##VIDEO ID:WufoFAh9R7k## 6 o' uh calling the nor school committee meeting to order for Wednesday October 23rd 24 um first up on is plge flag United States America one nation and media is being recorded by nor media and nor Public Schools if anyone else is recording please just let us know um just a quick thing before we get to the agenda um just wanted to uh as we got kind of for our first true meeting uh since the tragic loss of one of our students lilan Costello a seventh grader in nor middle school I just want to invite everyone to join me in Hing her with a moment silence um in the face of such a tragedy I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to our superintendent Jennifer O'Neal our director of counseling and therapeutic services Vinnie cersley uh nor Middle School principal Vinnie Hayward and our entire administrative team uh I also want to extend my thanks to Chief of Police Brian Clark and our dedicated school resource officers Jake denn and Mark robers Our Community Partners at epon Health and Wellness Center led by Nicole kin Victoria and Linda and also the community counselings of Bristol sorry the Community Counseling of Bristol County and Riverside trauma who have been invaluable and providing essential and ongoing support to our students and staff special thank you goes out to our teachers staff and students who came together during this very challenging time ensuring that everyone had a space and support to grieve in their own way I recognize that there are many others who have also contributed and I want to send uh thank you to all of you as well I'm immensely proud of how Mar community and the school district have United in such a difficult moment please continue to reach out to one another your support is invaluable and truly can make a world difference thank you all uh first up on the agenda is to approve the minutes of September 25th 2024 Open session meeting has everyone got a chance to review the minutes yes any concerns anything to go along with them a motion to approve the EVS second all those in favor I uh warrants I reviewed and approved the following warrants School expense warrant September 25th 2024 36823 181 October 9th 2024 $521 27811 School payroll warrants September 19th 2024 1,346 7369 October 13 I'm sorry October 3rd 2024 1,239 3036 I wish to enter them in the public record Sher last two prep upate good evening everybody JCS the students at JCS are looking forward to a Halloween celebration next week and lpk the third grade students are invited to bring their costumes to school and SP grade thir grade levels one of our teachers jenley and our SBO are organizing a group JCS families to walk this part of the Y in charot hollowing bre this Sunday October 28th finally the JCS Community is planning to have a flag ceremony to celebrate and commemorate veterans veterans day on the morning of Friday November 8th we have invited family members and JCS students who may be veterans to join us and we are hoping to also include members America the high school uh it's a very busy time in or High School fall sports are wrapping up the regular seasons with every team place to make postseason tournament golf has already wrapped up their probably the most successful season in North's history the golf team with sectional Champions have played seventh and the D2 state championship congrats so coach L the whole team October has been has been and World finish as a key month of future planning and high school juniors and seniors attended the college fa with more than 60 schools and universities Juniors pads this week to give everybody an exposure to tests necessary for post secondary education next week's next week sophomores will have a prer day and an opportunity from about 25 different local businesses and organizations about potential careers although all through the month various local businesses and Military recruiters have been set up in the CIA during lunch providing job applications information for the we just finished up our he PTO Scholastic Book Fair which was a huge success this fall helped to refill and keep filling our book vening machine with exciting book choices for our students on almost a daily basis we give out about five points with the students which the students use in the PT machine hey students earn hashtags by showing our pis expected behaviors of being respectful responsible and safe work get caught by an adult being kind supportive putting in amazing effort students are always doing such great work and faculty and staff make an amazing point of seeing Behavior acknowledging it and in celebrating without giving these students hashtags when students have accumulated their first 50 they hand them in for a CO for every 100 after students can get a CO a little over a month students have earned over 100 books it has been Sensational and has shown how positive our students are we have also continued our practice of hasood newsall of the day where any adult will nominate a student for going above and beyond and be deserving this hasd so far this year we have already done 60 good news calls the students also automatically qualify for a coin for a book from our vending machine so as you can see our students are doing sensationally and earning a lot of books our Monday October 2 on Monday October 28th our he PTO is bringing in Author George Chan to do two presentations once each grade on how he comes up with his ideas with his books and how he develops writing very much good uh opening of school remarks evening everyone Thanks for allowing me to to do this tonight I appreciate all your hard work obviously for our our school Community uh so little school bigart is off to a great start this year uh so here I am in my third year nor public schools and despite obviously the obstacles we sometimes face as a school Community I couldn't be happier to be here at lgn and in dorton uh I had a superintendent years ago told me I was a new principal he said it sometimes takes 5 to seven years to really get going as a school to for people to buy in believe in you as a principal to trust you uh we've worked hard over the last two years going into this third year to build that trust as a team and it's really kind of showing its