##VIDEO ID:a3cfR7qxuQo## [Music] we're going to call to order the meeting for the alal Royal St Regional school committee meeting for this Wednesday October 16th 2024 our first order of business is the Pledge of Allegiance and miss Emily White's going to start us off I pled aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with libery and justice for all next order of business we have is the approval of minutes we'll start with the September 18th minutes is there a motion I'll move them as present thank you there's a motion made is there a second a second motion made in second is there any discussions I'm seeing none all those in favor thank you and then the next one is the school committee meeting uh approval of minutes for September 23rd 2024 is there a motion a move present thank you Bobby is there a second second yes any discussion seeing none all those in favor moving on to public input Eric would you check to see if there's anybody on that list over there okay there's no public input this evening um before this meeting we had student recognitions I'm I'm going to name them here from royalston Community School we had Benjamin Lael and Noah Gregory from Aces we had miles Carlson and Allison martinz from arms we had Natalia campier and Randy hu from AHS from the high school we had en sepa and Mia bue our Subway Scholars this evening were Sophie Rob Sophie Roberts and Dominic St Andre congratulations to you all we have some unfinished business it's the superintendent evaluation mat I'll turn it over to you um sure so the only piece about that that was unfinished is I will make sure that everyone um receives an a copy of the electronic version of the form and also we will do printing I I think what we discussed at the last meeting was that we would print the forms as well and then have have folks provide a wet signature for them um so there was conversation at the last meeting that folks wanted to see the mcast results which I entirely appreciate as I mentioned it is a big part of our work um I will say oh back to the evaluation P apology um so I think we're going to need to have the evaluation documents yeah let back by a certain time for jod to be able to compile them um so when will they go out that I can have the that out this evening uh tomorrow tomorrow can we do you think two weeks is enough and have it back either email is email email or um well it's well when you when you respond so what we could do is when you respond it automatically collects your answers into the Google sheet um for those that I don't know if we agreed that everyone would do a hard signature or if those who wanted to could do we going to to see if there was something on the form that said electronic signature was recorded is is that what it is recorded okay the electronic I either I think either way would be fine um there's no legalities to or no we've we've discussed that and Council says that but again we can print and then W sign any of the copies but just for your timelines if you're like oh my gosh I'm going to need a couple of days to get it over to the district you don't have to wait for that because your actual answers will be submitted online if you if you do the form that way um so whatever date so if you could get it out tomorrow is two weeks enough for everyone would two weeks be okay so back by the 31st okay that right no it's just an agreement of the committee that it works for you guys okay so that was our unfinished business for the superintendent evaluation we were moving on to did you have anything else you want to add no I presented my evaluation materials uh goal materials last meeting I didn't get any questions here as you guys are going through the evaluation tool if there's questions or things that you want to ask me do please feel free to reach out to me especially if there's a specific piece where you're not sure if it you know let's say you have a concern but you're not sure it fits into a specific area let me know and we can we can talk about it and I can try to help process it but anyway that's that all right moving down to new business the first item of business is update technology feedback so I did have an opportunity to meet with the technology assistant um I got some very valuable feedback uh most of it revolving around some gaps in communication that we've had between the management organization and the tech assistants that are on the ground uh I also had a labor management meeting just earlier this evening uh with the union and they expressed some of those same concerns um I've already been in conversation with DG networks about some of the communication concerns um the union has been working with the district to try to potentially put together Ana for some type of ticketing system that we could use that might contribute to cleaning up that communication but um there's other pieces that need to be more uh I would say there's more pieces of the puzzle that need to be exercised with Fidelity with regard to the communication there needs to be more consistent meetings with folks and there needs to be certain guidelines that are communicated out to the district so that is something that we will be working on um between the administration and DG networks but uh it was really helpful to get the Insight from the tech assistants and hear some of the concerns from the union regarding what teachers and or admin assistants and others are experiencing so we're going to try to act on that and again this is we decided to move in this direction as an option to assess whether not it was it was appropriate I think there's a lot of things I will say there are a lot of things that are being done in the background by DG networks that I don't think the the general population see with respect to servers and issues that we have with Connections in our Wi-Fi and the way certain systems are set up um they have been trying to address some larger internal like um Network work structure problems but and they've been addressing them but those are the kinds of things that go unnoticed so it's usually the the things where someone needs something ordered or there's you know someone needs something relatively quick and there's been some breakdowns in communication where that's it's proven challenging so we're going to try to work on that and that is the update that I have does anybody have any questions I kind of I have a couple As far as how how much impact on daily activities has some of this lack of communication like have students not been able to use Chromebooks and things like that because I'm I get some complaints from parents occasionally um and um in couple cases kids were turned away saying yeah I can't fix that right now leave it in the office and like that and so that's a little concerning when and I know there was staff issues in certain places during the week or in a couple cases like they didn't know where the person was like it was regarding this building um like where the person was so how is that being flushed out like when are they supposed to be in house you know are are they getting here at like 8 in the morning or I mean I know a lot of these people are probably coming from Eastern Mass so what's their scheduled time frame to be in person so I I'm not struggling with the answer to that okay yeah I don't know that it's their like the scheduling piece of it and I don't want to cross over boundaries um meaning from like a school committee perspective right I don't want to go school committee management um so what I would say is I I definitely hear and have heard even through the conversations the concerns about some of their staff not knowing where to direct people which is true like there were kids I I can speak specifically probably what you're you're referring to there were students coming down in the middle school to find Miss Winters to get their Chromebooks fixed and there was a person there that was the rep and their answer was like oh I don't that's not me go to the main office and then they go to the kid would go to the main office and the main office would say that's Tech go go to Tech so it was a bit of a a circular roundabout for the kids and and it didn't have a traumatic impact on on the students I mean there were probably a few kids that got to spend a few more minutes out of class than they wanted to but we do have replacement Chromebooks and we have been trying to address any of the Chromebook issues for students um the biggest impacts from communication that I that I have been made aware of is more with respect to our testing systems and like how we can disaggregate the students um and the the grouping of students when they do like the NWA testing and then we're looking at the data or some of our other assessments like the dibles so more of the problems have been on the end of bigger level like arrangement of systems and platforms okay not to dismiss the some concerns that were presented in particular here and your point is valid another thing that I just discussed was I think there's been a portion of apprehension not wanting to overstep with what the responsibilities of the Union employees are so I think and and I may have over it overemphasized some of that right so I feel like part of what may have contributed to them saying that's not me is kids are coming with broken Chromebooks and a tech you know the the person on site is like well that's not an administrative thing that's a tech assistant thing and I don't want to start doing Tech assistant work because we don't want to take that work away but the reality is because I'm not disputing that that was the wrong choice yeah the reality is it's the administrator's job to step in when they can and if they're needed so so those are definitely pieces of the communication system that we're working on okay we pretty much covered most of my points I had some complaints too but I just wanted to clarify I know they when we had the presentation basically they there would more or less be somebody here I think almost every day a different facet someone is here every day and that's why I can't I said I don't I don't want to speak to the times they're here during the school hours um will one of their employees you know come in at 9: probably at times I don't have a set hourly schedule for each of the individual employees I have that they're on site each day um there's also again sometimes times get shifted right because like Mr Salzman himself comes here now on Wednesdays to make sure that this is all set up for the school committee and and for you know working with aotv so he's shifted his time to come in later you know on on a Wednesday so that he can then stay because he'll be here till the end of the meeting so there are some of those pieces as well so that but but mostly there's someone here every day okay just you know we we kind of signed an agreement I just make sure that that's well the agreement was for four days we were talking about four potentially five days a week and I would say we've had someone here five days a week okay regularly um again it's not structured as like a specific this is your 8 hour day but they're typically here a school day at least a school day length so if they come a little later they're staying a little later and not to suggest that that is like an answer for the kid Tech issues the feure Tech issue so maybe that's something we need to work out more so but some of the tech stuff is only able to be accessed after school right when the teachers clear the classrooms or you can sit down and then kind of process what the issues are so it's that's partly why it's not like you come just school hours school day it's it's a little bit more flexible sure maybe on a Monday sometimes things go wrong during the weekend and with the computers for the students that maybe we could request if they could come in earlier on that day yeah maybe we could do that and they can leave a little bit earlier in the daytime maybe got come in earlier yeah maybe we could I appreciate I appreciate that so are they Matt are they in like each building every day or they there there there's one individual y they're on campus every day they may not be yeah there's only one person in I mean if we had a tech administrator they wouldn't be in every building every day they're typically housed out of the middle school which is what this model has been and then they go to any building that they're needed at um but it's a lot of it is more communication Direction and coordination with the technology assistance which admittedly that coordination has been part of the problem so that's one of those big pieces that we need to address okay and I know that some purchases have been taking a really long time so yep and and I can speak to that also but I the specifics on that and it just is true I'm not going to tell you stories uh I know there were a few instances where Dan Saltzman himself had said to me like how do I get something ordered and I would suggest I'd say okay well I'll put you in touch with Maria and Nancy and they'll show you how to get a PO for the thing so then Maria and Nancy would put together a purchase order for for the request but Dan was under the assumption then that our office sends the purchase order over to the company and orders the equipment so he was sitting around thinking okay I put the purchase order in the way we explained it there were a number of things that he put purchase orders in for that then we had to go back and and explain how the process works and and I own some of that breakdown in communication as well but it's something that we're definitely we believe we've addressed that ordering piece we're going to continue to address the communication and the coordination piece okay excellent any other comments questions just um just out of curiosity do you think it would be possible that we could get um you know perhaps maybe some sort of monthly report um from that organization um to the committee just to say okay you know this is kind of what we've been not necessarily the nitty-gritty of the daytime stuff but that's great idea it's a public contract we voted it m talking like these are the system upgrades we did a monthly update of whate yeah I will I I will tell you that Dan who leads the the organization attends our executive team meetings every week so he's there with our executive team and whenever there's issues we do process them with Dan at the table and he puts together his executive briefing I have every one of my leaders put an executive briefing together of what their big picture pieces are for the coming week so we go over it at our meeting and then we discuss what our needs are and so they already do prepare those executive briefings for me so it should really not be a problem to summarize some of that work and then give a monthly report to the school committee Le okay thank you awesome there any other comments questions concerns all righty moving on the mcast presentation I'm turning that over to Matt so thank you this even evening is going to be brought to you by Matt and it's like I'm actually going to try to get myself away from the microphone which you'll be happy about however the opening has been uh directed toward me as you can see Cindy was unable to attend this evening um it was very regrettably she really wanted to be able to do the mcast presentation but she had very serious situation where she couldn't be I am going to try to slide over so that I can work the computer as well while I go through some of these slides um so for starters I want to thank everyone for saying please can we get a look at the new accountability data how are things going how are we doing on mcast I want to preface that this district has historically not done well in the achievement section of mcast right so the achievement section is when we talk about the two scores for mcast there's achievement and then there's growth I like to focus on student growth because that shows that they're moving from one place to another our students have started off at a low achievement rate so even if they're growing and moving they are potentially still behind the state averages and their achievement scores will pale in comparison so I do want to point that out um I am actually thrilled to be presenting the data that we have I shouldn't say thrilled I'm relatively happy to be presenting the data that we have we certainly have a long way to go but this information and this presentation should show you and give you a good idea that we are definitely on the right track and we're headed in the right direction right now so for starters we wanted to just go over quickly an accountability system refresher so you can see and the people at the table have these packets you can read along it's the same slides uh for the audience we'll make this available to the public you can get one just email me um I'll see Jody maybe we can attach it to the to the posting after sure okay thank you so this shows how the accountability status is configured there's two parts that give us the accountability rating there's the normative component which is our performance as students in the school compared to other schools and then there's Criterion reference components which are our targets so again where I said our achievement scores are going to just compare us flat achievement to whoever else took the test our Criterion referenced targets are going to measure ourselves against what desie is expecting us to do so that's something important that's something important to take into consideration um so the measure is taken on the performance of groups schools and districts on the following specific indicators there's achievement on mcast there's student growth there's High School completion rates there's English learner proficiency rates and additional there's some additional indicators and in your package there is the entire accountability worksheet that I've given you a copy of so please you can dig into that more thoroughly on your own um but I just wanted to go over basics of how to look at the accountability system so those are the pieces that they focus on to see if we're making our targets there's achievement student growth High School completion rate English learner proficiency and additional indicators those additional indicators are typically how many students are completing higher level cour or enrolling in advanced placement courses so those are some of the additional indicators as well as The Chronic absenteeism which we've spoken about that the district has done very well this um this is an example of the Criterion how it's how it's presented our accountability status and if you look at the very bottom here's it's important in 2023 for our Criterion reference Target percentage we hit 23% and we hit 40% of I'm sorry of our these were our percentage points I'm sorry and combined what they do is they combine our scores from 23 and for and divide it in half and that's how they get our current accountability rate right now we're at 35% which I will start to show you this is the this is the detailed accountability chart for 23 if you look at FY 23 you can see these are the total possible points in each C and then you can see the points that the district earned so these are the different points for achievement based on English Math and Science mcast achievement scores then we have growth which is based on the ELA and math growth then High School completion which is based on all of these characteristics so I'm not going to go over every single number in this chart but I I want to make sure people do understand how to read these are the big buckets that they judge us on by the state these are the pieces that go into them and these are the points that we were awarded and then they calculate our total score so in 23 you can see that our annual Criterion reference Target percentage was a grand total of 23% and we were not even heading towards meeting goals in 23 this is FY 24 where you can see that we essentially almost doubled the percentage from last year of our accountability scores uh this year we got a 43% but it averaged to the 35 because as I mentioned they take a two-year spread so I'm hopeful that next year when we're above 50% then that will help average us to a much better place right now as you can there is a statement on it that says progress towards goals um so that you are aware this year we made substant um I'm sorry this year what we did was make moderate progress towards our goals last year we were not making PR progress towards our goals this year we made moderate progress towards our goals which is a big imp it's a big Improvement we're hoping next year to be making substantial progress towards our goals these are the scores from mcast we put together in your package the scores in your package there's the 23 scores also for each of these subcategories I didn't include them in the slideshow I just hid those slides because they're just additional numbers so there's one sheet for our Ela achievement in all of our different grades and when you're looking at this sheet you can refer back to the FY 23 scores in the package but the green highlighted areas are areas where our achievement grew the reds are where our achievement decreased slightly and the whites are where we had essentially no change with respect to the mcal scores now again these are just the achievement scores of mcaps so when I'm finished getting through this I'm going to invite the principles up to speak more individually about each of their school scores and what's going on in in their builds our math achievement data similarly the FY 23 data is in the package we had some really good highlights of growth but we also had areas where we where we sank down there's really other than being clearcut and saying there's areas where we grew and there's areas where we we fell below the state basically the red means we fell a little further from the state than we were last year so if last year the state had 54 and we had 39 and then this year the state had an average of 54% meaning and exceeding and we had 26 you'll see a rent but you can see in each one of these the current this is the state average this is the district average so you can see here in third grade we did better than last year 35% of the state were in needing and 28% of our kids were there which means we're getting closer to that state in that area here's our data for the science this was interesting um I think the high school will speak to the science tests a tiny bit more in their data because it does show something kind of interesting where I'll ruin a little Thunder it it seems like in the higher level courses our students are performing better in in their endcap results we were I believe we did better in our Physics Exam than we did for the biology but I'm sorry and if I ruined that speaking point she's working on her SL here's student group comparisons from 23 to 24 this is something I would like to point out this is based on the the changes from our different groups of students that are designated by des and what this shows is there are certain places where we fell below again like our our difference from Desi decreased those are the red there are areas where our difference from Desi increased and those are in the green what I want to point out is some of the areas that we're seeing these green highlights which are our Focus areas and where desie is focusing on us raising our scores so even though we had a slight decrease right in math for overall you can see that our lowest performing students did better percentage wise than they did last year our high need students did better our lowincome students did better and our Hispanic and Latino students did better on their math exams so that's a really high note to notice and again again we have work to do across the board for all of our students but we'll hear about that from the principles another this is the 10th grade testing comparison and again you'll see where we're seeing some big green spots which is we're moving our lowest performing kids we're addressing the needs of our high need students and our low income populations it's our general aggregate that has been a barrier for us and and we're going to keep plugging away at making sure everyone would chose [Music] that and with that I am going to ask uh Miss Carrie sheret to talk about rcs's have my version too okay and you can tell me when to move your slide okay all right um so what you what you see um in front of you move mine down here too um our our achievement and I took 2023 and I have 2024 for you to look at so what you are seeing like um superintendent aworth just said is this a percentage of the two years put together for 2024 um so all of our students moved up to 65% my lowincome students went from 32% to 79% and my high needs went from 24 to 88% and then total for our school for accountability we're at 44% it's not on there but when we go to those slides that's meeting no you can wait Matt don't go that's meeting so we get to 44% out of all that I think the most important thing that I wanted you to be able to see is that you know we did Institute a new Ela curriculum last year so typically scores will go down when that happens but ours were able to be inreased and we see the line with math as well so out of possible Four Points earned you can see the difference between 2023 to 2024 so um that's where you have like a two a two and a three so our low income students improved our high need students and then we got down to math and we had a lot of growth in math and that was not a district Focus per se last year but my staff we attribute the growth for math with the work with the new Ela curriculum and the focus on language um breaking down the words and getting the students to really hash out different pieces and the skills so that's why we believe that there was a huge increase um for our math scores as well and I appreciate you saying it and I failed to say it in my my um explanation if you notice too most of the greens in the areas where we grew even as a district were in math there were more in math than there were in ela even though we did have some good high points in ela but to car's point and I know that Dr Kennedy is probably like cursing at the television right now saying you should have mentioned this up first I know she would have said the same that Miss shet just said which is we had previously implemented a new math curriculum and we're working on using it with Fidelity our math scores are going up we just introduced a brand new Ela curriculum which typically shows decreases in achievement we did not see tremendous decreases so we are very hopeful that as the teachers become more familiar with the product and we're working with this system that we'll see even bigger gains with our students in ela so thank you for that you can go to the next one yep so um here's our growth which is another way to um look at the pieces that you saw from the last slide um the last very last SL going to talk about how I breakdown um so I wanted to talk about our growth and you can see the points that were earned out of possible four and you move down to ELA and you can see that all my students moved from a two to a three and then my lowincome and my high need students are at fours wow I'm very excited my staff knows how excited I am we had lots of celebrations um and even my my math superintendent is excited I know right um our math scores you know this is all students it says two and two but when you come down to my lwi income and my high need students they moved up to threes and it's outstanding it speaks to the work that my staff have done with the students and the families um we focused on an inclusion model this past year so that our special ed teachers were in the classroom doing co- teing um my staff worked on two data Dives with me two data chats so they looked at their students and then figured out targets made smart goals to move those students forward in the next couple weeks weeks and then we had met again um my building instructional leadership team offered a lot of um CPT Flex so um different times for teachers to get together to look at data look at engaging instruction um differentiation and looking at some of the state standards and I think when it comes to our lowincome students they really families really started to feel connected to school and we are an extension of family all the teachers even myself included we say there are kids there are kids um so collaborating with Community Partners so we can figure out what is happening and how we can get students on campus Because we know we know about our chronic true and say and how we were able to improve that that's why we have the fours yeah so if you get them to school and you can get them in seats and you can support them their social emotional learning G to have grow so you can go to the next one that too I'm trying to go fast because I know there's a lot of people talk after me um so what I did want to point out for our school accountability is that this is a lot to look at but if you take the first line at the top it says all students and you see uh 4916 from 2023 and then you see 4923 and there was only a 0.7 change the state wanted us to be at 4943 so instead of getting like we could have got possible Four Points in that category only were awarded two because we improved below the target but if you look down our high need students and our lwi income students you know the recovery path met and then there was a little bit improved below the Target so I know that's a lot to look at um but if you check that like there's the the one that says change that's the one that I've been focusing on because for me my high need students my lowincome students whether it be math or Ela and even as you go down a little bit further further it says typical growth High exceeded typical growth the big thing that pops out to us here is that are my general level students need increased rigor because there's potential for them to continue um improving so that's our Focus for um this year and I did ask the staff to like I know what we've done for work the past year but I asked my teachers at our last staff meeting to tell me why they believe that we've had that much growth um and I put some quotes they said improve School culture and climate the co- teing model consistent expectations and high expectations social emotional learning supports parent teacher engagement and connections and instilling a sense of pride in their work for the students and that speaks directly to my staff and how hard they've worked with kids and families that's fine okay next steps uh we are going to be focusing this year on increasing that rigor um really working with our Massachusetts state standards and aligning those to our Ela curriculum that we have been using we use data we started using it last year and we'll be Lo using it a lot more um we're going to be working on four data chats this year as a staff instead of just the two that we did last year and we were able to put in our schedule that my special ed teachers can meet with their regular Ed teachers by monthly and that includes meeting with our interventionist as well and my instructional leadership team is going to continue um working on collaborating with each other we're going to look at data and then we're going to use that to to offer different PD in our building to our staff to move our staff forward um and last but not least I know you guys can read the slides I'm trying to tell you things in our own slides uh the support for the Guardians I think that that's really important I asked uh the parents and Guardians at my open house what they're interested in learning about and learning about how to read their children's State testing data was like number one on the list I was like perfect because we're excited about that we want to show our parents that because they want to also help their children succeed and so helping them like this is a paper you get what does it say so we're going to collaborate with them on that we're offer a couple evenings so they can do some work with us and we're really working on getting our children out into the community and having Community Partners come to us at RCS we're going to be going to um the town and doing some voting very excited about that uh Miss McDaniel's class gets to participate in that so we're super excited and last but not least really um working with our community connections that we have to get supports for fam who need them so that students can come to school and the district is not responsible for any policy changes that take place in royalston based on the voting of our RCS students so they're voting on something for they have to vote ptg was nice enough to give us aund $100 and they will vote on how to spend that money yeah that's sweet that is sweet any questions specifically for car that's really I'm really very excited really great news that's good keep up the good work bring that message back to the to the whole staff there and tell them to keep up doing what they're doing and they're moving forward and that's good for the students they are outstanding and I think the quote was um you know Mrs McDaniel put her on the spot asked her students you know what changed there're sixth graders now and one said you taught me to love learning your story yep I can I'll I'll Echo that quote and I'm GNA hopefully not offensively our teacher here um I met with Deb Harris Dr Deb Harris who is our special education consultant who goes through the district and she said she said um her team just the other day was at RCS and they were in Laura's class and she said we actually asked the kids uh they said do who knows does anyone know what your your number of students that were in the red were last year and think was it 16 or 19 the year before it was it was a certain number but one of the students in the class knew the number and they were like it was 19 and they were like yes and then they said and can you guess how many people were in the red this time around everyone was like two and they said no zero and then they asked what's contributed to this and one of my favorite students said I finally just started getting interested in what it was that was happening in the class and I realized how important it is to learn and Deb Harris was like exactly and Miss McDaniels was like exactly and it was just a wonderful moment where I think everyone of of us the student the teacher the consultant and the superintendent were all on the same page and the principal was there as well and we were all thinking exactly if we can get these kids to be here and realize the importance of this to them it will click right that just speaks to what Carrie said our community get them here so okay thank you again car thank you and next I would like to invite up Miss Sarah Priestley from Asus good evening so the first slide on the aces section is the achievement levels um compared our scores to state so that's for grades three and four in LA and math the notable pieces on this slide are the areas where we're close to the state percentage and areas where we are either ahead of or below the state uh percentage so you'll see you can read the numbers yourselves but what I take away from this is the number of students in the partially meeting expectations category where we're looking to move students that are in those bubbles of not meeting into partially meeting and from partially meeting into meeting and from me meeting into exceeding that we're moving everyone up in those those different bands of um their scores so our instructional leadership team this week has looked at an item analysis of the ELA for grades three and four the math for El for uh grades three and four and looking at each item and where our students performed below the state on different uh standards and looking at our curriculum and our instruction and where do we need to build additional support in those standards and those skills so that we can move those numbers from not meeting to partially from partially to meeting so that we're increasing that over the next year if you go on to the next slide so these next two slides focus on our student growth percentage so you'll see that one of the bubbles and it just comes out this way when you run the report one of the bubbles uh represents um Aces and one of the bubbles represents the district the star repres represents the state and what you'll notice is that the achievement is low which is why our bubbles are at the bottom of the graph but the growth isn't that low the growth is closer to the median or to the mean line at 40 and 35 so that tells us that our students are growing that the growth is is there we want our bubble to be in the top right quadrant but the closer we are to the right quadrants in general is a good thing so we are seeing that okay the next one is for math I think and the bubbles are very similar and that compares 23 to 24 as well I didn't mention that and then the next slide is our accountability so this is specific to Aces what I like about this visual is that it shows the points that we earned and the total points possible so you look at something like Ela achievement is lowest one point total points possible is four but you look at mathematics achievement and that's a three out of four so that's that's exciting um at the bottom it gives you the um totals the weighted total and then on the next [Music] slide this shows and you can't really see on the um projector but if you looked at this on a computer you can see that the 2024 column the first two boxes the one and the three are highlighted those are increases from 2023 and the fourth box the math growth is also an increase from 2023 if you look at the progress toward Improvement Targets in 2023 it was 37% we are now at 45% which shows our that we are growing it's very exciting we're still moderate progress both last year and this year um but the number is growing and we were in the eth percentile in 2023 and we are in the 10th percentile so it it's trending upwards which is really exciting and getting over that 10th percentile for Aces is is if we are I believe it's a 2ear path at 10 or over not sure if it's at 10 or over 10 but that that helps with getting us out of an accountability status which the the school has been in for as we know decades and we are on our way and we are on our way so our next steps for ELA I just outlined a couple of pieces that we're looking at so as um Carrie mentioned we are in our second year of implementation with an Ela program um my view and we know the research says anything in its second year is going to show the most amount of growth so we are excited to see what that looks like this year um We are continuing to work with savis and the um professional development that they're providing for our teachers we are encouraging teachers to use that program with Fidelity but customizing it to the students that are in front of them and what does that look like our instructional coaches are working with our teachers our instructional leadership team is looking at um our programs and where some areas that we need to really focus on for this year um the second bullet talks about using formative and summative assessments so really using data to inform the instruction in the classroom the district leadership team has been talking about formative assessments and Comm common assessments um that we're we would be using to track student progress um and certainly our ilt and our coaches um and our school leadership team are looking at those as well in math there is is a group of teachers who are participating in avmr training and the avmr is uh assists Educators in um identifying where students are at in their learning and building their um numeracy uh sorry numeracy skills so that's something that we really want to focus on you know targeting instruction for our our math students so that um professional development is being offered for teachers and again the idea of using a formative assessment to guide the instruction in math I believe that is it for me any questions questions yes the students are all set they have everything that they need and the teachers have everything that they need at the current moment we believe that they do okay that's all I want to make sure yep it's going to take some work it's going to take some continuous uh looking at data and we get there is there anything the school committee members can do will help with any way any way there's nothing that comes to mind right now but knowing that you're open to um assisting in that is really great to hear so thank you for your question you're welcome I appreciate it thank you thank you and next we will ask Mr Jason Webster to join us for arms good evening eventually going to need bif focals but we'll work on it for now uh so we're going to be talking about the middle school and as we look through the data we're going to see that there are definitely some areas where uh we can improve we also found that there are some uh small areas where we did uh have some improvement uh so we'll be looking at that also kind of the tail behind the numbers and kind of why I feel that we are now poised to uh now that we have some things in place uh have a successful year where we can see some considerate growth um so as we start to take a look at this first slide with achievement uh we have green where we see for example low income and high needs those are some significant subgroups of our school uh where we've seen some good growth from last year to this year 13 to 30% for low-income kids um that's over 200 students in our school as well as the high needs population as well um they were able to have some growth as well 133% to 17% when it's broken down into Ela math and also our additional indicators we see a little bit more information here more success really with again low income and high needs when it comes to English language arts they were able to go from zero points for low income to two points this uh this past year uh and then High needs again they went from zero to one and so we will celebrate those uh gains I think uh part of the reason behind that last year I missed a lot of transition uh there was a lot of work done as far as uh speaking of transition from fourth to fifth grade for example working with our student supports director to see how that trans transition looks and how we support kids as they change their education model from elementary to Middle School making sure that they're able to get more um successful uh access to the curriculum and just seeing that they're able to make those adjustments because they may have they still have the same needs but the way we address them at the middle school with a team Middle School teaming structure looks a little bit different so that's important and we were able to spend a lot of time working on that um so again as we now continue to look at math we evened off oh I'm sorry I wasn't quite done here y man thanks um so with math we see some zeros uh consistently we did not make any growth uh as far as math with all students low income and high needs below that we see as far as our additional indicators as far as our chronic absenteeism we did make growth however instead of four out of four we were three out of four so we did make some growth there but not as much and again when I kind of reflect on uh my first year last year we had some uh again transition our um admin team um was of one uh for a little while and so that made it challenging as far as being able to be in uh classrooms and giving uh the support needed um again this year uh with Mr um LEF Fountain and Miss capio myself we're really excited we've already gotten started getting into classrooms having some really good meaningful conversations with teachers about what good learning and instruction looks like sounds like and feels like we'll get to that in just a minute um but again just being honest with the numbers uh this you know when we look at this there's a lot of opportunity for growth um and I just feel as Matt clicks for the next slide um that we'll be able to talk a little bit about that um but just to continue as far as speaking of growth we were able to earn some points however again we see that math again that's an area where we were not able to have as much as kind of the typical low growth uh and low growth uh categories that we'll see in the next slide U but again Ela that was a strength of ours low income and Hines kids they were able to uh earn some points two points both years thank you okay so here we kind of see a little bit more detail behind the numbers um what I look at is when we were talking about low income and you kind of look between uh the ELA the math and then the the growth below we have high need students 322 321 those numbers variate a little bit as far as the students that were able to uh take the tests some couldn't for different reasons but that's a big portion of our school and that that's where we did see some growth so I do want to recognize that our uh special education department works really hard uh to collaborate with our general Educators and and make sure that the kids are accessing the curriculum so that's something that we're going to focus on as far as a positive as well as low income 287 289 282 that's more than half of our school as well when you take all the numbers together and you add all the students up then yeah the numbers do go down because we have some kids that are struggling um but having looked at that and we go on to the next slide here's what we have in front of us for this year the good news is we feel that the things we can work on really go across all content um standards based instruction we've seen as we go through learning walks with leadership teams and also with with my team at the building level we have an opportunity really just to specifically focus on something like standards based instruction where we know that kids might be at a level below their grade level we're still working with our lesson planning and with our instruction to make sure that we're identifying those specific grade level uh standards for example I taught sixth grade and 8th grade math um before I was crazy enough to go into Administration and so say if we had an eighth grade math uh class and we have students that might not be at the eth grade level they might be grade five grade six while we're still meeting them where they're at so to speak we're going to be working to make sure that the the lessons that we plan are hitting specifically those skills that are at the eighth grade level so that's what I mean by standards based instruction that's something that our instructional leadership team is really focusing on and actually in all uh buildings across uh the district uh our ilts are doing a lot of work with that um continuing on looking at student work I'm sorry that's same slide math uh looking at student work it sounds simple but it's actually a really important step as we as we reflect as Educators to see how our kids are doing and then we have to adjust based on what they're showing us okay it's not a matter of well this kid's struggling we'll give him the test again it's how are we going to adjust our instruction so that our kids better understand what other angles can we use um and there's different ways that we can do that and so uh again um at the bottom the arms instruction leadership team they really last year we were able to solidify ourselves um in working with things like uh teacher-led uh learning walks getting into classrooms um looking at academic vocabulary um again you see sorry a little bit excited so my voice SS but um you utilizing the the common planning time the team time faculty meetings there's a lot of other opportunities uh for PD through the district where we're going to be able to um focus on these different areas um so that we can become better more uh efficient teachers I missed SBI I just want to make thank you just want to make sure people understand all of the acronyms right um so I'm going to slow down because I really I've been thinking a lot about tonight and just the opportunity we have before us we really do have some areas where we need to improve but I just think that you know now that we've had a year in I've got a full admin team behind me um we've been having some great conversations about instruction um we've been making some great connections with kids our instructional coach um we is constantly just as busy as I am with a lot of teachers reaching out to uh her to be able to ask for some help in all of these different areas um student discourse how we encourage to get our kids to uh participate actively in a meaningful way and the two-way uh feedback that's associated with that these are all really important things that work across all content areas so that was really in a nutshell what we felt uh needed to happen uh to move the needle moving forward I'm going to take a breath and I'm going to answer any questions yeah just an idea um sometimes you may have some students who above average have you ever thought of having those students help with the lower with the students who are struggling a bit to have them teach them and work with them a bit sometimes that gives them more um they feel more better about themselves the students and then the other ones are learning from them at the same time so by that do you mean hey Jay can you tell me about that new student leadership program that has gotten started this year um you're absolutely right uh when we talk about uh a school where kids are feeling comfortable to take academic risks and try that speaks directly in line to you know the slides that we've been looking at here not only my school but in all schools and so this year actually um I have two uh staff members that have begun working with specifically we started with 8th grade to identify leaders uh in our school student leaders that can find ways to go into classes whether it be academically uh but also uh for those core values that we talked about earlier when we recognize two of our kids but that's a small example of what you're Des describing where they're coming back and making connections with kids because we all know the kids the students listen to themselves uh and their peers just as much if not more so than the teachers and the adults maybe I'm speaking as a dad from my home with my kids but but yeah that's an excellent point and Bobby I thank you for that because that's something I would I would say not to speak for all of my principles I'm sure we use that that exercise in probably I hope most of our classrooms right we want the students to be the EXP and we want them to learn from one another so quite frequently teachers in different classes will strategically group students with one another so that their kids that they feel will contribute some additional pieces and might help facilitate the work and others that might be in a group right with kids that support a little more and they're picking up on the information so to your point about having them working together and learning from one another and utilizing those those students that are are excelling I agree and we are definitely trying to do that as much as we can in our classes thank you else any questions for Jason I'm really looking forward to this time next year being able to come up and talk about the growth so thank you very much thank you and we have with us this evening Miss pagar and she will be talking about the high school I think I feel a little bit like my kids with the w last name they're last for everything so maybe we could flip this around next time so I'm gonna I'm gonna cut in I'm gonna cut in and tell you Amanda I actually intentionally put you last because the accountability data on the high school is absolutely fabulous not to ruin your show appreciate that all right so we'll start with um achievement um you can see uh the differences between us and the state um obviously these achievement levels are not where we want them to be so it's definitely a place where we know we need to grow and we'll be uh a focus area for some of our action steps that I'll talk about later um with all of that said uh we do want to highlight uh the difference in the two testing areas and the science um where our students that tested as Matt had indicated earlier in physics performed better than biology um and in fact we were only four points off of the um State average um in terms of student growth and sort of our Trends over the um last three years um both Ela and math um tested students who tested saw improved growth percentages uh in 20124 um that was a 4.7% increase in ela and a 3.9% increase in math um student growth is not available for science um because uh these subjects are content based and eighth graders are not tested in biology or physics um here's our accountability data um some of our three-year Trends um you know we show the three-year Trends um so that you can get a bigger picture of where where what our journey has been like um to provide some understanding some of these areas of accountability um the data points are lagging because it takes one to two years for the data collection to to catch up and be complete um the four-year graduation rate um lags by one year um but it shows we were able to maintain our rate um from 2022 to 2023 um while our dropout rate improved um by nearly a percentage point the extended engagement rate which is our five-year graduation rate so so students who start with a cohort and end up graduating a year afterwards or or more um this this data lags by two years um but it does show that we made tremendous uh gains from 2021 to 2022 as we saw 16% increase during that time I did want to just cut in because there was one piece that I was discussing with Dave the other day when I was looking at this and I asked the question and I was like oh I guess that is the case 4 our 4-year graduation rate that I so I was actually talking to someone from Mass higher about that too this to me might be one of the least meaningful indicators from the state for accountability because kids need what they need and there are kids that might need to take additional time to graduate and this data also the part so I mean obviously we want our kids to graduate in four years but they they need whatever it is that they need this also includes our students that are in our life skills programs that stay here until they're 22 what I can't understand is why those students are included against us in our four-year graduation rate but they are so that's just the way that it is so all of those extended programs that we have for our students that that go up to age 22 are factored into this and as you can see we did decline a little bit I could tell you I could think of the students that made that change and those were specific arrangements for those students to get what they needed at our high school before they went out into the real world and and tried to get jobs or tried to go to college so that's just something that that sticks with me that I do hope people understand all right so uh the next two data points uh chronics absenteeism and advanced coursework have definitely been a focus um in our school for the last few years um as you can see um we exceeded our 2024 Target which included lowering our chronic absenteeism by 11.7% um we've we've put a lot of work into that our counselors are regular reviewing regularly reviewing data and we're meeting with parents um and students to to continue to try and improve in that level um and we increased our number of students taking advanced level courses by 5.1% and this is attributed to um becoming an early college school so having many students taking uh dual enrollment classes Juniors and seniors um and then a focus that we've had on promoting and and adding a number of new AP classes um we are growing as you all know um so our overall en enrollment has increased by 2.8% I I was just telling somebody else I can't get all the names of the ninth graders because there's 114 of them so I tell them it's going to take me a bit uh to learn all their names um our graduating classes have increased up to uh 24 students last year um and our accountability rating took a bit of a dip last year but is is now on a positive tra trajectory uh with 2 uh 2% um again uh the population is growing and and we are definitely on a big trajectory um next steps um it's not highlighted necessarily here but we're focused on continuing to strengthen and expand uh both the early college and Innovation career Pathways in order to meet the College and Career demands of all of our students um we're also focused on using continuing to use the systems we have in place around attendance which I just mentioned uh to ensure we're we're constantly monitoring that and taking action um other next steps uh include uh the fact that we know there's a focus on curriculum and instructional practices um this this is important in being able to continue to make gains in our student achievement and growth um that said we have already made a move this summer uh with the adoption of savis uh high curricul high quality instructional materials in ela um our teachers ELA teachers and our academic coach have been receiving um professional development and they're working closely together to unpack all of the different resources that come with the curriculum um in math we're happy to say I can't say enough uh since the 2122 school year maybe when Laura left maybe um we've finally been able to fill all of our four math positions which is great uh the new hires are being trained and getting trained and our our high quality instructional materials there um and we're focused on developing in math a better system that supports students that have um lagging math skills um in science of Summer the the state released a new curriculum called open SED um which we have adopted for biology classes um as this is the testing area as you saw uh that needs the most focus and during the next few months our science teachers will also be focused on reviewing student work um to ensure that their instruction meet uh instruction is meeting the requirements of all the standards any questions well I have also a statement thank you Matt for what you have done for the students that they can go and get their college thank you I want to give you an Applause for that that's a good job also my question to you is um question your AP courses that you have put in place which what are they um so we now offer AP seminar which is essentially an English course for 10th graders um we are offering uh the complimentary course to that this year new is called AP research um we've added AP World History last year we had um AP Computer Science principles which previously had been had been taught through um virtual high school but we have a teacher that's able to teach it this year she switched to AP um computer science a so that's like the next level of the computer science um AP US Government and politics is a new one from last year can right a push History AP History yeah that's we've had that for was the last one I didn't get uh AP United States uh government and politics oh Bobby were you asking just for the newer ones or for all of the ones well that's good to hear them all well I don't know I don't know the new ones they all in those are all the new ones those are all the new ones okay yeah we have others that we had there others right could you uh let us know in our next um packet what the all of them are to us yeah we it's probably in the program of stud it's in the program of studies we have all of the AP course listings I can certainly um Jody if you in mind just noting we'll we'll get we'll get that information to you thank you no problem thank you very much thank you so much Amanda um otherwise any questions in general so I could have I wish I would just like show the first slide and say we doubled our accountability score for the district okay thank you but umul no it's good to it's good to be able to take a look at the data that's being produced from our students in each of the schools it's good to have an understanding of the programs that we're working on and the next steps that our administrators are planning on taking and I know that a few people mentioned it you've seen a very strong focus on standards aligning to student work right that is the push for the district this year we are working on protocols for coming to the table with our teachers with our Administration and saying what are the grade level standards how are we ensuring that the student work that we're seeing are connected and meeting those standards at that appropriate level of rigor and that is the push for this year um we definitely are trying to make sure we keep our Focus narrow but it's a it's a tremendous place to impact so when our teachers fully understand the standards and we're teaching the content to the appropriate level of rigor I think we're going to start seeing very dramatic changes in the district and I'm very hopeful for it all right I'll shut this off um just for clarification just again let me start by saying I think I am you know thankful that the presentation was put together and I think that the uh individual uh efforts and of the staff the district the students uh collaboratively um you know is in a good place however I just want to um you know continue to emphasize that obviously we know what's being done in the schools where we're moving to uh we've had moderate progress but um what on that first page um that was put up there you actually have it still in your uh packet uh the official accountability report uh from the actual State website there's actually another page that's not included in the presentation um that I look have been looking at for a while now um just so everything that's being done in the school is great however it's the state will obviously look at um the overall uh average of the state Etc our achievement targets that is mentioned on that that page of going you know 23% to 43% which equals 35% um is actually a full breakdown of that what it actually looks like individually for the overall district and under the achievement targets we're still zero for 12 under growth we dropped a point from last year um elll good progress there we went from zero out of four up to three out of four and again you know we nailed our attendance issue uh four out of four targets so I mean I think we still need to uh push you know to understand that the district overall still needs to uh continue to work hard you know to get us to where we need to go and again that doesn't take away from the great work uh that's being done in all our schools and there has been and you know tremendous effort I I know we're coming out of uh Uncharted times with our educational aspects with what occurred over the past you know three years and you know our students are being expected and doing a lot of stuff that to gain to regain ground that they lost um during that time frame so again overall I am happy with what I see in the presentation but I just want to keep in mind that individual targets as a district we're not you know we're still way below what the state expects in achievement um you know and I just you know say hey continue you know continue what you're doing I'm pleased with the progress and you know again thanks thank you any other comments questions excent uh moving along we have communications and your packet is the district enrollment um if there are no questions there uh we will move on to the financial statement and approval of accounts and I will turn that over to n thank you so your I'm going to start with the expenditure so in your packet you'll see the report from I Visions the one line item that I wanted to mention here is the special education AUD District transportation so the total expenditure for a District transportation is currently projected to be around 968,000 with approximately 412,000 that's already allocated from the general fund this this um results in a potential overage of 556 th000 I want you to keep in mind that a a district tuitions and a District transportation can be difficult to forecast as students fluctuate attendants fluctuate um and they can be taken on and off without warning but I thought it was worth mentioning at this point in time as to where we stand um we're also currently awaiting approval for several of our 2025 entitlement grants once these grants are approved the funds are expected to help alleviate any existing overages that you do you do see on the expenditure report so also in your packet you'll find um I included a revenue overview this shows a comparison of the revenue that was included with the fiscal year 25 budget for is where we are with Revenue as of October 4th so I'll go over it quickly with some of the highlights you're aware that we had an increase in Chapter 70 funding of $81,000 the Charter School tuition reimbursement increased by 122,000 however keep in mind that this increase is counterbalanced by the ex corresponding expenditure so really it it levels out fluctu ations and other revolving Revenue sources are primarily due to the allocation of revenue for um specific budgeted items so as the fiscal year progresses these allocations um will will adjust based on operational needs so the the items that are highlighted to the left are grants that we are waiting for approval on but i' I've included projected amounts that I anticipate will be allocated to the budget they're approved um one of the grants that we didn't get this year that we got last year was the seal Grant and the other two that I wanted to point out is the Esser 3 will be fully funded this year well it's already been fully spent and then the one-time pandemic funds that was mentioned at the last meeting so overall we're forecasting total expenditures of $35 m319 th000 while Avail available Revenue stands at $5,595 th000 which Ade adequately covers anticipated expenditures want to mention but still very early in the fiscal year and many factors can take place in forecasting out a budget at this point in time but this is where we stand at this point in time does anyone have any questions on that section before I move on on okay so the next [Applause] is so I wanted to um request from the committee um for approval to issue two stiens in the amount of $2,500 one to our payroll specialist Deborah Goen and Maria Brown who's our AP AR accounting specialist so both deba Maria have consistently exceeded expectations um they've been through various transitions within the business office and they also have provided and are still providing exceptional support and training our HR specialist so their dedication and commitment to the district has been outstanding and I find it fitting um that to recognize their efforts to the district with the stipend we would also like to request the committee's approval to issue a stifen of $2,000 to Natasha Castello Castillo VAR thank you Natasha has been working with the Franklin Regional Council of governments communities that Care Coalition in this work she has helped to develop a student leadership program which has involved work and attendance during weekends as well as chaperoning a for night trip to Chicago so that our students could participate two of the participants were Jaden santer and peace pasor who presented to the school committee at our earlier meeting so these stiens would be taken from the one-time pandemic revolving fund that was discussed at a prior meeting anyone like to make a motion to um do we have to do that okay would anyone like to make a motion for these stiens I'll move it so move by Bobby is there a second to discuss second for discussion thank you excuse me for one second can someone in the back check the back door over there I believe our attorney might be locked out oh [Laughter] dear I apologize for that Interruption I thought it okay better to let them in to see something it's cold so we have a motion made and seconded for discussion anybody have any questions concerns would like to make a statement Lee I guess um I I have no you know obviously I do this for a living so I have no issue um recognizing and rewarding employees I mean but was this overly necessary for this to come to the committee as opposed to just read we were told we were told by Council that because it was not official budgeted for and their salaries that we would have to bring it to the committee um and and I not to cut you off Le I did I wanted to just comment to the the women that are referenced in the in the first part they've been putting in many additional hours to support um our person that's shifted into the HR position and and it does take a toll on their ability to do their own work and I know I'm sure you could see just the trip to Chicago for four nights that Natasha took and presented with our students sorry we can't give Laura a stien it's not legal no that's okay no but it actually what ended up happening was fob reached out to sherley and asked her to set this up and they said that they would give her a stien and she said well how about Natasha organizes this Natasha took that project on and then when Shirley reached out to the or organization they said oh well we thought that was going to come out of our last year's funding because now July you know it's July it's a new fiscal year we didn't budget for that this year so we can't give her anything and in conversation with Shirley I just thought to myself that's absolutely deplorable and I won't stand for it so for her time that she took to stay overnight with those kids four nights and the weekend time and TR tornado it's what yeah tornado coverage yeah so the $2,000 was a small gesture honestly that I think she will greatly appreciate I'm sorry Le I just again I just I I'm re I'm trying to recall and recollect I've never seen um stien for non-union employees come to this committee it's always done in their contract or whatever so I'm just I'm just apprehensive of setting precedence um not not not saying anything derogatory towards Deb Maria or Natasha um it's just process I just again like I said I've never seen uh any type of um you know movement like this uh coming to the full committee with regards to non-union Personnel that's all well another piece to that is our Union employees received a a raise this last last year and this year of $4,000 each year flat uh was it 4500 I'm not sure it was it was a significant significant increase percentage wise all of our independently contracted employees with the exception of some administrators uh that I had reviewed and revised their agreements with um traditionally they' received like a 3% increase which um was was grateful but it certainly was not anywhere um near where a lot of other employees were and and where their salary was increased to and I am I I will say candidly I'm trying to raise salaries where I can and show the staff that we have that they are appreciated and that we value their work for as best as I can um so I yeah I'm I we asked Russ Russ had right I think Kim Kim I'm sorry yeah I know we asked and because it was additional money to the to the budget for the stiens for the additional for the three people that we put in there um they just said because it's extra money that wasn't originally budgeted it needs to go to the school committee so are these are these stiens like a permanent yearly stien or is a one time this is a one time this is a onetime payment for the work that Natasha did with the Coalition and with the you know her travel and then for these other two individuals for their onboarding of an additional employee and picking up all of the work that's been tossed around and dropped in the process of transitioning like seven different seven different business office employees in the last two years that's what I was going to say also like with the new you know they had an interm business manager last year and a new one this year not you know it's it's I'm constantly where's this file where do I find this like they're and they're so gracious and just very helpful so lot of change for that yeah there's a motion made in seconded is there any further discussion um might I suggest that you lose the term stien and perhaps call it a you know again I'm all I understand you know I understand why we have contracts I but I just think that you know to call it a stien kind of opens the door for additional um employee uh action Etc um you know versus existing stiens um you know could you call that a you know a one-time performance bonus or something to that effect can I ask a couple questions so this is a stien that you're expecting this is work that's been is being performed now and will be performed through the rest of the school year has been so for the business office it's kind of like lumped for all the work they have done with the switching of business managers inter business manager and now me training the HR specialist um so ongoing training and support so past and present and future but you expect that's just going to happen through the end of this year yeah they'll definitely be giving her guidance throughout the year yes okay yeah the for the Natasha there is continued work that she's doing with that leadership group for for the remainder of the year but I can't say to the level of um what she's invested up front that's why this was really more based on her organization of the group and then the travel to Chicago with with the students but I think to Lee's point this is not something that's continuing going forward correct this is these are one time pays may just write one time s um so you could call it like a onetime bonus for the 24 or 25 school year but it's not a continu like stiens are usually like in the teacher contract that's why I asked if if stien was a ongoing thing if we change it to bonus will it affect the if we take retirement out of it mhm yeah that only thing I mean you can call it you can call it but you need to make it clear that this is for this year only it more than likely won't be their highest three right right so that's fine so I think they may actually appreciate not being not being deducted for their retirement because it's not going to contribute to all right well we can certainly we will adjust the language if the committee so wishes to say a onetime bonus for the FY 2425 year um okay so we'll U just we have a motion made for as is does anybody want to revise the motion to a one-time bonus payment and take out stien yes okay it's moved by Bobby do we have a second second moved and seconded is any further discussion I'm seeing none all those in favor okay the next thing that I wanted to cover um is to bring to the committee is the fiscal year 26 budget calendar as we're approaching the new budget season so in your packet I included the letter that will go out to the district leaders in the budget calendar the district leaders will be receiving two reports one will show their actual spending for fiscal year 23 and 24 and the year-to date spending for 25 the other report will show their detailed expenditures for fiscal year 24 by looking at the history of their spending and the details from last year they should have what they need to process their fiscal year 26 budget request if anyone has new budget request we're asking that it will be submitted separately along with reasoning as to how it aligns with the district's educational Direction so the calendar has the budget being submitted to me by Monday November November 25th Matt and I will meet with the district leaders the week of December 2nd to review their budgets individually we will then begin preliminary discussions with the budget subcommittee on Wednesday December 11th and on Wednesday December 18th the school leaders will present their budget priorities to the school committee on January 15th the presentation of the draft budget will be presented to the school committee then we will meet with the finance committees when it's scheduled with the towns the public hearing for the budget will be on Wednesday March 19th along with the vote by the school committee to certify the budget then the budget will go to the towns for approval on Monday June 9th for AOL and on Saturday June 7th for royalston I don't know that we needed to officially vote on the calendar but we wanted to make sure that we presented it to the school committee um if there are questions or concerns about the calendar certainly we would entertain that so one thing I always recommend is that if you're going to when you post for the budget dates I would say have a snow date so that you don't have to go through the posting process again so you can post it all as once as this is the date of the budget hearing if it's a snow date this is the other date because you have the timelines that you have to meet so you're better off posting that all at once y can we we'll make a note so Nancy Jody and I will actually make a note for us because we're not going to post all of this but as we go through the process to your point Russ we'll make sure that we put try to put in snow dates that's a great idea I think we ran into that last year once at least yes was there anything else this evening no that's it okay great thank you so much um we're moving um moving on to reports of the committee reports of the chair I didn't have anything today budget and finance will Le we did not meet um the past week uh so basically everything in nany's report kind of covers what we would for on great thank you facilities um we had as usual lots of projects completed over the past month um hoping to really dive into the facilities assessment report in the upcoming um SubCom meeting in November so that's just all I got um J I have this in my pack I don't know if it was something that we need to talk about use of facilities and grounds had asked okay oh for policy okay thank you I wasn't exactly sure where it went okay perfect um academic Excellence um we did not meet this month meeting minutes are in there from last month our next meeting is November 4th at 4:30 thank you so much and uh public relations we did not meet this month thank you anything public relations wise we need to know about no um I am hoping to we are hoping to eventually hear back from the msba and I think once we are in a better understanding of where things stand with that process that might change the direction of what the Public Relations Committee is going to be focused on so I think just until we get to that point it's it's been a bit uh dormant so to speak thank you all right moving on to the policy subcommittee um there is some information in your packet um if you wouldn't mind reviewing those minutes um looks as though I have a use of facilities and grounds um form did everyone get a cop I can I can speak to it briefly um at the committee at the uh subcommittee meeting we discussed a few of our policies it's listed there we did the facilities our Title 9 Title 9 regulations changed where we stand right now is our attorneys have provided us with proposed documentation and like forms SL policies to use we've relay them to the union they are reviewing that information and we're going to come to the table and and try to hammer through whatever those finalized policies and documents need to be we did discuss um go going uh in the direction of using the mask policy updating and storing process um we brought the full proposal to the policy subcommittee we reviewed what the proposal entailed um and I think the majority of the committee subcommittee believed that it would be a worthwhile investment um I I believe Frank you can correct me if I'm Frank Bobby correct me if I'm wrong I sorry am I'm sorry Eric uh we were planning on voting on that this evening correct yes but I don't know that we put it in the agenda specifically which one the oh it is listed for the um exchange no it's for the um mask okay because it wasn't a policy yeah because it wasn't a policy that we added it it missed the uh agenda so I apologize for that we will have that vote on the next agenda for the school committee but in essence mask will come in work with the district totally review all of our current policies that's right kyli there too I go to the different subcommittee meetings I apologize and I don't remember specifically who's at each one of them every time um but we were talking about they will house the policy electronically they will potentially with our permissions they they go through our first policy to our last policy and they give us um proposed updates they will make those updates for us in the storage system so it it is a lot of leg work that they pick up but more importantly what we discussed at the meeting was this is a process that believe it or not people think policy it's the backbone of the district for as far removed from the classroom as it is it's always when there's legal issues or concerns or problems that we fall back on these policies and for that reason we need to keep them up to date and school committee members usually I say this respectfully a a lot of school committee members will not last as long as the policy that like in the time that it has taken to get to review them we have policies I think from the 80s that have still yet to be up for review again and I think that by engaging mask and going through this Pro process we will get a firm handle on things and we will have a systematic way of putting things in order and in place within two or three years because again it's not a six-month process where we're done with all of our policies even working with them it will take a couple of years that being said at least we know that through that three-year process we have the consistency of mask behind the policies so even if members of the subcommittee change mask is leading the work and has that record of the work so it will keep the work moving forward so that was the discussion that we had and I think it's a I think it's a very valuable worthwhile investment but we'll vote on it next time uh last was I mean we did discuss the exchange policy for student exchange um I think there's only one policy in the package for a first read I didn't see it listed here so I don't I don't I wasn't told that any of were first read so were we just including them for reference that's what I thought Britney had planned on a discussion I wasn't made aware of any first okay actually and again I could be mistaken do we want to bring these policies just to if there were concerns or questions from the greater committee or we whether or not that was the case that's the case now it's the case now like I thought we were going to do a first read and okay so um you have it for reference now and next meeting we'll do a first read is Britney the chair of the policy subcommittee she is correct okay could you have her call me about the exchange policy because that's actually get fairly complicated because an exchange program program really means kids are coming here we're s there and this policy doesn't read that way this one here that one you read yeah yeah so I can talk to her about yeah the policy for the first read was the grounds I believe think the policy for the first read was the grounds facilities yeah the grounds exchange the facilities and grounds was the one for open read first read this one here yeah okay if you want to read it we can do for I think well it's not on the agenda so oh it wasn'ted well facility's policy is listed oh it is you're right is there anything that prevents us from doing a first read of it how do you usually label it on yours you put first usually do first read second read that's what we've done in the past yeah you should do that so we'll do first read in November on this we're have policies with it you want to have it tabled until the next meeting oh yes so the facilities grounds polic facility and grounds policy policy that's here in your packet will be for a first read in November okay and then I will have Britney contact you on the exchange student policy and then it for policy right yes okay um that is it for this evening we are at Committee Member referrals Eric so I spoke with Matt we've had some trouble with some sub and mostly nursing Subs so um defer to that thank you I wasn't sure if I could just jump in during referrals and because I know this is not on the agenda tonight I didn't want to discuss it earlier however I actually would like to request that we put together um an unscheduled school committee meeting at some point next week so that we could potentially review some changes just to our pay so there's three things that I'd like to review that have to do with staffing issues right now we'd like to review our substitute pay policy for our nurses we'd like to review our I shouldn't say policy it's just our pay uh protocols our substitute pay rates for our substitute teachers and then there is an MOA um that I was discussing with the Union where we want to um introduced the A prek Lead Teacher into the district when we re when we reorganized the ECC responsibilities into an administrative position and now Jen Ames is filling that special education coordinator position there are still Lead Teacher like roles that were part of that earlier um that we need to break apart and put into a separate sement so I'm hopeful that we could maybe get a meeting together next week so that we can change the nurse sub rates the teacher sub rates and potentially approve an MOA to get a Lead prek Teacher is just a suggestion we can absolutely try to coordinate um I travel for business through Wednesday so I wouldn't even be available till Thursday evening anybody available Thursday evening was Thursday that TR retreat W yes it is sorry yeah okay so that's not going to work um if we can't do it next week that that's fine too maybe just as soon as possible so I could do an evening um I could do Tuesday evening but it wouldn't be till 7 o'clock and I feel bad that's kind of late I couldn't make Tuesday the 22nd uh Tuesday yeah the 22nd okay anyone able to do Tuesday the 22nd at 7 I'm traveling okay I can okay so Emily anyone else christe I can Le that doesn't give us a quum okay how about Monday a Monday is a travel day for me I'm I'm literally on at an airplane at that time so I wouldn't be able to okay do that unfortunately um can we do it virtually yes we can do it will be virtual 7 7: I can 1 two three four five if I can get Britney to do it at 7 I'll email it out to everyone let me talk to Britney tonight see if we can do Tuesday evening at 7 pm. okay thank you we just check and it we'll have review changes to pay for subp pay for nurses and for teachers and a memorandum of understanding for prek into the district prek Lead Teacher thank you I don't want people thinking we don't have any pre good point all right excellent Bobby did you have anything you want to discuss this not at this time thank you great chrisy anything no thank you Kylie anything nothing for me okay nothing for me okay em um I know with academic Excellence we had discussed doing some of the principal um reviews so I didn't know if we could get that going at some point putting it on the agenda to clarify it's not principal reviews but it's how updates from the principles on how things are going we thought that actually this would be a perfect initial initial presentation because we got all of them up here to give you some real good information about their schools but I know that we have discussed continuing those and we will plan to do that thank you Frank anything this evening nothing here okay Lee do you have actually I have three okay um and they're just kind of just they're just um thoughts that I've had for you know future or however but um the first thing is is that we had a um long-term process in the district that the committee would get Advanced copies of presentations um it's kind of difficult to come to a meeting and and have like a you know a large presentation done and the first optic is when you come here and it's sitting here that was kind of um hashed out five six seven eight years ago that you know something that we could get emailed to us just informational no uh you know no dialogue in the email or whatever but that would be appreciated if we can consider that um also uh again I try to keep up the best I can but nothing kind of frustrates me more than a school Committee Member to have members of the public say to me why weren't you at this event why weren't you at this event if I don't know about them um you know and like I I saw for the first time today on Facebook that we have the event next week we used to get a calendar events on a monthly basis sent to us as school committee that listed you know schools could Supply their events and District events so that we can stay ahead of things and know where we're supposed to be I all of our events are posted publicly on the website I don't need to go to a website and look we should have an email yes yeah and then the other thing too is um just a recommendation um for the agenda itself I would like to see a monthly agenda item placed there whether we use it or not uh called academic and instructional update we come to these meetings month after month and there's not a lot of mention of academics or instructional or what's going and I think keeping ahead of what's going on with the plans that we saw tonight and having updates and continuously feeding uh information to the committee would be a great thing uh it also informs the public because you know obviously um when the feed is working which it was not again this evening by the way um you know the public can see what we're actually doing because I I I think it's integral very integral piece of this District right now is to keep that on the Forefront so that you know we get constant updates on what's going on that's all okay excellent is anything else okay is any anybody going to make a motion to return thank you second motion made seconded all those in favor y have a good night everyone