it's a checking for understanding I think it's really routine for our students to know that they need to have supporting evidence and to look for details um now run the level of having students try to self assess or evaluate what their strongest piece of evidence is and um how to order and weave that into a paragraph thank you okay so I'm still in objective one but this is just the second half of it okay um so last time last time I presented so we we had asked them to turn you down a little bit because it felt like your mic was super loud but apparently there was no middle ground all right so screening data last presented by grade level in school um and we got a little curious about if we broke that down stud L not student so there's still a lot of variables but it does give us some more information okay so this is a similar display to what you saw last time which was just by grade level in school except this time um I pulled out the English learner student group and compared it to the students that are not in that student group as recognized by desie um and you can see um by grade and by school that we had some disparities there between groups which I'll get to later when I talk about the SOA plan as well but um just to clarify the percentages you see are the number of students in that group reading at or above grade level um and in parentheses that is the number of students testing that fit within that group um so you'll notice that when we're looking at this the English learner slide as the grade level increases we have fewer students um reading at grade level or Beyond in the English learner group um so simply because the text complexity in Lexile gets higher as students get older and so when someone comes into the district um we have a number of English Learners that are in their first or second year in a massachusett school when they come into the district and quickly need to become um proficient in English and then get transitioned into their mainstream class which might be grade eight that's a big learning curve and that's hard so we're working on having some acceleration there to help students um get up to Pace even quicker but again the CGS is the school that houses the newcomer program K through 8 some other schools do have a couple newcomers who who chose not to take part in the Excel program at the CGS um but primarily at the marsh Tenny and timy you would have English Learners who are what we would call level two through five in proficiency so um they're a little higher in terms of proficiency and I'll show you the next slide then I'll ask for questions okay so this is the same setup um and this is the students with disabilities student group and then the students that would not be classified by desie in that category so again the percentage of students reading at or Beyond grade level and the number of students who tested within that grade and category so again not to say that all the students and the students with disability student group have a reading goal um it might be something that's different and does not impact their reading ability yet that is the group as it's recognized by desie and we notice some concerning disparities in both of these slides that we're going to work on further okay I'll pause there um just for clarification does the students with disabilities on this slide include 504 students or just IEP students IEP students thank you thank you Max no member Maxwell sorry um so I'm concerned that the tntb reviews are being portrayed as Improvement when they're a hired group to help us get a better idea of how things are going to get better not necessarily that it is making Improvement and with the numbers that we have here it's kind of hard to base them off of anything when when it's just off of assessments that we're giving and not State Standards because state standards are significantly different through desie than they are through our um through our rating system or whatever whatever this is called I'm not sure but the the state standards where we're meeting expectations aren't even close to us in our district meeting expectations and this was as of September of this year so I just don't understand where the disparity is coming in are you talking about MC Ela mcast scores um achievement levels and mcast scores yeah I mean it would it's meeting expectations in math and English so if we're just talking about English they have they have sections where it says meeting expectations exceeding expectations not meeting expectations and they don't compare to our numbers yeah the mcast exam measures different standards than what we're talking about literacy and reading in these slides here there's also writing components um so for ELA it's Reading Writing listening speaking language um the English Learners also take the access test which might be a different way of measuring their Proficiency in English we're just looking at the screener here I will say that our mcast scores um do mirror what we're seeing in these last two slides in in terms of student groups with disparities in terms of achievement and growth okay yeah I I just saw some concerning numbers through the district profile on des's website then in comparison to ours so I just wanted to get an update of that and I understand that tntp comes in and gives us um objective and things to get better and improve and I just don't want it to be portrayed as Improvement when it's to help us improve it's not necessarily Improvement the group itself well there is incremental Improvement which we're going for to say that we're done absolutely not and they wouldn't say that either right um but when we since when we first started focusing on this and when they started visiting our district we have seen we have seen it trending in the right direction in terms of what we'd like to see in the classroom which we hope through that experience in the classroom and strong instruction would transfer into an improvement in test course okay so on that first chart I flipped the math so doing it out I guess my biggest question is what is different about the timy that is showing that 51% of the students of nonel are not reading at or above grade level what is what is the distinguishing factor that makes the timoy special what which grade in particular are you looking at because there's some that caught my eye just I went through and I put it all together the school as a whole cumulative cumulatively yes um what stood out to me about the timy and it and it it went with um another idea that I'll share with you in a bit is that the um lower school had a significant number of English Learners as compared to some of the other schools but also that the English Learners there was there were close to 40% in some of the grades reading at or Beyond grade level which was different than other schools um and I did notice on the non-english learner group too that some of their um achievement wasn't as high so that's something that we've been talking about and addressing um and looking at and that's why pulling this data apart sometimes helps tell the story or helps direct our efforts um but I will say the other piece that came to mind is when we were talking about um The District's accountability or the the school report cards from desie the timy got four out of four points last year on their English learner growth um and so that that coincided with this finding here um so there's something special going on there with that instruction um which we've already been looking into to try to spread um but that came to mind as well is there something special going on at the Tenny grade 3 too because it's one of only two places where the El Learners are reading at or above grade level higher than the nonel so I don't know if there's any you know can we can we look at that classroom and see is it just the makeup of the students or is there something special that's being done there because I look at that and then um to your point the timoy uh first grade you've got 39% in the E reading at or above grade level yet only 33% for the non-el so to me I want to kind of poke at those two a little bit and say so what's what you and maybe you know uh you say it's it's just the makeup of the students right maybe it's just their willingness because part of me was looking I was doing what Dan was doing and I looked and saw that as you go up the grades and this Bears your point out I believe as you go up so you know I I my mind was focused on grade three at the Tenny and then 59% above or at grade level and then it drops to 16% for fourth grade so um part of that could be complexity of the material I get that but there I would assume there has to be something else there too as well right because that's too statistical to drop to just explain it by saying oh the books get tougher right so and and they do but um you know I there might be something to be gain from looking at the grade three at the Tenny and the grade one at the timy and saying what's unique about those classes is there something that we don't see in other um e type classes that maybe we're capitalizing on maybe it's just the teacher who knows right um it could be anything right but I'm just we might want to dig into that a little bit more and say how do you get to 59% that's that's as a former bilingual teacher that's a really good number right people will kill me because they'll say no May that's not 80% 59% for your English language Learners is fantastic right um so I I hope we can kind of take a look at some of them and and say what's unique about this class you know sorry no I think I think uh this conversation is uh exactly uh what we wanted to have because this uh clearly the deeper you dive the more questions you have correct which is going to lead us to the student Opportunity Act data which is actually going to lead us to what our next strategy plan is right so like this is all the questions you are asking is what we're setting up with the student Opportunity Act plan that we're going to share with you tonight and hopefully you approve so that we can I mean cuz all of these numbers as simple as this looks to divide this I mean Dr golovsky and I right I I've lived this sort of Deep dive and you you take one grade level one category and those 22 students with disabilities each have a unique Story how do you take a deep dive and say what do these five students have similarly what levels are these L's that are similar so that at a building level at a district level we actually know which are these sort of the tentacles that you're going on to figure out what we do next and so we're where're this really is uh landed in a place that that made the decision for the student Opportunity Act plan and I think it is the decision that we have to make because we don't know uh all these stories uh in these categories and there are a ton right and so uh that's the work that lies ahead is taking this information and all the questions you guys just asked is exactly what our hope is with that deep dive because they are going to all tell a story and can we make sense of that story that makes sense for us yeah and the students and the work ahead because they aren't all the same and that's I think that's what makes education so complex uh right the state says here put them all in one category but uh those of you who've ever been in a school and have children I mean no two children in a house are the same never mind a subgroup right and so desie asks us to say here's a subgroup figure it out except like I said within a subgroup you have I mean every IEP is different every English learner's background is different every level is different but yet they're categorized and put all together in one group for for the sake of testing for the sake of reporting for the sake of accountability so um I say all that because this is all the questions you have is the setup and all the questions we have for our next steps hold can I just finish off M keeg sorry I just I want to make sure because either I didn't ask the question right or I didn't understand the answer one of the two when I look at the timy and I put it all together cumulatively of the 885 students accounted for under the on El I see that 49% are reading at or above grade level which tells