Good afternoon everyone. Welcome. This is um the curriculum subcommittee meeting and tonight and Wednesday of the night we're doing it Thursday. >> Thursday night they're going to hear the uh school improvement plans and so each school gets about 12 minutes. So
it's going to move along pretty quickly. Um we may not have time for all the questions that people might have. So it's nothing personal. delicious. We have a lot to get through and you might want to jot them down and we'll get back to people about what some of the questions might be some that we need to
do. Um, two things before we start. Uh, one is, um, I just want to say curriculum and teaching and learning has a lot to do with the fact that we were the number one school district in Massachusetts on the niche
>> rankings. And um if you have a chance to look at it, thank you Bob for passing that around. And um I think it's quite an accomplishment and I feel really good about that. And it wasn't just any one thing. It was a whole bunch of things and we came out with eight pluses on
almost everything. I think one of the things we got hit on with the cost of our housing, but that wasn't true with the schools. >> I'll get on that next time. >> But our our teachers are the best, our districts the best. our schools are the best. Um, people are really pleased. Our
salaries are good. Um, so it just, you know, it makes it we feel good and I think we want to, you know, raise that up and celebrate that. That's, you know, sometimes people forget. And the other thing I'd like to do is I would like to move the minutes uh from June 17th. I'll
second that. Thank you. Um, we're going to vote on that. Sarah, how do you vote? >> Yes. >> Yes. Bob, how do you vote? >> I vote yes. >> And I vote yes as well. Um, and that's some of the uh Oh, the high school that we should bring up again. Not now.
Betsy, just know in those minutes that we talked about the high schools going through some review of some kind. That's okay. I'll talk to you about it. >> Okay. >> Yeah. Fine. Okay. Um, we don't have Carolyn. I I take it that
she's not I don't see her online yet. No, I'll let you know if she arrives online. So, is this everybody online? >> Yes, it is. Six people that small group. Okay. >> I have to say it was really helpful to have them ahead of time to be able to read them. >> Great. Thank you. >> Okay. Asa, you going to take it away?
We're going to hear it on Roland Hayes first. >> Roland Hay School. >> Okay, great. So, thank you everybody for the time tonight to talk about how we're making progress towards our three-year plan uh school improvement plan. Our
school improvement plan is a public document. It is on our website. It's pretty easy to find along with our minutes and agendas um for all of our school council meetings. We had our first school council meeting last week. It was really productive where we talked about this very presentation. So, um
just it's nice to all be aligned and having a shared conversation even though we're not all in the same space. These are our school council representatives. We have a really great group of folks who represent a wide range of experiences in our school and
in our community including Linda Roseman who's well known in the community. She serves on many many different councils. Um she's our community member and then this on this cycle we have a pair of professional who's joined us as well which is really fantastic for representation.
Uh looking at the budgetary impact of our plan not a lot has changed here. So, if you've been following along, I know that you are just, you know, ravid fans of school improvement plans. But, um, the big the no big shifts. We're still
kind of in the same space. We want to we intend to be a responsible and transparent steward of the public resources of the both the public schools of Brooklyn and the town and of course the Commonwealth. We take that very seriously. We work very carefully about how we
spend the money. I have some discretionary funds and how I spend those discretionary funds I want to make sure squarely goes towards serving students um our students as they are right now in order to nurture and then create environments where they can thrive and become the people that they
need to become on their own terms. We do anticipate we launched our third RISE classroom rise is a program designed specifically to serve students on the high-end needs of the autism spectrum. This year we have now three RISE classrooms. So we're well on our way to
mirroring with a full cohort K pre not pre-K but K through eight for our RISE students. Right now we're serving students in our RISE program um grades K through seven. And I must say that RISE isn't exclusively for students on the high-end
needs um of the autism spectrum. Um but that is the majority of students we serve. And then finally, the a point that I reiterate is last year I really was hyperfocused on my own school as is typical, but in our decrease enrollment,
it's not a it's not a mystery that our school is now at two sections K through five and then three sections in our middle school. We'd like to maintain that that um size and programming, but we recognize that we're part of the greater system of Brooklyn and enrollment is either stagnant or decreasing and we're in a really tricky
time right now, especially with kind of the way people are immigrating to our country, what kind of people are coming here for fellowships, etc. And so that's not only impacting Hayes, but the entire district. Um goal one looking at the district goal
increase achievement for all students high quality challenging curriculum evidence-based practices. Our um school improvement plan really hyperfocused on K through three and the science of reading rollouts with Hecerty foundations and other um early childhood
literacy development skills, phonics in particular. And so all of our while we're monitoring these goals, our goals haven't necessarily changed, but I did add um in the talking point that's highlighted in green here. And this is actually my one of my principal goals
this year is to effectively manage and support the roll out of fish tank curriculum by ensuring teachers receive clear guidance, high quality professional development, ongoing coaching by monitoring the fidelity of implementation through classroom observations. I feel like that's really where the rubber hits the road. And so
that's where I'm spending a lot of my time. It's really in those observation sessions, understanding the perspective of teachers, understanding the impact of on kids. Um, and then that goal is the K through eight goal while the other ones are firmly K through three goals because
that's where the data, the dibbles data and the early childhood foundational literacy skills are really, you know, that's where we're doing that work. But the fish tank roll out is K through eight at Hayes School which we're really proud of and we're really firing on that.
So just looking at some of the data that we have, this is a very simple snapshot of data and how we're doing with our beginning of year um literacy assessment so far, grades K through three. And you'll see you you'll see a lot of
different colors and dots and stuff, but there's a box in the middle. It says BOY, beginning of year. And you'll see that 3% of our students um tested and we do aspire to test all students. Some students that does we have tried to assess in this with this um set of um
assessment batteries but it's not a perfect fit especially for some of our students that are in the rise program but we are striving to test every single student. So 3% of those students are well below 9% are below and then we have students at and above. Now, for the
below and well below, that's where we're hyperfocused on our students. And the students in well below most likely, not always, but most likely already have an individualized education plan in place. But the students below may not. And so that's where we're really having team
meetings to hyperfocus on who are these students, what are their needs, and who's going to deliver these needs. It's most likely the literacy specialists, our English language teacher, um, etc. finding a pathway forward for those students so that they then become at and
above in their reading abilities. So that's just a snapshot kind of of the data and what we're doing with the data. But we're really pleased with this data. Our students are really fantastic and they're working really hard as are teachers of course, but our students are really really going for it.