its fruits uh at this point uh we're really getting going as a school Community it's a testament to the unbelievably hard work of our teachers and staff here at lgn as well as the continued support of our students families uh we've had a lot of District initiatives over the last few years as you know new math curriculum and Stepping Stones a new Ela curriculum and Inter reading uh a new social emotional learning curriculum program and character strong uh and we continue to build on the efforts of imss that we started three years ago even if it's in smaller increments at this at this point uh the adoption of and implementation of these programs depends on the dedication as you know and the success of our teachers um I can't speak highly enough about our team here uh back by popular demand this year or maybe I'm just crazy our schools video morning announcements um one of the few good things that come out of the co shutdown I continue to record a 3 to 5 minute video each morning uh to start our school day uh we' recite the Pledge of Allegiance the lgn pledge which includes our PBIS language and and expectations of being respectful responsible and safe Marty would say hash respectful responsible and the daily happenings of our of our little school so we aim to include as much student voice as possible with segments um as part of the digital Equity team last year I uh wrote a program in terms of our morning announcements and trying to get our kids more involved each day last year we took some steps with our tasty tidbits segment uh Mr place our Music Teacher was kind enough to write a jingle for it um I encourage you to go on YouTube and watch watch our videos they're pretty hilarious at times um and this year we have segments such as hink pink Mrs Han's second graders um do a rhyming riddle every Wednesday we have uh funny Friday jokes brought To Us by siblings here at our school um so a lot of fun fun things are going on each morning uh we also celebrate birthdays each day uh each student receives a book of they're choosing to keep in order to celebrate their special day our PTC or parent teacher connection Works to support this initiative as well as many others uh we have many new board members this year who are bringing fresh ideas and energy to our already robust parent group they hosted a very successful fall Scholastic Book Fair two weeks ago and even invited the pagi brothers ice cream truck to be here in our parking lot during family shopping which which um really helped our our our sales and our teachers loved the ice cream um PTC is also helping them kick off our Boosterthon fundraising on Monday I'm excited for that Boosterthon is actually going to come and run that program for us because our PTC board is fairly new and hasn't seen it in operation uh but the fundr run is such a great event for our school brings in a lot of money as the fundraiser and that will be held on Friday November 8th our kids are always excited for that I'm excited for that we make a big deal of it um a couple of other important initiatives that we started this year include our critical attendance team uh newly formed after The Chronic absenteeism committee did some important work this summer to improve our students attendance our school team meets twice a month at this point to discuss working through the tiered supports we have in place for students and their families um we hope to see an improvement in that as the year goes on and the years go on we've also begun a really fun morning movement program thanks to our Wellness physical education teacher Mrs Kenny called ease e a e which stands for early activity starts education uh Carolyn put together a slides show with an introductory video for our our faculty staff and students I've shared it with our parents it includes a wide variety of movement activities and games that teachers can use to start their day moving with their students I know for a fact that Mrs Lion's class uses it every morning because I see them through their window as I'm on bus and car duty dancing around and I'm there acting like a a crazy ning as cars are passing by dancing right along with them uh it's just a fun way to get our students moving in order to settle their brains and bodies for a day of learning the kids love it the teachers have enjoyed it um and thanks to Mrs Kenny it's one one more thing that that we're doing here that's a just a positive thing for our kids and our our families we are looking forward to a really great year at lgm and uh again I'm super happy to be here and thanks for the opportunity to share this information with you thank you very much I loud administrator she I'm Gonna Stand because I don't want my back to everyone at the podium but I also don't want to sit down um the college board's advanced placement program offers high school students the opportunity to take college level courses across a wide range of subjects including Math Science History languages and the Arts these courses are designed to be as rigorous as first year college classes providing students with the opportunity to earn college credit or advanced placement if they score well on the corresponding AP exams the benefits of taking AP courses extend beyond potential college credit they help prepare students for the academic challenges of college strengthen college applications by demonstrating a student's ability to succeed in challenging coursework and can even save on College tuition by reducing the number of classes needed in college AP exams which are offered annually in May are graded on a scale of 1 to five with scores of three or higher often considered passing for college credit the exams typically consist of a m combination of multiple choice and free response questions Norton High School enjoys a robust participation in the AP program with about 155 students enroll last year in courses across multiple subjects tonight I wanted to take the opportunity to recognize some of our current seniors for their outstanding performance in our AP program um so this is actually acknowledging the work that they did as Juniors so when you really think about it um the information and the scores that I'm going to share with you guys tonight are all from um when they