me 51% aren't for the Tenny 57% of the 958 R which tells me 42 and a half aren't 61% of the 816 at the marsh which tells me 39 aren't and very similar numbers at the CGS I guess I I don't understand why it they aren't closer aligned like I would expect to see a disparity I know that geographically methan is a broad spectrum of socioeconomic differences but what is making the rate at the timy so different and if you answered it the first time I'm sorry I just it didn't it didn't different things you just said I mean I I'm not going to answer for she's going to have her own answer but these are all the things that we are asking because we also have churn rates in methan that are very high meaning I have students who churn rates are what desie students moving in and students moving out who accounts for one of the things that we've always been interested in of this 800 and whatever number you said 885 how many have been with us since kindergarten right how many have been with us since third we usually be able to test right mcast testing how many have been with us since third grade to 10th grade was always a cohort I was very interested in we still are desie you still give us those numbers now we have to calculate it ourselves a little bit but those are those are still some of the questions we have the last two years the timy saw the highest rate of increase of L new L students to the country into the state right so there there is a role in that where is that right where does that play a role in here so there are questions separate columns though right we carved out the L students we have nonl andl so you're saying that there's an influx of L students to the timoy and it's got the the greater portion of the the four schools right I I we'll go to the SOA and we'll see yeah I mean it's it's we we don't I don't have I don't have an answer for you to say what is tell me the one thing is the difference right we are we are diving into instruction we are diving into Data we are diving into assessment and accountability for our staff and our students chronic absenteeism plays a role I mean there's so many factors that we have to look at at each tree so that we can say at the timony this seem these are the three highest reasons that we can determine based on us trying to answer all the questions you just asked here at the Tenny it might be three totally different reasons at the marsh what is the impact at the CGS what is the impact right and where do we go from there that's that's as much as we'd like to see consistency at all the schools because of course that's absolutely because we're giving the same curriculum the same access the same schedule same support staff same class sizes right what is the difference what is making that difference and unless Dr glovsky has a finite answer uh I don't have that finite answer and I think that's what we are trying to every time we look at more data it brings up more questions that's the nature of our work and our jobs and sometimes it feels like we're chasing our Tail as soon as we figure one thing out that group of kids then they don't stop for us right they keep getting promoted and leaving grammar school and going to the high school so uh you know we don't have the luxury of all this time to try to figure it out uh but we are we are working as as fast as we can and hard as we can to take these deeper Dives I mean there there is you know support and work and things that we have in place that are consistent in all the buildings that I know we feel very strong about with curriculum expectations accountability so so if that's all there what's happening next right what is that next step I I do want to kind of see that what's the chronic absenteeism we're talking about what impact does that have there there's all those there's a ton of factors that go into this but you're asking all the same questions we are with no magic answer you know it's the work that we do day in day out I I will say too um when tntp they send us the report they also meet with each commity supervisor individually and give them school-based data um and focus points to grow and each of the four are different in their own way so we do an overview overall and then we we queue one on on different aspects um a few years ago it wasn't the case that all teachers were using the same material with the consistency that they are now so now that we have that put aside we can go to the next variable and try to figure out um what's happening from school to school but it's it's that investigation that we're always thinking about Madam Vice chair um I just have a clarifi clarification question um at what point do L's become non- L's and you know like as they progress through the grades we're actually looking at different students not kids who have always been an L is that correct that's correct so um on the access test which they take January February uh and we get the results in April or May um if they achieve a certain threshold which is 4.2 and 3.8 in terms of um the composite and literacy um in the past they would be eligible um to exit out of L status with the agreement of the team which would be their teachers administrators and having no other concerns desie just changed that um to say that um reaching those thresholds on the access test automatically make you what we call a Fel a former English learner um and that students could go back to L in the future if if teachers felt they needed more support um but that that's what the designation is there so that's another layer to unpeel um when we're thinking about this because the rate at which students fell or become fell um varies and because of a number of variables too and factors thank you I didn't include Fells in the English learner category so there are Fells in the non-english learner category so as Dr Quang mentioned um timy and tenny have a significant number of non-number English Learners so in those non-english learner student groups could be former English Learners there are definitely um a large percentage of students whose first language is not English even if they are not um classified as English learner based on their screeners um my only other question is is you say that we um have the same curriculum we have the same demographics we have all maybe not demographics but we have the same things across the board in the district are we looking at the success rate of the teachers or just the schools are we looking at the faculty are we looking at we're looking at all of it okay by teachers by grades uh mcast allows us to do that too write Trends over years uh all of that is comes a deep dive y great questions okay okay this is the last literacy objective slide so media center updates um okay so in early March we have a library consultant from fallet who came up from Connecticut and to toured all of our media centers um for the purpose of advising on um what she felt might be the best layout for the space she thumbed through a lot of the books in our current collections um helped us plan going forward what the timeline would look like um and that was a really exciting time um to and she enjoyed seeing the spaces and talking through that with us um it was also nice because this particular consultant led the um refurbishing of all the LOL public school libraries just a couple years ago so she's familiar with the area and had done 17 buildings um and she was raving about the size of the spaces um and it was really encouraging um she did say the hardest part would be the weeding of the materials because there are so many books um but she gave us some great advice in terms of how to activate our cataloges um and she could tell the the age of our collection um she gave me some training materials to train our weeding teams which um the first line will be um student weeders so National Junior Honor Society student student council sta sad groups um and some volunteers are going to help me lead the charge um and have students go through um and then my plan is we'll see how far we get with that I'd like to have it all done in April and we might offer some weeding nights for parents who enjoy lending a hand and would like to come and help out um we're also going to select and order the shelving and then while this is going on fallet is curating collections for us um and they'll be able to activate our existing catalog once we've weeded and Ross those two lists to come out with what they think might be the best um for our students um and that's for us to review and then once we have collections ordered and shelving ordered um fallet would come out and shelf all the new books everything would be labeled added into our system ready to go they take the boxes and trash with them um I think in L they said they they were able to shove and up each library and took them four days and then they were gone um and then we'd be ready with new collections that are nice and fresh and ready for students to use the start of the school year so that's the plan there okay moving on to objective two if there's no questions on libraries oh sorry remember ISO all right so um that that's awesome especially the fact that parents um will come out and do the collections as well but I was wondering if when we do activate certain collections um one of the ideas that parents also came up to me and talked to me about would they would love to see what type of collections we are thinking about ordering and kids could come out and see what collections also and see if there are selections that they would prefer um just because we were already thinking about about having them come and clean out the library with us they should also think about what they would want to put into the library so is there any way we could do that also in may as well so maybe parent parents night to possibly come and see the possible collections that we're possibly activating yes they're going to be large collections so we won't necessarily have the sample of books here but we would have a list that we'd be able to share maybe a Google form with student suggestions um but highin reads are are certainly a priority and those that represent our students um and also some non-fiction as well perfect thank you Dr I'm kind of late to this party so could you just walk me through what's going to happen in September what the the big picture is how the students will be able to access when I know in some of the libraries there are classes how do you how are you going to work around all that I think it's a wonderful opportunity but could you just help me see how it all comes together in September yes and in the library space itself for Media Center space we are prioritizing and trying to preserve open space for students to work and collaborate um so ideally I have to price this out but we plan on having tables where students can sit and work together um still maintaining a space for for PD for teachers can sit and gather um we envision a K2 area of the space being designated for that those grade levels where they can reach books with book baskets um large rugs where students can go and hear their teacher read um so that would be like a separate little Nook that we've identified in each school um we are are fairly confident we'll be able to move the classrooms that are currently inhabit the media centers into other spaces more traditional classroom spaces which would free up room um for shelving um but I think the shelving we have in in a number of the schools we'd be able to repurpose and purchase others in terms of um the Staffing of that position that will be coming out in the budget um proposal to you pretty soon um but we are looking to have a full-time staff member in the media center space okay thanks okay go keep going okay thank you all right we're going to move on to objective two um and we have the director of school mental health and Behavioral Services John Crocker hi everyone so happy to share uh some new data that we've secured through through our spring screening um if you could go back one slide thank you so much so these data represent um comparison between fall 23 and our spring screening so um the the kind of overarching report out here is that we're continuing to see growth the past three years we have seen um some very significant