And this is we also have the STAR assessment in grades four through six. And this is just an example of kind of how we're looking at data and thinking about data. The STAR assessment, I'm not sure if everybody can see it, which is glad it's in front of you, but it again shows who
what percentage of students are meeting or exceeding our expectations. It also shows students that are near meeting but not quite there yet. That's in the gray. And then students who again are not meeting kind of those benchmarks. Now the star assessment is measured against
um the state standards and then we can dig into each and every one of these um kind of you know you can dig into the red here, you can dig into the blue and then you can see what are the how how likely is it that students will
be meeting these standards by the end of the year. And so we're really focused on those projections and then we can drill down standard by standard by standard to see what student needs what support in what area and then we're tailoring um our work with students towards those
points. Our next strategic goal too is really positive increase in student data returns particularly for students with disabilities and bipox students so that every student can advocate and access what they advocate for and access what
they need. Now, a question I was thinking about earlier that was posed is really um why particularly why that language? Why not just a more straight ahead um kind of goal like you know it it hey students students with disabilities and bipox students will get
what they need so they can advocate access. I feel like when I was writing this goal and when my school council was giving feedback on this goal, we wanted to make sure every student was accounted for, but we also want to recognize and verbalize publicly that we are particularly interested in students who
have historically left been left behind by not only public schools in Brooklyn, but in America. And those are students with disabilities and students um who are black, indigenous, or people of color. Um and so that has is a hyperfocus in the data, but we'll look at both. The goals are the same. I'm not
going to stay there, but we can look at some of this data. Um, again, it's a little hard to read up here on the screen, but you have it in front of you. This is the data kind of whole plot for supportive relationships. 92% of our students in grades three through five say can affirm in the positive they have
supportive relationships in school and six through eight. 98% of our students self-efficacy students in K through three real 98% are able to name skills and feel confident and say yes I feel like I can get what I want when I want
it. Um raise your hand data that's students who are raising their hand to say I need help with something. 82% of our students are not raising their hand in three through five. And then um I think that data is mirrored over with um
in middle school 98% of our students are not raising their hand to say I need help with something. Every student who does raise their hand, we have a one-on-one conversation with them to say, "What do you need help with?" And most of the time they say, "Huh? What do you Well, on this form, you said you needed help with
something." "Oh, I don't I don't need help. I'm okay." So, we're able to drill in and we do that very specifically. Another great thing that we do is there's you know asking part of this is can you name a trusted adult and um every kid in the in the survey
the panorama survey they write out who the trusted adult is and then my counseling team writes it like a love letter to those staff members to say these kids named you as a trusted adult and we hand them all out to the school. So, we have really good data scores. Um, for the bottom two, positive feelings
and challenging feelings. You can see those kind of at the bottom. Those are areas where we want to make sure that kids have what they need. All kids grades are will experiencing challenging feelings. We want them to feel like that they're learning the skills that they
need to have in order to manage those feelings or ask for help with those feelings. So, that's an area where we're working really hard. We have all the proclaming like second step etc that we've been rolling out with fidelity in our school. Move the dial on some of those numbers.
Here is the data specifically around our students of color in the school or bipok students. I'm feeling really good about this. You'll see on these these lists the bottom one confidentiality confidentially protected data. Those are multi-race students who um you know
their parents fill out all the kind of their identity forms and stuff at the beginning there. These are kids who identify as multi-racial or African-American. And because we have such small numbers at Hayes, those it's not really a population that Yeah, that's why it's kind of confidentially protected because their numbers are just
so small. Um but you'll see that those numbers are really really great. I'm proud of those. um 78% of our students um who are multi-racial black, they you know say that they belong at school um have high rates of being able to manage
their emotions. Um they feel like you know 93% of those students feel like they are in supported relationships in school. So that's kind of data digging that we're always doing to make sure our students are feeling cared for and and seen. A part of that is also plays into the fact that we have our AAPI um group
for students, affinity group. We have our young scholars program which is really a very powerful program for students who are um African-American and Latine. We have our GSAs. We have our rainbow club. And so we're really investing a lot of time and money in supporting these students specifically
and publicly. Um, goal three, create a schoolwide culture of attendance accompanied by a deep commitment to ensuring students are engaged in classroom and overall life of the school once they arrive each day. This is a part of promoting belonging, creating safe environments, etc., which
aligns with our district goal. Here's the data and all the things we've been doing towards that. And here's kind of what the data looks like just at the start of the year. Our attendance has been really good this year. And I also want to recognize that attendance is something that feels sometimes
completely out of my control. You know, I, you know, can't help it when somebody's like, "Oh, we're going to Disney for four days and we'll miss four days of school." It's like, "Okay." Um, but um what this data shows us is that we have really strong school
participation with presence, but it also what it really does it allows us to find where students are falling through the gaps. And that is the most critical. We have probably three or four students right now in our school who are chronically late or chronically absent.
And that's where our schools student support team really comes together every week and has really complex conversations about how are we supporting these students? How are we making sure they have what they need? What kind of next steps or community liaison need to come into play here? So that's where this data is really most
powerful. Um yeah, then finally we this isn't a goal per se. say it is a goal of our school, but it more aligns to the district vision of providing every student with an extraordinary education. And this speaks to just making sure that really tending
to that rise program in my school is a very high priority for myself. It's a high priority for our professional development and it's a high priority for um our parents for sure and it's a high priority for our students, not only those enrolled in the program, but
students globally and the whole school. was a very powerful um part of our work. And then finally I present here kind of my principal goals for the year. The first one we talked about um no that that we already talked about the second one which I added but the first one
develop and implement a continuous cycle of professional development that responds to the emerging academic and social emotional needs of our prek students. We're continuing our our work with we're really digging into the MTSS um plan. Um we're working again with the
um Glory Center Aspire for Mass um general to make sure that our um work around neurotypical and neurodeiverse students is really strong. We want to make sure everybody has equal access to school and inclusive spaces. And then finally, again, the RISE program remains
a priority, especially as we're really deciding how far and how soon do we need to expand to afford the classroom here in school. And then making sure that our new teacher who just joined us this year, she's a novice teacher um she's leading our third rise classroom that she has what she needs as she because we
want to keep her there. So yeah, so that is my presentation. Sure if I hit the timing, but thank you very much. >> I didn't play the music. >> You didn't play the walk. All right. >> All right. >> Any questions?
>> Uh any questions? I let others go first. Bob, do you have a hand up? Go ahead, Bob. >> I do. I don't have a question. Asa, I give you an A+ on that report. >> I'm not so I'm not surprised that Brookline public schools received the
number one ranking in the state. I just felt that there was such a strong focus on the essential elements of a great school um with data to support, you know, the the work that you're doing. I think it's it was outstanding. Thank you, Asa. >> Thank you, Bob. Well, I always tell
people I say we are not perfect and we will never be, but we strive to do what's right by kids. Um, and if and I think that's a shared kind of mantra amongst my staff, like we're not striving for perfection. We're just striving for great kids, safe spaces.
>> Go ahead. Yes. Um, I really appreciate the understanding of the Hay School that it seems that you are aware that your student need is going to become a larger percentage of the whole population
>> and it's so helpful to us that you're thinking ahead about that. Of course, that's not principal discretionary spending. That's other buckets. Right. Right. >> And so, um, we need to make sure that that's something that we can plan for. Yeah. Right. >> For sure. Yeah, I know I'm out of time,
but we do anticipate that on this fourth bullet here, um, that the number of students with academically based disabilities is going to continuously grow even if our population stays flat or lowers a little bit depending on the
neighborhood, the churn, you know, what's happening at the federal level with, you know, people immigration. Um, but we we are very cognizant of that. uh the disparity and the changing demographics within those sub
populations for sure. >> So I just had a quick comment just you said the Aspire group at Mass General. >> Yeah. >> So they're working as consultants. >> Consultants. Okay. Right. >> And the consultant model, this is our second year doing it. We're consulting with one of their team members. Her name
is Ely Wolf. She's really fantastic and expert in this field. and um she'll come in spend four or five days, six days over the course of the year depending on our contract and for the bulk of the day during the school day she's observing students and giving feedback in a consultation model. So students who are
really concerned about we don't necessarily have all the answers we could use some expertise and then we have team meetings and we're consulting in that way and then she'll do whole school faculty development. Last week she talked about um MTSS with the staff. What are structures that
allow all students to be a part of the MTSS structure and how do we know it's working and what frameworks can be developed internally to really move the work? >> I dare ask is this paid for by a grant or you have it for budget? >> It is paid for through OSS. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
>> I know there's a lot of data in here but >> Right. And we would love to discuss that lang, but we definitely need to honor everybody else to do what they're saying. >> So, thank you so much. I appreciate it. And um feel free to leave as you >> better stay with me because I need to
follow you >> which I think is the hardest job. >> Dad, it's your turn. Tell us about the whole >> Was there anybody else that had any hands on? >> No. Okay. Thank you. Just let me know because I can't I should say Mariah is also on. Okay. Just so you know,
>> he's gonna make this So, I'm going to start by saying I too want what's best for children at RNL. All we all start that's our starting point is what's best for kids. And I also want to be just like Asa. So, >> yeah. When I grow up, I want to be ASA.
Um, so we've shared we shared our presentations with each other prior to coming tonight. So, some of my presentation is going to look similar to ASA's, but I didn't dig down. and and I didn't know you could get the dibbles yet on architects. Mine don't mine doesn't show up yet. So, um I'm just
going to preface with that. So, um has a brand new school site council this year. Um we have three parents and we have and Lynn Chong who has been a um parent for years and her children are now grown and she has stayed our community member and it's been amazing. And then we have um a
teacher from K2, we have a guidance counselor, we have our IT person, a rise teacher and myself. So, this is the smallest our school site council has ever been. Um, but it's been very effective and we're excited to get going. Our first meeting is this week.
Um, I don't want to dig. I think my budgetary impact is very similar to to AC's. Um, we did add one rise classroom this year. We had always had five. At one point, we had six rise classroom. So, it has shifted over the years. Um
and then when Hayes took over and took some of our more younger students and now they're building a program, Riseze last year added a fifth classroom sort of in the middle. What I can say about um RISE in terms of is that what we're seeing is an increase in the severity of
the students who are entering our program um in terms of learning issues and behavior. It doesn't look like it did when I started at 15 years ago. it feels different and we've spoken to Karen Schmucker about this as well and that we're feeling that although we have
been doing this program for years long before I came um that we're ready to have some people come and have eyes on wrinkles program as well to give us some consulting um information. Um, our first goal is to obviously to increase achievement for all students by
implementing tier one and tier 2 interventions and to support a consistent high quality and challenging curriculum with literacy and math. Um, and we too want to work on our MTSS um strategies. So, I'm going to show you um my pro our um school improvement plan
runs from 2024 to this school year. It's a two-year uh cycle. some of the stuff has stayed the same, but what has been impacted based on some of the budgetary constraints like there is no more um well I'm going to get I'm going to go back to that. I'm going to I'll show you
the data first. Um so this is our star data. This is not our Dibbles data. Our Dibbles data I did not see yet, but we have 71% of our students um at proficient or above which feels really good. We have seen a decrease over time in the students who require that tier 2
intervention with our literacy specialists since we've instituted Hagerty and foundations. It's had a huge impact um when we do this dibbles um and the start at the beginning of the year. So, we feel really good about that. The other thing that we've done is to
really try to dig deeply into some of our MCCAST scores. And what I don't want to take credit for this. I have an incredible vice principal Chad Pelton who is loves this and this is what we do. We hire really good people who can dig into the data and he's created this
if you click down on the right um if you're online our MCCAST story. But we've looked at data both from looking at this slide right here is actually looking at um individual questions on MCCAST to see if where they fall in the standards. And we follow them both over
time like from year to year like is this a fourth grade issue, third grade issue, or is it a um cohort issue? And so we followed we look at the data based on the standards and the questions or the grade levels. Then we also look at it over time and we've gotten up to four
years that we can look back to see and follow our cohorts to see if in fact we're missing anything and coming back and the teachers are accepted bought into this. It's hard to um dig into this in a public forum I think for a lot of educators but they've really accepted
this and want to do better and we want to see if there's things that we're missing that we can do better. We're we're ready to do that. Um the MCAT the link for the story is is in the slide. Um our second goal is about educators are given opportunities to engage in
cultural prof proficiency training and implement culture professional learning to decrease implicit bias and foster community for understanding. Um last year we worked with our the office of educational equity with Christy Hernandez and she worked with our um
middle school group doing a cycle of um her the equity cycle for that grade level. She came in once a month. She worked with our staff. She came to our cluster meetings. She met with a small group prior to that. Um it was a really valuable program. I think our teachers really learned a lot from it and we were
also she did a lot of observations not evaluative but were able to spend time she was able to spend time in classrooms give teachers feedback about what she was seeing and they could reach out to her for advice too about how to handle situations that came up in the classroom and that felt really good. So that's no
longer um in place but what we did really focus on this year is trying to um use the PTO and our ROAR groups. ROAR is is an organization started by parents at RURL. It stands for Bronco organization against racism. Um it
started as a parent group a year and a half ago. Last year the parents just wanted to meet with administration to sort of talk about what was happening in our building. This year we really wanted to make it a community- based group that reaches out. Um we have new teach directors. They're they're um new to our
it's like a change of the guard. We have much younger families now who have come in and taken over. um they've worked really well with me. We have our first um event on November 14th. We're have we're going to do the Groovy Bridges Walk, which I know other schools in Brooklyn have done, but it feels great.