were juniors in high school you well shakaron took three tests and she received a five in US history um which is amazing and I will hold on to this aort um Amara oh that's okay Amar took two and received um a five in English language uh Jacob Barry on up Jacob uh Jacob Barry actually took five AP classes as a junior and received a score of five in three of them AP language statistics and US history so incredible I don't know how you're going to top it this year Jacob but here you go congratulations how what are you doing this year for courses uh a AP site AP economics AP Literature and AP when do you sleep oh Apu yeah when do you sleep also AP economics is two all right right here congratulations plyy Alex uh last year Alex took four AP exam and received a score of five in her US History all other great great scores as well here you go Alex congratulations how your course this year Alex great only two all right thank you congratulations all right James May do not know where he is problems living off his achievement so um this is gonna be like the Grammys when someone doesn't show up do this well that's wonderful um sorry I'm going to use my cheat sheet here four uh AP tests last year a five in BIO and a five in statistics so here is the award but of course get picture I mean why not of course all right and Zoe Sant uh last year as a junior Zoe took four exams all of excellent excellent scores and a score on the pre uh five on the preal exam so congratulations Zoe congratulations and then finally we have no Nora watus and who's not able to be with us scheduling conflict four exams and a five on the AP stats assessment so um I think we'll hold on to this and make sure that our students that we're not us tonight um get their Awards I think you know we try so hard to make sure that we're recognizing for a lot of different things um sometimes as Athletics um i' love to bring them in for academics as well because that's so important for all that we do so thank you all so much for your coming out tonight and um um just a few words unbelievable it's uh it's always great kind of see what kind of goes on behind the scenes if you will seeing our students with such high level of AC exactly what we all look congratulations unbelievable job I don't know if we we have any AP people up here I'm certainly not one oh what's that two levels before it's really amazing and um we had a number of students that graduated last year that also would have been recognized um unfortunately we don't get the scores until late in July so um I think it's really important to note that these guys were Juniors and and what an incredible um success story for all of them super proud um keep working hard you guys are all going great great places so congratulations awesome anybody else thank you you don't have to say can I just mention that in addition to his AP um tests and scores Jacob also presented at the last conference last week for adults um so like just phenomenal few timesed awesome thank you all right next up is uh s Sarah's Village presentation awesome so uh we appreciate the opportunity to get in front of you guys once a year and just give an update on what we're doing with our grants and what so here to give you an update see if I can handle it St one two I said it was just a white here we go teacher okay I'm pres mark and um for those of you who don't know um we lost our daughter in 2017 she had a mental health that we weren't aware of the change of her life so in our honor we set a foundation um and so our mission is to promote wellness and to eliminate the stigma associated with mental health and young people um all right okay so we trying to make this a little interactive this year um so we we have a couple questions so how much um is the grant that we have been providing each year for north and when those answer shout it out go with [Laughter] 16,150 well that's you guys used up but how much were we willing to provide we didn't provide the answers yeah we 25 20 20, close yes and then for how many years ah grade it was starting third third year yeah and we did work with Norton in the fourth year didn't provide a grant that is correct that's pry so just we wanted to go over some of the impact that um we've been working together on and we meet with uh Dr O'Neal and with Vinnie to decide what what we want to do and then uh move forward so the very first thing you know appropriate and that's why Nicole came out to uh to join us tonight is um two years ago but he's like if you do one thing please pick up the grant for E so uh that was our opportunity and so over the two school years so far not ining so far this year 44 students uh 274 counseling sessions for a total of 28,000 so real impact helping kids out where they need it and uh the program is amazing and Nicole can give you a little bit more insight from the ground up or on the front lines so yeah we're at we just got a referral for our 45th student um PRI I do want to give you guys credit because prior to the two years were covering groups for us with in the school start the grand plan in 2021 yeah so we're providing the stress management groups in the school we're doing it again this year but I haven't moving so we're not R all that that works um but yeah we've just started with our 45th referral and it's been great we they've provided us with 10 sessions per student that's referred some students use the entire Grant some don't use it the entirety of it we can transfer them over to under their insurance or we've had situations where um Martin Cynthia and Sarah have been able to extend the grant for students where there's just a crisis or a dire need and we're not able to do the transfer over to insurance it's been very helpful and I have to give Erin Shay major credit she's picked up a lot of the grant students for us I want to say one of the other impacts um is that the families and the students especially the older students are talking about to each other about this so I know you've received referrals I've received questions um sometimes we use that in the grant other times we're able to go straight to insurance or the Go's not able to do that we to other agencies but the point being is because of this you know it really matches the impact you guys wanted to to have which is The Stig right the kids like oh no no go GE call Nicole talk to Mr cers talk to your guidance counselor talk to your J judment counselor they have it you got it's been so benefici so it goes beyond just 274 students and families really has out into the community it's talked about in the soccer fields that stigma is breaking down so I mean that's that's to me yes you want 274 students but that loger impact I was feeling good back to this thing last one so um we all to the the grant for the counseling is any school so I can come from anywhere but also there's uh Focus sometimes in the high school but we've also looked towards the middle school we brought in a speaker who engaged with 590 students and she uh talked about her own lived experience with mental health when she was an athlete excellent student and she just talked about not wanting to come out and and say the struggles that she was going through so it was couple of grade sessions or one for each grade and it's just really what you wor fting for so that was really well received Cy you get to have old home we back and felt like I was with a rock star but uh and then nms started a peace of mind Club so we have the active Minds Club at the high school and Lisa da and Tiner Beno wanted to do something in the middle school so they started the pece of Mind Club again something peer-to-peer students talking to students about um it's okay to not be okay and uh reach out if I think one of the other impacts that maybe we haven't even talk about is that um because of the work that these folks do we have these Community connections right and so the work that that we did with with um the folks here led us to Jed high school and we received a $25,000 Grant directly because of the connections that they made to our high school um and when we talk about those 274 kids I want to make sure everybody understand that's at all levels P up so um there's that piece but we also were able to use it for other grants we've got some Desi grants pretty significant um Desi grants around this work that I think have a lot to do with our ability to really say hey here's our connection within our community um with with on you know philanthropy groups and so for so it's it really has a larger impact than just what they're presenting and the last slide just says any question but uh one yeah so this is our fourth year and 100% of the money we rais we put back into the community so we're primarily supporting Norton and East and people $20,000 and when we call them they answer the phone we we they they've reached out these folks all here um to offer support to our our teachers and staff M school right now um we do two of them provide five s folks want it so that's one way um my other crazy idea was you were approached by Medway that they're doing working with a group that's doing AI counseling support so it's a new kind of artificial intelligence program that they're piloting there they asked us if he'd like to be part of it it wasn't free believe it or not um so I went to these folks and said what do you think let's try it out as they always are they're like all right let's give it a shot let's see what happens so um they really are there for different things and whatever we need to support us our students and staff thank do you have any fundraisers coming up that you can share with us yes satday yes Saturday nights our uh so we um initially when we started the foundation we just asked friends and family the we probably have about 400 450 people that engage with us either through social media or our newsletter our uh daughter-in-law is our director of communication she gets paid in hugs thank yous and then our son does the website so we started with that then last year we had a one of our board members is one of Sarah's friends so she said Sarah love to dance let's do a Zumba fundraiser like Zumba all right I'll give it a world you know was a good sweat but uh so we did that combined with a small gathering last year and then this year we did Zumba a month ago now we have this gathering at eastn Country Club uh on Saturday and so there uh lots of people from Norton coming at two tables worth so Lis on your board right yes yeah Lisa yeah Lisa and Tanya on Lisa daily our board so yeah so that's it but at any time anyone can just go on to our website Sarah's Village and uh someone in this room did go on recently and U make a donation so appreciate but um so yeah that's that's a great way to donate and again 100% of what comes in we put back into Community any cost that we have with like the Gathering or whatever that comes out CN Incorporated but um by all means though what I'd like to you know enhance the partnership is as you have these events you know please reach out to us so we can kind of get it up to our community as well I know we have a pretty good inter Super's office I think I went out to the entire to staff to staff yeah did um I think it's been a great partnership I know I've had you guys since you know since you started come in front of us so I'd like to see you know more engagement hopefully with our communities as well so we can really get Sarah's message out there and support you guys which ultimately supports us as well and our students so um it's a commendable effort by you guys I I've always been um you know amazed at the amount of work and things you do for us so definitely we can try and repay and get the absolutely awesome thank you any else no of course I have more that I want to say but I'm typically the one that cries every time I'm just gonna say thankful thank you but we are just so grateful for this tremendous partnership um Ark and Cynthia have been so wonderful to us to our community to our students um and I we can't say thank you enough because the impact that we've had you know 40 44 45 students the counseling sessions the um presenters that come in the support that is given to our staff in times of it's it's really incredible and we thank you for taking this opportunity to share message with us do it without you awesome thanks app andco come [Laughter] on sure she misses it awesome thank you so much app on theenda fi25 bu upate um thanks to the town for oural for FY sched um our previous allocation for this year was 35,5 3,57 um the additional um funds our new fy2 budget total is 35,5 35,600 um the report that I gave you um tonight just shows an additional 16802 um for our extra check 70 funding that we received um we have not included the additional amount for 321 yet on those lines we allocated to homeless Transportation um the TU collaborative and um the high school sped salary line as well um 321 292 we will allocate the next week or two once we finalize discusss with special we have any expenses coming in those are like separate accounts that we received in the town report but we can start that to you as well no just curious had a couple I just so it'll be a totally different account instead of funds that way um but we are just to say publicly thank you to the town for approving our capit projects as well um one was the second set of payments for the prium boards that we paid that we purchased last year for the Middle School uh the second item was the replacement of the two hot water heaters at new high school which definitely happy that's going to happen and then the third was um a new athletic bus so it's a smaller Mini Bus um we currently have one which is red people refer to it as a red rocket um not ort colors at all but it was what good before at the time um and we've saved an incredible amount of money um on um athletic trips for smaller teams shorter distances field trips Special Olympics everything so we're super excited to have um this other small bus and um yeah I think be another great savings for us so thank you to the chat for that um we were also approved for the $50,000 for schematic design for the nor and Middle School group so um we will hopefully find out late next week if we were selected as part of um this year's program so fingers crossed all around um I did want to mention a few things to you about the additional Staffing uh the 321,000 umll that was there so we are going to be posting the permanent building Subs with the start date of 114 um so those will happen hopefully tomorrow um and I know that I met with Elementary principles earlier today and they all have some people in mind for the most part so those positions will get filled pretty quickly um we will also start with the elementary Specialists returning them to their 2324 FTE for November 4th um the one position that might be a little bit tricky as our librarian as she is currently um working the other half of week as a reading specialist so um we I'm going to work with her um and then I'm working with the Norton Teachers Association PR arounds the teacher leadership positions and what makes the most sense in terms of um reinstatement and how can we do this in a way that make that makes sense for um roles and things that need to be done so um hopefully we'll have um in agreement with them by early in November as well finally we have the art the music at M middle school and then the um reading and math positions um after conversations with the Norton teachers ation I'm actually going to post those as long-term sub positions for January through June um and the rationale for that is um number one it allows teachers that are in classrooms um you know as a classroom teacher just staying in their room for the year and um one of my biggest hesitations was disrupting learning for children that um have a teacher we want to make sure that we're trying to be as consistent as possible um but having a long-term um position that way at the end of the year if we're able to maintain these roles as we all hope we are um it will be posted um through our regular Union process if we're interested um can apply to them and go through that you know our current transfer process for the September of 2021 um from my perspective I felt like that was the best option for us as a district to as I said maintain teaching and learning for all of our students and also um give our staff the opportunity to move into those roles if they so choose um is that for positions is that January second that be a January second start yep um and then we also have some ideas about like if we can't find a ma inters like we've got some ideas of how we can back fill in other ways we've done um there was a time when our Title One Grant was a little bit bulkier than it is now and what we did was we hired tutors they were um either retired teachers or perhaps teachers that were had left the field and were home youngers children and wanted to work three hours a day a couple days a week and it was great because you know lgn teachers arrive at 7:30 um but you really don't need to get started like Ping groups until 8 so people would start at 8 they might work till 11: you didn't pay the benefits um so we're trying to be really creative about how we're going to do this this year so um as I've said to all of you I will never turn away money we're thrilled to have it um we just want to make sure we're doing it in a way that is um that maintains teaching and learning for our students isn't so but super thankful to all of you for your advocacy and for the community as well any questions concerns other business 48 Hours my I got two things one I think someone mentioned it but Norton veterans Council they're doing the Veterans Day Parade obviously help promote obviously it's held on Veterans Day Monday November 11th um and anyone you welcome to March or at least attend great be going out yell School kind of up the secondary entrance of North High then down to the um uh Memorial here before you turn right on to plan shoot um that's that one and then uh just to Echo kind of Jen's words about obviously town meeting on Monday night um you know thank you to the community obviously for coming out and voting and giving us a little bit of positivity and hope going forward um you know I think the school committee is you know thing was trying to you know you know with the free cash that we did have is trying to come back and you know bring back some of the positions that we thought were kind of giving us the best P for so uh thank you for the community and know appointed we kind of helped helped guide that process as well good to see think was a good good for any other other business motion toour second