growth compared to what occurred um U after the pandemic so you'll see that moderate and severe are decreasing across 5 through 12 across uh anxiety depression post-traumatic stress um I have included in here all of the the charts from the past um nine years um just to be able to get a a strong sense of the trajectory of these data um on the second slide you'll see a couple key data points that we wanted to track over time we've um in Fall 21 we saw that 18.4% of students scored in the severe range on at least one measure that represented a 32% increase compared to previous data points um we have seen that shrink down to 11.4% so that's a 7% growth over the past three years that represents very significant gains in that category additionally students who endorse a question of self harm or suicide that qu the uh the group of students that are endorsing that question has shrunk by about 4.5% over the past three years so we are continuing to approach the prepandemic levels and make gains in a way that is um is significant and uh shows the the hard work of not not just counselors not administrators not just teachers this is you don't move these data without having everyone pull in the the same direction so this represents a a fully realized system of supports across all tiers um I will not go into the specifics on every single one of these graphs if you want to take a peek at them and and uh look at the trajectory um again growth across 9 through 12 5 through 8 you're going to see that there is an exchange between moderate and Mild or mild and no concern it is not a perfect growth um but it is growth in the right direction moderate and severe decreasing no concern is increasing yes yes so for um I'll take uh I'll use as an example the anxiety 9 through2 data so you can see on the far left hand side um under the severe categories that U Bar chart in green it's in the middle that represents a point where we saw a massive increase in anxiety depression post-traumatic stress that's that is when the pandemic hit and since that time we continue to see gains in the right direction severe going down moderate going down and on the far right hand side of the graph that's the no concern category you can see that continuing to go up uh we projected that we were going to see at the beginning of this process fast gains moving into slower gains um after the first year we re we corrected our thinking there and recognized that it was going to be slow gains into some fast gains and then back into slow gains and I think that that's what we're going to continue to see over the next uh several years if you take a peek also at the um the comparison between grades five and grades 6 through eight that represents um few more slides Lisa there we go this is a category of data that we were focusing on in the fall because we noticed that grade five was um was a a group of students that um for for sure were impacted by the pandemic at a at an increased rate so we wanted to just keep an eye on that category of students uh we did ultimately make some moves relative to our system of supports uh one of those moves was to push cartwheel down into grades K through 8 to provide additional Support Services to students in the elementary middle school um grade bands in addition to that we you know sent a message loud and clear to everyone that that was a a group group of students that was going to need additional support So providing additional group and individual services to those students um so we we are happily seeing that the Delta between fall and spring is shrinking ultimately um the the students that were most impacted those grade five students were starting to see growth at a higher rate for those students uh compared to grade six through 8 which represents um which represents a step forward in uh in our process of trying to achieve um growth at a faster rate for a more impacted grade level of students you can see that that Delta is changing at a higher rate for the 5 through eight post-traumatic stress data compared to anxiety and depression but still both categories were're seeing that that that level out so ultimately what you would want to see is that those um those fall and spring or the the the Delta would ultimately be reduced to zero meaning that they were on par with grade six through we do expect that there's a bubble that will continue to move through our students in grades five students in grade four when we think about where they were when the pandemic hit what grade levels they were in and what instruction they ultimately instruction and support they missed as a function of the time in which the pandemic hit that is going to be um those grade levels will need to to receive continued support at a at a higher rate so I will pause there so tying back to goal number one it would be interesting to see how these numbers relate back to the individual schools to see how that correlates with reading sure because I could imagine that PTSD and anxiety and all of these other issues are going to impact that so that would just be something nice to see my other question is how much of this is dealt with in-house by your guidance staff in the individual schools versus being sent out to the the third party service and then to a a provider in the community sure sure the the vast majority of the services that are provided to the students um generate from the schools how do you manage the disparity of service among not only just the the counselors in the schools but school to school um could you say a little more so I I know from my own experience that it it very much depends on where you fall in the alphabet as to who you get and there is a different it's I assume it's much like on the academic side where there's a a standard that's a processed as a let's call it a program for lack of a better term okay but it's being implemented differently what do you have in place to say that those processes are implemented uniformly by whether it be someone with the last name beginning with a or last name beginning with z I see what you mean I appreciate that so we we engage in supervision of the counselor's uh directly looking at their specific practices treatment plans they develop data they collect the individual cases so case consult happens all day long every single day um supervision is provided directly to them um I I provide direct supervision to the councils across the district along with uh Martha Tetro uh assisting at the high school so the processes the systems that you're talking about the uniformity of our roll out of these programs and services that's monitored through collection of data through review of different um products of practice that are developed case consultancy that's done on an ongoing basis so accountability is uh is baked into the experience of being a council in this district and the major I don't that's probably not the same for all of them but are your staff are they lcsws are they mhb what is that's the other one mhbp they're all Desi licensed um School mental health staff so school counselors school psychologist School social social workers adjustment counselors uh we do have some individuals with uh independent licenses it it varies quite a bit we have created a staffing model that really Honors that the the core of what all of these individuals do is the same that the Train the core training that they receive is the same and we have invested tremendously in professional development and uh coaching opportunities to increase their practice would you say that there's a the the adjustment counselors because this is like the third time I've heard that term this week um uh how many are there per school is or is it per grade per per last name however you have it set up varied different licenses and and purposefully so uh we're looking for people with great experience and with um a desire to work in a comprehensive system and provide evidence-based therapeutic care how many per per school that does vary a little bit depending on the the school but we are we have been aiming for a long time uh to be one per grade level and we've achieved that at the timy and the Tenny Martian CGS we are um we have seven um seven and seven I believe um yeah and at the high school we we we have 11 I may have more questions for you but I can shoot them to you in an email as they I did um I did want to just um offer an answer to a question I saw um at the last meeting around care Solace there's question around uh the description of uh inbound interactions and communication saved yes um so I just wanted to provide a quick it's pretty simple inbound interactions ultimately is just referring to uh community members contacting carolus so that's time that carolus is spending coordinating cases with a Community member who's called them the uh communication save that's car Solus communicating with providers with uh families ultimately they're generating that communication um and that is time that they're calling texting engaging in uh web uh like a zoom call on our behalf to coordinate care awesome thank you of course Vice chair um so I noticed that the K2 data um went up not down it did um and I'm wondering what kind of preventative skill building are you putting in place at that level so that the kids don't get worse I guess is the best way to put it 100% um no I'm glad you brought that up actually that is going to be the grade band that you see the greatest variance with uh when you look at a fall and spring screen because we do not screen the kindergarten students in the fall and the reason for that is they need time to acclimate to the technology so I would say it's there is a there is a change there there's a a Delta there that is representing uh kindergarteners first go at really understanding how to engage in the screening process I will say also um the first the first couple months the first couple weeks um it is absolutely the case that we should expect to see some false positives and plenty of them for a kindergardener they are learning about their affect emotion they're learning about mood they're learning about the scale of emotion and you can imagine some of the things that happen with a kindergartener where the tiniest little thing is devastating um but that is a wonderful opportunity to be able to talk about the size of the problem and to um to talk about accessing care appropriately what's a crisis what's not a crisis so there's a tremendous amount of Education about mood and about emotion that goes into the screening process and that that process of learning allows for us to get more accurate data over time as students become more skillful around it um affective identification thank you sure mug though thank you Mr chair um so going off a kindergarten because I was I was reading that data and how it goes up and exactly what you're were saying like a kindergarten subing a kindergarten a little tired say so do you do more screenings with kindergarteners or is it the fall spring just yeah so it's a it's a weekly screen once a week um and and I I I will say this um member ke I I didn't exactly answer the question around preventative care a tremendous amount of care being provided to K4 as well so um whether that is through um tier one instruction using social emotional learning curriculum group-based Individual Services um but yes um it is is going to be the case that we see some spread with that data um but is a weekly screen thank you member Willet thank you Mr chairman um I think we've making tremendous progress as a school system and I'm seeing that we haven't reached the high water mark of no concern what I'm personally concerned about is that when I looked briefly at the house ways and mean Budget and the subcategories and they have specific Grant programs for instance for civic education or literacy education and they have different categories we don't have a specific category of grants for mental health at the state level is that correct no we we do have U specific categories for grants for mental health okay so is I mean it's not just exclusively Chapter 70 correct that's correct and we we have um pursued and secured many of those grants okay yeah so is that with the the current uh Governor's uh plan is that under Jeopardy too because I know Chapter 70 is a gr group we've been talking about the cutbacks that's been proposed and I know Civics education is going to be cut and I know literacy education is going to be cut under the the current Governor's budget are we envisioning in addition to under the governor's plan of cut backs to Chapter 70 are we seeing those Mental Health Grants being cut likewise uh do you see anything in terms of being jeopardized that we would be concerned about I appreciate the question there continues to be Federal money that is pointed at this effort um the degree to which that is dispersed to States is decidedly not something I can I can speak to um how that ultimately is dispersed from states to leas to to districts is is also something that is really not in our purview but I can say this money continues to be pointed at mental health from the from federal um and grants are continually being um being created uh for the specific purpose of mental health and we continue to pursue them we've been uh successful in securing a large number of grants for mental health okay so as well as an earmark from the legislature okay because I I looked at it perused it very quickly sure so we have Chapter 70 which is like the the main education account that's right and there's also a subcategory specifically for mental health services you can apply as a grant and then you have federal grants that obviously contingent upon the federal government is it possible for the next meeting just to have like a memo of what the grants are from the federal and state level um so they're all listed on our grants sheet so at the next business meeting we can the between Dr glovsky and Mr cracker we can highlight the ones that we do receive that are state and federal grants specifically for mental health that's if that makes the yeah that's I would just again just in terms of pure education of I know we're dealing with Chapter 70 and that's going to occupy our our time and then I notice like civic's education is going to be cut by the governor and then also the literacy education is being cut by the governor it might be other things that the governor has I would say that the Mr Crocker is uh incredibly skilled at this point of going after every single grant that aligns with the work that we're doing both federal and state um and we are very lucky uh we continue uh representative Hamilton has continued on some earmark money that um representative Campbell started for us years ago um so we are also very fortunate we have a delegation that supports the mental health work in this community at large um so we can easily I think again point that out in the current monies that we have and what we would expect to continue to go after next year so in a current setup taking aside the Chapter 70 right and what's happening in Washington what's happening on Beacon Hill we don't currently Envision any Jeopardy to the the Mental Health Grants as we foresee it I I don't think we could guess I don't but we don't okay the breakdown would be helpful yeah the way we see it at this point no but you know anything could change but um we can certainly identify those for the April 8th meeting okay thank you you're welcome any other questions from Mr Crocker before we move on thank you Mr Crocker very much yeah okay we're on to objective three um which is where we're trying to provide students from historically disadvantage groups with Equitable access to an excellent education at our discussion during the last Workshop um we talked about and it was requested that more data be provided um surrounding these areas so I pulled a few different pieces that I wish to talk about today so this first table um and the few that follow were pulled um from the College Board who um creates the AP exams so um I have from 2019 to 2023 the total number of testers the total number of exams because many testers take more than one um and the total number of qualifying scores which is considered a score of three and above and qualifying score I'll speak to um it it's generally the score that most um postsecondary institutions will recognize bless you as um taking an AP credit so the student who um suppli bless you uh a score three or above on an AP exam to a college of University may be um comped out of the class and be able to to take uh the next level course they may be issued credits um we've had a number of students who have started um College as second semester freshman um and a number that have in four years graduated with a bachelor's and master's degree due to their AP credits so we can see um again we little fluctuation around 2020 um but we have increased the number of exams being given and the number of testers and this is the college board's equity and excellent measures so this is the number of U methan High School AP students per grade level who scored three and above on an AP exam divided by the total number of students in each grade so the first row shows the graduating class which means um at any point in their High School career they had earned a qualifying score not just taken a class and a test um and then it's parsed out by 12th 11th and 10th grade so sir certainly um students generally access more AP courses as they progress throughout their High School career although there are opportunities in 10th Grade and some ninth graders as well will take a course um but these are the students who have earned a qualifying score so last year nearly a quarter of the graduating class graduated with um a qualifying AP score I'll just do a couple more on AP and then I'll take AP questions we have a few topics in this bundle okay so this was issued by the College Board as well these figures so these are um methan AP testers by fee reduction status and percentage earning the qualifying score so unlike desie where we have um student group information provided um from the Department this is um not necessarily the same as what we would see as lwi income but this is um uh quantifying the testers who received a granted fee reduction and those who did not um and so um compiling this data it led to some interesting discussions with the high school staff about how one would go about getting a fee reduction uh what fee reductions are available to us um as a district um and what I found out is that from year to year it can vary um but we have a partnership with mass Insight um from years ago I believe 2008 we started our relationship with that group um and they do offer a subsidy um for students in need as does desie so Mass Insight offers um for math science and English test takers um and um for subjects Beyond um and so these would be the testers that were granted the fee reduction as compared to those that that were not so we have in the first row just the number of testers the row below the number of exams that were administered and then the passing rates okay and this is a slide showing uh AP testers by race and ethnicity as shared by the college board so from 2019 to just last year so we have growth in all areas and some groups more than others and I'll pause there any comments and questions regarding AP data so and we talked about this the last time we went through this I I I think this goal is a little bit misplaced because I feel like it's a fundamental element in everything all of us want to do all the time right um but when looking at that first chart the one that was in blue the AP data and looking at the rest of them I couldn't get any of the numbers to line up like I could never get back to that number of testers 469 going through it because nothing nothing add back up to that number so I guess looking at that chart my question becomes who and how does it tie back to historically disadvantaged uh groups so I guess when we when we do conclude this set of goals and I guess what I would just want to make sure that it's it's clear and it's all able to be tied back because i' like to view myself as someone who's relatively good at making the numbers work and I I couldn't I couldn't math my way back to the original numbers and I know that it's desie information not you guys so just when we do finish up my ask is that we try to make it clear and validated and we can certainly pull from our own um student information to and cross it against the testers and scores um that's all I got for thank you Maxwell I mean with light sorry it's okay thank you Mr chairman and I appreciate the information and I think for the most part we are above the national level for AP examinations and we're just slightly below this the state average for AP examinations and we had the high W Mark was back in 2021 with 35% achieving three or above um but again if you look overall um we are above the national average but you know below the state average and again that's a moving Target and I appreciate that I also value that uh between the people taking the tests and paying outright versus the testers that were granted a fee reduction um it was very competitive so if someone comes from a lowincome home and they qualify to take the test at a reduced fee they were in good competition with the other households um so I think that's a sign too of um the educational value at though in public schools um that someone might be coming from a low-income home but they're also uh competing with their peers that might not necessarily qualified based on income for the grant FEA reduction so that was something I thought was uh very positive and also looking at the subcategories based on race and also the advanced course work I'm also seeing very positive outcomes um so I I understand um member shilia and I defer it to the mayor and to the secretary in terms of mathematics um but I think overall and I appreciate the data because I really requested the data is that obviously we should be dedicated to every student regardless of race gender ethnicity orientation background um but it's also very helpful um to have this data as well as where where can we seek improvements um as a whole and again um historically disadvantage categories um and it's something that I I I appreciate the data and I am impressed by the scores um and there something I wanted to just say for the record thank you thank you okay I'll move on and then if we have more questions on AP I can do those as well um so here's a slide on Advanced coursework so we're out of the College Board Bo World um and we're back into desie here so this is a a category of of course work um there's an exhaustive list of courses that um desie labels as advanced so it would be anything AP anything that uses Project Lead the Way curriculum dual enrollment um chapter 74 approve Vocational Technical courses um and other rigorous courses such as uh pre-cal calculus chemistry um and there's I brought the five-page list in case anyone had a question um but it's for a students in grades 11 and 12 who are enrolled in one of these courses and have completed it so these this is our number and percentage of grade 11 and 12 students who have completed one or more of these courses so the number there is the number of students and then the percentage is percentage of students with within that category that have completed Advanced coursework so for instance in 2023 of all students in grades 11 and 12 slightly more than half had completed um Advanced cours workk and so I tried to include the student groups um that desie recognizes and those in which we have students that fall into those categories so I know when the superintendent and I look at um AP data or Advanced coursework Data um and also in the course enrollment data for for grade n in particular we're looking to see if the population of students in courses and those completing Advanced coursework reflects the overall School population um and if not then we dig a little little deeper into figuring out why that may be there was also variation um between courses um and you could really get into the intricacies of the data to figure out um who is taking which course and why here's a slide on grade nine core course enrollment so um we just pulled the grade nine courses that we would consider um the most popular with grade nine students there are a few um different students who take some different classes for various reasons but primarily English nine CP and honors um for science most freshmen take biology CP or honors uh for math Algebra 1 CP or honors um those who did well in advanced math um in the K schools sometimes move on to Algebra 2 and then world history CP and world history honors so that's pretty much the core components of grade n schedules I didn't get into elective courses um and then we have the composition of those courses so we have the percentage of students um who are in enrolled in that course and then the number of students so for instance in English 9 CP there are 250 students in that class of that 200 of those 250 students 26% of those students are students with disabilities 18% are English Learners and 56% are low income I tried to focus on the student groups um that would go into to our high needs populations as identified by desie and also those with traditionally more significant disparities from the all students group and this is important because when a student is recommended for a course from 8th to 9th grade um it often impacts their trajectory um throughout their High School career and here are some different subgroups this is new to your not in your packet this one's hot off the press so different subgroups um and their enrollment in those courses so we can say we can see for instance in grade n English 64% of students in grade n CP are male and 60% are Hispanic in the honors course 61% are female and 56% are white so we also want to make sure that um teachers that are recommending from grade eight are doing so um based on hard data that support student achievement and growth potential um instead of going on a general feel about the student we also want to make sure that families are informed of their options um and how to access different Pathways and curricula also counselors have a big role in that um enrollment process okay that's the last slide for the quarterly any questions member willite again um I know it's been uh talked about previously is that we have a lot of headwinds in terms of the student population that just recently acclimated to methan the English Learners um so if we suddenly have a cut back at the state level that's going to really impact test scores long term um you're talking a huge percentage within two years I was looking at that page um so and then in the demographics at the back we've talked about uh uh previously how we became a majority minority District that the u high need uh increased by 10% the lowincome students increased by 12.4% students with disabilities increased by 14.9% English language Learners increased by 11.6% uh Hispanic population increased by 21.3% so there has to be a recognition that we want to educate all students so if the the copet is taken away from us and we're tripped at the local level and millions of dollars are then removed it's going to definitely impact these these core groups and once you jeopardize the education at the local level it's going to have a long-term impact so if you could do like a long t study that if you reduce significantly education funding and I know there's a talk at the state level and I support it is to deal with the early childhood education front um but when you cut head that's a factor and head was was cut at this by the governor and then the education of the Toddlers and the early um education front I support but then if you're cutting back Chapter 70 obviously there's a disconnect so you're starting at the beginning stages but if someone's in grade three and four they the their brothers and sisters are going to have like 25 28 to a classroom where we average 20 to a classroom um so I think overall when we're increasing literacy scores and we're reducing students identified with severe mental health issues and we're doing greater Outreach and like we we're doing diagnostic testing of the students and we're doing these type of um sessions of going over the data all of that is going to be in Jeopardy if the governor's budget becomes the reality going into the fall um so so I I definitely appreciate as always the comprehensive information um a lot of times I defer to my colleagues in terms of going to a deep dive on the statistics but if anybody is a very sombering looking at the last page um and I think we've done success stories overall but we also have like mentioning the timony um that there's something there that's triggering that we need to have further analysis on um but if you look at that shifts in student populations this the student Opportunity Act is definitely designed for that the historical commitment to Chapter 70 is definitely designed for that the the fair share amendment is definitely helping us and if we move away from that um and divert money for other purposes um I think it's just a detriment to all the goals we've done since since Co occurred um it would be a shame I think overall to our school system thank you thank you nice job okay moving on superintendent would you please start the presentation for the S SOA plan the student Opportunity Act sure I'll let Dr golovsky get your breath for a second and just introduce this because she's on again um but so what we have in front of you I think I prepped you for this at the last meeting um is a student Opportunity Act plan this is a requirement of the legislation for the student Opportunity Act that was uh passed in 2019 uh for the money that member wette was speaking directly of moments ago uh you know the formula changed and basically in the most simple term I could say is that the Foundation formula was changed to provide more dollars to students who are underserved so our English Learners our high need students which will Define all of those groups for um the folks watching and just remind ourselves of those student groups and low income and students with disabilities so it really uh is the most impactful change in the budget formula uh for districts like ours who typically don't have the level of um income in towns uh that some other Suburban uh places do have uh and so over time uh the promise was that these funds were going to help us build again all the things that member blette just said and the things we've been doing over the past four years or so here um and and before Dr golovsky starts which goes through some of this information I think it's important to note that um you know our job so at our next meeting we will be presenting our preliminary budget to the school committee uh with everything in mind that we've already talked about um but but our hope and goal is not to lose the things that we have put in place uh this may not be the year that we gain a lot more uh but I think it's also clear uh and uh you do see tonight that um you might see some different things at the Tenny and the timy than you do at the other schools and we have to be ready to have those conversations about the needs of our schools are not always the same just the sheer size alone uh of those two schools uh we are over 1,300 in both of those schools and the the CGS and the the the marsh are not they're hundreds below that right we're at like two to 300 below that in the other two schools so just the sheer size uh just statistically uh prevent you know provide challenges um and so so that's our job right my job is to put together a budget that does uh just what member blette says and provide support in all areas uh to all of our students um you know we will have dialogue over the coming months about uh what we want to keep what our reality is and you as a committee uh will help us direct and make some challenging decisions and that's what my team will do um I hope not too challenging but um you know we're not going to present a budget to you that is going to bring some false hope either to adding more to what we have right our hope is that we maintain and there are pockets of things that we are going to ask for some things uh that will make the most sense to you I think that is Our obligation to you to present that to the school committee in the public that we're not without needs but um we can't be unreal real istic and fiscally irresponsible and so we're not going to be doing that um and again the whole point of this process is that the school committee uh which the budget is uh a a huge portion of your purview as to have this dialogue and discussion and thoughts and give us Direction on what those next steps are right I'm going to we're going to present to you we're going to give our thoughts on what should be next and then some and what it means if right lots of those conversations and then that's what our team does in between those meetings before we actually approve a budget and take it to city council so um we are prepared for that dialogue and we will be prepared for that at the next meeting so I appreciate the uh preface uh of this because this pertains directly to that work um but I am going to let Dr golovsky go through this plan which uh I think we talked a lot about with the the um the quarterly update and so there's not you know a whole lot of new information here but uh really a focus on what this this is a very prescribed plan by desie this isn't like Dr kabasi and I sit around in a room and make up like oh what are we going to do and what does that look like and what's what's the language and what's the uh evidence-based program this is here's the list from desie and you have to pick one right and so uh we feel really good about it because we have had all this work uh since since the first s SOA plan which was a little less structured it was a little uh I don't I don't know it was just harder to create the first time that that uh we wrote the plan four years ago at least I know it was I think we were I was the one creating it um it just didn't have a lot of structur as to what desie expected what the options were but yet we were required to do it and we weren't seeing a ton of money then right so we had here's the law here's Co you're not seeing any money but yet you have to do this cuz it's law right so it's just a little more challenging than this process was for us and I have to say that that pulling some of the data we did it literally fell into like well this this makes perfect sense for us and so I do feel grateful because uh I think it's going to allow us to really focus on the conversation we had here tonight so I think you'll see that if I know you've reviewed this but I think it'll make the most sense to you um we are required by law to to submit uh this plan to desie by April 1st uh I'm also required by law to submit the minutes and the actual vote to desie with that plan so the turnaround time uh was not a lot uh they gave us the information probably by the right after the governor's budget came out the end of January to turn all of this around and and may have it make sense so I think we're in a decent place because this is the data that we feel is important to our district um you guys have made it clear the previous committee made it clear this is the data we need to look at to figure out the why um as we continue to move forward and progress thank you yep ready to go okay so here's the student Opportunity Act plan uh presentation on the slide you can see that this is our fifth presentation of this plan so we have shared um at two c Council meetings um we shared with our uh districtwide leaders at the quarterly leadership meeting um and Dr Quang shared um with parents at the CPAC meeting so just to um summarize what Dr kuang had shared um student Opportunity Act was enacted in 2019 um as part of this act every District regardless of how much funding they receive um needs to submit a plan to Desi that outlines outlines the targets for improving disparities in their District between student groups in terms of achievement and then what their plan is to solve that and close the gaps so this is our second round of the SOA plan um here here we are okay so uh just to clarify this is different uh very different from the district Improvement plan or strategy plan that is more comprehensive in terms of everything we're doing to support students who fall into particular student groups are not this is just a a snapshot of a few particular ways that we plan to support students in the groups that we identify and the key um the keys to tipping the scales so to speak and to see an increased Improvement in those areas so this is just a small piece of the pie um but a really important one that we plan to focus on so here are the components of the S SOA plan just so you're aware so we're first tasked with identifying disparities and both learning outcomes and opportunities for student groups second we're to identify specific evidence-based programs which we intend to implement or better there might be things already in existence to reduce these disparities and as Dr Quang said we're pro provided a list from desie from which to choose um next we need to outline the type of funding that would be used to implement the plan so um it's not to be seen that just s SOA dollars would fund this s SOA plan s SOA dollars go into the general fund and then we pull from Grants and I'll get into that later all all different areas to support the plan to decrease the disparities then um we're tasked with establishing Targets this year desie established targets which they asked us to uh follow so that was done for us um and then finally we need to talk about plans for for engaging families and measuring our e efforts from year to year as it is a multi-year plan okay so this was the slide that U member wette was was speaking to regarding the shifts in student populations which led us to determine in part um that the English language Learners and students with disabilities are the two student groups on which we would like to focus so over the past decade the district enrollment overall has decreased by 400 students and the white student group has decreased um by 24% the Hispanic student group has increased by 21% English Learners increased by 11.6% and students with disabilities increased by 14.9% um and then on the second portion here I think it was really important to note um the changes that have come about just since the first SOA plan um was presented and adopted so in just three years our low income students increased by 12.4% and high need students increased by 10% so um and I'll get to I'll Define High needs um at the end English language Learners increased by 8% in students with the first language other than English increased by 5% so the high need Student group um accounts for students who uh are English Learners a lowincome or economically disadvantaged and also students with disabilities so if you fall into one of those three categories you fall into the um High need Student group some students fall into multiple categories within that group and I just wanted to paint the picture um of the English Learners in methan public schools so this is based on the 2223 School enrollment data 34.2% of English Learners at MHS within their first two years in a Massachusetts school often it's the fir their first experience in a school in the United States 49.7% of English Learners at the CGS are within their their first two years in a Massachusetts school so nearly half and the reason for that is in large part because the CGS houses that K through 8 newcomer program and then at the marsh Tenny and timony combined um there's an average of 99.1% who are still within their first two years within a Massachusetts school and this heat map was provided by Desy I took some some some snapshots of portions that I thought spoke to what we are focusing on today so we have um the 2023 data for mcast meeting and exceeding so just like when we look at reading data we look at students reading at grade level and Beyond here we're looking for students who are meeting the academic standards and exceeding them um and then on the right hand side we have growth the growth percentiles so when we're looking at student data we're looking at achievement but also growth both very important so the the darker the cell indicates the greater disparity from the all student groups so it's it's a a nice visual to illustrate on the meeting and exceeding so I would say that's the achievement side um that in terms of ela at least in grade six8 10 um the English Learners um there's a great disparity from the all student rate um and in grade 8 Ela for students with disabilities in terms of math we see a great disparity in grades 6 8 and 10 for the English Learners between English Learners and all students and then in grades 8 and 10 between students with disabilities for Math and the all students group um and even in those cells that I didn't name in particular um that are colored in that pink color the student group still does not meet the all students rate and then on the right hand side that's the student growth percentiles um and I just isolated those student groups that we're looking at in ela grade 10 um we see um great disparities in English learner and students with disability ities both in English and math as compared to the all students group here's some more data that's speaking to why we're we identified these two groups as being the focus of the SOA so this is the percentage of ninth graders passing all courses and it's really important just just like I commented before about um important to have students grade nine placed in the appropriate courses so that they um they end up in the pathway or they understand the opportunities available to them in subsequent years it's really important for grade n students to earn as many credits as possible and to end that grade nine year um with full credit load it exponentially increases the chances of them meeting their next academic Milestone which is graduation when they finish their freshman year with all their credits so we can see um in the blue bar that's the all student rate as compared to the English learner rate in green and then our five-year graduation rate which is older data um from 2020 and 2021 is provided by desie and then students with disabilities we see we see um also there's a disparity in terms of passing grade n classes and the 5year rate we also included the slides um that we already spoke about tonight regarding the the breakdown of the screener scores so hopefully that um point you to understanding why we chose those two student groups um and then in terms of the evidence-based program um as offered by desie the one that we chose to focus on to address these disparities um we thought really articulated exactly what we needed and the phrasing in italics um is the Dy phrasing so use the mtss process to implement academic supports and interventions that provide all students particularly students with disabilities and multilingual learners equ able access to deeper learning that's funny you should ask okay so here's an overview of um mtss in case you're unfamiliar so mtss stands for multi-tiered system of support and it's a comprehensive continuing of evidence-based systematic P practices to support a rapid response to student students needs with regular observation to facilitate databased instructional decision making so in other words what we're trying to do there is use systematic PR processes to examine data um and to make sure that students are growing in real time in learning and if that's not the case um we're red we're redirecting and trying a different pathway um and using data to inform our instructional decision making so the tenance of a framework the mtss framework is that all students are capable of grade level learning and that's really important and it just it's just a matter of the type of support and the amount of support um that student that students need in order to access and perform at that grade level standard mtss is rooted in proactivity and prevention and utilizes evidence-based practice practices I will also say that mtss is not only to support the students in the process but also the Educators who are maybe having um a tough time finding how to support a student and it provides the opportunity to confer with colleagues um and use data to inform the the decisions that are made um and also the degree of support given to students is based on their needs so just like it's important to scaffold learning it's also dangerous to over scaffold learning because then we don't get to those core actions two and three that we talked about um an objective one um and it's really important that this occurs schoolwide and that we have stakeholder collaboration so this would be an example of a program that we have in place but we think we can do better with um and so that's why we chose to focus on this so these um subset sets of um the elements of btss were provided by Desi so by selecting this program we also are selecting these these subtopics which we believe in so the effective use of the weda framework to support English Learners both within and without of those those programmatic classes High leverage practices for students with disabilities collaborative teaching models and targeted academic support and acceleration so these are all areas that desie has identified as being key components of mtss and those which they wish for districts to focus on who are choosing this program so where will the money go both s SOA dollars and Beyond um to improve mtss so we have on our teams and schools who are driving this this academic process we have English learner supervisors and Humanity supervisors who are who are taking the feedback and data from teachers and they're all meeting together with teachers to discuss next steps making instructional decisions and supports and we intend to request um when we submit the budget to you stem supervisors to really round out that team so we have science and math um expertise professional development so we had um a lot of professional development this year in the El Department regarding the weda framework and the El supervisors um spread some PD at department meetings um and during CP time on the weda framework and how to uh trickle in our support of English Learners and everything that we do in tier one instruction um teaching multilingual Learners co-planning and Co teaching um which we're actually using some earmark funds to support both um I'm working with um assistant superintendent boac um to support the El and special education department and General Ed teachers um we plan to run that in June High leverage practices for students with disabilities would entail curriculum revision material adaptation support staff to maintain and generalize new learning across settings targeted academic supports would entail our reading Specialists academic support Lab at the high school after school homework Center at the high school acceleration would entail personalized digital intervention tools vacation summery these are just some of the the general buckets that we see as fitting under these subcategories but as it's a multi-year plan we certainly plan to enhance and expand these ideas so funding sources um federal grants local funds and state grants are just some of the ways that we will um be able to improve our mtss and then I spoke briefly at the beginning about desie setting the target so how do we know if it's working or if it's getting better so desie will set a three-year Improvement Target and then from year to year we'll have an incremental growth Target as it pertains to our lowest performing students group so the lowest performing students group entails students who have the lowest academic performance and therefore need the most significant levels of support So by performance we're talking about the average of ela and math scores for mcass so this target is is new they didn't use this on the first um issuance of the S SOA plans um and the idea is that this will provide some consistency between between districts and also when you're looking at more than one student group there's so many different ways to parse out the data and so much variation as we already said that they um felt strongly that this is the best way to do it because if these truly are the disparities in your District then naturally students Within These student groups would fall into that lowest performing students group okay so a little bit more on who that is and what um this group really means or represents so it's the lowest performing 25% of students when they ranking average of ela and math okay so it's for high school and non- high school the way you figure that group is different for each so the students in order to be in this group have to have been enrolled in the school for two consecutive years so that would eliminate newcomers who are brand new to the district and they have to have tested in both years if they're not in high school okay so the um K through eights or 3 through eights weren't talking about this we're looking at the results of the current year compared to the same students previous results so if we're looking to see if we've met a Target and a making growth we're looking for that lowest 25% of students and we're comparing how they did in one year to the next year and we're hoping to see growth that matches the Desy Target the high school is a little different because we don't have two consecutive testing years since everyone tests in grade 10 so when we're comparing the lowest performing students group we're really comparing two different crops of students it's a lowest performing uh group in one year as compared to the next lowest performing group in the following year and here is where we did the presentations and I zipped through that because we talked about so many pieces of this already um but I will say when we did the presentations these other dates to these other groups um we had a an email account made um where people who were listening and just hearing all this information and seeing it for the first time could digest it and then send questions or comments to the superintendent um and we also um asked for for ver verbal feedback and comment I think we had a few questions um which we're happy to address do any of you have questions or comments you'd like to share I apologize that this is not one of the questions that I gave you earlier but mtss is already in place and a lot of the things that you said are already in place what makes makes you think that we're going to get any different results if we're just going to do the same thing it's in place but we think we can be more effective with it so I will say one change that we that we made this year um is on infite campus um the superintendent um worked with Matt CA our our data administrators to open the historical profile so so teachers were able to see in years prior um documentations of strategies or events that have occurred with the student and so we're not just spinning wheels from year to year and we're making progress that way um I think that teachers understand the need to collect the data and are working really hard with the ad administrative leadership to do that we want to make sure that what we're recommending as a team as for instructional decisions are really strong evidence-based and personalized for that student so just like we talked about before different students having different needs um I think with some of the items that I addressed earlier that we can be stronger in what we're recommending um sticking to the time frames of what we're recommending and tracking data that way can I also ask can I add to that yes because one of the things that is challenging and having lived from the beginning of when desie identified this lowest performing 25% group that was another new subgroup that desie added probably seven years ago um and it's still a little elusive to us Educators because it doesn't come out we don't get that list at the same time that we get um all of of the other data and so it isn't typically a data set that we are hyperfocused on because we don't have it when we act we get it like halfway through the school year so often times for us this is why mcast is so frustrating because we get the data after we have the kids already rolling for the school year this data set is even farther out and I think it's telling to us uh they don't have the targets for us right now so we owe them this plan in April but we don't know our targets are so des's like don't worry turn in your plan we'll get you your targets when we get it so there are some frustrating pieces of this but for us I think the difference is exactly what we talked about tonight there is such a deeper dive so while we are doing some of these things more globally we absolutely feel taking a deeper dive and looking at these two subgroups with a fine tooth comb right or lens no looking through whatever lens right that we're we're hyperfocused on the stories and we're hyper focused on this data subset that we really have never been before because this is going to this is different than our first go round witha they didn't have uh a subset of data that they absolutely uh were focused on and are going to if you would grade us on right and see if we're meeting our targets annually with this plan so this makes sense because we already have the wheels in place uh but like Dr lson said there's so many things we feel we could do better better and having the staff in place to start diving deeper to think about what is MTS what pieces of MTS are we needing to focus on what do we need to do better that we have to do that regardless of SOA or not this is going to be our next step right so this is clearly where our strategy plan has to head parts of it right but this is the hyperfocus part that the state wants us to really look at who are these kids what are their names who are they what are their stories and where do they fit in this larger picture right what grade three what group are they in what's their story right and so that's I think for us that's been the level of conversation we've been having with people is it's just taking us not to a Global Perspective but really nailing down what do we need to do differently for these two subgroups by grade level by school by K2 35 68 like you know what is it that we have to look at so for me I see that having done this work for for many years in this District uh there have been a lot of moving targets and I think having these targets set with the strategy plan plus the SOA uh it's going to only move us in the right direction you know it's not going to happen overnight I there's there's no promises there but our team is going to work as hard as we can to to have all these things in place and figure out what we need to do and do better thank you the one thing I want to say is that I'm encouraged by by is that you're actually acknowledging in this plan that all students are capable of grade level work that is a huge change in about phase from when my kids were in elementary school my son was not expected to do grade level work and it was discouraging to me and that has changed since he hit high school and it's been huge to see the the growth that is capable of a kid when they're expected to do grade level work and I'm encouraged that we're going to start that in kindergarten preschool instead of waiting until the kids get to high school so I'm I'm really encouraged by that one sentence in this entire plan so thank you welcome so I need a motion second to approve the district SOA plan so second motion second by any further discussion other than what we've already had okay this has to go to roll call M Ryan deaglio Yes mayor Beth Donovan grai yes Lori Keegan yes Kristen Maxwell yes Daniel shabila yes Kenneth wette Yes Man Daniel Perry present un name oh six yes one present passes okay moving on we have uh um we have a motion excuse me we have a we need a motion and a second to approve the resolution for chapter 78 so moved second motion by Meers second M discussion I'll kick it off uh so as a body we received this from our counterparts in havil this same exact resolution is was brought up and approved in havil uh when I last spoke to them it was going up in adelar Barnstable Brockton Chelsea Holio Quincy and they're waiting on more confirmations that it is going up and being voted and approved upon approval it's being sent to the the uh the appropriate legations it's being sent to the governor's office it's being sent to uh Massachusetts Association for school committees basically anybody who's willing to read it who might have some poll who can uh bring to light the uh let's call it the era of their ways um so that's where this is coming from it is word for word character for character the exact same as what was brought forward and hail uh all I did was uh control find havil and change to methan so listen work smarter not harder um so that's that's the objective here uh in in discussing it with havil uh some of it is symbolic and some of it is um kind of a a a slight pressure so we're hoping that more districts jump on board and we can get them to uh fix this in the next rendition of the budget would we be delivering this to our legislative delegation or are we going specifically to the governor and others like that so the intent was that it went to the delegation it went to the governor it went to masc and after this was over I was going to ask the noer of all things Miss Martha how that happens be we do that so Martha Miss Martha and your secretary to the committee send it to the appropriate delegations that represent us all right okay so will go to everybody everybody and then some yeah I like it once we sign and we have a clean copy if this passes tonight for you all to wet signature I did notice that the date was wrong on this one oh no it says March oh no you it was corrected March 25th in the packet okay okay so uh any other discussion on that M will I On a related topic with the budget memo has that been related to the legislative delegation at this point um my budget memo yes so I have had uh direct conversations with with representative Hamilton I have not had Direct conversations with representative with the senator yet so I would our Representatives know uh not our not the state senator I have not had a conversation with paval Pano yet because I I want us to work on Dual tracks I support the resolution because like member shabila said some of it's symbolic some of it deals with um doing threeyear look back of inflation um because I know with the GIC they do a three-year average for the premiums so when we do the fluctuations from 4.5% downward to 1.35% I think for in terms of stabilization it should be a three-year average because back in 202 22 the high water mark was 99.1% inflation in this country So for anybody to indicate that we went from 99.1% inflation down to 1.35% inflation please explain that to me step by step so that was one of the Dual tracks the other one I would like to have our budget memo because I think we're ahead of the curve normally when we present the budget that information is included but I think if we send the resolution to the legislative delegation we send a budget memo to the legislative delegation well the the only thing I'd caution is that um so the superintendent is going to get a a number from the catho this week um that will be the city's contribution to the schools um it will be more um it won't make up for the Gap I'm going to say that right now um but I think you know the superintendent is going to come in here on the 8th and make your budget presentation so there's a couple things that have to happen before I would want to share that budget memo with any of the state delegation right there's some numbers that have to firm right and some of those will be done by members of this committee as we walk through the budget Workshop as you remember right we're going to go school by school class by class it's a great ID opening experience right I just want to be careful I don't want to promise you something that we we need to wait on I think we need to wait on until the meet at least you know uh the meeting after the eth right so we start to on the eth we'll start to formalize numbers and we'll get in our heads okay this is where we're going so we technically could say these are you know not finalized numbers but this is where we're what we're looking at right so I don't know if that answers your question no it it does Mr chairman and I think someone will have to correct me if I'm wrong is that the next meeting yeah we can have that final version of the the budget memo for the most part no so the only part of that sentence I want to be careful with member well that is final yeah right you cannot have the final the final doesn't come until the city council tells the superintendent this is the number no I I say it should say up to date okay how about that up to date we can say okay this is the number that we're projecting right yes we can do that yeah and I and you know again from our standpoint yeah and then we we going to proceed with the budget but we also can send I'm circulating a letter yeah that for the next meeting that should be in time because it's going to be a mood point if we start to have budget amendments considered at the state house and this information should be presented to the legislative delegation at least on the house side sure before they proceed to file budget amendments or sign on to budget amendments so I think that next school committee meeting we should have a formal letter to the legislative delegation we should have at least an updated version of a budget memo that we can present and include as part of a package we can do that okay so that's in terms of that I understand and I shouldn't have said finalize I'll retract that part of the statement I just don't want them to come back and say oh see you guys said you're you're this and you're that right so I think what it is is that the local contribution obviously is it's subject to finalization by the city council what we're focused on is the differential between the 4.5% down to 1.35% yes and I don't want to have the legislative delegation be kept in the dock on this and as also this should be from the Affiliated parties in methan there should be a unified focus on abely the budget as it pertains to Beacon Hill and then afterwards Focus your resources if you want to as part of the democratic process then you can focus your resources at the local level yep but I think it's a little bit unwise to just focus like tunnel vision in terms of methin where we still have an opportunity as a school committee Y and people affiliated with the in public schools to Marshal our resources and direct them at a legislative delegation because of what happened so that's would be let me tell you I'm banging away on the legislative delegation already okay so all right thank you yep Madam Vice chair um I just want to comment on something member wette said um I'm a little bit concerned about sending numbers that the city side is going to be um presenting for the budget because the state should be not focused on what we're going to contribute it's the state number Chapter 70 number so I don't feel like we should be sending them any numbers that the city says they're going to give us or projects or anything I don't I think it's completely irrelevant I got to be I got to be honest though if we send them numbers without the city's contribution they're going to say what's your net School spending right and that's a question we answer all the time right so that includes the local number so um um I can tell you that the CFO um she's probably home ringing ringing her hands and wanting to ring my neck but she's she's there right so I had to have her go through all the revenue projections for the year because um some of the things that the previous Council voted at the end of last have reduced our Revenue inflows um not only that um you look at things like Holy Family Hospital and I have to sit here and play a waiting game right so Holy Family Hospital pays a million dollars plus in taxes to the city of methan that's as a for-profit there is a great likelihood I don't want anybody to quote me that you know if it continues to operate it will it will be absorbed by a nonprofit as soon as that happens that million dollars is out right and I just use that as one example so she's gone through the revenue inflows um she's anxious about them she always is at this time of year and now um you know um Wednesday morning I will sit down with her and go through with them and we will finalize the number and turn to the superintendent say here's the number and the superintendent can tell you once I give the number you can talk about all I never reneg on the number the number is the number right um so I just think if we if we give something to our legislative delegation they're Savvy enough that they're going to say well what's the net School spend what What's the total amount what do you what's the city's contribution so I don't I don't really want to hold it back if you will um we're to do we're going to do like we've always done better than net School spend right right and so U to me this is about a bigger problem that you know what was forecast and I I I look at the governor and um I want to make sure you guys all understand I think you do she's making Cuts based on projections not based on actual revenues so the actual revenues in the com of Massachusetts are more than they were last year they are not matching the projections that were set forth and that's that's a dangerous game you play in the budget cycle right how aggressive or how conservative you get so uh you know long-winded answer um I don't see the benefit and I don't know if you disagree with me to holding out the local aid number because it's it's you know once it's defined it's defined right and um you know we'll stand there and defend it to anybody who wants to talk to it so I I don't disagree with it I do I think there are two paths that could get very confusing and we're all in agreement yeah everybody in my seat and everybody sitting here and probably every school committee in the Commonwealth is in agreement that the formula has a flaw and I think that's the battle with the legislators right that because that Chapter 70 number isn't going to change for us right right unless it changes I guess I should say that's a weird statement but like you know unless something changes now and they do get pressure from enough committees you know enough legislator enough voters that's really the only wave that's going to make change for this fiscal year um and again if that happens during the process wonderful right if it doesn't then we're going to build a budget based on our chapter 78 number now the city contribution number that we have and again uh the mayor's right I've I've been around uh too long to know uh the school committee votes a budget that can change that budget can go to the city council that can change um so there's just there's a process we have to trust and follow and uh my job is to Advocate as is yours for the best quality school budget we can put together that um again advocating for all students in our in our schools uh that's that's my job that's your job and that's you know what I think we'll do collaboratively going through the process so so I do think this resolution uh uh of course I 100% support it and it will go out as your secretary uh this will go out to every um you know legislative branch that represents methan for sure uh our entire delegation uh the governor's office lieutenant governor masc it'll it'll go you know I'll ask my colleagues is is there anywhere else they sent it that actually would read it it's something else yeah and just just to emphasize that the state has an 8.2 billion stabilization fund a rainy day account which is like the third largest in a country only behind California and Texas with massive populations so when we go into the budget deliberations and we have a reduction in the inflation of the foundation for Chapter 70 it's not like the state is crying poor right they have the third largest stabilization account in the country and we always been told whether it's city council school committee School administration mayor is that you do not tap into your cash reserves for personnel purposes unless it's an emergency situation you say that again yeah and I I read a certain memo that's being circulated and I can't understand where you do Capital expenditures you pay down debt you tackle massive projects you do not tap into your cash reserves because that impacts your bond rating it impacts at the at the state level um so you do not go into your cash reserves to handle elected bargaining agreements or handle year-to-year Personnel funding yep it's frowned upon by your bond organizations it's it just you don't do that yep so I my focus at this moment is that the state because they're resting on an 8.2 billion dollar rainy day fund and then we collectively should focus all of our resources at the state amen yeah member thank you Mr chair so in regards to the budget and everything um the school committees around the state of Massachusetts could write this letter and and send to the legislation but when I'm requesting our parents at home to start calling your senators in your UPS you vote for them they are to listen to you just like we are supposed to listen to you and if we we can be it's the truth we are their bosses I just let you said we we we have to they have to listen to you we just like we are supposed to yeah um and the fact is that like I've told our Senators and representatives multiple times that I am your boss because I vote for you so and these are affecting your children um and I will sit here and I will call our legislators just as much as you will I will do my job effectively as much as I can but at the end of the day when it comes to the ballots that will be cast in a few years um you have more power than us so I am I'm asking you all I will make as many phone calls as I can but you should too amen thank you anything else okay so we have a a motion on the floor to uh approve this um do we have to go roll call in this month and we can go right okay all those in favor signify by saying I I oppos say nay and not surprisingly it carries unanimously all right that takes us on to any other business from the committee I have a couple things um so first and foremost there's a listening session the second such one tomorrow night at the merac Valley Golf course it's for residents of the east side of the city uh I say that because to the residents in the Central and West we will be doing some of the sessions in your neighborhoods and you're welcome to come out and the first one at barelli was well attended and the people couldn't have been uh better they asked really great questions so that's the second is um so the city I'm sitting here thinking now the city council had asked me to ask the committee to have a joint meeting on the 8th now I'm not sure that would be the night to do it because we have our budget Workshop right which is tough as it is it is tough and we have negotiations right before that so I don't we're going to go back to back probably that night so do we have a date that we I could go back with to because the eth is not a city council night it's a school committee night right but the budget work that's too much right um if we're here till midnight on the 8th you pick me up with a mop I can send you and the chair of the city council last time that's sort of how we rounded out potential dates okay uh so I can do that appreciate it Y and that's everything I got M will light y thank you Mr chairman uh constituent at asked to promote the uh timy PTO scholarships yeah I believe there's three $500 scholarships that will be awarded it's open to all graduating seniors they must have attended timy for at least three years so that's one of the criteria um the timoy uh PTO I believe they have a page on Facebook for additional uh details also reach out to the gu's office um so that's something if you fit the criteria definitely apply for the scholarships there three $500 scholarships and the deadline for applications is going to be April 30th thank you Mr chairman thank you appreciate that yep any other discussion yeah no it's three years okay with no further business to discuss at this time may I have a motion in a second to adjourn the workshop business portion of this meeting of March 25th 2024 and go into executive session so move second move by member shilia second by member daglio so pursuant to master Law chapter 3A section 21 A3 to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation if any open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the bargaining or litigating position of the public body and the chair so declares Unit A and Unit C we will not reconvene into Open session at the conclusion of the executive session any discussion there R call Mother Ryan daglio Yes maybeth Donovan gry yes Lori Keegan yes Kristen Maxwell yes Daniel shabila yes Kenneth wette yes maniel Perry yes thank you all the me the workshop is adjourned at 9:10 p.m. good night Mur [Music]