##VIDEO ID:sRxY2fPw1k4## you good evening everyone and welcome I call the meeting to order if you could please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation un God indivisible with liberty and justice for all oh can you see by the dawn the night what so proudly we held at the Twilight gleaming who BR stripes and bright stars through the per fight or the parts we watch were so streaming and The Rock rare the bombs bursting in air gave Pro through the night that our flag was still there oh s do that star spangled then wave or the land of the free and the home of the bra Mrs fan if you would lead the invocation yes Lord as we begin this this session let us acknowledge your goodness and mercy and ask out your blessings on all our deliberations we thank you for this opportunity to be of service to our community and to the young people entrusted to our care and if you'll remain standing we have one to announ announce the loss of one of our uh Personnel from a long time ago uh Kenneth Edward almea who was born to Edward and Dorothy meta in New Bedford Mass where he spent his early life he attended the Berkeley College of Music in Boston graduating with a degree of music from the northern Conservatory of Music in Banger main he spent his entire professional career as a music direct director and educator for the city of Taunton conducting chus bands and directing theater programs with the community impacting the lives of so many and after retirement he pursued his love for art various mediums he survived by his wife his brother and three sons and three grandchildren along with several nieces and nephews um I would just like to say that we are extremely proud of the work that he did did in that we honor the devotion that he gave to Taun High School to spend his whole career here and he did a great job and we all remember him for that and but also to keep his family in our thoughts and in our prayers so a moment of silence please for Kenny elme thank you thank you Mrs Fagan and roll call roll call please thank you Mr Reus present Mrs shavs present Mr palowski present Mrs fagin present Miss Santos present Mr Vieira present Mr Laura present chairman Dello present and mayor Ron present thank you approval of the minutes of August 7th 2024 motion to accept as recorded by date of the 7th of August second Motion in second all those in favor opposed none opposed so voted I'd like to just respond by saying I'm present I was not present at that meeting okay okay so thank you um we do not have a student advisory committee report this evening is there any public input this evening evening okay thank you and we will go to E which is executive session uh Dr Dello are you making a sure so uh a motion would be in order to go into executive session discuss cyber security protocols pursuant to exemption 4 of massachusett general laws 30A uh section 21 A4 and to reconvene an open session that will be by roll call Mayor is there a second motion and second on a roll call please Mrs Fagan sure um Mr Reus yes Mrs shs yes Mr palowski yes Mrs Fagan votes yes Miss Santos yes Mr Vieira yes Mr Laura yes Dr D and mayor motion passes yes okay e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e motion to come out of executive session okay all right great M make a motion to come out of executive session second motion and second to come out of executive session do we need that on a roll call also yeah roll call please Mr Reus yes Mrs shs yes Mr palowski yes Mrs Fagan votes yes Miss Santos yes Mr Vieira yes Mr Laura yes uh Dr Dello yes the F May amend the motion no votes we taking okay that's part of of the motion it doesn't change we don't have to do the roll call again right okay all right if there's no objection okay all right so all set um next we have social emotional learning update and that will be by uh Chris Bara assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction even everybody um in a moment I'm going to introduce Dr Linda watt our director of School counseling and therapeutic supports here but it's important to note that her work isn't defined by a certain classification of students Dr Watt Works collaborative with myself for curriculum instruction Amy moan director of special education along with Stephanie Hoy student services because a lot of the work Dr watt's work is grounded in evidence-based curricula it lends itself more towards my oversight or introduction tonight than perhaps the other two because the work that she will support in the district is for all students each and every student not just a certain particular uh type of student prototype so having said that I'd like to introduce you to Dr Linda Watt and uh present the update for the social emotional learning uh that has taken place since last spring Dr what thank you good evening evening so I wanted to start oh here we go good okay I wanted to start with um just looking at social emotional learning and mental health and really defining those two things so when we talk about social emotional learning we're talking about skills that everybody has that they need to develop in order to interact with people in order to function um in order to manage their emotions when we talk about mental health we really talk about kind of your emotional functioning so we're talking about anxiety we're talking about depression we're talking about how you manage kind of stressors and things like that in your life so you need those social emotional skills in order to support your mental health so that's kind of the differentiation between those two things but when we talk about the students we're going to talk about both of these things so what I want to really talk about is the fact when we talk about supports for the Youth we want to talk about tiered supports we want to look at like an mtss model and we're going to put into place tiered supports for our students and these are the things that we want to see come out of those tiered supports so we really want to see students engaging more in their own learning and feeling like they're connected to their classrooms we want to see the children being able to manage their emotions better and tolerate frustration or discomfort in their classroom we want to see a decrease in our suspension and an increase in our attendance we really want to see less conflict um amongst the students with them each other and with the adults and we want to provide spaces for the young people to be able to reframe kind of what's going on for them to be able to refocus so they can function in the classroom they can repair their relationships and then they can re-engage so from the spring of last year until now some of the things that have occurred have been that we completed our Universal screenings so we did our cus which looks at those social emotional learning skills and we did our Sabers in June which looks more at the social academic and emotional behavior of our students um and I'll talk about kind of the results of those in a minute we did a lot of professional development which I'll talk about um we did hiring we've had one year a full year with our reset rooms in every class um in every building um our bright program which I'm going to talk about specifically is started in the spring and has been going strong since it started and Manet which is the be um Clinic that opened at Parker hired their behavioral health staff so and she attended our last District mental health meeting of the school year so she is now part of that so in the spring we did our celus we um administered that through third grade all the way through 12th grade the students take this and it looks at their five um Castle competencies they have five social emotional skills so it looks at Social awareness self-awareness self-regulation um relationship skills responsible decision-making and we've been giving this in the fall and the spring every year since 2021 so this is our data and what we're looking at here is we want our children to be in that developed skills or the highly developed skills area so that anywhere from 500 to over 600 is where we want the children to score so a good number of population over 50% of our students are scoring in that range on the flip side of that we do still have a high number of students that are developing those skills or have emerging skills so those are the children that we're going to focus on more when we talk about our tier one interventions so these students will get all students in the district get a tier one intervention so those are the students that we want to look at building up some skills and our tier one intervention will help with that so we have minded up which is our curriculum that we implemented two years ago last year we implemented it across the district for kindergarten all the way through 7th grade um this year we're going to at the beginning provide professional development on Monday about what the expectations are for mindup so looking at how we're going to do mindup in all of the classrooms we're going to do walkthroughs to make sure that we're implementing mindup with Fidelity at this point in time um so those are the two main pieces for the tier one and then we are also we have three schools that attended a restorative practice um training for six full Saturdays with suffk University and they are implementing a tier one restorative practice so that's Chamberlin eole and fredman so when I talk about a tier one restorative practice that aligns very much with the district's um focus this year of belonging a tier one restorative practice is about building community so anyone that remembers um open circle years ago restora the tier one restorative practice is a circle and what it does is it connects the students to their class classroom into their buildings so one of the things that these three schools are going to do is they're going to Pilot that and then we're going to collect some data with regard to how they um the school is doing um and we're going to have some more increased PD for the teachers on embedding some trauma informed social emotional practices into daily classroom teaching we started that today with the new teacher orientation where we talked a lot about how they can start to embed in their classrooms just certain things that will build up those social emotional skills for the children in their classroom so then we also as I said administered the Sabers and when we look at the Sabers this looks at students emotional academic and social behavioral functioning in the classroom and it places them into risk teachers K through S complete this on all the students that they have and then the students complete it from 2 through 12 everybody in the purple range are students that are at low risk so we have a lot of students that are at low risk at this point in time anyone in the light pink is moderate risk and in the bright pink is high risk so we really want to again focus our tier two or our tier three interventions on that population of students because they're at high risk with regard to those um risk factors so our tier two and our tier three expectations going forward for this school year will be we are going to at the beginning of the year provide a review of data analysis and identifying students utilizing a rubric which I shared with you in the spring we will review that with all of the buildings and then review how they should be reviewing data all the data from the spring um screenings will be reviewed in September and then all of the school-based mental health teams will identify the students that will go into tier two or tier three groups or supports um they will they will be consistent scheduling of tiered groups by the school counselors and the school adjustment counselors we're going to make sure that we ensure that they're collecting data during their groups and they're using evidence-based practices and this is very important that we want them to be using evidence-based curriculum much like we're using for reading and for math we want them to also be using evidence-based curriculums when they're doing these interventions um and then we're going to do continued PD on data collection so our reset room we went over this in the spring a little bit this is our end of the year data these are all the number of students that used our reset spaces last year per school um so some some schools to say some shout outs to is pole did an excellent job establishing their reset room their staff in that reset room were like a well-oiled machine they really worked well with different um expectations of their students and interventions Mahi utilized their space very effectively with regard to teaching children recess skills so you'll see that high number of students that that used the space they used that for children that were struggling at recess they would have the children come to the reset room teach them some skills and then take them outside with the adults and generalize those skills so teaching them how to play which was very important because a lot of times we see conflict in The Recess yads so everybody used the reset room a little bit differently um but we did have a lot of successes so when we talk about the data the reset expectation is that every reset that room is collecting data in the same exact way so you'll see through this data collection different students use the room for different reasons some of them have a behavior plan and it's part of their behavior plan some of them it was an unscheduled break but because they were having difficulties in a classroom as part of their plan they came down some of them had schedule break so they were using it and then we also have the reason why they used it and the strategy that was taught or supported so that we can start to again collect that data on what works and what does doesn't work for particular students so our lessons learned from our reset spaces were was that we had increased time on learning because we have the academic support in the reset space when the student comes down disregulated and we work with them on a scale the academic tutor then supports them with what they should have been learning in the classroom during that time so that when they go back up to the classroom they have not missed the learning and that they're ready to learn again so they're not missing anything so that they'll become disregulated again um we have seen increased relationships within the building because now they have connected with other people in the building so therefore there's more opportunities for them to engage in their learning they are now able to generalize their skills more within the academic classrooms because our support staff from the reset room also goes into the classrooms with them and helps generalize the skills that they're using in the reset room so it allows for the children to understand how they're supposed to use those skills in the classroom the only only drawback was there's been some inconsistent implementation which impacted the data collection piece so going forward this year we will fix that and make sure that we're consistently implementing things so our next State uh steps for the reset space we're going to do a review which we've started already a review of the reset room expectations so what a student support meeting should look like what a behavior plan should look like how they should be collecting data and how they should running groups we're going to review data collection and making sure that everybody is utilizing that same exact data collection so all of it looks the same we're going to work with them on monthly reviews of the data so that we can start to tweak things for students as needed rather than waiting we want to use um evidence-based group curriculums and individual interventions and walkthroughs will take place frequently this year to make sure that we're implementing all of these things with fidelity bright is a program that started in April of last year we started um right after April vacation we became fully functioning it is a um a room a classroom that provides support for students who are transitioning back from hospitalization for significant mental health issues or from out of school placement for significant mental health issues students who are on the cusp of possibly being hospitalized or students who are just struggling with significant mental health issues that they're not functioning well within the academic setting um it is very shortterm it's intensive it's a tier three intervention um it's for all students um and we had 11 students from the end of April until the end of the school year uh school year utilize this space this is a grant funded um initiative um so we have a social worker a teacher and an academic um tutor in this setting and this will be all year this year so we'll have really they there's um particular data that we have to collect for the grant so we'll be utilizing that data to to kind of prove whether it's effective or not since last year we've had a lot of professional development so throughout the year we did the restorative practice um through suffk University where 12 staff from three different buildings um attended as I said six full Saturdays of um training so they will be leading the implementation of these practices within their building this year we had uh dialectical behavior therapy um which uh in schools for all of our counseling staff they were trained DBT is an evidence-based curriculum that looks at four components one of them is mindfulness distress tolerance em emotion regulation and interpersonal skills so it hits all five of those social emotional competencies that we really want to develop in young people um so all of our counseling staff have been trained in that and how to utilize it in school and they have received the curriculum that goes along with that um we also did training in the March PD and then we did follow-up training in June on group planning and progress mon monitoring and data collection for all of our counseling staff so they understand when we give them a curriculum how do you plan your group how do you collect data and how do you progress monitor students so we really wanted to make sure that they were trained so that they know how to monitor if the students are getting what they're supposed to get out of these curriculums there's a a chart in here that's two pages long I'm not going to go through the whole chart but what this looks at is at the end of the school year for the last I think maybe four or five years we've been running a mental health what we call mental health food Camp um so we do five full days of professional development for our counseling staff but we also invite all staff in the district to attend so admin teachers any support staff who would like to attend Paras anyone who wants to attend can attend these trainings um and they range all the way from looking at adult seal and decreasing burnout in the adults um to teaching executive functioning in the classroom which is great for a teacher some of them are more leaning towards um the counseling staff so things like motivational interviewing and CBT and schools lean lends itself more for the counseling staff but working with behaviors and OD we had 53 teachers attend that in those 5 days after so those are days that they don't have to come in and we had 53 teachers attend that because they really wanted to learn and that was a whole day PD so when we think about the end of the school year we have a district mental health Team which is a multi-disciplinary team it consists of the nurse manager myself um the director of guidance we have school counselors psychologists School adjustment counselors teachers um all attend a once a month meeting to discuss what are the needs across the district with regard to our students social emotional learning and mental health so at the beginning of the school year we identified some needs this the needs come from the school-based mental health teams so what are the school-based mental health teams talking about their needs come to the district mental health meeting and then we came up with several protocols over the year the first one being our crisis intervention protocol we did not have a uniform consistent protocol across um buildings that looked at young people who are at risk to themselves or others so if a student presents at risk to themselves we actually have a protocol to follow inclusive of an evidence-based screener the Columbia suicide screener that the counselors will use so that everybody is using a uniform consistent protocol and then that leads to our section 12 protocol so if a student needs to be hospitalized we have a protocol in place now that if we need to section A student what would that look like so that just came at the end of the year we created documentation for counselors because one of the things that we found was there was no consistent documentation across the district for every counselor when they meet with a young person what they noted so we created some consistent documentation and we're currently working on a protocol for referrals to the be mandate Behavioral Health person because we have one Behavioral Health person for the district in at mandet so we want to make sure that we utilize that person appropriately and we make appropriate referrals um we want a an exact protocol for return from a mental health hospitalization and a protocol for mental health support after an incident or a tra a tragedy so we want to create a protocol for that to respond so that's going forward we did have the competitive mental health Grant last year so some of the things that our funds were utilized for were to purchase evidence-based Group C group curriculum for all grade levels so there's access to evidence-based group curriculum at all grade levels we purchased supplies for all of the reset rooms to make sure that they had what they needed in order to support the students we uh purchased another full year of universal screeners we also provided clinical supervision for our counseling staff so in order for school adjustment counselors to get their professional license they have to have an independent license for their um master's degrees and a lot of times if someone doesn't have um a licensed supervisor they can't get that independent license so what we did was we took our licensed people so our lcsws our L mhc's and we paid them to provide clinical supervision to people who needed it so this was outside of the school day and it was for their independent licenses so what this does is it provides sustainability for us as a district because that will allow our school adjustment counselors to get their professional license and a lot of times what you hear from them is that they're very happy that this was provided to them because if not they have to pay for this outside and so they're getting something that makes them want to stay here in the district because it provides them with their independent license and then the grant funded um a lot of the professional development that I had talked about um our staffing and hiring update um all of our positions were filled at each location this past year um there were some inter internal movements that occurred mid year so we did have particularly at some schools we had some people leave and new people come and currently there's only one Social Work position that we're looking for and there are interviews ongoing so again we're almost fully staffed for this not next school year so the goals for social emotional learning and mental health for this coming AC Academic Year is consistent walkthroughs through the reset rooms and the classrooms to make sure that we're implementing our tiered supports with Fidelity we're going to implement grade level meetings with our counseling staff so that allows for them to utilize th that training with regard to group planning but then there'll be some accountability to make sure that they're consistently using that evidence-based practice that we asked or we purchased for them um we're going to Pilot that tiered restorative practices within the three buildings that were trained we're going to review our data frequently from the screenings so right now currently we will be reviewing at the beginning of this school year we're going to review again mid year and then at the end to look at the screenings to make sure that the kids are getting the interventions that they need we're going to look and when we look at our screenings we'll be looking at attendance and we'll be looking at the student support data at the same time and then we'll reconvene that M multi-disciplinary District team that I was talking about to assess and monitor where our resources or what other things that we need for the school year this final slide was something as an example of with the Hope by the end of this Academic Year every school building will have a tiered support that identifies what is available in their buildings for the for that building so what are their tier one supports what are their tier two supports this came out of bright when we were doing the bright Grant this was kind of um a tool that they utilized so so the tool is very effective because it matches our mtss model so we're we're going to develop one of these for every school building all right thank you Dr wat for that excellent presentation and um for really educating us on your focus on social emotional learning and mental health um two you know very important things for our children and families right now and it really sounds like you are um focused in all of the areas that are needed um I just have one question and I'm going to open it right up to uh the school committee and I don't know if I missed it when it stepped out but in in putting together your your your vision your goals your plan implementing all these great programs and pieces of this uh were families involved in you know kind of understanding what their needs are what they feel like they need more access to or their kids need more access to when we did our um surveying last year we did not get a lot of response back from families with regard to surveys um my goal this year will be to survey families more consistently um and hopefully get a lot of feedback um we did get some feedback when I sent out the information with regard to our screeners so I did speak to a lot of families at that time that when they were asking questions about the screeners and things like that I got some feedback from families about their concerns okay yeah that's great and I guess you can only use what you get back and surveys on aren't always answered by a lot of people so all right thank you okay I'll open it right up uh Mrs shops Dr thank you so much that was an excellent presentation a couple of things three things that really came to mind is I like that you're looking at the protocols and really setting up um um your informed decisions based on the data you're getting and I think that is important and I think the most important thing is that last slide that you just showed us that that triangle I mean I think it's so important that staff number know what the tiered supports are in each building and they can be different from building to building so I do think it's fairly important that you have it specifically by building I mean I think sometimes I at the school something will happen and and we don't know what to do or who to go to or what supports are in and I think that will circumvent a lot of that so excellent job thank you thank you Mr Laura thank you madam mayor uh Dr wats thank you for that wonderful presentation uh as far as the tied interventions of on the three tier as far as the reset concept of the children are they like repeated students that go back these reset rooms or so the reset room in order to utilize the reset room we have a student support meeting where the team that works with that student meets to discuss what that student's needs are and they create a plan for the reset room for that student and every six weeks that plan is Revisited to make sure that what we're doing is working and if it's not working we can tweak it so they can can spend more time or less time in the reset space or they they're not utilizing the reset space effectively so therefore that was not a good intervention so we revisit the plan every six weeks so it is the same students but that we revisit them every six weeks the other use for that would be as an um alternative to discipline so um when they're going through the discipline process instead of out of school suspension the admin may decide to utilize the reset space um as a tool to teach the child some skills skills that they need for that one day rather than having the student home they're in the school building so the academic tuta can work with them on their school work and the social worker can work with them on whatever they needed to work on so that they don't kind of participate in that same behavior and do the students feel s stigmatized in the sense that they're they're being picked on and put in this environment no it's a choice it's a choice we run it by the parents we make sure that the parents are okay with our utilization of that yep so we have parent consent um and then we talk to the students I have found that most of the students actually want to use the space and we actually have students that ask like can I use the reset space how do I get to use the reset space so we have a lot of students that utilize a space without any stigma because it's not attached to behavior it's not attached to um any type of disability it's literally available for any student and those that benefit from it go back to the classroom and said you know was great great for me because I needed that special attention right exactly yeah we have a lot of students that say I might need to be able to use that space and so we have conversations with them good thank you no problem Mr Vieira thank you Madame Matt thank you for your presentation Dr Watts um when you were talking about the reset space in your presentation you had said that it's utilized differently um based on the school is that by Design from the district to determine which is going to be best and then and secondly is there a plan to have like the space shes universally the same or would you keep it Case by case school by school the plan is for it to be used more consistently the same when we implemented it last year um we implemented it and there were a lot of different spaces and we were in the process of hiring the staff and then what happened was you know there weren't consistent walkthroughs to make sure that the space was you being utilized consistently the same way so the plan for this year is to try to make it more consistent across um the district so that when we collect data the data is accurate and we can utilize that data in a more effective way awesome excellent thank you so much okay Mr Dello thank you mayor uh so for the celis uh just for my education purposes the data is reported for spring of 3936 students is it limited to a certain grade level it is grades 3 through 12 but only 3,900 uh were part of the cellus is there a reason that we excluded so many we didn't exclude them um like part of the consistency for this coming year will be to make sure that when we put the window out that they actually implement it and take it so we do have an opt out for students we probably have no more than 50 to 60 students whose parents opt them out of the cus um so we put a window out and we have the schools administer it per grade level and then typically about 3 weeks into the window desie decides this window for us we don't decide the window so about 3 weeks into the window I ask if we can get some input from desie about how many students have completed it sometimes they can give me that data sometimes they can't last year was a year of transition with desie because the person that was running the celus historically left and they had a new person last year so he had a little bit more difficulty kind of accessing that information for me um so I was not able to get out to the schools like hey you guys only have this many students that took it can we make sure that the classrooms took it so this year hopefully we'll be able to get that data earlier so that we can make sure that that it gets implemented okay so yeah because that's a big number uh and uh just if I may uh on the bright program uh I I want to share not only my colleagues but Folks at home that we had a particular student that went some traumatic experiences and I can tell you that the parent uh was way above uh the accolades that uh were all good uh and not only that the the the main point was that the parent knows the daughter or the caregiver knows the the son okay and they can uh pick up a phone and call ahead and say hey uh Jimmy's not going to be doing well today in school so heads up or vice versa and uh there were certain folks you were at that meeting Dr wats I believe Dr uh Amy monan was there too U special ed director uh and these conversations took place on weekends took place at night took place early in the morning so it's it's I I want to commend the entire group the entire staff that went above and beyond uh to not only take care of that one student but many others that I know have taken care of but it's the parents that brought that to my attention and I had to come and and actually see for myself not that I didn't doubt any of it but they wanted me to be there to better understand the relationship that was built that transformed their student 120% 150% because there's some days that just not good days and it works both both ways so I commend you and your staff and everybody involved for that one student I know there are many others so thank you for your work thank you superintendent so I want to commend Dr Watt for an excellent presentation and when we were preparing for the presentation this afternoon and going through the slides one of thing that was clearly evident is that this work started back during my entry plan seven years ago and you think of where we were seven years ago to where we are now with having bright spaces reset spaces psych multiple psychologists in schools School adjustment councils again this committee you've done some hard work made some difficult decisions to and the city has provided us with the funding to be able to build and continue to build a robust Mental Health social emotional know program to support all our kids and it's only been about a year year and a half since we've been consistently collecting or three years collecting data and you we all know that when we Implement change it takes about 3 years so we're moving in the right direction it's not where we want it yet but I'm very proud of the work this committee has supported I'm very proud of the work that Dr Watt and our Administration has led because we're going to continue to build we're going to continue to add just like we've done with all our robust program so excellent presentation thank you thank you question thank you Mr Laura one more question briefly watch with all the resources that are make we're making available for the student population uh do you see the the teaching faculty also appreciating all that we're doing to work with the student population and that we're addressing many of the concerns which occur as far as discipline in the classroom I think we're on our way as um Mr cabal pointed out you know it takes time but this past year with the reset room spaces being in play um I'm in the buildings all the time and one of the things that you hear from the teachers a lot of times is they are very thankful for the space that the students can be in because the students now are not sitting in the office they're sitting in a space where they have access to their academics and they have access to support so they're also still learning so when they come back into the classroom they're better prepared to be in that classroom so it's not that they're kind of sitting for 15 minutes because they you know had a difficult time in a classroom and then that class period's over and they go back they're actually working on schoolwork so the the teachers are seeing that the students are coming back better prepared to be in their classroom space and I guess and as um Mr Cal pointed out it's going to take a little bit more time but we have a lot more resources for the teachers um we talked a we talk a lot about the school counselors the school counselors are in the classrooms now they're in the classrooms on a regular basis providing supports to the teachers they're providing tiered um groups to the teachers because they no longer have to do special education so they're in the classrooms and they're able to provide support when the students are struggling so we do see um a lot more support and the teachers you can definitely see that they're getting um they're feeling more supported thank you appreciate that all right well thank you I think we're all set so thank you for the presentation thank you for taking the time to be here this evening with us all right we will go to G superintendent's report thank you madam mayor so I'm not going to read my report to retim but I'll just highlight um the critical parts that I think are important for the committee and the public to know so I am pleased to inform the board and the public that tarton high school has been awarded a $400,000 Grant from the bar Foundation as part of phase two of meeting the moment cohort the two-year Grant with the focus on creating a more inclusive and supportive and rigorous environment for all students assistant principal for teaching and learning Carolyn blenau will lead the implementation of this transformative work the initiative will involve the entire School Community teachers families students ensuring that changes we make are deeply rooted in our students actual experiences and needs key areas of focus include strengthening instructional practices through targeted coaching in leadership support building a stronger sense of community in reviewing our disciplined practices to ensure they are Equitable and also incorporate restorative practices activities such as a such as student Summits uh empathy interviews which I can conducted last May with the graduating seniors and shadowing will be a critical in driving the changes needed to support the whole student at ton high school so we've already received positive encouraging feedback from students who actually participated in several bar visits AR State and we're going to continue with those student L Bar visits AR of state and we will with the continued support of the bar Foundation the toon Public Schools is well positioned to redefine the high school experience and fulfill our mission of academic mic Excellence for every student in every classroom I'm also proud to say that in my seven years as superintendent this is probably by far the best all admin Retreat that we've had uh no offense Mr shfs I know you've attended a few but I will say uh the feedback uh from our administrators was outstanding so I'm happy to report that the districtwide administrators including members from the leadership team principles and assistant assistant and associate principles and curriculum directors and supervisors met for an engaging and inspiring Retreat earlier this month over two days we participated in professional Learning and Development activities these included team building and Leadership exercise centered around the theme of belonging the exercises were designed to be enjoyable and interactive in the aim to identify key leadership traits create a supportive environment and promote risk-taking new educ also uh administrators were exposed to the new educator evaluation rubric from the Department of Elementary and secondary education this work was led by Dr Teresa Craig who's the former executive director director of reeds collaborative she facilitated the orientation and then also in the afternoon on one of the days we took a deep dive into preliminary mcast data and administrators started working on their goals I want to thank uh several school committee members who took the time and again I know everybody has day jobs and other commitments but we do appreciate those who do have a little more flexibility in their schedules who took the time to come participate in one of the activities so thank you Dr Dello thank you Mr Laura and thank you Mr shavs I hope you had a chance to see firsthand you know how engaging the retreat was and for me just seeing everybody uh energized enthusiastic it's a great way to start off the year and I'm hoping not hoping I believe that energy will carry over into convocation day on Tuesday the 27th and we'll be know work that we will use to launch the new school year which believe it or not a week from today 8,190 students will be arriving on our doorsteps that concludes my report and on that note um if there's no questions or comments we will move on so we have administrative business uh first is the Staffing report any business with that superintendent uh the only thing is on the second Staffing item I'm happy to report that we are 90% staff when it comes to in our classrooms and we have going to five schools that are fly staff there be a teacher in every classroom at preschool Elementary School co elementary school gag elementary school elementary school middle schools frean is positions positions and midle school is down to two teaching positions as well and the high school has done some great work under the leadership of Dr Harrison and assistant principal Carolyn blenau they still have five positions but I'm very optimistic about the work that has taking place in our districts and as I've shared with the school committee Staffing is one of my top two goals this year to ensure that we have fewer vacancies than what we ended fiscal 24 okay thank you and uh so and there's also the enrollment update which I believe everyone's had a chance to look at so if there's no comments or questions on that Mr Laura there was a position I think about a librarian position a few months ago that was pending has that been resolved we had one recommendation made last week there now is two positions open there's a candidate that's being recommended for the gagan Bennett and I believe the high school has selected someone I'm not sure if they've accepted the offer so we should be I'm saying now all filled in our librar spots thank you okay you're welcome all right and then on just on the Staffing report so in your packet uh you have last week's numbers so last week on 8:14 we had 8,07 students as of this afternoon uh we're up to 8,190 students and we are still registering and enrolling students as we speak and we we're seeing uh a nice uptick in kindergarten we're up to 540 students in kindergarten I believe your report reflects 521 uh our prek program again I got to commend the committee for having the foresight to invest in prek because I do believe Universal prek will be something we'll see within the next two years we're up to 321 students in prek and I want to just remind the school committee and the parents at home uh grades 1 through 12 begin on the 28th prek and K come to school on September 4th four that'll be the first day for prek and K so two different start dates okay all right thank you superintendent all right we will go to subcommittee reports finance and law Dr Dello thank you mayor the uh special meeting of the finance and law subcommittee met this evening uh for an intense 1 hour and 40 minutes uh present were Mr Vieira and Mrs shavs and myself uh the subject matter was to review a request for proposal for Legal Services uh a motion was made to recommend the award to americ and oconnell and to refer it to the committee the whole on SE setember 4th so that will be on the agenda of September 4th and then the regular finance and law subcommittee met uh at 5:45 it's normal start time uh first on the agenda was a procur oh also present with Mrs shavs Mr Vieira and myself uh first on the agenda was the procurement card it was a memo that was reviewed uh by uh Mrs Monahan and uh there were no U questions asked so it was justed and placed on file and then the uh second item were bills payable we started off with fy2 uh in the amount of $484,350 39 the motion to vote unanimously to approve that uh with a couple of questions uh first and foremost uh there was an item uh regarding uh Outsourcing some printing material to a company online when the response was uh could be in untimely Manner and the cost was less uh so of course we always like to support local if possible and then uh there was a suggestion made regarding uh applying for an Uber business uh application for folks traveling on the um school committee uh on the school business to conferences presentations so forth and also to uh look into the lift for business app uh and the reason being not only is it uh more centralized and uh one form of payment which could be the procurement card is tagged to but it's also a duty of care issue safety envirment employees knowing where they are uh at all times uh and for the best interest of them so a motion was made unanimously to uh refer that to um future uh Discovery I believe there was something that we needed to go through the city ordinance is that correct so we're going to look into that but the motion was made and voted unanimously and the entire fy2 warrant in the amount of $484,350 was approved second on the finance and law agenda was fy2 24 bills payable for $268,600 and just allow me one second here uh a question was asked regarding uh bral Community College uh about paying $15,000 what that was for and of course it's for our early college and uh a comment was made by myself uh you know the state government's been very creative in offering adults 25 and over free education for uh Community College uh why can't our kids get it for free why are we paying for that so basically it's something that's a wish and uh we just paid the bill and that's it and that was fa voted unanimously by all three committee members and that concludes my report thank you mayam motion to accept the report and adopt the recommendations of the sub commmittee Motion in second all those in favor opposed none opposed so voted I seem to not have the second page of the agenda may I look at yours mine absolutely there you go oh okay um so next is new business mayor I just had one comment and uh the superintendent said it three times already uh it's about back to school on the 28th of August uh which where we know it's right around the corner but we need to remind our I made a mistake September 5th Folks at home and that's from grades 1 through 12 and the correction for pre is September 5th not September 4th okay okay thank you Wednesday all right it's okay we have unfinished business and action item updates number one is two Hamilton Street City assessment update so in your packet uh I believe you have a letter that I received and that was addressed to the school committee members on July 30th from superintendent of buildings Christopher carmichel in which he provides you with an update on the work that is taking place at two Hamilton Street uh I provided you with a cover memo that kind of summarizes um the his memo but you have all the work that's been taking place regarding to Hamilton Street and I just want to make sure that the committee is uh aware of the work that is taking place so that we can begin to have conversations on if there's a desire on the committee side know to further engage in conversations regarding this facility okay thank you superintendent and as you can see a lot of work is taking place Mr enus um I was thinking about inviting the the um the engineer Mr K Michael and Del Russo back in to give us a further update on the building just see where we're at and what the next step is May the 18th of September or so okay so is that your motion it's form as a motion okay so motion to invite those three party SE engineer Mr kichel who's a building superintendent and CFO Del so to a school committee meeting to give an update on the Cal building okay motion is there a second second okay motion and seconds all those in favor I opposed none opposed so voted okay thank you and then uh anything on the action item update on the action item the only thing on the action item update is I do know on the first two items I'm sorry I do I anticipate in the near future items dated 9722 and 105 22 will be coming off shortly so I did receive an update today regarding the food truck uh the food service truck I was told is being wrapped today and then it should go go through its final inspection so we should have that shortly and The Culinary Kitchen expansion that work will be completed Sometime Late October and the tot and high school awning which I hope some of you have had a chance to see there is a piece that is missing on the back of the school in the alley that piece is being be fabricated and it will be installed and then that project will be completed so other than those two items and other than the items I've shared with you in my weekly superintendent uh weekly school committee report that it's been a very very busy active summer on the facility side okay thank you Mr viea thank you Madame May so The Culinary Kitchen is it not going to be um the students are they going to be able to utilize or practice at the start of the school year or is that affect their ability to it's going to affect the program as far as their ability to get into the actual commercial kitchen and be able to prepare food to prepare meals and and we we noed when the bid was awarded that this project would be um completed sometime I mean we're expecting end of October that's a pretty high date that's not load well you know with construction especially Construction in the building that's um that's not new there could be some unforeseen condition unforeseen circumstances there was an unforeseen condition or circumstance with a drainage pipe that had to be rerouted and reconnected so as of today that's been the only unforeseen condition but other than that the project has been running pretty smoothly thank you superintendent Dr M mayor thank you um on the action item uh traffic and parking situation at the high school uh we met on a few occasions I know Mr Vier was present I believe Mrs sha is pres Mrs no Mrs sha wasn't yet here m Fagan was present since we have new leadership at the high school are we going to reconvene this uh committee or whatever we want to call it to address the parking or safety patterns or drop offs and all that stuff because we do have a new leader at the high school if that is in the form I mean obviously it's on the an action item so we can I don't think a motion would be needed but we can coordinate studing some meetings once the school year starts okay okay okay all right so so there are no press here this evening so how about a motion to adour motion to adour Second motion and second all this in favor oppos none opposed so voted thank oh yes sorry you know what