Our culture and climate committee at Ronl, which is made up of teachers and administrators, we're working with the PTO and with ROAR. Um so this will happen on November 14th and it's been very collaborative and it feels great. We also have had parent professionals join our culture and climate committee
for the first time and I feel like it's really starting to feel like we're in a good place in terms of collaboration. Everybody's feeling seen. I know our mechco we have a new mechco leaison just five days a week that's been amazing having five days of mechco support. Um so this is a that's exciting very
exciting for us. Um oh and this I just this is around the inclusion piece too. Um we just had our cross country meet. We were all a lot of principles were there. Um, but I just want to I think what makes at least for me in terms of run, we have managed to include kids
from for years in all of our sporting activities and curricular activities and even events that runs and that's this year for our Halloween fair on Friday. We'll have a sensory like the first half hour is s more sensory s I want to say sensory sensitive but no but we'll have
a time between 5:30 and 6 where students who are in our rise program or any student who does who might be afraid of the dark or worried about the noise can come early and they can do the trick-or-treating they can do the haunted walk first um or they could just go to we have a space set aside for them and then at the cross country we we had
some students in our rise program run they start with a mentor runner in the beginning of the season but they run the course alone and one of those students is in this picture and they are so proud and we are so proud of them. Um and you would never know who those students were. They just it they were amazing. So
that always feels great and I will say Carlin does a great job too um the curriculum coordinator for wellness um and and our teachers and our coaches. But that was a great event. Um our third goal was to enhance family and staff engagement to foster safe safe
and inclusive environment in a positive cultural climate. Um I too I shared also panorama um information as did Asa around belonging and ours I can't see that without my glasses. Another 71% are failing. I didn't break it down, but as
you can see, and even just by looking at the blue lines, our sense of belonging at Mon has increased every single year. And we too, our guidance counselors do the same thing. They send out those notes if you are a person who would file identify as a safe person in the building. And nothing feels better as an
adult in that building to get a note that says, "These children named you as a safe person." And sometimes you have one and sometimes you have 10. And oftentimes it's a student who names a teacher from first grade who's now in eighth grade, but they're still thinking of them. So, I do think that that's just been an amazing practice.
Um, I just linked to my small primer plan at the end, but was I under 10 minutes? >> Well, thank you. Sarah, >> it's amazing that having this set up the same way between schools really helps us
be able to have a sense of exactly what Ron is, right, compared to other schools. So that I I've you know >> obviously been at Rockle before, but to hear you speak about it that way just really brought to my mind exactly what you're focused on and what's super important to you. So I I love this
process. >> Anybody else on the line that wanted to say? >> No other hands are raised. >> Yeah. A minus Bob. >> I'm actually a pretty hard marker. You get A+. >> It's really It's really impressive that
you you cover all of the essentials that compo that comprise a great school and and you have to data to support it. You're looking at it looking at it and um it's impressive. You know, I was the principal of RNL um for one year in 1988
89 and I'm really glad that the color is still blue. >> That's a great color. >> Um yeah, I mean I'm impressed. This is I mean I haven't been in close touch with the elementary schools for a long time.
Um this is this is really important for me sort of get me up to speed as to what you guys are doing. So, I'm sure the next couple of presentations will get really boring because they're going to all be the same and good. >> Try to I'll try to stay awake.
>> I do I do have one question. I was wondering not just for Ronco but for our system if you could help us understand the intersection of um English language learners and rise and English language learners and reading testing. Um just so
that that's something that's grow out a little bit more. We did we talked about this today at our principal meeting too. I I know that a lot of questions have come up about around EL learners and fish tank and the new curriculum and how challenging it's been to find the time to make sure that they're getting what they need. It's
really we have to be really careful when we pull them out. Um we do have I I I can say from from perspective we do have many e students that arise and it is a challenge. Um and it's it's hard to figure out is and on my background I
should say I was speech and language pologist over 20 years like Suzanne that's what I did. It's really hard to tease out um what is the EL what is the communication disorder and then then you put autism into the mix. Um so we struggle with a lot of that. I think we
do a really good job. I think our EL teachers are outstanding um in terms of they don't necessarily have a background in that that area and they make it work. they work collaboratively with the um speech language powers and the teachers. Go ahead.
>> I mean, I know it's Donna's time, but to add on, I think you we use the language kind of what's driving the bus right now. So, for this one kid, what's driving the bus right now? And the team is excellent and is willing to go above and beyond to get into the space to make
themselves available to the students on their terms in their space and figure out what's driving the bus and bring up a wide variety of models of learning. Are we just going to play games together? Are we just going to be side by side watching a video together? Um
that kind of hits some of the target areas for language development. And so that's what I think really matters in those moments. There's nothing prescriptive that you can really pull out of a sack. You really have to just know the kid and be available on their terms and figure out that they did it. >> Yeah. >> I will say some of the demands on time
that they they want to do the assessments for EL students with our students is not a good use of their time, the adults or the students. And I know that sometimes there could be waiverss for that, but that has been an area >> that's on all the assessments.
the star because some of our students are non-verbal and it's like we're doing a verbal test with non-verbal students. How does this work? It's very >> and you know I'm struck by you have many I would say resources as a human resources support systems but it it also
requires that we give them time to collaborate so that they can do some of the work who is going to who is going to take the lead on the student and and how do I learn from other support services so it's it's it's a lot to it it's very frustrating
>> I think that when we imagine schools on paper we think of kids as having started out when they were five in kindergarten and they get the appropriate skills that they need at different times and and that's not always the case. Students sometimes show up and they're in fourth
grade and don't have the skills you would have taught K3 >> and that's maybe even more complex with rise and >> thank you very much. >> Thank you for your work. I think we're going to Pierce next. Are >> we
done hit stop share >> on your Zoom very fast? >> Hello everyone. I'm here. I am not in person. I'm actually at my home, but I'm excited to see you all. >> Thank you Asa and Donna for fantastic
presentations. I will say I was trying to be timekeeper for you Asa. All right. So, should I show my slides on my screen as I go through? Will that work? >> Candace, if you have them handy, you can. If you don't, I do have them, so it's up to you. >> Yes, I do have them. If you just allow
me to share, and then I should be able to pull them up. All right. So, I don't know what you see right now. Do you see the presentation? >> Yes. Yeah, we do. If you go to slideshow, then we'll
>> Perfect. >> Perfect. >> All right. Well, hello everyone. Good afternoon. I'm so excited um to be the incoming principal here at the John Pierce School. Um and this is our school improvement plan for the 2025 school
year. I will say that this is a three-year plan that was originated um in the year of 2023. So, we're in our third year of this plan. Um, of course, some of the things have been modified due to new leadership being added. And
so, one thing I want to make sure that I let you know is that the Pier School, you know, our teaching and learning is definitely grounded in collaboration among students, staff, and families. And it also promotes equity, academic achievement, and the social emotional
well-being of all students. So, with that, I go into our peer school council membership. So, these are our parent our caregiver reps. Um, as you can see, we will have elections this year. Um, and
also our teacher reps. And so, I was able to meet with the team over the summer uh part of my onboarding for listening session. And then we also had our first meeting uh last Thursday. Um, I will give you a bit of background
about the Pier School. Currently, we have 587 students. Um, since the 1 of September, we've had 90 students enroll. We speak, we have over 30 languages in our school with our primary language being Mandarin
Chinese. Um, we have 13% ELELLL students. We have 13% um, students below income and our special education percentage is 17% this year. And so going into this budgetary impact.
So with this um the former principal Yad Off um this was her budgetary impact for the school year which I just kept because there was a lot of work that was done over the summer um in this area. So one is funding required for summer work
to support the following um action planning for students struggling grade level team time to co-plan for our wind blocks and integration of the new curriculum fish tank. We also have a team uh that gathers data and make
meaning from it and present to their colleagues. And so we've utilized that time this summer to review student data. Um unfortunately due to the budgetary constraints we weren't able to fund it during our primary budget but uh luckily
our PTO's um sponsored this work for our school. So some of the items were not completed in the full SIP. Also we adding meaningful instructional rounds that will require substitute coverage beyond what we can staff in house. We want our teachers to be able to see each
other in their classrooms especially implementing the new fish tank curriculum. Um and so we're asking for budgeting for this. Then additional workshop funds to support staff attendance at professional learning community trainings. This just year three of this and so we're now getting
the role of what it looks like to meet and learn with each other as colleagues um during our professional learning time. And then of course being in two separate buildings, the OS building and the Fiser Hill building, we um the model
is two schools, I mean two buildings, one school. And so we want to continue that um by finding support during the school day for busing students to joint locations so that the whole school can connect annually.
All right. So then this leads me into my goal one and I think my slides are out of order here. So let's see. This leads me to our goal one which aligns to our initiatives. I think I need to shuffle through because I have a page
that's supposed to be here that's not there. I'm sorry. So for our goal one monitoring um we're going to continue the implementation of Heaggerty and foundations and the newly implemented fish tank. Um this is through September
25 through 26. Of course the evidence on align curriculum standards and phonics and literacy during class observation and I have the uh data slides following to show. Then we also want support for our ongoing work of the data team in
reviewing school data. This is bringing student work samples and other teacher data and other teacher provided data. This is our monthly meetings during school year 2526. This will increase evidence of the state district and classroom data in planning
for instruction and increase the use of student work and professional learning communities and other staff meetings when discussing next instructional steps. Um then for the next goal, it's provide professional development that increases teachers sense of efficacy using highly
effective and culturally responsive methods. Um this was some of the work from this summer from our PET team which is our Pierce equity action team. And so this year we will begin our work utilizing faculty meeting times for the PE leaders to provide culturally
responsive practices, courageous conversation and courageous conversations to staff. And with this we want to see an increase of our percentage of our mastery and exceeding in our students who are traditionally marginalized. And I'll go
into a little bit of that data um in a second. Then last on here, uh oh, let's see, I'm trying to move my screen here. Last we see provide professional de development to staff to support their
confidence using student work at the center of professional learning communities. And this is to discuss student work and present new curriculum. Um, this is the teachers creating their own PC agendas that reflects observable focus on
student work when discussing effectiveness and curriculum and instruction. And so, like I said, this has been a three-year plan that began prior to me becoming principal. And I'm actually seeing the professional learning communities in action. And I
know we still have continued work to do. And so with that, this is where I go into my data. And so this is Dibble's data um the end of the year for our K2 students. Um and this you can see we are
73.9% of students are at benchmark or above. Um so we are at 73.9%. We have 127 students that are above benchmark, 57 at benchmark, and 33 below. And this is
showing us that um continually we're seeing gains being made. If you look at the benchmark overtime chart, um you can see that we peaked last year at the end of the year. And so of course, well, that's two years ago. And so this year
we're going to be on a continuum of how many students um that are meeting mastery or above in Dibbles. And then my next slide is just a preview of our MCCAST. And this is just the ELA MCAST as of last year. Um we have 73% of
our students um that are meeting and exceeding. And so what you don't see behind these numbers are the disegregation of the data disegregated data. Um and so in our ELA, our breakdown, which our focus um for our school improvement has been looking at
our groups that are traditionally marginalized and providing um cultural responsive practices and um instruction to these students to increase their MCCAST percentage. Um, I know last year
we had 25 students um, in 2025 that tested and only 40% were meeting and exceeding on MCCAST. Same for our Hispanic students. We have 54 and we have 52% that are meeting and exceeding.
The year before we had 42 Hispanic students and 45% were meeting and exceeding and 30 um African-American black students and 50% were exceeding or meeting and this is in
relation to our Asian and white students that our white students last year 177 81% meeting and exceeding our Asian students 87 and 76 six are meeting and exceeding. And so this is the data that
the team has collected and we work with and we focus with our teachers on what are we doing as a collective in our professional learning communities to bringing these artifacts, student work to make sure that we are um engaging
students and giving high quality instruction. And so I'm going to move a little faster because I'm looking at the time. SIP two, develop and implement a culturally responsive community engagement plan to foster connection among caregivers schools and district.
So with this, we're going to establish systems of communication that allow families to remain actively engaged in the process of planning for a peer school renovation, including the temporary locations at the of the peier staff at the old Lincoln School and at the Fiser Hill campus.
And so with this goal, goal number two, we have planning of family and community events that bring together both campuses. This is in the summer and early fall. Um we have all family members invited to no fewer than three events between August and November. And
I will tell you, we're going on the fourth event this weekend. Um, next we have keeping families and the school community informed about building renovations through consistent transparency, accessing and accessible communication. And this is monthly. So
families are going to, you know, report increased awareness and understanding of the renovation process in our end of the year surveys which we give families. Um the principal prior to me would give for surveys to our families since we are in
two different buildings um and allow them to have voice in our um day-to-day operations of how the kids come to school, how they leave school, what are some things that we can do better and what are some things that you want from us that we can improve on. And so I
believe this is um one of the biggest things that have come out of my listening session to um coming into this principal ship. And then of course develop and implement a comprehensive communication plan that includes regular school newsletters and a dedicated
academic spotlight newsletter. And this is to highlight student learning, instructional practice, and academic achievements across grade levels. Um this is also due to us being in two different buildings. a lot of time as as colleagues and as parents, we don't see what one building is doing versus the
other. And so creating a school newsletter um that comes out maybe the third week or the fifth week of the month to just um bring all that into a perspective one-stop shop so that you can um still remain engaged in the
school community. All right. And last goal, SIP three, partner with families and the community to create safe environments that promote belonging. Our strategic objective is to continue to build authentic partnerships with families in both buildings and the
community to enhance trust, support, student well-being, and contribute to a school culture where everyone feels valued, seen, and safe. Um and I will say enhanced trust has been the primary because as a new leader I too am trying
to gain trust um so that I could lead effectively and so that involves um building relationships with the staff, the students and the parents. And so with this we have our goal number three and the first one is assess what actions
from year two had a positive impact on the community connection and connectivity and where there's an area for improvement via the community survey for staff students and parents. Now this survey was created by the school site council team. And so with this, being
able to actually look into um the survey and figure out which events uh are parents and students most wanting to engage in and where there's room for improvement. And so this same survey will go out again from the school site
council team at the end of this school year uh for planning of the next school year. Then next we have foster unified and inclusive school community across both Pierce campuses by creating shared experiences, consistent communication and opportunities for collaboration
among students, staff and families such as visuals, morning announcements, and everything that can be leveraged with a sense of connection. And so with this, it's hosting schoolwide events, ensuring constant communication with both campuses. This is through newsletter, virtual morning announcements and the
digital boards in both campuses. If you look, my favorite is when we pose a question from a staff member. Like this week, if you come in, the students are trying to figure out which staff member has 33 plants in their home. Uh last a couple of weeks ago, it was which staff
member house was a former bank. Um and so this is highlighted across both campuses, but then you also have student highlights. We also still have our math word problem of the week in which we put out that problem of the week beginning of the week and students take time in
their off time to complete the problem and then they drop it off and then we read off um in morning announcements the answers to those problem of the week and the students that submitted their answers and answered them correctly. And I was so happy that I was the first one to do the problem of the week and tell
the school how much I love grapes as a snack. Um and then also we always highlight student and staff achievements from both campuses and our school communications and reinforce shared identity. And one way is that I love that we have the
intercom system where I can be at one location and reach both so that at the end of the school day I am giving the end of day announcements. And last, teachers and staff will create welcoming spaces through visual displays, inclusive celebrations, and
culturally responsive classroom and school practices. We're going to see this increase in our panorama data for student belonging, which I have here on the next slide, where it looks like we have been consistent at 60 66% since
fall 2020. And so my goal is to move us up to 80% um for student belonging. And so if you can see the consistency here, there was a drop in 22 um but I just want you to see the overall um school belonging from
our students at Pierce since 2020. And sorry that concludes my presentation. >> Thank you. Thank you Candace. I >> was talking pretty fast. I'm sorry. >> There's a lot there. We'll we'll we'll
digest it over time. Sarah, >> I guess I'm feeling that I really like that you came into this midway because um a lot of the work that you're doing is work that I know knowing you as an educator that I know is is stuff that's important to you and you didn't have to
take the time to find out if that's what where Pierce wanted you as well. So PICE has this long history of um a a real sense of community and you're jumping right in the middle of the work and it's just to see. >> Yes. And enjoying it. I am
>> uh anyone else Betsy? Uh no Bob's raising his hand. Okay, Bob. >> Hi Candace. >> Hi Bob. >> Want to send warm greetings to Jeff, >> my former buddy at BEu. >> Yes. Yes. I should definitely tell him
hi. >> Good old Jerry Whitmore. Cool. He's still hanging in there, right? >> He is still hanging in there. >> Okay. I also bring you warm greetings from Jessica Middlebrook. Do you know that name? >> I do. >> Okay. She's my daughter-in-law. >> Oh, really? Wow.
>> The school committee in Watertown as you will. >> Yes. It's such a small world. >> Congrats. I was sad when you left Watertown. >> Yes, she was. >> Um, great report. Uh, quickly, you're a quick study. Thank you. >> And my I guess my only question was that
66% belonging figure that you >> which has been consistent. What uh it's to me it sounds a little low. What do you think? >> I think it does sound a little low. Um but then also I looked at the percentage of 198 students gave the response last
year and so of course our we have 587 students and so um figuring out um how to collect it with our K2 as well. Um I think that percentage will definitely go up but that is what's been pulled in
Panorama for the past several years. So I definitely want that to be moved up. >> Yeah, you got a good goal. Thank you. Yes, >> thank you Candace. I was actually going to comment on the same thing. I agree 60 seems a little low. However, you also have split campus as you do. So, I was
very pleased to hear about the intercom working both places >> because students know your voice and so when they hear that feel like you're there even if you're not. So I I think that's good and and you plan as many efforts to keep the community as tight
as you can even though you have the added challenge of course of being on two separate campuses. So thank you for your focus on that. And with that I think we say thank you and goodbye to you and we're going to move on to >> thanks you all. Thank you for your time.
>> David you are up. >> Hi everybody. How are you? >> Hi David. We're doing well. >> Good to see you. I'm going to just share my screen. Just pull this up. Hang on one second. Just give me a minute here. Just want to make sure I'm pulling up the right
thing. David, if you can Oh, >> okay. Can you see that? Okay. >> Yeah, I can. Yes. >> Okay. >> If you hit the slideshow button near the top right, it'll show the whole screen. >> Oh, that's really good. Thank you. >> Is that good?
>> Perfect. >> Yeah, perfect. >> All right. Wonderful. Well, uh, it's nice to see all of you. Um, so I'm going to be doing our SIP for the Driscoll School. Let me just um move this along here. Uh, we have a wonderful uh site
council. Uh, Nicole Mlen, Scott Nanian, Kyle Deo Cook, and Lee Simmons Simons uh have been part of our uh school site council. Um, Erica Sullivan, Mackenzie Snow, myself, um, McKenzie and Erica stepped down last year, but we are
looking forward to adding uh new teacher reps this year. Hopefully, we can get some from the middle school. It's been a while since we've had middle school rep representation at the Driscoll School, but um they all contributed uh uh to our school uh school improvement plan. It is a two-year plan uh from 24 to 26. So,
this year we will be embarking on a new school improvement plan um with our school site council. Um so, I just wanted to talk about the budgetary in impact. Um, so we'd like to continue our uh staff,
our middle school staff has done a lot of work over the years um to guide our values with our middle school. um back in uh the summer of 23, I was able to um pay them to work over the summer for a period of two two days uh to work as a
middle school team to uh come up with a series of values and also uh some habits that they would like our middle schoolers to display. Um it really developed a really nice cohesive environment not only with our teachers, but what we're trying to work on is
consistent expectations from class to class. Um and so they did a great job of putting together um a list of these values along with uh students get these Rick scores. Um there are middle school scores that they get to to show that
they are following along with our classroom expectations. Uh they're doing their homework. Um and it's a nice way to make sure that our students are following middle school expectations. um in ma in ensuring that our students are trying to u show and display and have
consistenc consistently from class to class. We also hired um our landmark consultant Annne Larson to train our staff um to also maintain consistencies. We are a district-wide program. We are the lab program here at Driscoll School and
um of course Landmark is our consultant with our lab program but a lot of what they do in lab um is what's good for their students is also good for all of our students. So we we try to do is maintain consistency from class to class in things like every class has a dragon
book. So we have make sure that all of our students uh write down their homework and their dragon books. they get stamped by the teacher to make sure that they wrote down their homework so that they know that when they go home their parents can see that they wrote down their homework. Um, and that's something every single class uh from
grades 6 to 8 abides by. We also we also um have each of our classes uh they engage in two column notetaking and I think again that consistency of two column note takingaking allows our all of our students to be successful um and it also um you know improves their
writing but having that consistency makes it easier for students so that they don't have to learn uh how one teacher does notetaking versus another teacher versus another teacher. And so that two column notetaking uh really um helps our students become more successful across the board. So our
middle school really did a good job of embarking on working together to mean those maintain those consistencies. Um making sure that they have uh expectations that are consistent across the board and um also codes of conduct um are other things that we want to make
sure that students follow. Um and so um our our middle school has done a great job of um of doing that. So hiring using the money to hire our consultant was a big part of our budgetary impact a couple years ago, but it's really reaped its rewards over the last couple years.
Um, one of the other things that uh as part of our budget that we have uh we as part of our work with Landmark and uh with our middle school, we have homework binders with dividers, pencil consistent pencil cases, a Chromebook case, and classroom binders to help our students
organize their work. As you know, that's always been a challenge over the years to make sure our middle schoolers are organized. Landmark has done a wonderful job in terms of helping us uh maintain that organiz maintain organization systems in the classroom and also at
home. And so we always make sure that uh our students are provided with um those organizers, but it's always come at the cost of the parents. And so last year I was able to get through the town uh for this year uh an allocation of $8,500 to
cover the cost of these items because this is something that we expect uh the students. We want to take that burden off of the the um the families. So this year we're we are buying all the materials that they need uh for going into next year using last year using the
allocation that we got um at the we we got it in July. But we're going to buy all those materials so that our students don't have to foot the bill starting next year. None of our uh parents needed to buy those uh dragon books this year. We we um purchased those for our families. So we're really trying to
shift the cost over to um the district for these items because they are expected. Oops. I'm sorry. Let me go back. And then um looking at our data, I just need to move this um
I'm sorry. Sorry guys, I just lost I was just trying to move something. I just lost my presentation. Hang on one second. Oops. Folks, I'm sorry. I apologize. I just I just uh clicked off here. >> This brings us all back to the time. >> Why don't you hit stop sharing and I'll
pull it up, David? >> Can you do want to hit stop share on your Zoom? >> Yeah. Am I still sh Can you still see my uh >> Yes, we can. >> Yeah. Go down to the little green button on the Zoom um ribbon towards the bottom of your screen. Yeah, there you go. Let
me see if I can pull it up for you. >> Okay. I just added a couple of slides. That's why I just want to look for it, Betsy. Oh, all right. >> All right. Let me just uh just give me a moment here. I'll pull it back up. >> I was saying that all of us who online have been there before, right? Where are worried about what's getting projected
out to everybody else. >> Okay. All right. Let me try this again. All right. All right. Can you see my screen? >> Uhhuh. Perfect. >> All right. Sorry about that. Um,
so then looking at our data from Panorama, our equity team wrote a grant two years ago uh to establish to reestablish actually a mentor program at Driscoll for students who didn't identify a trusted adult in our school. Um, and that students will be paired with teachers in a non-academic way to
help them feel reestablished and reconnected to our community. And we'd like to continue this program, which cost us about $1,000 a year. So, it's um it's a really good investment. It's a great way for our our students to feel connected to the school and our and our faculty. So, our district goal uh for is to
increase achievement for all students by establishing and implementing a regularly uh and regularly assessing a consistent highquality challenging curriculum driven delivering using evidence-based practices. And so uh we we'll use u dibbles and star data to
plan and deliver targeted instruction that meets the needs of our students uh and foundational literacy skills. Uh we also want to identify um successful instructional strategies that provide robust tier one and tier 2 interventions in math and or ELA to increase the
achievement levels of each students. And I put that in there because um as you as you know the uh schedule is a very complicated uh process. This year we were able to work with our guidance team and schedule um our interventions for
our EL student students and our ELA interventions during our um grades 1 through five windblocks and that has u been very um productive for our our staff. Um it's it's it's been um you know it's a real challenge to try to get
everything aligned. And as you know with our uh lab program, our lab program gets scheduled first and we wanted to make sure that um we're also um aligning our windblocks when with when students also leave the classroom for our lab program. Um and so we were able to do that with
ELA this year. We haven't been able to um do that with math yet, but uh that's something that we're working on. Did I do this again? Why did I keep Why do I keep doing this? Okay, here we go. Um, so again, uh, educators will assess students with
dibbles in grades K to three and STAR in grades four to six two to three times a year. That's how well that's one of our strategic initiatives. We also want to increase the positive data outcomes for students in K to3 on uh, Dibbles and in STAR. Um, e educators will continue to engage in data review meetings with
literacy specialists, special educators, e staff, and school administrators to discuss and review student progress uh and adjust instruction accordingly. Uh we'd like to see an increase in positive data outcomes for students in K to3 benchmarks and dibbles in four through
six and the star assessments. Um we're also giving our teachers time to examine data during um our staff meetings. Um we'll have protocols for the collecting and analyzing student data that include unit assessments and
formative assessments from uh investigations, star assessments and MCCAST. Uh and also uh one of the things that we also want to do is to reduce the amount of um um the the amount of loss over the summer.
We want to pay teachers to produce grade level math games and resources that families can access throughout the year. So, we'd like to produce a bank of uh math resources for families to access in Google Drive. So, a couple things I wanted to show you
is um some MCCAST data from uh last year. You can see that we have about 70 students uh meeting or exceeding um uh standard and um we'd like to see if we can increase that amount and also we
want to reduce uh the number of students uh not meeting or exceeding um the standards. One of the things that uh our average student growth percentage was at 57 which is not bad. Um so it's not it's not a bad SGP but you know again we want to see uh an improvement in this area.
And for math uh we had 71% of students meet or exceed um standards uh with a an average SGP of 63.8. Um, and I'd like to give our staff some time during our staff meetings when we
look at MCCAST data uh to really dig deep into what areas we feel we need uh improvement in. And we have a wonderful math um interventionists who uh can help us dive deep into that. So school improvement goal number two uh
we want to develop and implement a culturally responsive community engagement plan to foster connections among caregivers, schools, the district and the community. Um our strategic objective is to bridge the K to5 and six to eight communities in order to solidify our identity as a K to8 school
and we want to also develop a connection from our elementary grades to our middle school and may and also because we're in a new building. I think I mentioned this last year uh this is our second year in the new building. Um it's it's a bit a little bit of an adjustment since we have grade levels on each floor. We have
K to2 on one floor, second floor is 3 to 5, and top floor is 6 to 8. Because we're all on different floors, we've kind of lost that ability to see each other on a daily basis and have us interact. So, we want to maintain some continuity between grade levels.
And so, in doing that, we want to continue with our traditions. We have whole school traditions like arts equinox, science solstice, and at the end of the year, we have a wonderful Junth celebration. uh for the first time we were able to hold that back on campus in our field. Um and that's usually uh
right in at the end of the the school year in June. Uh it's a wonderful event. Um we also have uh we want to prepare our students and parents for middle school in order to ease that transition from elementary grades to middle school uh by h by holding a fifth grade parent
night in u May or in June. We had we actually held it at the end of the school year last year. Um we also want to we also provide students with a meeting uh with the sixth grade team in September to understand the day uh the daily life in the middle school. Um and
we our our sixth grade team did a wonderful job with this meeting in September. This is before openhouse. This is basically just helping our uh our new sixth grade families understand what it's like to move into the sixth grade into an ele into a middle school
environment uh which is very different than their fifth grade environments, very different from their early elementary um time. So uh it was a really nice transition meeting and of course we want to provide more communication to middle school families. Last year our vice principal did a great
job of sending out um newsletters uh to our middle school families. our um elementary families, our teachers do a great job of communicating um with our uh families and sometimes when you hit the middle school levels, our families want to that same information. So um
we're going to we we are down a vice principal this year because of budget cuts and so our hope is to to try to um uh rebuild that communication process to our middle school families because they still want to keep up with uh information that's going on strictly in the middle school.
And then uh again district goal is to partner with families and community to create safe environments that pro promote belonging. Um and we we want to identify individual needs and social emotional health. And we want students to have a sense of belonging and feel respected and valued by their classmates
and teachers. And so again uh we want to we what we do is we uh we look at social emotional data from a panorama. Uh we use staff meeting time and PD days uh to review that panorama data. Our clinical team reviews panorama data on data on a weekly basis to determine how to be best
support uh individual students in our middle school. Uh we started an initiative um several years ago where we uh our K to2 students decorate postcards and our middle school teachers uh write notes to their families um just letting them know what what a wonderful job that
their students did. And it's just a great way for our middle school faculty to uh stay connected to our middle school families. And our goal is to uh by the end of the year have each student have a have them receive a a postcard from their teacher teams. Um, we use RA
Panorama to examine responses about staff and family perceptions on school climate. Uh, we want to always increase maintain an increase students sense of belonging and safety at Driscoll. And we want to continue to work on middle school schedule and staffing to see where we can incorporate time and
resources for seventh and eighth grade advisory. Um, and this has always been a challenge because our teachers teach uh seven multiple grades at a time and during throughout the year it's a real challenge. That's been a real tough time trying to find that advisory time how we could fit that in like a full period. We
just haven't been able to accomplish that yet, but this is something that's ongoing that we're trying to work on. And then the last thing I just wanted to share with all of you, you can see this is our uh growth over the year with our sense of school belonging. Um and you can see from uh the 2324 year, we've uh
improved in the springtime to 2425. Our sense of school belonging in the springtime was up to about 84%. uh and emotional regulation also increased from uh the prior year from 82% to 84%. So our our guidance team is doing a wonderful job. Our teachers are
doing an outstanding of job of incorporating uh SEAL uh work into their lesson planning and getting to know their students. So I think that's really it really shows in this data right here. And that's what I have. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, David.
>> Yeah, I do. Am I holding us up too much if I talk? >> No. >> Okay. >> So, David, one of the things I'm going to go back to monitoring goals, too. Um, I loved hearing from you. You don't shy away from um challenges. You find solutions to them. It's really evident
in in every detail that you've given us here. And one of the things that we on the school committee have trouble seeing is where our system is a school system. you know where the where the um commonalities happen between the
different schools. So when I was looking at traditions transitions from elementary grades to middle school parents understanding the day in the life and the communication to middle school families using those examples could you tell us like I guess you're a senior statesman around here these days
principal um could you tell us how do um our different schools communicate about things like that? um is it in principal meetings? Is it when um PTO's get together? Is it vice principles? Um where where are best practices shared so
that all of the schools um have some of these great ideas? >> Yeah, you know, that's a great question. Um I think when we meet as um principles uh in our principal meetings uh and also we we're very good at communicating with each other um our our principles. Um, but in our principal meetings, that's an
a that's an awesome time for us to just sit down and have time with each other face to face where we can discuss these great ideas because every school has got these wonderful ideas and we all share them with each other and um, you know, I've incorporated practices from other
schools into the work that I do here at Driscoll and um, we we're constant I think that's the best place where we can share that information um, ask questions from each other and how we approach approach um how how to tackle a difficult problem or difficult issue or
how do we get better at um doing something and it it's um that's really the ideal place for it and uh and really giving us that time with each other uh is so critical. Uh we've talked about that as principles like we really we've really tried to carve out that that time
uh during our leadership meetings to say listen we just we just need like an hour or so to really discuss um best practices and what what are we doing to improve our schools and so um that's really the best way to to um I I think
learn about each other's um practices. Um I hope that answers your question. >> Yeah, that's helpful. Thank you. One other thing I wanted to mention in there I didn't actually get to uh say in my presentation is that um you know we last year was our first year with Winthropen
Middle School and um that's also that's been such a wonderful part of our uh middle school and uh we're so excited that this program is in our school and um as part of sense of belonging we we make sure that Winther House is incorporated into everything that we do
here at Driscoll and uh as part of our community and um and I think it's just added so much value to our our overall school uh community. So, I just wanted to put that out there as well. >> Thank you. Thank you, David. Uh Bob, >> yes. Thank you. Hi, David.
>> Hi, Bob. How are you? >> I'm good. I'm recovering from COVID. That's why I'm not there. >> Oh, no. >> Um I think I'm I'm finished. Um great report, very comprehensive. Um, I love I love the fact that you kind of
understand that the third floor is middle, second floor is older elementary and first floor is younger elementary. And because my kids went to Driscoll and >> I remember the interaction that happened between the older kids and the younger kids there. Um, so I'm glad you're
focusing on that. At least that's important. I have a question for um, I mean, whoever's going to answer the question. Um, I was part of the uh original school improvement program back in the 80s. Um, or no, early 90s. Um, and there were
students on the on the school council. Um, and there was also money allocated to the school council, but money is a whole separate thing. But, um, why are there no students on any of the school councils? >> Just curious. >> You know, Bob, that's a great question. I, uh, I I I don't think I could answer
that. That's a that's a very good question. Yeah, I mean that's something that it would be nice to have. >> Has that been going on for a really long time, not having the kids? >> As long as I've been here, uh we have not um mainly because we hold it during the school day, but that doesn't mean that the students can't step out of
their class like you know once every couple of months. So I think that's that's a good suggestion. I think it's >> Robin's gonna >> typically there is there are students on the high school school um advisory council but not necessarily on the elementary or middle >> right I always found that the seventh
and eighth graders could contribute a lot because you know they're there and they they can just express their own experience which the adults are not in >> I you know I'll throw that out and say maybe that's possible. >> Yeah, I think it's a good suggestion. I
I think some schools have also worked with um some advisory councils like at the middle grade level or have some sort of student student government and quotes I guess. Um but I don't know how iceberg that is.
>> So something to think about as well. >> Okay, we're gonna we're gonna move on. Thank you so much. Thank you David. >> Thanks everybody. Good to see you all. by your school all the time and I see all kinds of things that are exciting that are going on. So that's great. So thank you. >> Great
>> