good evening um we are calling the school committee meeting of June 20th to order at 700 p.m. um just a quick walk through the agenda then we will uh dive in so uh first things first for anybody here for public comment for anything not on the agenda that will go first if you do so it's approximately two to three minutes and please tell us who you are and generally where you live or Precinct as the case may be uh we'll then have the consent agenda and we'll go through reports um I don't think we have our students but we'll go through the rest of the administrative team reports and any uh Lees on and subcommittee reports from from there we'll then take out of order E4 we'll do that first since we have some of our teachers here and we have want to let them have their time and then I think some have to leave a little early after after that's over so that's perfectly great and we give them what we need to do there we'll then move um from the literacy update which will include both middle school and Arc and then we'll go back to the rest of the reg regular business which is going to be Parker School Improvement the pre Q4 Financial update including any budget transfers of which there's one uh the special education Reserve fund report and discussion about how we want to allocate any um after that we will move to Dr miles's formative review um and vote to accept that uh we'll then do Post formative review discussions including an amendment to his contract um which is ref funter basically hopefully um but we'll get it done and then discuss and a vote on his salary increase and I'll give a little bit of background on that as well when we get to it we'll then move to school choice update um and some Next Step discussions by Dr mileski and conclude the night with our annual reorganization okay so with that said um I move to take item uh E4 out of order we have a second second seconded by Carla all in favor and it passes actually yes no go go go ahead and do that there's not many people here does anybody have public comment oh wait okay I'm going to pull that back and we'll start with public comment sorry about that Karen no wor good evening um you know congratulations to all of you for completing another school Year woo um Karen gatley herck Vice chair of the uh kilum School building committee and vice chair of the select board and I'm here just to talk to you briefly about the school building committee tonight um I've been fully engaged in this project since ring was wonderfully invited to participate in the msba grant program in March of 2022 so uh we are entering a critical juncture in this project leading to hopefully a successful um townwide vote next spring um I think many things are going very well with the project including the addition of Matt Canales and Jane wman our new town manager and our newest um assistant Town manager it's been a pleasure getting to know um the staff at killum uh with our not so new principal and I always appreciate the superintendent's commitment to innovation and full disclosure and lots of communication to the broader Community um so this project is a big test of the town and school's ability to collaborate on a new municipal building that will support our students and also satisfies the ultimate decision makers The taxpayers Who bear responsibility for financing maintaining and operating this new school for the next 30 to 50 years um so tonight I'm here to um propose that we think about planning a joint meeting this summer between the school committee and the select board um I had a great conversation with the town manager today and he's on board with that I asked him to come tonight and he preferred to have it be an agenda item or a separate meeting so that's fine um and the topic of this meeting would be to reconnect and be clear on the roles and responsibilities of the town and the school's uh professional staff for execution for ongoing communication with our onus project manager and I think it would be a good time to also clearly Define the responsibility ilities of the uh the chair of the kilm school building committee as this project gets more complicated and the goal would be to avoid any missteps that could jeopardize the project Grant finding or cause the taxpayers to question the process um I have two concerns today that could possibly be addressed at this meeting um it pains me to do this but there are reports from some appointed and elected volunteers that someone on the school committee is asking for me to be removed from the school building committee um you know I tend to lend some weight to these um um messages claims because there was a similar occurrence last fall and the prior select board chair informed me that she had received two such requests and her response was something like you all need to work together so you know that's perfectly reasonable um so the new reports are troubling if true because this behavior is the opposite of leadership and stewardship and can only negatively impact the project and the morale of the broader team uh the other concern I have relates to a request that was made by uh a a building Committee Member to remove our caller's project manager um I didn't agree with the need for this action and I felt that it was unwarranted and not an appro appropriate way to address the concerns that were raised um a personal decision a Personnel decision of this magnitude really needed to come before the full km School building committee for consideration it did not this is an example of a decision that I believe goes be beyond the authority of just one or two appointed members of the school building committee who were involved in this discussion um I did raise this at the last kilum school building committee meeting and I I just thought it was important to raise it to you all as well tonight um I want to thank you for all of the many hours that you dedicate to your role as school committee members as well as the building committee um and your commitment to doing everything in your power to assure that this school project and the volunteers and internal and external professional staff are all treated with respect and with the guiding principles of our respective codes of Conduct in our o office um I am also going to be I've really enjoyed being the le as onto the school committee I am handing that off to another member of the select board so I just wanted to let you know and um of course I'm always available um but also I was really thrilled that the select board was invited to participate in your naming process and I happily raised my hand on the select board was um supportive of that so I look forward to um serving on that initiative and that's it so if I don't see you have a great Fourth of July thank you thank you okay so well I'm moving back towards what we said and we'll come back to reports as well since we've already taken out of order and since we have guests so uh let's go ahead and move forward with the um K8 literacy update and um Aaron and team come on forward hi everybody hello great to see you should we we need pull more chairs forward I think we maybe need a couple more chair you want if we just I can sit out there for like this too we just move down one we can all move and they yeah want why don't Derrick and I Derrick and I just move the oh yeah he was there that whole week we got slide one of the chairs around this way and slide down a little bit more and get more on camera as well come [Music] on do we have the presentation if not I can open it from least from mine that' be great let me get there and I'll go ahead and share it in a second you know who it's honey H there we go which way's easier if it hasn't changed I can just do it there were Middle School right to the middle mid you want just we'll just do it there that way you got the share code on you're good yes yes that's the Parker one do we have the there we go yep yep that one show it and share it I'm good to go all time back to this year okay so you want to keep until they finish because they can okay got it all right there we go awesome thank technical difficulty solved we're good to go fantastic want Aaron to click through do you want to click through Aaron can certainly click through we can pass fantastic give her full control Dr hard's goingon to start us off so okay I'll still be clicking um good evening everyone um we are really excited tonight to be talking to you about Middle School literacy very excited to have some of our fabulous ELA teachers here with us tonight tonight um folks who have been part of this work since day one um and so you'll get to hear from them too um as you know this has been a two-year process and we will try to summarize that for you really quickly tonight just so you know what has led us to this point um what you'll see in our presentation tonight to start is our working draft of our literacy um our vision for literacy not going to read it but it is there for anybody who wants to know sort of what grounds this work what we're here to do tonight is to give give you um our recommendation that we move ahead with amplify Ela as our Middle School curriculum program we would be recommending the use of the 100 lesson pathway and pairing that with teacher created units and lessons that would create what we believe is um a well-rounded evidence-based program for our middle school students that would um align instruction across our school provide um a nice coherence grade 6 through eight and really be based on what we've been learning our best practices for Middle School literacy instruction we'll go into a bit more detail about amplify Ela as we go but I just want to quickly let you know that amplify Ela receives top ratings from Ed reports which is an organization that looks very closely at curricular materials um against a consistent rubric and also the highest ratings from um curate reports which is the Massachusetts uh based organization that reviews um curriculum so we're going to quickly lead you through our curricular review process to help you understand how we've landed at this choice and I'm going to turn things over to Erin and the team uh to walk you through that um so one of the things that we look at and consider is data um when we're thinking about doing a curriculum review so we have some data up here um from both I ready and from recent mcast um that we looked at before uh the curriculum review started in the fall of 2022 um so we just wanted to make sure we had some data there for you um this is where we spent the year um in the investigate and select um in the investigate and select part of um the Implement ma process um and hopefully in the fall of 2024 we'll start like launching the new curriculum um um so the Middle School literacy leadership team was formed in the fall of 2022 um with the following goals here um this was a 2-year curricular review process we we decided to take our time make sure we were going through all of the pieces and examining everything we needed to examine along the way um these are the members of the Middle School literacy leadership team spans across both middle schools all grade levels um special Educators involved other content area teach teachers involved as well um and some uh school and District leaders as well these folks have worked for two years um on review and curriculum reviewing current practices taking a course with the hill for literacy um and really came to a really thoughtful recommendation um so I just I want to thank all of the folks that are listed here at both coolage and Parker they have been instrumental in this work couldn't do it without them these are some of the folks Andy spinali is a seventh grade laa teacher at Parker Pauline sutus is a seventh grade laa teacher at kage Jess losy is a special educator at coolage and Susie Carol is a sixth grade ELA teacher at coolage um and they all came here and I'm going to let them jump in when they want to jump in we have a couple specific places where we're going to talk but let me talk you through it a little bit um so in year one it really was the learn and prepare phase of this work um we looked at we analyzed the current state of Middle School literac and reading um we looked at literacy assessments instructional materials resources that we had alignment of Standards vertically and horizontally and across the two schools um and surveyed all teachers across the district um ELA teachers we really wanted to analyze and review the criteria for high quality curriculum in evidence-based instruction as well um so we spent a year doing that um and we also in that first year through looking at the criteria for high quality curriculum um in high quality practice and what we already had in place um we established the following sort of musthaves for a literacy curriculum moving forward um they're listed here um and this is really what we based our work off this this current year in year two um so year two was really about investigating and selecting so we spent a lot of the year um looking at different curricular programs I'm going to talk about them in a second um and really used this backwards plan that was the consistent backwards plan from the jump in the fall of 23 um the goal for June of 2024 was to decide on the right path to improve cohesion for Middle School literacy and improve outcomes for students in ela um and from the beginning we said this could be an adoption of a comprehensive literacy curriculum a team created scope and sequence with aligned materials or combination of the two in the little confetti around the combination of the two because that's where this recommendation comes from today um so in this school year we re sorry this was this is um one of the um one of the things that we really wanted to look at was that second option A Team created scope and sequence um so these are some of the things that we thought about um when we were doing that um to understand what we really needed in a middle school curriculum a middle school Ela curriculum um every member of the literacy leadership team um along with about a dozen other Educators um Middle School Educators don't know where it went hold on um took a hill for literacy course um the Adolescent literacy course from the hill for literacy um and that was really essential in forming like the foundation for what we knew we need needed um some research based pieces do the share again I'm sharing again [Music] okay oh you left it or they left it sorry increase security when we had somebody come in so that's what happened to you let me just find sorry that's their like did you use the share code from Zoom is that the no it's sorry Tom there's Zoom got it share screen got it sorry not my computer I have a hard time um the other thing we did uh I'm going to share the slideshow there we go um the other thing we made sure to do was really utilize those musthaves that we created in year one and think about the how and the why and the when of if we created a a district scope and sequence ourselves what we would really need um and how we would go about doing it um when we investigated adopting a comprehensive literacy curriculum we looked at four different programs we looked at amplify Ela Arc core El education and fish tank those are the ones that were most highly rated in both Ed rates and Cur Ed reports and Cur rate um and we reviewed them with the following criteria so we looked at text quality tasks and questions assessment and classroom instruction support for all Learners and accessibility and usability for teachers um so anytime we met with a publisher reviewed materials we had a rubric um and we scored and collected data on the different programs this is the summary data from our initial review um the two highest for amplify Ela and Arc core um with El and fish tank falling quite a bit below actually um So based on literacy leadership team feedback the ratings we selected one program um to Pilot this spring we selected amplify Ela um the pilot began in April of 2024 um all Middle School teachers were given the opportunity to Pilot you didn't have to be on the literacy leadership team and we had a multitude of teachers actually sign up to do it which was incredible total of 12 teachers um we had a two-hour initial training with amplify um in additional like one hour virtual check-ins um they had access to all teacher materials they could choose what unit out of all of the units that they wanted to try with their kids um print and both print and digital access so there was a little bit of a hiccup at Parker getting some of the materials um and teachers were to select one unit of their choosing to Pilot either in like team time or intervention or with their whole English class um and data was collected using the same tool we've used all along um there's some information here about some of the student responses to the pilot really liking the vocabulary app um we got better feedback from classrooms that use both digital and print materials um rather than like the full digital um kids did not want to be full digital um which was super interesting um the shifting to a new instructional platform like mid year and like in April I think these folks can say proved to be a little bit challenging like in the middle of the Year sort of just like shifting what you were doing um and teachers reported that student engagement in the various topics was pretty high um anybody want to add anything student engagement lines good K go for it yeah um so I'm a small group English teacher so I teach some students that are reluctant Learners and um learn a bit differently and even their engagement was high so it was really like interesting to see that some of our students that really struggle to learn could still learn with this program and I I was in a position where we were full digital because of some of the print issues that we had getting up to Parker um and and what I would say is the text themselves the kids really enjoyed it was kind of the digital interface that I think was really challenging for them to kind of uh it's not as userfriendly but I think I don't know if this is in their errand but like amplify is pretty receptive to feedback about that and they're kind of constantly evolving and changing it cuz the the way it looks to go from a year that's mostly Google Classroom Google Docs things they comfortable with and now you have to use this new learning management tool I think for a lot of them that um was a little like the cognitive load was kind of overwhelming but at the end of the day they enjoyed the text they were being exposed to yeah um this is just some data we collected student data too um so we surveyed kids after they had um completed their unit um so these were just some of the tasks within amplify and we asked about their engaging and and what they found most engaging so the data is there um our recommendation to you is actually that choice number three is a combination of both um using a comprehensive curriculum um so amplify Ela um when you purchase amplify you get the entire curriculum you get the whole 180 185 days um they have a specific 100 lesson pathway that ensures all skills and standards are met um and it includes five units instead of I think seven I think it's our seven is is the total um so our recommendation is to do the 100 lesson pathway um and also some District develop units and lessons that are interspersed throughout the year this is an example this is not like like set in stone but it's just an example of sort of what that could look like um with the different amplify units and and putting in some District develop units we're hoping to work this summer a little bit on on that piece of it to have it really strategically rolled out um by the end um we wanted to make sure we shared with you amplifies research base um their curriculum is really focused on Five Pillars five research based pillars um middle- grade engagement text at the center high expectations with strong supports uh active multimodal Collaborative Learning And Timely feedback and ongoing assessment um I'm going to sit back and let these folks who have actually piloted it um talk a little bit about that um so handing it over to you all yeah I'll start with um text the center so this is something that I find that I was particularly extremely excited about I know other colleagues were as well and the rationale for that was re and the reality is that we really haven't had an updated curriculum and I think we also need to reflect the standards but also think the different types of text that are available uh and that access for students and really prepare them so they can show their growth um that includes informational text which again we've seen more recently in standardized tests like a growth in that especially in ela and providing students that opportunity to learn um grow as Learners and to ensure that we as Educators have that access to curated and vetted um resources curricular resources as opposed to us you know finding things and looking for things and ensuring that that process is like again evidence-based being at the core to support all those students and that ties into that third pillar which is high expectations and strong supports we have a variety of different students in our classrooms and I think we do owe them the opportunity to grow as readers as writers um to develop our speaking skills again really that 21st Century Learning and by doing so like really providing text at the center you provide them these rich opportunities to grow um you can still provide students who struggle that support um I was very fortunate to be able to co-pilot um the seventh grade curriculum which was a research based curriculum the Freeda Diego collection with Jess Loy who teaches small group Ela and that provided me um a growing opportunity as an educator because I was able to really examine from the lens of someone who teaches special ed also small group Ela the struggles um what type of modifications what type of supports that we can provide students whereas they're still receiving the same type of resources same access really diving into challenging Texs but really meeting them where they're at and I think it's such an equitable um way to teach students because you have to provide provide them that support in order for them to grow and at the same time you know we have students that we can challenge a little bit more and it was nice to see that amplify did provide that as an a push as an opportunity for students to grow um at their current level and I think that also does tie into pillar one as well because it does increase engagement with engagement if a student is challenged and you can push them a little bit above from where they're currently at they will grow as Learners and they will get excited and become passionate and I think ultimately that's what we want all our students to be whether that be in ela um science science reading and writing in social studies it's it's vital that they critically think but we also have to provide them those opportunities to do so and I think by having vetted curated resources that are evidence-based that provide multiple opportunities throughout the year to practice those skills I think you would definitely see over time um the results and their growth as students and I think as Educators it was a learning experience I think I grew as a result I don't think necessarily anything that's packaged as a curriculum is easier for educators I think that you grow with it um and I think the most important thing is that we Pro are given those resources so we can provide the best to all students absolutely um the amplify curriculum had some of the differentiation options built in U so you could assign your students to a differentiation level and it there was seven levels of differentiation from substantial modification which is what my students used and then there was all the way up to a challenge level which meant that students who were Beyond could have a challenge so um our students even though I'm in the small group class and they did the exact same curriculum they had the exact same texts that they used in the two settings um and they were able to access it a little bit differently but the same with the same text and by the end everyone of our students had created a three paragraph research paper um we used different questions hers was more thoughtful than mine was more fact-based but they all came out with a really good essay good um so the following slides really just sort of put together our RPS musthaves that you saw in the previous Slide the Amplified Ela research based pillars um and then some pilot and program review feedback that we collected along the way through like through those surveys that we did um I'm not going to read through them and go through them all but we wanted to make sure we had that there for you all to take a look at um so you all know because I've been here quite a few times uh with Arc a huge part of any implementation is monitoring right like we have lots of things that we're going to monitor along the way I'm sure the list is going to grow here if if amplify is is what's adopted um but we just wanted to make sure we called out a couple of things that we're already going to be looking at um so like monitoring for screen time the digital text versus the print text amplify has both um and a lot of times it's teacher discretion like what you're using when and how um also we need to look at lesson pacing with our Middle School Ela blocks often times programs put a lot more in and there is time for so we want to make sure we have enough time um and pacing for that and just establishing practice around Ela assessments um sort of the timing making sure like we're all following the same timeline so we can actually talk about those assessments and grow in our practice as Educators um that's one of the things I'm really excited about to have some consistent um not only texts and lessons but also assessments that we can really talk about and look at student work and student writing as a department together um can I jump in yeah please go um can you go back um just going back to the digital versus print text um I think it's important to note that our two units I did the Titanic collection which was again a research-based um uh unit but it was based on internet research so they were they had to be on the computer for that a lot of the other units are much lend themselves much more to being kind of offline so I just want to point that out that some of the feedback was based on the units that we chose as well right for sure um I also think that was the they have the kids actually go through and do internet research but talk to them about how to go about doing that too um so that's a really interesting piece um in terms of the district develop units um I think one thing that is vitally important is that they really allow us to leverage existing instructional practices that have proven successful ful um and allow us to draw on the expertise of our teachers um just to inform the scope and sequence we think that's a really important piece and we don't want that to be lost here um in year one of this District develop units piece um teachers will work with their grade level teams to sort of Select and adjust existing curriculum existing units that they already have and in year two we'll really as an Ela Department review and create common District develop units that'll be interspersed between the amplify units doing both at the same time is that would be really intense um and we want to make sure we're giving folks ample time to sort of learn what's coming and learn what's new um did you want to did you have anything um I was just kind of going off of that so another hat that I wear is as the curriculum lead for 6 through ad0 laa as I work with eron to um plan some of the professional development and similar to what she touched on I feel like a lot of times we talk about common student learning experience expences but I think for us to grow as a department we also need common um teaching experiences so having the experience of like we all tried teaching this standard with this lesson in this way what worked what didn't work I know like I when when I I was doing the Amplified poetry unit and to have my counterparts div Leo to go down the hallway and and kind of bounce ideas off of was invaluable to be able to bring that to everybody is kind of the goal right that's that's what we're looking for and it's not just like looking at student work and scoring student work it's looking at student working identifying what are the next steps for this groups of kids because invariably you're going to have kids that fall into certain buckets when it comes to their writing and their reading so figuring out collectively as a group what do we do when we are all seeing essays that look like this or what do we do for as py mentioned those kids that are clearly extended and ready for a challenge what what is the next step I think doing that collectively is so much more powerful than doing it in isolation which is typically what happens to teachers when they're sort of on their own and I may add on I think it also leads to authentic and really like consistent collaboration so again when we have the professional development throughout the year when we do have whether it's um school department meetings whether it's you know middle school or within High School it really leads to like that authentic consistent um conversation where you can plan take action and um see results so um looking at the budget for for the purchase of amplify Ela um the the quote that we received is a just a little shy of $143,000 what that gets us is five years of the digital subscription um for students and staff it also gets us five years of all the consumable materials and we will purchase enough print versions of the teacher guides for every single general education and special education teacher and our literacy Specialists as well um so it's really everything most everything we anticipate that we will need materials wise um the funding is coming from two different spots um we are going to use 50% of it um we're going to use the high quality instructional materials purchase grant for 50% of it less $1 um and the other 50% will come from this year's operating budget so based on what we've presented to you tonight we recommend um the adoption of ela amplify ela's 100 lesson pathway with District developed units and lessons um at our Middle School level beginning with an implementation plan which we will create and roll out um beginning in September we're happy to take any ready for questions okay Sarah's hands up first okay so one can you tell me a little bit more about the digital versus print text and what do you mean when you say text so there's a lot of good research about the importance of physical text for learning so if you could speak a little bit more what are those digital resources is it the books and passages or is itary so and you all can correct me if I'm wrong as the people that used it um everything is available in print and in text um the print actually comes and this this is something I was a little wary of at first and then I was like oh no this actually makes a ton of sense it comes as like a consumable book um and all of the texts are included in the book and it allows for kids to like really learn how to annotate and take notes and be in the text themselves um it also comes with the core novels that happen in each of the grade levels you get sets for every student of the actual physical novel um a lot of the tasks and activities are done either in print in a journal writing journal um or in that the book with all the text the the the core consumable um but can also happen digitally um so it's a it's really is a blended platform where you have access to both things and will there be guidance s guidance for teachers about how I mean I think that you know if it's I would like to stray away from teachers saying digital only if certainly some resources some students and Learners will need that I can tell you after the digital experience nobody wants digital only no I mean really it's not and and most of the content from book Parker didn't get the books until like June 5th um so we really weren't the wrong test the waters at that point um I think my students would have there would have been a coup down the seventh grade hallway um and and but the it's pretty comparable the activities that happen in that sort of workbook kind of thing versus the digital um the digital has some great tools that you can't recreate otherwise um but I think the overwhelming feedback from the teachers that did it as well as the teachers that have just kind of played around with it is like we need to be mindful of the amount of time we're having kids on screens um especially because more and more research is coming out that suggest that in addition to all the other issues the screen time causes that it leads to a lot of skim reading which is something that I caught even my my best students doing during the the trial was like how quickly can I click this click turn in and move on to the next thing um so I do think that we have to be super mindful of that in our practice as you roll it out yeah exactly there's a lot of research around comprehension and physical books we had the we had the books and we used them um we had them highlighting we had them it was it was easy to read it was clear and vocabulary was um defined in the side in English and in Spanish and then um online you could click the words but it it just they could move away from the tab and all that so we we used books she used a class copy and just had and they didn't highlight I had each student had their own we were like trying different things and um both ways were good and one benefit that digital provides which again you could use as needed is that it does provide that audio for students that do benefit with reading and listening to the audio um but couldn't you just as easily like have them have the audio up but then do the workbook like that I think it just depends on like again going back to like again really different differentiating class to all different kinds of Learners some students benefit from that other students don't necessarily need that support and again when there's times when students are doing a close reading that is provided for them but I would say um from like just talking to other colleagues um teachers were very conservative and very much aware of like you know the amount of use the digital being really aware of when is it needed how does it benefit the student and for what um purpose yeah thank you it is a nice Advantage too for when students are absent because they have access to the amplify library is not just the the text in the collections that we have or in the units but there's a um I don't know how many books there's a a lot of books there that kids can read there and also listen to so it does provide that as well that's an advantage to the online platform the overwhelming kind of consensus among teachers was that if there isn't a clear purpose for using the digital text we're going to go with the print like what when in doubt I think that's been pretty consistent whether it's Google Classroom Google Docs whatever if there's not a if there's not a a pedagogical like like reason behind that supports their learning we're going to opt for them being imprinted away from the screens when we can great thank you second question or do we have follow on to that topic okay my second question if you could tell me a little bit more about the approach to the district developed units so one of the things we've had issues with challenges within the district is consistency across from building level and across both buildings so in terms of approach and making sure that we're starting to build that collaboration and approach to those units I mean I think we're going to start in the consistency piece with the 100 lesson pathway like truthfully um I think that's the way like we really start this by having a common resource by having something common and seeing like how helpful it is to our kids and how helpful it is to our Educators honestly um and then I think following that like Andy and I will work together in department meetings to really make all of that come together um I really do like I want to stress this first year is really going to be about learning with amplify and learning like all of the pieces um just from having gone through two years of year ones um of implementation like that's honestly what it is it's like learning all of it um and doing right by your students like making sure you're you're learning it but you're also giving kids what they need um so that's something where're like we will definitely continue to work on and I think you know we the kind of two parts of this answer the first is that over 90% of the Middle School ELA teachers were part of that Hill literacy course not just the LT so that means over 90% of us have these new experiences that we have to start talking about how does that professional learning shift the way that we approach amplify and the way that we integrate it um as far as that like kind of District develop thing I think to aon's point you know this year the Amplified units are labeled like a through F or whatever it might be following those kind of in sequence as they're presented but then also being open to having conversations about we've done it for a year do we need to start like shifting around based on whether it's content based on social emotional learning based on concept uh based on skill and then with those kind of areas that are open what makes the most sense like what makes the most sense for a seventh grader after coming off of this unit where's the next step for them and those are the decisions we have to make together yeah thank you thank you for doing this because it was um needed and excuse me I'm excited about it um in terms of the um all of this material for five years does that 100 does that cost include five years of printed material it does wow wow it does yeah okay we asked multiple times yeah could you clarify that yeah um but it is yeah okay great wask you and it includes the as well it does okay the workbooks and stuff yes yep do either of you have Sean that was M do go a couple um I want to follow up on the district developed piece a little bit you know um are we open to a future state where there's no District developed content and and we're you know using the entirety of the curricula is this is I guess what I'm getting at is the need to the need to include District developed content to me on some level implies that we think there might be deficiencies in portions of the Amplified curriculum where you know something we would create in a house would inherent would would be better right or or provide some you know some benefit that may may very well be the case I just I didn't hear that articulated necessarily what I what I heard was it's a lot of change to absorb all at once we're going to sort of step into it a little bit so I'm just curious what where we think this goes where we think this ends you know some point in the future this one I I think amplify is just the beginning of the conversation um and I think that when it comes to like possible deficiencies as in any program that is meant to kind of be a catch-all it has a wide net that it cast that we have to then figure out what makes sense for reading okay um when it comes to talking about the district design stuff I can tell you as a teacher I spent my whole career doing this um and and and kind of working with my counterpart to kind of build a common experience um and I will tell you it's also one of the most rewarding parts of my job um not to you know as much as I'm excited about what this is going to do for our department uh I think that it's really important that we don't entirely limit the creativity of the teachers and when you have something like we go 180 days that means that like I don't have a lot of creativity in the decisions that I make for my students um and I to be honest I don't think we want to employ teachers that want that sure like we we need to have that flexibility I think that's why the 100 day pathway is perfect for where we are right now um and and if there are elements that we like there's the option to go 180 there's the option there's a 140 isn't there so there there's plenty of time I just think that there's also really good things happening in the district we've just been missing an anchor for a long time and this becomes our anchor like this becomes that thing that kind of settles us a little bit and brings everyone back into it um but I think there's also you know I I've spent six or seven years in the current role that I'm in now as the curriculum lead 14 years in the district they're really exceptional English teachers in this department they're really they can be pain sometimes um but they're really exceptional teachers and and we don't want to limit their creativity or the flexibility that they need to be able to meet kids I would also say that amplify as a curriculum is is meant to be applied in any District you ever go in reading's expectations in my opinion need to be kind of higher or amplifies is and that's where we come in with us too yeah yeah so that's a fantastic answer thank you appreciate that could I could I add from the special ed perspective um we need a little bit more time so the 100 day pathway provides special ed like a our pacing is a little bit slower so we just need a little bit more flexibility as well so that we can use the curriculum effectively and I mean honestly even if we did if we followed the 100 day pathway with Fidelity as Aaron mentioned like a lot of the lessons are really packed with things that we might stretch out over multiple days we still could totally make some of these units be much longer sure um my second question was um not certainly not challenging the selection of amplify I'm just curious though was were there any continuity benefits when we looked at ARC thinking about carrying Arc forward to 6 through eight yeah we looked at ARC um we looked at ARC really deeply and I think it came in like a pretty close second I think it is um so inherently different than like what the Middle School um program sort of looks like yeah the model like looks like here in red I think it have been a much harder shift um for just our Middle School in terms of scheduling um in terms of all that arcs also working on revamping their Middle School curriculum so it didn't feel it didn't feel like the right move for our Middle School folks um fa enough I mean it would have only worked with like a complete overhaul of our schedule just the way it was set up yeah fair enough also the texts that they had were somewhat limited too they talk about the copyright of accessing certain texts so when we're talking about text at the CH being that second pillar again these excellent um texts by different types of writers and from different different types of genres wouldn't be as accessible they're the ones that create the text that would be provided to be part of that curriculum so that was one drawback I suppose that um kind of redirected us towards amplify I think amplify just felt more Middle School there okay then my last question is for Dr Hardy um I think we all had the good kind of sticker shock like the this was you know a 15th of what we spent for Arc for right so that's great um but one of the things you know I know we we paying for with Arc is all of the embedded PD and everything that comes with that do we anticipate you know do we anticipate that there might be sort of PD costs that come down the line with this one that aren't incl there most certainly will be um as you've heard us say many times uh an outstanding curricular resource is one part of the equation um continuing professional support and professional development for our Middle School teachers is the other part to really make this successful um we are exploring a continued relationship with Hill for next year they have been in the process of supporting this year a couple of middle schools across Massachusetts that are have adopted amplify um and so are kind of coming in and providing some of that coaching similar to what Ark provides for our elementary um and so we are working um our best to pull that out using our operating budget our our PD operating budget and some of our grant funding um that is a that's a plan that's still evolving as you know we still haven't officially adopted but we do have um some you know some good ideas underway and believe that that will be essential to really make this implementation work thank you so I guess this is a question for the chair uh just refresh my memory on the on the arpa Is that shut down at this point and if it is okay it is all right I just I knew there was still some money left there technically not shut down the money has to be spent by the end of 2026 but it has to be encumbered by the end of this year and it's is fully encumbered it is okay never mind all right so yeah um okay is that was that so a lot of great questions a lot of the ones I was thinking about asking already as well um but I'm going to build on some of them a little bit and um I have similar concerns as Sarah has some of the concerns Sean announced or or not announced but asked or to pry into a little bit more on the district development side um Mr spali you know my kids went through your school so I know you know I love you and I know that I appreciate that but I have this concern I'm just going to put it out there right that we have had this for years and the reason why we need the anchoring is because we haven't been consistent we haven't been able to see the growth we haven't been able to do structured learning from the bottom up that fully supported all the students at all levels you know and all Etc so I'm ecstatic that we're going down a path of the 100 I'm nervous that we didn't go the 180 I'm just going to say that right um just put it out there I you're the teacher I'm not the teacher so I'm just going to say that too um but I think what we've seen what I've experienced from hearing from others is that something like an arc is I'm not saying I wanted to choose Arc here but the structure of having something doesn't inhibit the creativity it just provides the structure and enables the creativity on top of the structure um everybody goes through different things and I think you you'll see or or not see as you go through this over the next couple years and you'll say that's either great or we'd like to go at 180 or this 100 is is really awful and I need to go back to the the drawing board and try something else so I'm not presupposing anything I just wanted to let you know that that's a caution I have um as we go out there um so just put that on the table nothing to respond to necessarily just put it on the table because Aon will hear it Sarah will hear it they probably have heard it from me before but yeah please go ahead um in some ways like when we started out Tom I felt very similar to you because I agreed like one of the things that concerned me and one of the things that llt discovered early on was the lack of consistency was really a detriment to the success of our students um and I think it was at one of our llt meetings it may even be one of the people sitting there who said even though we tried to align we have never aligned as as a department it was me and and so I think the difference and what I view what the llt you know really has come to and and sort of supported the use of is still very different from what we have now um that it would not be you know as we go into year two it really would be a firm development of units and we've been you know pretty upfront with the ELA Department about this this is not going to be just there's breaks in the curriculum for you to do whatever you want but that there would be um developed units with set outcomes assessments um and and so that we would try to sort of create that consistency but allowing our teachers to contribute to that work um we've said all along we don't know where it's going to evolve um but we honestly aren't going into this thinking that we definitely are arriving at the 180 days eventually um we really do believe in the work of our teachers um and also just feel that you know their investment in the work is probably one of the most important things in seeing the success of our students because we know that when our teachers are engaged as well um when they have really good professional collaboration where they're able to say what's working for students and what's not um that's where we see the most student growth regardless of of the curriculum so I think the systems and structures that we are going to be able to put in place that haven't been in place before um I'm really optimistic about how to support learning for our students so I appreciate that can I just respond real quick I'm sorry um so building off what Sarah said I've been in this district 14 years um and I I say this with all due respect to previous central office administrations we have never had a financial commitment for the LA Department we had kids buying their own books when your kids were coming to Parker mhm I know we had kids but oh yeah we had kids spend $26 on great books and we never had the the the level of structure and conversations that we had it was always once a month you meet as a department try to figure out how you can be aligned this is a very methodical thoughtful process that I I am 100% confident is going to yield the results that I think we're all looking for um and while as ELA teachers we value our autonomy and creativity there's not a single Ela teacher in our department that doesn't recognize the need for this right and and there are going to be difficult conversations there are going to be things that that we're going to have to um get rid of or move on from that we love like that's just part of the whole process and we all have to be willing to do that I'm going to fight for a Christmas Carol till the very end might not fit um that's your December unit that's it that's it and uh and but I think that ultimately um it's the investment that we've gotten from central office and the support of Aaron like we've never had any of this before so you really it's difficult for me to sit here and compare you know the first 11 years in the district that I was in for the last three CU we're a totally different department because of the structures that have been put in place we're toally different District as well absolutely right um so yeah I mean and that I fully acknowledge and and on board and you know the the work that we've heard about from the literacy leadership team over the last two years is is great I'm ecstatic that most of you were able to do the hill for literacy related course I'm ecstatic that we're looking forward to doing some of that going forward and the fact that they've done some stuff with amplify formerly known as ckla um right um so as as we go through through that I think that's going to be huge and I'm looking forward to hearing more on the PD because that's my big concern is and you heard me ask this in elementary as well do they know the why do they know the why do they know the why right and make sure the foundation is right that that from the ground up we're doing it the nice thing about this department double-edged sword we can't move forward if they don't know the why in the five years that I've in the curriculum lead there's no moving forward without the why yeah well I think there's two wise right could say why because the kids need to grow but also why behind the science of what you're trying to do from an instructional perspective there's two whys there so that's I'm obviously I think we're all fully aligned on the first we've had some disagreement not necessarily at the middle school level but historically at the second and the second is I'll say to one of the reasons we started with the hill for literacy right like we did that work alongside this work and that was really purposeful hugely purpose at the same time and like sort of able to be like oh yeah we talked about this last time in the hill like where does this sort of fit into all of this and we're going to continue that work and also where does the contradiction where like where are some things that it's like no this makes more sense for reading than what amplify is suggesting in in this moment right it's a fantastic tool but knowing we know from the hill literacy changes the game as how we've the lens we look at it through going in next year and I actually love that answer as well because they as they know I've been asking that question about Arc to right don't just take the curriculum publisher for what it is know the why underneath the science that leads to What's Happening Here and you can challenge them and adjust and and work with them appropriately to drive it forward so I guess the other question I have is with regards to the assessment and the data collection um it's obviously going to be built into the 100 days and you've talked about building assessments as part of the district development units but there's a standardization there that we need to think about and there's a data collection process and how does it compare to what we're doing from an amplified perspective that needs to be kind of layered into that process so it's not we're doing one thing over here and another thing there right um so have you thought about that yet or is that part of the growth over the summer into next year and the years Beyond yeah I think next year our Focus will really be on the assessment systems as they relate to amplify we're going to continue to use I ready Ela as well so we'll have that sort of outside Benchmark assessment um and once we have a better understanding of how to calibrate around amplify as we go into year two we can see what other assessments we end up layering in okay one last question I promise I said the last one was the last one but I'm not so um I love seeing like the the joy of vocabulary in there and I'm thinking about the reading rope the writing rope how Str how how much more of those structures are inter Le into the the platform that you guys have been able to see in your in your process right you know the whole building up of comprehension you know it's seek it's knowledge building so obviously that's part of it which is why they get so engaged um but how much more of those two ropes have you been able to see and I'm particularly a little worried about the writing side of it because that's the weakness we're seeing in Arc so how much of that have you seen when you think about it from the foundational perspective I think like when you look into the buildin supports too you're you're providing students with access to the quality of reading um and you're providing those resources you're Prov the lessons are that scaffold and it builds that comprehension now what helps build that comprehension there's a lot of different classroom activities that build on to that vocabulary is one Element to that too I think there needs to be that that exposure that practice and one of the most popular um features in the survey for students was that vocabulary tool which was extremely engaging which is you know it was digital um there's other resources where on you know one of the subunits is a flex day so it goes really more in depth into more traditional types of vocabulary like acquisition and so forth however the the vocabulary app really was set as like a zun now for that unit that we pilot and it was extremely engaging um interactive which they liked and that was that exception to when we would talk about the digital component that was that was just part of it it was vital and they were extremely excited about it now with the writing that's a little bit more complex that's also where again the comprehension needs to be woven in for students to be able to understand what they're writing about and then also the supports of like evidence-based writings so I think with the exposure to these texts that um basically are layered in meaning it provides students that opportunity to work on these responses and really look at that rubric that is provided to us to really give that more immediate feedback and really have them grow but one element that I do like that um amplify does provide is that it provides multiple opportunities for writing it's not like this one you know we just read something there's just one assignment and that's the bulk of your grade in the final product there's multiple opportunities within a lesson that you can utilize daily every other day you build towards that growth and that literacy and I think that's a a vital component that was you know vacant in what we had um the vocabulary so the unit that I I piloted didn't have the vocabulary part it was a Flex unit isn't the vocabulary also connected to the unit they're doing it is which is huge for knowledge building that it's not it's not just as vocabulary and isolation random we know is not effective anymore it's been proven time and time again to not work um that was something so again didn't my unit was was a Flex unit so didn't have it but hearing that I I was really intrigued by that and what it could do for kids the units we chose were writing units we we didn't realize what we were picking when we picked we just the pretty one the writing unit from me what a r mistake so yeah we were writing in June it was awesome but they they did it they were writing almost every day there was like different types of writing we did a creative writing poem and um there was a lot of scaffolding for the writing so that they had starters they had like thought bubbles they had different ways to like really get into the writing so I mean my kids wrote a poem about like an I don't know it was like this ugly animal so it was like something interesting and fun but that they were writing and they didn't even realize they were writing and then all of a sudden they had a poem and then the three paragraph essay they all completed a three paragraph essay so and we it was broken down by types of paragraph and there was a lot of support in there so they it was argumentative so again it's looking at it's like it's very standard based it's a lot of informational text in combination with literature the inclusion of letters so just that I think that the key point I want to highlight is that exposure there's there's a lot of exposure to different types of writing so it wasn't that traditional like you know a short story or just one poem or a novel it was letters a lot of the excerpts really did provide that opportunity to really develop that knowledge that comprehension and then again that opportunity to practice the writing so they were interwoven naturally as a result and I think one of the things that's kind of shifted at least in the time that I've been a teacher is the the idea of like the Standalone summative end of unit essay while it has its place is almost not as important as the daily practice that in the process of like and the way that we scaffold to kind of build up to that moment where they can do that because if you don't understand or have if you done no pre-thought into what you're doing to them be like you know I'm just pulling something from Red Scarf Girl cuz that's Unit A for us you know how has the narrator changed if you haven't done any of that thinking you don't have any of the vocabulary like we're just setting kids up to do a marginal job right and I think that that's one of the things that shifted a lot there's like a theory and teaching of writing that you should assign 10 times more writing than you could ever hope to grade or read right it's that continual practice and then those checkpoints that kind of help those skills build up and that's one another thing that I I appreciate about the amplify setup is that it's like every single day in some way there's some level of extended writing for them to do yeah and this is like a side note but they have Flex units for poetry and also for grammar so grammar is built into it as well you know where I was going you know where it was going right so okay uh we're well past this portion of the of the agenda but I can hear just from the excitement in your voice so that's that to me is is huge so you want us to officially accept or adopt since you that's what you've asked for yes so um I will then move that the school committee adopt the recommendation of amplify 100 day for grades 6 through eight across the middle schools second seconded by Carla any further discussion Jeff Jeff cor Ridge Road um so earlier today the reading public library had a book to talked by um Tiffany jeel who was talking about everything I learned about racism I learned in school and how this connects here is that there's actually a chapter in there it says how much she hated the word book Hatchet which my kids both read in sixth grade and so my question to about the the curriculum here is to what extent the the options for the the curriculum the books go beyond the quote Classics written by long dead white male authors it's a fantastic question I can speak tou to that which is interesting that you mentioned that because I think I've been a huge advocate for including diverse texts I think it's really important I think that in the cannon of a classroom like there's a place for the classics you definitely do learn but again if we want to include engagement in students you have to have um experiences stories um both fiction non-fiction that reflect society different types of societies different parts of the world so there is um texts that do represent that um you know next year I'd be teaching 8th grade and one of them would be one of the texts would be The Narrative of Frederick Douglas so and then so there's there's there is that variety of different types of authors where again it's not that traditional um you know set of books or novels that you know maybe we read 20 years ago or 40 years ago because we need to adapt but also have a place for all types of work and to examine the value and if we want our students to be critical thinkers too we we also want them to dissect the literature that they read and really grow and learn from that so there is an element where I've noticed that there isn't just that one type of writer that's included um that students have exposure to not only in the novels that they provided or the books but also in the excerpts that are included within each you know unit um and subunit so we chose the Freda and Diego collection which was Freda Koo and Diego Rivera and um you know I asked my students at the end what did you learn about Mexican culture and they all had an answer so they definitely learned about another culture that they hadn't known before I also went into Andy's class to see him teach his unit and the video that was a mess the video that was shown had um diverse people talking about the text that was being read so you were hearing intelligent people uh with different colored skin that we're talking about a text that we were all talking about so it was really really nice um way to include some diversity in the lesson I I would say of the four that we looked at Jeff this one for me really hit out of the park when it came to the level of diversity um and I I think uh to the point that that writer brought up it's really important that not only do our kids see themselves in their experiences um you know reading is is becoming more and more diverse I think it's great but like we need to make sure that every student has a chance to see themselves but also have that window into be able you know I'm excited about the fact that in sth grade we're starting with the Chinese culture Revolution now I know nothing about the Chinese culture Revolution I have some work du the summer but like to me that's really exciting that we're going to do that we have um raising in the sun we have langsten Hughes in there that we're exposing the kids to um a variety that maybe wasn't happening before great all right any further questions all right all in favor all opposed and it passes thank you thank you both thank you all I say more than both yeah thank you all I'm that this none of this would have happened without the folks that are here who are like came you know on day what five of their summer vacation I just want to get away from my kids yeah thank you thank and it's really nice seeing the list of uh staff on the lt2 it's like to have your best teachers and some of the best teachers up here the ones driving this work I I think that's why I'm so confident this will be successful so a huge thank you to you for and the list of teachers on here I think represent the very best of the best in our district so thank you and happy summer too very much wondering thank you great summer I think we'll continue on with the ELA updates right do you want this back you're presenting aren't you I am where is it what's the next Arc we're going to go to the arc dark up and then back got it you going to try and take your laptop back yeah it's okay yeah come here thank she has it asking for a link I got it don't worry about it okay thanks I do not thank you you want me to click or you want to click I'm all right I talked a lot on that one so sorry I talk a lot on this one jump in all right um so we wanted to provide you just sort of with an end of the year overview with some data and some next steps um that you can look for at the elementary level for literacy so we have um our agenda on here which I won't go through we'll just Dive Right In I want to thank first our our core implementation team which Aon ran this year this is a group of teachers that meets monthly and they really do help us with the communication Loop through implementation so we gain a lot of information from them um as to what they're seeing at their grade level at their building and so you know a huge thank you to that group um before I jump into the data I just want to quickly set the context for you there are two literacy assessments that we're going to share data tonight um from the first is Dibbles um Dibbles as you may know is sort of a standardized screening tool that is uh completed with um measuring early literacy skills and it's really intended to be able to match students to the proper intervention um if they do not have the if their literacy skills aren't where they need to be and also to sort of let us know the amount of intervention that's needed to support those students um it isn't really sort of a standalone document or assessment um as we use it our literacy uh Specialists our interventionists continue to look at those students continue to progress Monitor and assess so this is really a screening it's a way to alert us that some skills might be missing uh the independent reading level assessment or the eara is a completely different type of assessment it's embedded in our literacy program and it's really designed to give the teachers information on individual students and um that information is related to the specific skills that are needed to read text at grade level and those skills are in a progression um sort of in the order you might learn them and the ear really helps identify the next skill for a particular student that they can work on when they are pulling that student for strategic instruction and the eara is different from the Dibbles where the Dibbles happen sort of at one point in time three times in the year the ear is happening consistently there is sort of an initial assessment window where teachers do a longer assessment with students and it's really a onetoone assessment where they are going through a bunch of different inventories a cold read there's a bunch of elements that happen and then over the course of their time with students whenever they're in a strategic instructional group they can revisit that assessment um give students a word list a cold read they can just continue to add information into the ear so it's something that evolves over time the ear is really a formative assessment for the teacher to help guide their instruction for individual students yeah tipples in some ways is a formative as well um and so when we look at the data tonight it's just sort of a word of caution as to it's okay to look at the data this way in the aggregate um but just understanding really the real purpose these are really tools that are to be in our teachers hands and the hands of our school leaders as they are um making instructional decisions they can be helpful for us to have like an overall shot like look at how students are doing um but they don't they don't necessarily um we just want to be careful when we draw assumptions from them um when you see um for example our overall eara data for this year um you see that you know there's really some nice promising results here um I want to caution you as well K K1 and two it's their first year through and we know we saw with with third fourth and fifth that teachers reported to us they felt much more comfortable and more sure in their assessment near two um so we do want to give K1 into that Grace um being only in year one but overall these results look promising you know we saw we saw nice growth over the course of the year um I do want to caution you know as I just said this assessment is given very different from say an mcast assessment where students are taking a standardized test on a computer univ has done side by side with the teacher students have lots and lots of opportunities to show um that they've mastered skills um so we we're excited to see these overall results just in case you were curious I threw in last year's too we did spend some time looking at the eara data based on different categories um and looking at how different groups of students did we looked at first um how our students K to 5 fared um based on the breakout of race um what we saw you know is sort of a similar pattern that we've seen in other data I do think um you know some of the gaps that we're seeing particularly for our black and African-American students um is not quite as wide as what we've seen in the past on mcast um but it still presents for us a challenge in knowing that we want to continue to move those students along similarly with our our MLL students um we do see a difference um which would we would expect some difference as students are acquiring English um in order to make the results here um a little bit more realistic in a sense we we didn't include any students that have a weda level below two those are students who really are still acquiring English um and so you know to to rate their ability on the eara didn't seem fair um since we know that they haven't acquired English um but overall we do see that you know 52% of our M students um actually are scoring proficient um we want to continue to move our at risk and our emergency students along that Continuum um and we're confident that as they acquire English they start to move along that when we when we drill down a bit into the data we did see that that our emergency students and at risk students tend to be lower on the weda scale and then as students go up they start to move into that proficient and above two other groups that we look at um our students broken up by income and then our students Broken Out by disability um we're pleased to see that lowincome um did not have as big of an impact on this data as it has with some of our other data um so that's promising um we continue to want to support um our students with disabilities we you know want to make sure that we're getting more students out of that emergency more students out of that risk and to the proficient um we know that in particular our students that have reading disabilities are going to struggle on this assessment and so really our place is to figure out um what are the things that we need to do to propel them along uh the next slide just sort of has a summary of some of the key data we pulled out you know overall 83% of our students K to five are falling in that proficient or above at the end of the school year um we saw that K And1 have the highest percentage of students and grades 2 and four um have the lowest percentage this year and then the groups that we've highlighted um that we went through were the groups that did have the lower percentages uh than their peers I don't know if you want to if you want me to pause if you have any qu questions particular to ear or if you want me to press on to Dibbles um I'll just make a quick observation more than a question um some of the committee may or may not know that eara has not been assessed or validated against a standardized um mechanism like dibles has been right so considering that it's it's an important feedback and input here what it has been assessed and validated against is other Statewide tests although not the mcast it has been cessed and validated against multiple other Statewide tests and the correlation numbers are in the 80s high 80s to low 90s in most of those related assessments so if that holds true we should see some decent numbers for some of this for mcast at least and we still have some alignment to do which we'll see in the next couple slides against some kind of standardized testing mechanisms yep thanks for that all right pressing on so we've got our overall Dibbles data what you see here is that for most of our grade levels we did see from beginning of the year to end of year that the number of students um that we're scoring below or significantly below um has shrunk over the course of the year the only grade level we didn't see that for is kindergarten um we weren't terribly shocked at that um unfortunately the where the way that the beginning of the year assessment window is we um tested our students sort of right towards the end of it um The Benchmark for kindergarten really ratchets up um for that end of year assessment so the what our students are being asked to do at the end of the year is much much harder um so that is one of the things that we are going to adjust next year is our kindergarten assessment window um so that we can get some data um that we hope will better reflect um where our kindergarten students are regardless though um we feel like in our first year of administering Dibbles our first year of implementing a new intervention system um we feel like we have some pretty solid results always room to grow um and we look forward to um making some improvements next year um but we are happy with um sort of the low amount of students in kindergarten in the red before you go that past that slide sorry on this slide I think one of the things um that would be good for us to understand going forward uh in my mind and I forgot to ask about this ahead of time so I apologize would be those students in the red and even some in the yellow versus is our referrals and our special education related testing results sure um you know are we and I know from the previous presentations that there's a decent size correlation between those numbers um but it would be good to kind of be able to track of these you know 12 that are currently there for first grade are they all already on special education plans iups or are they in the referral process and if not why not um and how are we assigning and aligning those between our own individual referrals and parent related referrals or anything else especially as we talked last week or last time about referrals dropping because we think we're getting better at some of this that's great as long as our you know the data that we're using for the referrals is actually leading to in uh positive referral correlation like say yeah yeah I don't have that exact data for you although we do look at that um in one of the slides that we'll show you in a minute when we show you like which students students received intervention we can tease out a bit um how many students are receiving General Ed versus special ed so it hints at that a little bit okay so we did provide you with the same categories for dibles as we just looked at for ear um similarly you know we saw that um when we looked at um students in our district um the our Asian students were performing the highest um with our black and African American American students um struggling the most um on the dibles when we shift to income and disability status um again we did see uh discrepancy with our low income students and uh discrepancies with our students with disabilities and for our ml students again we used the same system where we pulled out students who were below a two on their waeda level um and are reporting those results there to you those were not uh as far off as um some of the other subgroups We examined there's 12 12 less students in that bucket though than there was in the early bucket I wonder if how that plays into your percentages there were 33 in the early only K to three only K to three okay water my plants over yep not sure what's happening outside thunderstorm let's go the last till N9 I just up okay so um this just shows you um some information about what was how the dibles was used uh to intervene so to your question Tom you can start to see some of this teased out a bit um that students who scored well below and then how many were receiving tier 2 um students who did not receive tier 2 is because they were receiving specially designed instruction with an IID um and then students who scored below and then the amount of students receiving tier two so some of those students in the score below um are also students who receive IEP Services awesome all right I don't think there's anything new on that slide that we have no we had shown you this um when we talked about the early literacy screener and the the sort of systems that we've developed that are consistent across all five schools um so those receiving tier 2 pullout support are happening with each school's literacy specialist in a small group targeted instruction y um the tier 2 in class support is sometimes with the literacy specialist but most often with reading tutors who work really closely um with the literacy Specialists so the obvious question here is these 22 in particular right the bright pink 22 or no not the bright pink 20 yeah the bright pink 22 Yeah would be where where are they on the IEP assessment would be one question but it also could align to language acquisition so M mlls have have we have we broken those that 22 out a little bit that's the next level of of data analysis here Sarah's like can I P you back on I've been waiting till the end of the double section so I think to piggy back on what Tom is saying I think it would be really help some of the subgroup scores are still really concerning particularly the students with disabilities and those without disabilities so I think particularly for those and by um an MLL would be really helpful to look at it by grade level so of those students with disabilities where do they fall in that K to5 bucket are these kids if if they're in the you know um scored well below when they're in the fifth grade to me that is very concerning for potentially um if we're not intervening appropriately versus um and where are we catching those along the way same thing with ML by WEA level so of those kids who have lower or higher levels where are they in that um you know scored well below to um proficiency or above proficiency level so I think great level would be super helpful and then adding in um a column here on this chart around um of of those how many are being referred out for special um evaluations assessments and then as subsequently rece on IPS and again B grade level yeah so just a real quick and Sean you're going to ask something but just just so the rest of the committee knows one of the things Sarah and I talked about making sure of is we don't have enough that's that makes students individually identifiable so we're trying to be careful of that in in some of this demonstration of data but as long as we can do it with our data system great but that would be one of the cautions in in this level of grain as we go further down with only this number of students so yeah and and Sarah for your concern um one of the things that I did in my process I sat with Karen Hall and we reviewed the data for each MLL student um and looked at like their vaita level and the scores that they had and there were a number of students that she noted that the student is currently being assessed right now um so that is that work is being done internally even if it's not reflected in the slide here John do you have something I was goingon to say exactly what you just said if you take the MLL number for instance and split it by grade you're talking three or four students per grade it's too it's too small so yeah I don't mean publicly necessarily but yes looking at this split out by grade level I think especially when you look at um the the students with disabilities and without disabilities when you look at that by um um grade level yes that's a significant portion of students I'm I'm betting some of that depending if you're looking at the ear or the dibles 20% of kids without disabilities by gr probably actually are kids with disabilities who are in the at higher risk yep and that is work our team looks at all of this by grade level by school by grade level at school um and you know one of the things we're always striving for we know that our students particular our students that have a significant reading disability we would expect the dibles to find it right if they are if they are getting pulled out of class and having specially designed instruction we would expect there to be a skills deficit right so it's going to show up on the Dibbles so part of our work is General Ed yes and tier 2 intervention but this also dovetails with all of the work that Dr stce is doing around that specially design instruction because really and truly the way to move a lot of those kids out of bread is they they need to receive the specially designed reading instruction that will meet them meet the needs of their disability they need both um but they in particular need to address those the deficit areas yes and I would just to pick at that throwout a tiny bit more Tom if I could just I think it was last meeting where we talked about special ed referrals going down so I think we're seeing these numbers are still fairly alarming to me in terms of the number of kids in the at risk buckets so just making sure that we're picking out that thread of Are We referring them are we actually assessing them evaluating based on dibles because she she just she just um Chuck couldn't here so she just you got to talk into sorry too far away from my microphones like sir I just think connecting the dots from I think it was our last meeting we talked about the number of special ed referrals having gone down so making sure that we're really connecting the dots between our data sets and looking at um you know how we're utilizing our data and making sure we're identifying kids thank you one other just quick thing to add that uh is new to our system we are going to hit the ground running uh in September um the groups have already been built and identified that's something we've never done before we've always had to wait for an initial assessment um so the nice thing with the system we have now is just it's just a continuous cycle um so those students that we have already identified as needing the support don't have to wait another assessment period they will start getting um that intervention and support as soon as school starts great okay um I did include in here um just if you're interested go on Aon um I mean a a couple of the things Dr Hardy's already alluded to we are we've already shifted the assessment window for kindergarten to match one through three um the literacy Specialists and I have like toyed with the idea of like oh we should wait we shouldn't wait like we should give them a little bit more room um but what we're actually going to do is within the first assessment window we're going to start with three then go two then go one then go k to give them more like room sort of but keep them in that window so we really do have them and have like beginning of the year data as opposed to like it was almost middle of the year we were so close to that middle of the Year window and we think that definitely skewed that a little bit um but I I think like that is definitely one of the major adjustments along with like the literacy Specialists are psyched that they have data to like start the year and like we're going to hit the ground ring we know the kids we know what they need to work on we have it here like off we go we're going to give them a couple weeks of instruction and then start open the assessment window give kids a little bit of time when they come back from the summer I threw this in just for fun this is just a cross reference of ear and Diles this is the end of the year one we just created this we haven't dug into it yet we did the same thing mid year and what we did is we sat with the principles we looked at the list of kids that we considered outliers um and they went in and went back to the teachers and had conversations um what we found is that for students that were sort of in these windows where we're like this doesn't match up you're above in this and Below um we found like for example we had a we had two students previously in that emergency category that were above um Benchmark on Dibbles when we went in to look at their earlier we saw that that they scored two years worth of growth in one year so these are examples of times where teachers just sort of underestimated the student in that initial eara and this happens especially K1 and two our teachers were going through for the first time um so these students that we've flagged as sort of not the assessment's not matching um is something we'll dig into with our principles and take a look at um but overall we think that you know the the matching up the alignment um is a bad you know is pretty good um I think that that that shows that teachers are seeing similar results um so we just wanted to include a slide in here and I'm not going to go through all of the things because there's a lot um but we really wanted to have a slide that talks about the both the purpose and the use of both of these literacy assessments so we went through what was the purpose how is it assessed what does it assess and what information does it give us um so we wanted to make sure we had that in there for all of you to take a look at and just for the general public to have too um because they are they're assessments that are used for different things and they measure different things similar things but in different ways too the other thing we wanted to include for you is we did take some time this spring to gather feedback from our teachers um we really had two primary ways that we looked at that we did curriculum chats with teachers in grades three four and five This was um really fantastic time spent um Aon and I greatly enjoyed the conversations with teachers it's one of the F my favorite things I did all year getting to hear firsthand from teachers how their students are responding to the curriculum and what their experiences are as teachers we heard some really promising information we also learned a lot um and I think it's going to inform our next steps um really well we sent out a survey because we also wanted teachers to have an anonymous way to respond we sent that k to5 um and so we were also able to gather some really good feedback that way we will be using that feedback to support our professional development next year and also programmatic um decisions um I'm just going to highlight these um key takeaways teachers continue to say that students are engaged especially our K2 teachers were amazed at how engaged their students were and how much they wanted to work and um be involved in the arc activities uh Arc 2 teachers um did feel that this year's program in Arc did not offer them the handwriting instruction they wanted um this is one of the pieces of feedback we gave Arc and actually next year Arc is publishing um a handwriting tool a letter formation notebook um and so that is something we were able to preview something we will purchase next year for our kindergarten teachers um um we also heard from our teachers that there was a need to provision some additional toolkit texts for kids that overlapped in levels from year to year they had already gone through some of the texts teachers were finding they wanted to repeat lessons but wanted a new book to use and so we actually have that work happening um this week it started happening this summer actually and and teachers are going to be the ones that are pulling those resources similarly we heard from almost every single teacher that they really wanted to see exemplars of student work and so that is underway right now in an organized structured way um to pull those resources together another really common theme that we heard across teachers was just wanting to solidify writing instruction I think one of the things we underestimated with Ark was just how big of a shift writing instruction is um teachers were are have been very accustomed to um writing that always goes from beginning to end that uh the primary um lessons they were delivering were craft lessons um and Arc takes a very different approach to writing um it's very much U more about students pulling their knowledge and understanding from text and providing evidence um to make their claims and to create their reports um we're also finding though that Ark does not have some of the structure in it that we want um and so we have launched this summer a group of teachers that are going to be trained in the writing Revolution and are going to be rolling that out next year with grades three four and five I won't go into it right now it's not a program um the writing Revolution is just a writing approach that is um a structured way of teaching students how to form sentences paragraphs um and longer pieces of writing that really matches well the type of writing that happens with Arc because it um seeks to leverage the knowledge students are building and really build their comprehension through writing um so we're really excited about that and we think that our um teachers are going to appreciate that moving right into our next steps and a lot of this is informed from the feedback we got from teachers um we we knew this going in but just didn't really have a choice because of the timeline arcad to teachers really um would benefit from strengthening their knowledge of teaching foundational skills it's really essential and so that is one of our big pushes next year is to provide professional development in that area um we're going to continue our work with heal for literacy to support that um the other thing is that there were a few areas that we are going to continue to Monitor and some areas that we actually are going to make some adjustments um we're going to be adding in some instructional routines uh in the area of vocabulary and we also have some instructional routines that we planed plan to embed as we um go through the PD with our teachers around uh blending and and how they're teaching blending to their students um and then the Gathering of exemplars that we start this summer we're going to continue over the course of the Year part of the work this summer is to establish the system for um Gathering those pieces from teachers I think next steps to um we still have professional development provided by Arc um and we're going to focus it in in two separate ways we're still going to have some school-based coaching um where coaches go directly to the schools work one-on-one or in small groups grade level groups with teachers um as they've done uh the past few years we're going to really focus it on uh pre-planning the units before teachers dive into them and really get a lot of that work out in the front end looking at their data what does your data say what does that tell you about the planning that's happening for the next unit um so planning both core um whole group and strategic group instruction uh will be really important um the other thing we're going to do this coming year um is something called learning Labs with Arc and it really focuses on the train the trainer model um so we're hoping to have some teacher leaders at each of the school at various grade levels who come together across all of the schools so we'll have the site based coaching where you're at your own school but we're also hoping to have um these learning Labs which really bring teachers from across the district together learning new digging in um to the art curriculum and the instructional practices that come along and the instructional shifts that come along and then bringing those back to their schools and their grade levels um we're even talking about and and some things folks are really excited about are having um even like sister schools so like if if we're doing one thing really well here bringing some teachers at different grade levels to see it happening talk about it debrief it go back try it again and that kind of thing um so really having some co- observations with schools um and in doing that sort of in like a learning lab model um our teachers have asked for that they're ready for it um and I I think it'll be a really great addition and like very exciting for next year's learning some other important next steps um are just continuing to review our systems and structures that support collaboration between General Ed and special education um not only just the review of our data but also feedback from teachers and our and from conversations with our special education teachers um we don't feel like we've done enough to really bridge the gap between the two we want to make sure our general Ed teachers understand the strategies that should be coming back into the classroom to support special education students um we also are going to um work to continue to leverage our met Coxs one of the parts of their job is that they do provide um academic support in the sense of like monitoring how our Boston resident students are doing um one of the gaps we identified this year was really their access to an understanding of how to use our literacy data um so that's one of the things we've actually built a little dashboard for them um that they'll be able to access student data as a pilot for other things to come and um so we're looking forward to supporting them in that practice next year um and then um one of the things I think eron mentioned at our M last meeting too is really starting to deliberately bridge that Gap also between our literacy Specialists and our ESL teachers as we wrap up there are a few promising practices that we have found not only through our feedback sessions with teachers but just through the um implementation team um that we are going to try to take and bring to scale next year um we saw some really great success with forming small groups for strategic instruction across classrooms this was a practice that was done in quite a few of our schools all at different grade levels um and so we think it has promise we also saw that in some classrooms there were some really nice co-creative creation of writing exemplars happening so we have some teachers that have shown a strength in that who would be able to model for others um one of my favorite things is some of our schools have gotten so creative with the knowledge building component and they've created experiences for students that tie in so for example during the weather unit um wooden brought a meteorologist in but the best one is Joshua Eaton during the um one of the bugs unit brought in uh Terminex for a visit so um I think there's opportunity to get our students excited and to bring those real life um applications in um final piece is one of the big takeaways we got from our curriculum chats where there were a few teachers across our district who have really started to figure out data collection and what works for them we have a couple of different ideas that we think will be really helpful so we plan to um share those out with staff and and help them um as they are streamlining and managing that data input component awesome John just on the um on the real world context one so like the woodend one for example you know that's a um that meteorologist has a personal relationship with one of the parents who's got third and fourth grader I think so like that'll go away someday um but I I love this concept I think we should think about how to sort of do this more systematically um as part of the family and Community engagement you know type effort anyway this is a great opportunity for us to engage people from all different walks of life all different types of jobs and career paths whatever um and and apply it to the way that we're we're teaching literacy now so um I love the thinking here and I'm just you know excited to see us hopefully figure out how to build on it you're talking about my Dreamscape Sean like Dreamscape yeah um I will say to the second graders at Joshua Eaton um were correcting the Terminex person who like referred to the the bug's body and they were like that's the thorax that's the abdom and the person was just like okay yeah okay um but that yeah that would be amazing yeah any other questions or comments I think Sarah and I hit them all early so I'll make one final observation uh the the previous step in terms of other next steps and improve improvements um all of those are are hitting the weaknesses we saw in the previous data right so I I appreciate that I I love to see that the more and family community engagement hits the metco side of it too and making sure that they're pulled in as as part of the process I think is just as important so you've heard me hit on the English and and MLL type immersion type stuff too so I loved seeing those types of things as next steps thank you for taking the time to pull this together and and present multiple times throughout the year on Arc as we've gone through it it was actually fun pulling this together you were nervous when we first talked well it it was a lot of work but it I enjoyed it it's a lot of good information too yeah a lot of good information okay well thank you appr um okay so we're moving back to the beginning and welcoming up our Parker Parker leadership team um M Rino M Story come on forward we'll switch your presentation up over here for you and give you control Tom do you want a motion to take E1 out of order technically no it's not it's going back in oh we skipped B okay so now to take item E1 out of order second seconded by Tom all in favor favor allos and fastest 5 Z so we'll go for with you ladies so you can go home too then we can go back to the other stuff there we go thank you everyone um for having us tonight we are thankful that we are able to talk with you and talk to the community about Parker and um highlight what a great school Parker is and what a great Community Parker is um our school Improvement plan um which not letting me click forward maybe it's me okay okay um our school Improvement plan um we are going to go into detail of each one but um these first two slides um give you an overview of our school Improvement plan um and I just wanted to start by saying the heart of uh the efforts of the work this year um really has been a focus on improving student outcomes and ensuring that all of our students are achieving at high levels and I'm going to um go through some data from our I ready data that you'll be able to see um that we are starting to see that some of the work that we are doing is starting to take hold um and this is a reason to feel encouraged by what we are doing so if you take a look at our I ready data um that we have here when you compare um our I ready data from the mid year this year to the mid year last year as you can see see on these slides here you can see that we are improving um our green areas are getting bigger that's what we want to see growth in and the red and yellow areas are getting smaller um so I think that shows that um the steps that we are putting in place um is underscoring the hard work of our teachers and our Educators um and our students and I'm excited and feel encouraged by that growth um and I think that when I go through as we go through all of these steps you'll see that um the efforts that we are continuing to to do um are going to show results of that work so one of the things that we did um last summer before the school year started was we reviewed the I ready data from Spring of 2023 as well as our preliminary mcast data um which had not yet been released publicly and we were able to identify students who had some skills deficits and some content area deficits um and create some tier 2 interven mention classes in ela and math and so um we're able to use what we have as team time so in each grade um they have three out of the six days in their cycle where they're on team and that's when teachers really um identify what what is the extra area that kids need support in so that's already getting provided with the General Ed teachers on team so this was utilizing that time and providing targeted support with um our math and Ela interventionists and pulling those kids out into small group for e8th grade we're able to use our enrichment time um to be able to do that and so kids were not necessarily losing out on that team time or losing out on um other instructional time we also were able to do push in and so have have these um teachers also push into classes in math and Ela classes specifically to identify again mostly our general ed students who weren't necessarily getting um those supports and like an academic support class um we also used our Title One math interventionist to have small groups so again looking at the data identifying also from teachers and we have um weekly meetings with teachers where we're talking about students in in areas of concern and so we're able to um work with our staff to identify which students would really benefit from this in increased support um and just to add on before um I ready we didn't have the tool that was able to help us Identify some of these gaps and now that we have that we realized that we needed to do more to Target the discrepancies the differences with these gaps and I ready has been able has enabled us to have that opportunity to do that um and that's what some of the things that you we were able to do right away throughout this school year oops um we've also um spent a lot of time um thinking about student sense of belonging and as you can see from our professional development work a lot of what we've done this year is meant to differentiate the needs of each school and the teachers and Learners in that school and then provide teachers with an opportunity to teach that curriculum in a way that students feel connected to their learning and that gives them opportunities to learn see themselves in their work and be connected to that curriculum um and we did that through engaging in an all staff read of culturally and linguistically responsive teaching and learning um and we've piloted professional learning communities which was able to help develop the capacity of our own teachers in our school um they were able to share breath practices and take on ownerships um teaching other teachers about tra trauma-formed teaching practices through collaborative problem solving um a PLC on language based instruction that really helped Target um what you need in a language-based classroom and help teachers learn how to generalize those skills in the General Ed classroom um learning acceleration versus remediation tools for advisory curriculum um and then other protocols used to assess student learning and inform instruction throughout the school year um and then as you can see here our Middle School PD choices which was were offered on the PD days allow teachers to also be able to choose what they wanted to do um for PD that connected to their own learning um and you heard a little bit about the hill for literacy PD already um that was one of those options there and I think I'll just add I think um we really see that teachers were embedding a lot of that into their practice with evaluation so when when teachers were submitting their evidence they were submitting evidence um that was very much in line with what these PD offerings were um which shows that those practices are actually then having an impact on students in the classroom um some things that we are that we had focused on this year that are changes that you'll see next year um and I also want to pause here and give a thanks to my school council um members Lauren civan Julie celetta Janette Bishop Erica MCA and um Grace Tero they are part of my school council and every step along the way we've had them part of the process providing another lens giving us some Fe feedback when we're talking about some changes that we wanted to do next year um especially around our revised spell schedule um I'll talk about conferences in a little bit and um my cap which I'll talk about in a little bit as well Joe will talk about that in a little bit they have really been a sounding board for us and giving us advice along the way um and giving us giving us some feedback um I've also shared that with the PTO as well so they've been just Avenues to get additional feedback and support as we've been rolling out some changes so one of the things next year that we really wanted to do was increase um time on learning in our math classes and in order to do that we were looking at our bell schedule and thinking about areas that um we could add those minutes um so right now next year we are going to have 50-minute classes with 2 minutes of passing time that provides us with four additional minutes in class per day um and across the board that's 20 additional minutes of time across the board by the end of the week um we are also um we've also been as you can see here um continuing the Fidelity of our illustrative math curriculum you've heard all about um what the Middle School literacy curriculum has been doing leader liter literacy leadership team um and um you've also I think heard in past presentations about our math summer courses and the math Pathways work that we've been doing um we've also been partnering with families um around our Multicultural night um there were some pictures in the newspaper tonight I saw about that so check that out if you haven't had a chance to um we've been able to partner with our PTO to bring all School enrichment programming such as Len cabal story teller and um extreme science and our student um student council has really been able to develop more student leadership opportunities they've been present at different activities for fifth grade to sixth grade transitions they've gone on some leadership field trips um and what I'm really excited about as well is um launching Middle School conferences for next year that is something that we really heard from both the school council and our PTO the need for that and the desire for that and um using the feedback from the PTO and our school council and um working with our instructional leadership team at Parker and Cool's instructional leadership team we were able to um design programming for um piloting Middle School conferences next year some other thing that we have been doing is leveraging coaching um we've been a part of the um des's social emotional behavioral Academy we've partnered with Lynch Leadership Academy for professional development as well the Math teachers have engaged in coaching Cycles um with our math consultant Ramsay and our new coaches um and what I'm really excited about next year are our mycap um courses we really have spent some time reimagining our um exploratory elective options um and aligning them with the rmhs Innovation Pathways so Jill go ahead you can speak so um this was a great opportunity through the the myap grant to be able to um reimagine our Middle School course offerings and so when I started at Parker I was a little confused why the world language teachers were teaching all of these electives to e8th grade and it seemed like some of the scheduling things that had happened had just um been Band-Aids to maybe fix a problem that came up and so when we were talking about how we could explore reimagining um some of our course offerings the teachers um input was really really valuable here um so I think the the committee was great so I was able to chair my cap committee which consisted of teachers and counselors we attended the myap um Desy trainings there were three of those that were offered um and myself and Robin farizani were able to go to all three and the other teachers were able to go um to the first two and then really teachers kind of branched out and got input from the rest of the staff as far as like what would you like to see what would you like to do we're seeing the biggest changes happening in e8th grade which is really kind of an exciting opportunity for eighth graders who are then thinking about what am I going to be doing when I'm in high school like am I going to go to reading Memorial High School and if so am I going to be maybe focusing on one of these Pathways and so really the goal was exposure at the middle school level um and so we're able to Now sort of look at how we're we're approaching the curriculum such that we're giving eighth grade students just exposure that seems to be the word of the night to what they will then be able to explore more in depth once they get to high school and so our two um Civics teachers and our two science teachers in the eighth grade are actually going to teach a quarter long Pathways exploratory course um they will teach actually e section so it's going to be two a quarter and they will have all eighth grade students rotate through them so they'll actually be able to go off team so it's going to be very Project based very student centered essentially um like this is what your your tasked with they're going to be very small groups of students that will be working through those teachers and so we have um Civic action umine a clean energy class an engineering one and a public health class so those are again aligned with what is being offered currently at the high school in terms of those Pathways we also were able to look at how we could um provide all students with an opportunity to take uh computer science uh a digital ethics and leadership course financial literacy and an information literacy which is looking at really reading and writing with information texts um and we're able to offer all of those as well as PE to eighth graders too so it seems impossible but we're able to do it and we're able to pull the world language teachers out of having to teach those and and have the staff who are already teaching electives and now offer a World Language exploratory to sixth graders and so that's not as much teaching the language but it's giving them exposure to the culture and the food and the customs and the Traditions um and they will be able to take a French exploratory course one um quarter and a Spanish exploratory one quarter and then the quarter that they're not they'll have their traditional team time which is what they have now so I think this is really exciting these changes are you know we're able to preserve the band and Chorus for all those kids without impacting that negatively because that was always an issue so we're able to maintain the really really strong Arts programs that already exist there are additional um course offerings it's it's all going to be really exciting in terms of how it all works together but that that's just kind of a a quick overview um and if you have questions we can answer those but I I'm I'm very excited about it and I think the teachers are really excited about it too um so getting obviously those World language teachers and those eighth grade teachers who are going to be experiencing the most significant changes on board was really really important and they're they're all seemingly very enthusiastic about these opportunities for kids and I think it's going to be um an exciting time to be a Parker great that thank you any questions John just a comment so I I think the elective changes are are phenomenal um and I know if Aaron were here she'd be doing a happy dance about uh about um conferences um so yeah so that's great Aon would also be doing a happy dance about sixth grade World Language to here as well I think many of us will be and that's seep it down slowly but surely and work its way down to Elementary at some point maybe um we'll see one can one could dream right uh I have a just a a minor question in terms of the process of some of the ready stuff you make a pretty bold statement there this is 6 through eight and this is only six and seven what happened from a data collection process that we don't have the eighth grade data in in this so we did not we did not do final round for eighth grade due to the number of um mcast tests that eighth grade students have to take um they have four tests that they have to take with the addition of civics um and adding another um assessment at the end of the year um felt like too much for them to do so we don't have that data but the intention is to um complete the diagnostic early on in September right when they return which is a change from um this past school year where it was later on I think it was the beginning of October if I remember correctly I'm looking at Sarah for confirmation that thanks for relle that that we we received feedback last year actually from families of our eighth graders uh about the amount of testing days that happen in the spring with two days for ELA two days for Math and two days for science plus two days for I ready this year we had to add an additional two days for civics um and so we felt that at that point it was just the Tipping Point where we really we don't want our students spending days taking assessments okay um in addition we also added for eth grade our world language assessment um so it's there's just a lot of testing we felt that I ready was the one thing we could give um and we felt that with all the mcast our eth graders are taking will have you know MC data yeah okay I mean I think just um an obser I mean and that sounds like it's going to go forward so the bar is going to be what the bar is which is good I just sometimes it can confuse the data if you're looking at different sample sets it's not ideal with looking at the data sure but it still it still does show some positive growth if you look across the going back to you know midy year 2022 you know I'm just I'm looking at the math one for example you have a 54% at that kind of meeting exceeding level and now although the population is slightly different you're you're looking at more like 74% so 20 percentage points gra growth yeah although slightly different populations um so as we look at this going forward again it' be great to break it down along cohorts and things like that as we look at it so we're kind of it's a different cohort alog together really so it's not a fair assessment but at least it does show some growth and even if you just look at this year showing some significant growth as well so that's it's great to see and we want to just keep making the progress and I'll also Echo Sean's point from the structural changes and I I'll add to it the math structural change I think and we talked about that a little bit the math Pathways meeting last week but or last time we were together but um seeing that and and being able to work out additional I think it's 240 minutes across the whole year or something like that um I think that those will those little changes will make a big difference and sometimes that's all it takes is a little change so yeah thank you for the Focus the effort the energy thank you just a quick question and it may not be for for you um for financial literacy have we have a looked at um David Ramsay's um financial literacy program not that I'm aware of I haven't heard of that I can look into that David Ramsey David Ramsey he yeah I I I've been meaning to to say it and it just clicked in my head so let me look into that thank you okay anybody else thank you both thank you so much and thank you for waiting around we know you were first on the agenda we we flipped it on you so we appreciate your patience thank you thank you thank you you won't have to go out in the thunderstorm that's we thought stay nice and dry thank you okay so now we'll go back to the top of our agenda since I skipped and we'll go back to the consent agenda portion um so I'll move to approve the consent agenda second seconded by Carla any commentary questions or concerns I'll just I just want to quickly thank principal C an and her team for aggressively pursuing every Grant you'll see here the skills Capital Grant here too another $75,000 which really exciting so her and the team are looking for any potential Revenue stream uh sing for the pathway pathway so thank you I was going to call it out but you beat me good that's all right it's it's good for you to it's better for you to do it than okay um all in favor all opposed and it passes okay so the reports uh Dr Pinto ah good evening schol uh so I I just want to share a few things with you uh presented the special education budget to the to the uh parent Council the special education parent advisory Council back in May at the end of May May 21st so they had lots of questions they forwarded in advance and it was really great so they they were asking questions about the budget year-over-year they were asking about programs position services so uh it was really a pleasure to meet with them they were very thoughtful in the questions that they asked and they're very invested in seeing us progress uh seeing us make progress and and where we're allocating resources so I was happy to be a part of that uh I did want to send a thanks to the uh town of stonum administrator Dennis shien for providing me with their spot uh for the office of the inspector General's Massachusetts certified public purchasing official designation classes for free so couple of benefits that fit right into our budget because it didn't cost any it really provided me with an opportunity to broaden and deepen my knowledge and you know as the chief purchasing officer for the district I think that the benefits will will certainly translate so grateful to them for providing me with that opportunity uh I just completed a 300H hour log for that was required for my apprenticeship uh so it was reviewed by masbo reviewed by our superintendent uh I submitted it to desie and this is in an effort to advance my uh professional license so I wanted to thank uh Dr mesy for for his support and I want to thank uh school committee also uh for supporting me through this uh Endeavor to move things forward so thank you for that uh I did want to send a thank you to Julian Carr our network manager so he's been diligently tracking uh all of the uh you know products all the machines we have in our district and so he's been working with uh vendors on models and pricing he's been um you know moving forward with negotiations and now the purchase of 300 plus uh devices that will be that'll be meet both student and District needs and so he's keeping us right on top of things so very grateful to him for that and his work on that front so that concludes my report okay Dr Hardy just one quick item I just want to mention to school committee and the community that we have a number of teachers that are completing summer work um that is curriculum based so a big thank you to our staff who are giving up some of their summer hours to do this important work um so for examp example we have a group of Middle School ELA teachers that are going to come in this summer to help us look at that scope and sequence we were talking about where the units will fit in um we have uh elementary teachers working on three different art Court projects this summer all of which you sort of Saw referenced in our presentation um and then across the high school there are actually 25 different projects happening um many of them having two or three or four teachers involved that are either building out curriculum for new courses or um adding in um Concepts or new texts or resources to existing courses so we're so appreciative of our teachers um we we do really think they do some great thinking and some great work in the summer when they have dedicated time um but it is something our teachers do regularly and wasn't sure if folks knew that so I wanted to thank them for that great before we move on I just wanted to acknowledge real quick Dr P I moved past it so quickly but I heard really positive reviews about the CPAC presentation so I just wanted to publicly acknowledge that as well so thank you for taking the time to do that um and Dr meski great uh so just building up Stars too that gives me a chance to also thank uh all the staff we be working at esy over the summer too we know that's starting up in a couple of weeks too but uh after what can sometimes as be tiring and difficult days during the year to then gear right back up and and going to the uh teach in the summer we have a tremendous R of appreciation and respect for our staff who are back in there for our students over the summer so huge shout out and thank you to the esy staff too um also so I've heard some questions over the past couple weeks from the community around like our processes regarding hiring and retention uh particularly with respect to like non-renewal of staff so I just want to share a couple pieces of information tonight of context that may be helpful to the community um I just joted a couple of notes down so these processes are similar to other Massachusetts districts are driven by mass law and have been consistent over the years in uh Reading Public Schools uh so first there's a couple of common circumstances that may lead to a staff member not returning to the district including first uh voluntary transition so staff may elect to lead the district each year for voluntarily for a variety of reasons including pursuing other employment pursuing an advanced degree or relocating with family there's also cases of staff non-renewal so uh as the committee knows after the completion of three consecutive years teachers are considered to have professional teacher status or pts uh pts is a designation in Mass law signifying that the employee has completed a certain probationary period and is provided with additional protections against dismissal uh by law teachers without professional status are informed each year during the first three years as whether or not they'll be re hired or non-renewed um as such these teachers are considered to be yearly employees at will until they achieve pts and just on a uh related note 14 teachers this year across the district received professional teacher status which we know we celebrated at that uh reception a couple of weeks ago and then sort of the last common reason uh for someone leaving the district may be due to a temporary position uh so some staff filled time bound roles um which is covering for some sort of leave of absence if the staff originally holding the position elect not to return this position can then open up as a full-time position uh so then staff who are filling in these temporary positions often elect to apply for the full-time position and enter into the interview process with the rest of the other applicants who may decide to apply and in some cases these staff members may be hired into the full-time roles by school-based Administration so those are uh kind of three common reasons for separations that occur both here in reading and across the Ed sector too um a little bit more uh you know kind of information around communication so unfortunately due to St staff confidentiality and privacy were unable to speak to decisions around uh decisions to non-renew a particular staff member or reasons why they may not get a particular job that they applied for for this reason it's never been a practice in the reading public schools nor in any District to notify the community when a particular staff member will not be returning due to a district non-renewal uh this would be in violation of laws protecting staff staff confidentiality uh On a related note the staff uh the school or district is not able to provide specific information with the community on why a staff member may not have been renewed decisions to non-renewed staff are made by building based administrators who have uh more information and context regarding each individual employee uh so while parents may have a particular uh a perspective of a particular teacher based on their experience or their child's experience with them uh this does not represent the entirety of the information or perspective that would shape a school-based administration's decision around renewal uh so overall due to confidentiality uh we're not able to notify the community if the case of a particular non-renewal or the rationale for that particular non-renewal uh a little bit more context I think would just be important uh one uh decision around hiring and renewals are some of the most important decisions for school-based administr administrators uh I'd like to assure everyone in the community that these are our leaders in RPS do not take these decisions lightly while extremely difficult and sensitive are School leaders try to make Personnel decisions based on what's best for the future of the school and for students um it's it's understandable that in some of these cases decisions May conflict with what various stakeholders may think is the best uh option for the future of the school but it's also important to acknowledge that school leaders have a much broader perspective regarding Staffing and the future needs of the school and their role uh similarly these School leaders also share the same Collective goals that all of our students staff and families have around uh around our around ensuring the best possible educational experience for all of our students and certainly as a district superintendent I stand behind all of our administrators to make difficult decisions that they feel are in the best interest of our students and future of schools uh last point i' would just like to emphasize too that none of the hiring or non-renewal decisions in Reading reflect the need to lay off or reduce reduce staff uh positions RPS continues to operate in a strong financial position as evident by the increase in positions or FTE in the fy2 budget uh so I understand that sometimes these decisions around hiring and renewals are extremely sensitive and it can be frustrating the community to not be notified when a particular staff member may be not may not be hired or renewed or the reasons behind that decision uh however I'm hopeful that some of this information I shared tonight provides a little bit more context on why more communication cannot be provided on individual employment decisions and also reaffirms the commitment all of all of our school leaders uh to make decisions in the best interest in the future of all of our schools thank you Dr mileski any questions comments from anybody else I'll just add just for everybody else really quickly hiring and firing of staff is not the purview of the school committee so while we appreciate everybody reaching out it is not something that we can or should engage in conversation about so there we go okay um all right so let's move on to liazon subcommittee reports um Sarah um so the Kum School building committee met on Monday night with a packed agenda um Carla the chair will have a lot more details to share than I will um but we had a lot on there exciting was it 9 or 11 I forgotten the number of um design schemas that we're working through and talking through all kinds of detailed things like types of heating and cooling systems and all kinds of riveting topics the only update I have Carla so our our next meeting is um for the kilum school building committee is on July 8th we have two Community meetings coming up um on July 15th and a new date of August 14th we had a different date in August but um we decided to move both of those meetings to the reading public library just because they have a good um AV system and it will be a little bit I think hopefully easier for for people to hear when we had the um the meeting in here the other night for um MBTA communities it was kind of frustrating to not to be able to see the the screen from far away and we couldn't hear everybody online as well so hoping to go um writing Public Library to have these meetings so it'll be um just a little easier for everybody okay thank you Sean are you going to cover the two select board updates let you go ahead and cover them um so the select board voted to create a uh an ad hoc committee around commemorating Bill Russell um one of the members of that committee is asked to be a a school committee member or design so I assume in a future meeting we'll figure out who that person is going to be um and then you heard Miss herck said it earlier tonight but she's going appointed by the select board or raise your hand uh to be the select board appointee to our facilities renaming sub committee okay advisory committee right advis advis we call it fnac Chuck so uh the charter Review Committee met last week and I thought that was winding down but it isn't uh we're we have a public hearing uh August 29th is kind of a tentative date to kind of go through all the changes and then there was also a lot of discussion on rmld it's really written a lot into our Charter now and there's a lot of thought process that that should come out entirely and go under some state state laws like in a lot of other towns it's above all of our pay grades at this point it's with Town Council and uh so that that continues uh Recreation committee met this week uh we had a packed agenda I won't go in it's it was all summer programs and of course pickle ball and stuff so okay um on my side there was the um permanent building committee appointment committee meeting uh a couple weeks ago a week and a half ago um we now have a fully staffed permanent building committee including the five members and three Associates it's the first time we've ever had it and there were eight applicants for the two openings so it was quite a more challenging process than historically has been in the past where we pretty much were able to take all comers um the two permanent members that were already members were reappointed and then we had three additional Associates added um all three Associates were brand new the previous associate um acknowledged his ability to step back and even though he did apply he did agree that he could step back so we have three new Associates as part of that permanent building committee which doesn't necessarily impact us but might allow them to load balance a little bit more when it comes to the recal uh perment building committee that that comes about um because they could theoretically assign an associate to be their member of that committee um so that's that Sean covered select board and there's no finance committee updates since we already gave that last time so okay now we're on to the um Q4 Financial update with the budget transfers and uh Dr Pinto you want to start us off yes good evening again so uh this is the first time in recent history we've presented this Q4 report we uh a Q4 update so typically we present the Q4 report in October after the books have been closed U this is just a snapshot at time so I want to give you a little more information between now and June 30th March close of the there are a lot of moving Parts at the moment but purchases are still being made purchase orders are still being closed invoices have yet to be received so I do expect that there will be some changes in the balance although um you know modest changes as these items are resolved and attended to uh I think most noteworthy things I'd like to point out for you very quickly in this packet is just that it it's different from the typical report that I've shared with you and that it doesn't include the um the grants and theol the accounts it was a uh move that you uh noted uh the chair wise noted uh with presentation of the Q3 report which was the shift of the technology purchased dollars have now gone up to the regular day line so that's where they're accounting for this time around you'll see there's a transfer being requested here so we do expect more transfers to happen this was an effort to kind of reduce the number of transfers and reduce the dollar amounts U and so that's why the transfer is being requested at this stage uh and finally that the year end balance you'll see is something that I wanted to draw your attention to so that's going to come into u a little bit sharper relief with the next presentation because we're going to be talking about the special education Reserve fund and so what to do with those dollars okay any questions or comments for Dr Pinto on this before we move to the motion um I guess before I move to the motion my question um I acknowledge what we're doing here is is basically getting special education back to slightly above zero with this move does that include the forecast that aligns with the next topic or will that be potentially pulled from any one of the lines uh the special education Reserve fund Topic in particular so this one does the line so we have uh made it so year-over year the practice has been to allocate a certain dollar amount in order to you know prepay both for collaboratives and uh private placements so we've uh not only gone with the typical dollar increased it slightly and so that's so if we change the numbers in the next motion do we should we come back to this motion uh you won't need to come back to this motion but we we'll be able to make some choices with the next presentation as to how we'd like that we're looking to land at a couple of dollar amounts I think with the next presentation one is with regard to the special education Reserve fund and the other with the dollar amount that we'd like to turn back to the town and that out of District dollar will then become a little bit varable put some more money to okay okay so if we just I'll make it a little more concrete the next next slide has 175 as an as an example across the board for the special education Reserve fund if we'd make that 200 as part of our conversation that's another 25,000 it doesn't matter I think in the grand scheme of things which cost center it comes from but would it make sense for us to account for that now or can we adjust for it later adjust later adjust for it later okay Chuck you want to say something no I was GNA say that okay okay all right so with that said um I I move to transfer 111,000 from regular Ed day cost center to the special education cost center to cover the increased prepay for FY 25 out of District tuition second second by Chuck any further discussion no all in favor all opposed and it passes 5 to zero okay moving on Dr Pinto to the next topic thank you so this is special education Reserve fund and so as the committee is aware an area of great importance stresses the management of those special education of District costs so many variables affect the predictability of that number there are uh you know constantly there's constant reevaluation of student needs uh there are students moving into the district that we need to account for so in the uh packet that you've received there's I provided you with Furniture of three options but these are not be only once this was just just a to sketch out what it might look like if we were to return a a high number to a slightly higher number than we returned last year to the town a middling number and a low number back to the town I do have to caution you again that the ending balances are uh you know approximate I don't expect a large variation but you know we're trying to land on there's a lot of things in motion at the moment uh so as I mentioned earlier we're trying to land on a couple of dollars one is a rough approximation of what we'd like to turn back to the town last year was $100,000 and also like to determine what uh to put in that special education Reserve fund so the balance currently is 175 you'll see the chart and on the second page of that report uh kind of gives you uh it's a uh added a few further lines from the initial delivery of the court in October or in that October time uh just to give you an idea of what you know maximum minimums are where falling short where we could get so can I so it's at 175 now we're proposing to add 17 175 or 200 175 so what we wanted to talk about as a group as we put this agenda item on the topic is one we have to vote a number according to our policy to go into the special education Reserve fund um so that is what we're actually going to be voting on um what D Dr Pinto said in the previous thing I'll just make make a highlight on is we're not actually voting on how much to prepay that number can slide to keep ourselves solvent and then some um throughout the end of the year so that number is not as material but we want to make sure we can prepare ourselves for next year here as much as possible um the other thing we're not going to vote on but I think we'll look for guidance from the committee on is how close do we want to cut it right to the end year so he said there are three options that we've laid out there so it's really like do we want to cut it at you know 30 to 40,000 do we want to cut it at 75 to 80,000 do we want to cut it at 134 140,000 so those are the kind of the topics of discussion that we wanted to have so principally how much do we want to allocate to the reserve fund and secondarily how close we want to cut it and then the rest can adjust from there Sean I'm in the uh option A or option b Camp um you know the $175,000 allocation leaves us with the opportunity to still do some pretty substantial prepayment much greater than previous years I think we were at 923 last year yeah so both of these figures are are are much higher um and I know some of the reasons why that might be prudent but um I'm I'm just thinking back to you know past conversations about um you know when we were making the appeal for the arc funding and things like that right you know we we need to we need to find the right balance here of doing the right thing by the town the free free cash position all that and um you know and not putting ourselves in a position where we're we're going to find ourselves in trouble next year so um I think A or B probably do that better than c um so if the decision tonight is around the you know the reserve fund then I'm I'm in the 175 Camp given these options here Chuck so I'm a a hard on option b I think that you know we you know I don't really want to go down as low as as the option A so I think option b draws a a good balance of when you say not as low do you mean are you referring to option C that goes down to 30,000 we return or I mean I mean too much versus I think uh option b draws a a good balance between the two so okay anybody else Carla I I actually um was thinking more of something between B and C I was thinking more of um 50,000 back to the town [Music] um that was just I I it makes me nervous to out of District placement always can um it's so variable and we just don't know what could happen and I know that we increased our numbers this year with um with school choice and you you just don't know where we're going to end okay Sarah you have any thoughts yeah I was kind of learning leaning towards option b um I think kind of interesting what you're saying Carla too I could also um support kind of a B+ one kind of in between B and C um for the reasons you outlined Carla okay so um I was generally more be from a amount to return to the town perspective but a slightly different mix to achieve that um and you know looking at the policy and one of the things that we only have the net School spend through FY 23 but if we look and apply FY 24 going forward it's going to be more along the lines of 63 million probably give or take so if you apply that and extrapolate you know your 0.5% is quickly getting up towards you know 320 330 and then you're you know Etc um so 175 still gets us above that number and we're still compliant but it's still well well below the 1% number so I was in the in the thought process that ultimately the longer term protection for us is the reserve fund you know prepay helps us the great great next year but I I'm I'm and I know that there's a reason why we need to do that but I also want to make sure that we're giving ourselves some Flex for for uh the future years as well where I have real concern to make sure we're okay there so I was thinking more along the lines of like 225 to this to the uh Reserve fund and then bringing the special education um out of District tuition pay down to flex that and keeping the guidance of 75 to 80 I don't really want to cut it too too tight in the 35 to 50 range um I know that we can still Flex it as we need to but I you know keeping to Sean said the good Steward making sure we're giving things back to the town appropriately not too much not too little um the Goldilocks just right amount um in my mind so I'm I was proposing that we think of the surf allocation as 225 and then adjust the out of District payment down that 50,000 but keep the target at 75 uh from a you know give back to the town give or take perspective I don't know if that Rings or if anybody wants to say no you're crazy I'm okay either way but it's slightly different than either model um I don't feel that strongly I guess I I would say the one downside to doing that is you know the more we shift our the more we shift our planning towards having the reserve fund as a back stop and not paying you know for the year ahead as much as we can the more likely we are then to start needing to use a reserve fund and I you know people might have different perspectives on this I think when we or at least from my perspective when we created The Reserve fund I think the idea would be it's there and we almost never have to touch it um so I'm not sure I want to I want to actively I'm not saying this your proposal necessarily does that's $50,000 I'm not sure makes a difference at the end of the day but um you know I'm not sure I want to actively put ourselves in a position where we are shifting our safety net further away from prepay and more towards yeah I think we've always been bullish about prepaying as much as we could and yeah I mean I agree with that I think but Sean's key point at the beginning is we're either one of these proposals is paying 200,000 more than we've paid in the last few years right so we're we're prepaying pretty aggressively I'm just suggesting that you know what we want we have to maintain ourselves in that 05 to 1% range and actually this allows us to do less going forward of giving into to Surf because it could you know that that money should be invested it actually shouldn't be 175 flat we should have some interest in there already so we should follow up on that as well but it allows us to do less going forward where maybe we might have a tighter year and we might be able to do more of a prepay on on the forward years as well so as we get ourselves in that5 to 1% range technically we don't have to do anything in the following years from a surf perspective right and and it gives us some Flex as net School spend is going to go up over the next couple years just naturally it will that we then have some flexibility going forward to say yeah this year we don't have to do anything for surf or we only have to do a modest 50,000 or modest 25,000 or something to stay above the line that we've set ourselves in um whereas we're still paying 200,000 more than we normally would from a prepay perspec yeah I mean if you want to make a motion I'm not going to arm wrestle over 50 th I mean I think all right I'll make the motion go ahead I I am a little bit nervous about going I mean again $50,000 at the end of the day but I am a little bit nervous about shifting from the 175 to the 225 just we've had some we know over the past couple of months some like you know unexpected movein or change in demographics that we haven't necessarily budget for which kind of can eat into our contingencies so I feel like having a little bit more contingency which that would build through you know strengthening prepay a little bit would position us better for next year and we see sort of in neighboring districts there's been sort of a lot of Shifting of student population sort of that was unexpected that I think has uh put some districts sort in a a more challenging financial position so I I agree it sort of you know it helps us in either way to give us additional padding I think just given some of the recent moves in in District I think it would be helpful to have some of a prepaid closure to what we can prepay which is actually 1.3 um so I would prefer to if you know kind of weighing both of those options go more towards prepay but I again for $50,000 I I understand the rationale the other way too so I'll cut it in half then I'll say $2 200,000 is that okay y that that's fine with us all right so then um I move to allocate 200,000 to the special education Reserve fund and provide guidance although technically I said we weren't going to vote that and provide guidance so we're not going option C that we return approximately 75,000 to the town and I just want to put a caveat that that you know the 75 that can that can change right approximate we're talking tens of thousands of dollars that could go in either direction right here at the end so I just want to make sure that that's guance guidance y okay seconded by Sean can I make a friendly motion to Amendment sure amendment to um return 50 to the town step5 I will not take that as friendly but we can discuss it can I make it you can make it yes so the amendment on the table is to make it 50 as as guidance to return of the town is there a second I'll second it okay Sean seconds now that's what we're discussing so pros and cons of 50 versus 75 is the guidance Carla your Amendment so it it like I said we we are we we have um we're opening up to allow more kids to come into the district and then um I I don't mind the um special education fund having 200,000 but I think it's good to keep your prepay as high as you can too okay so you're basically taking the 25,000 from the 75,000 instead of from the prepay yeah okay any further conversation you know I again it's all it's it's not a lot of money but I think we're we're always uh very willing to go ask town meeting or the fincom for more free cash or whatever to help us you know I think to as you someone said you know we got to you know you know kind of a be responsible to that and give back and I just you know 75 is still a lot less than we've given back in a lot of years so you know to go to 50 I just I don't know whether it sends the right message any further conversation I agree with Chuck okay so we're going to vote on the amendment which is to to adjust the return to 50,000 instead of 75,000 all in favor of the amendment all opposed all abstaining and it the amendment does not pass 1 to four okay so we're back to the the base Amendment of 200,000 and 75,000 any further discussion okay all in favor all opposed and it passes so we have adjusted the amendment the the surf allocation to 200,000 and kept the guidance at 75,000 as guidance obviously things may adjust but 75,000 as guidance for the uh amount to return to the town okay thank you thank you okay so moving back to the agenda we now will go into Old business the midcycle formative review of the superintendent um I want to first thank all the committee members for their time and effort in putting together their reviews and Dr meski as well for the year um Dr pinto and Dr Hardy you contributed greatly to that as well so thank you as well um you know the uh I'll just quickly go through some of the highlights of of what's in the packet it's everybody's had a chance to review it and then we'll open up in case anybody thinks I missed anything that we need to amend before we approve or anything else along those lines so I think overall um we continue to see you know strong leadership collaborative nature um Etc which enables a lot of the other um successes we've seen throughout the district as we've gone through as we look at goal number one um almost everybody universally acknowledged that there's really no way to officially measure this as it stands right now um you know as most of the measurements go into next year or the end of the year of next year um but everybody pretty much also acknowledged that uh with the Innovation Pathways in the 193 students were already above the 150 Target that's out there uh and we have seen some positive indicators of other progress that hopefully will bear themselves out in the mcast data as well um so generally this goal is listed as incomplete um due to timing not due to effort um the next one uh secondary math Pathways I think just um most people I think everybody acknowledge the this the this this goal was met and probably exceeded as well when you consider the the single and sold Benchmark that was in in there and all the progress that we've heard about uh throughout the year as well and and just last in our last meeting in particular um highlighting you know uh the 18 of 22 kids that are uh that were you know encouraged and adopted into the 78 math the summer geometry course of which there's 11 I believe um you know the Meco Grant that's happening the math lab the the rest of the summer learning that's been put in place as well as just the overall you know adjustment of the the pathways themselves have been put there um so I think overall that's met SL exceeded probably leaning towards exceeded from a benchmark perspective and I think that's universally agreed to from from the rest of the committee as well um on the data point um this one is one where there probably was the most disagreement for lack of better way to say it um not necessarily disagreement on where we are in terms of the fact that we are you know using and leveraging data more um on a go forward basis you know the DT related agenda items are almost entirely um uh data data focused um you know there and then of course we've seen presentation upon presentation on ear and I ready and Dibbles and things like that um what we did where the disagreement comes probably is in the next steps um Dr mileski expressed his own concerns about the the the library to degree of sorts and the ability to build the the data warehouse and I would say probably Sarah and I were most aggressively gung-ho like go forward in in this process and there was other con um you know concern about the uh the you know the ability to achieve you know is it is it overreaching and too strong and too hard so I think as we go into next year of the cycle and we kind review the goals that'll be a discussion for the committee to have and see what they need to do but overall Dr mileski acknowledges that it's important that we figure it out in some way shape or form we might just need to scope back in particular the library portion of it and help figure out how best to to do the data um warehousing of sorts um to help uh multiple members of the committee although I don't think actually pointed it out here um also brought up the fact that uh there's a plan for a scorecard um that the team has put together um for next year as well and a school by school basis and using that more on a go forward basis so um developing supporting and coaching of principles um many many members acknowledged this was more than principles that we were seeing evidence of um assistant principls other members of the district leadership team also acknowledge you know the the safe and supportive growth environment for the leadership team from the whole central office not just not just Dr milesy um there was a desire and a focus to have a few you know more frequency of walkthroughs it seems like you know busyness and kill them and other things maybe cause that to fall off but hopefully there can there can that can improve going into next year again and um you know integrating the the MLL staff a little bit more holistically in the process as well was was something that was noted as Improvement but overall this one would be considered met you know leaning towards exceeded um and can continue to grow as we see some of the walkthroughs and continue to increase and go forward um the new superintendent induction program was the layup of layups um and is completed and met SL exceeded um you know I noted and I I think almost everybody else just noted that it was done and you know whatnot but I saw some correlations from it from stuff that was happening earlier this year that I just I pulled into to mine in particular with regards and Dr Mesi tell me if it's wrong but some of the the the the work that was done with uh with the collaborative in regards to you know getting that board to come to a consensus of where things were you weren't the only member you know but I I could could tell we were leading some of that and I think that some of it has to do with you know a who you are but also the the niip type program um but then also the work that we have with the uh the Deen heart a hearing program coming in as well so I think there's some correlation there and I think overall um you know it seems pretty clear across the board that you've met or exceeded the goals and just using the language for your contract you have attained the minimum proficient uh leaning towards exemplary um related review from this this formative perspective uh from my summary of everybody else's reviews so I'll pause there and see if anybody thinks I missed anything or if we want to Ed edit anything in the actual document I'm happy to do that and before we officially vote it as as final I I thought it was an excellent summary thank you okay with that said um I move to approve Dr ves's fy2 24 formative uh review second second by Carla any further discussion seeing none all in favor all opposed and it passes okay so that is done moving on to the next agenda item um we are going to the post postform review discussion we have two items here uh first is an amendment to Dr miles's contract it's in the packet for you all um and it is very straightforward I don't expect anybody will have problems Dr miles's had a chance to review it as well essentially the language um previously said after Dr miles's summative annual review and uh as we know we changed last year to go to a 2-year process so we had to account for the fact that he may have a formative annual review um so the language allows for after his annual review formative or summative um and I tried to make sure that it was the annual review and it couldn't just be after review in case something happened and we only did like a mid-year review or something like that so that was the one caveat I had when I was working with Colby on this so any questions comments concerns on the amendment okay none all in favor of approving the amendment to the superintendent contract all opposed and it passes 5 to zero okay moving on um superintendent salary next steps um so this one is a a little bit more background on this one um it's probably the first time in a while that we're actually not negotiating with the superintendent um this is something where we just have to discuss um and Perl since we're not negotiating we have to discuss it's going to be it's going to be an open um I don't expect it to be contentious in any way shape or form but it's just it's the first time since I've been on this board that we've had this conversation in a non-negotiation type mode um so Dr Miles and I talked about that a little bit uh we went through it um and in the memo I provided a couple of different options uh his contract calls for 2.5% um or more if we wanted to uh or adjust if you know if necessary but um using the 2.5% as the target you see in his current salary is 214 uh 2.5% would be 5,350 which would put him to 29350 um I would propose he's done more than that personally um so I would propose we look at one of the other numbers below that um but obviously open on the for the floor to consider um 2.75 gives it 5885 which is 29850 885 2.8.0 374 gives them an even 6,000 which puts them at an even 220,000 and then 3% % at 6420 which is 220 420 as his total salary there's no need to adjust anything else in his contract um his his niip time is is done um but otherwise there's no no reason to adjust anything else so with that said uh open the the floor for discussion and then we can make a motion go ahead Chuck so uh you know I I know Dr noesy excuse me has been very thoughtful in in his approach to making sure all the people around him are well compensated and and and uh I think we need to do the same for him uh and I would propose 3% okay anybody else just I would agree with that completely Chuck okay then I'll take a motion I'll move to uh use a 3% uh percentage increase absolute increase of 6420 for a 2025 salary of $220,400 seconded by Carla friendly Amendment 2024 2025 so it's it starts starts August 1st you just said 2025 so just want to make sure we started August 1st or sorry July 1 July 1 FY 25 FY 25 yep that's not friendly [Laughter] any further discussions no okay all in favor all opposed all right and that passes uh 5 to zero so Dr mileski in 11 days it will be up 3% so thank you thank you thank you for the work there all right um back to our agenda now uh school choice update and next steps and we'll pass it over to Dr milesy great so this should be pretty quick just want to provide the committee with an update on school choice where we've been and what's ahead you'll find that on page 127 in your packet uh so in this last round of school choice we received 35 applications in which we accepted 31 students um as per mgl we have to have a second Lottery the mgl languages has to happen sometimes before no sometime before November we just think that that's way too late so our proposal tonight is to uh keep open those remaining seats that weren't filled you'll see in the packet that has a couple of seats at elementary you know 10 total but most those were filled already only a couple of seats at the secondary level I mean uh middle level just three seats and then the majority of seats left on grades 9 through 12 uh our plan is to open up uh if with your approval open up tomorrow um on June 21st with the deadline being of July 1st and then the lottery taking place July 8th that will give us just time to be able to plan accordingly for the uh for the summer too so I don't think you actually need to vote on it but I would think it was more of just an information FYI wed you to have uh have this information just to clarify deadline of July 5th not July 1st right correct yep okay July 5th yep yeah I don't think we have to vote on it either um at all question if we have somebody who wants to apply for something that's not here they cannot technically apply canot technically apply so if there are seventh grader who wants to come in they cannot we actually had uh seven students apply for sixth grade we only able to take five one of them didn't accept we were able to move over with this the six but there's still one student who is on a wait list but we're trying to be really thoughtful about the available seats that we have so I um at this point we're not proposing opening any additional seats okay so as another question prior to this we had five at every level right so this main we filled in the five anywhere where we don't everything that's not filled in is has been correct and there were a case where I believe I have to go back and double check where first grade I think we had a pull we just pulled one seat off because it was getting full I have to go back and double check okay but other than that it's just simple math of matching up what okay all right any other questions comments from the rest of the committee nope okay thanks for the update and I think it makes logical sense to get the next one done as soon as possible yeah get your planning done great it's it's exciting that we had 35 applications that will say that as well and 31 that we're able to fit in so Tom I take back my comment in first grade because I'm thinking about it there's 60 60 seats available we know 12 * five right then we see that there's 20 31 filled 29 left so yeah match it up so I I know but I know first grade was tight okay great um with that said that's down you're in charge now I'm in charge all right uh all right so uh as we know gone through annual reorganization reorganization this is my third time doing that I will go through the process I will just first open it up to any nominations for chair uh when that process closes we'll then uh open up for any discussion on any of the nominations at that point we'll close out after conversation uh we'll close it out have a vote on any of the uh nominations following that I'll then turn it over to whoever's elected as the next chair to then R run the conversation around Vice chair so uh and simple kind of just a little housekeeping it's also going to it's simple majority of voting members too so I'm assuming everyone will vote tonight otherwise it make it trickier four though right no simple majority of vote of voting it's actually it's not even only those that are here it's only those that vote so if if people please don't I didn't want to I didn't want to say that to make it confusing for myself all right K's office did give a little guidance if it gets that out but we'll hopefully don't get down that so hopefully everyone votes all right Chuck go ahead so did when we set the agenda we knew that there' only be five of us here tonight or was this is always the last one on our agenda and yeah Aon acknowledged a couple months ago that she wasn't going to be able to make this meeting okay um and didn't ask to move this portion of the meeting at all great so open up for nominations go ahead s I'll nominate Tom for chair any other nominations accept the nomination I'll accept the nomination question SCH of policy not to no no we do not we do not I'm guessing just for people at home May out here that the question from Jeffrey was whether or not uh school committee has a policy around potentially being chair or vice chair in an election year was that what you were getting at yep and the answer is no answer is no policy all right we have one open nomination for Tom is there any other nominations okay close out nominations any discussion on Tom on the nomination no discussion to be had I suppose I guess I'll say this I mean I guess it doesn't really matter but um I was considering not accepting it if I wasn't going to run again but I have already made that decision as well so um yeah so I will accept it as a nomination can I make one comment Y not about your nomination per se um I think it's important to recognize that it doesn't feel like a blood sport here um which is uh not always true in this town so um I hope we all appreciate that right did you want to get a little more interesting we can probably throw please no all right any other conversation no discussion all right we'll close that part out uh do a roll call vote uh all in favor we're going to go voting for Tom as chair of the committee start with Chuck yes John yes Tom yes Carla yes Sarah yes congratulations Tom G it again all right I gave it up for a few minutes hope you're going to keep the meeting short yeah I'm trying the wagon last couple last couple of drag way off we reink this V I know In fairness to me and Dr mileski can attest this Aon would ATT test it as well we had to adjust and move things back that we previously planned earlier so anyway it is what it is um all right so we'll open the T the floor for nominations for vice chair has anyone spoke spoken to Aaron to see if she's interested in staying on I have I have not I we didn't talk about it no it's too many open beating things going around I don't talk to anybody any I I will say that um I would like to be Vice chair for the maybe superficial reason to have my name on my daughter's diploma and to shake hands I graduation however I know it's been really good to have a balance of power it's if that's what you want to call it we've worked really well together that way um you still get to give her her diploma I know but I have to say that out of all the things we've done in this position the best part of it was shaking like all those kids hands like it was we all used to do that that was taken away a few years ago while yeah to speed things up so I I'll share this principal C and every is very open to feedback on how we run the ceremony I'm sure anyone who wants to shake hands will have the opportunity to shake hands so I don't think that needs to be a that that was that was truly a highlight like I I think you got the job on that if you want that truly are you are you I'm sorry you done or yeah I know I'm done so there has been years where we've had some continuity where you don't have to necessarily upend chair and vice chair I mean I wouldn't be opposed to just leaving it as is so leave Aaron as Vice chair and you as chair Aaron hasn't said anything to me about it so I don't even know what she wants it so we could we could vote Aon and then if she has anxiety about it we can reor at any time so we could you know we could do it in our next meeting and choose somebody else I or we could table this part of the vote and have this part of the vote in July Fair that's entirely possible too y there's nothing that says it has to happen today if if we're if we're not sure she wants it and and if it's something that might be the best thing I mean she she's still the vi successor she is still Vice chair until successor is elected ex let's come back to it it's she wouldn't have weighed in on that at all before we're all terrified of oml now you meet with the CH you meet with the we just didn't I mean we didn't talk about it probably for that reason I wasn't sure if she'd talked to anybody else she probably wasn't sure if I'd talked to anybody else and we wanted to make sure that we didn't POS problems all right so with that said uh we'll we'll I think table is not the right word because table's only in the same um same meeting we just don't vote we'll we'll postpone we'll postpone the vote I'm going to move to postpone the vote on Vice chair until the next meeting so second second VI Sean all in favor all oppose and that passes right so that will be the only agenda item at no we have we'll probably have a few other things in July don't close it so any further motions motion to check second second second by sah all in favor all opposed and it passes all right good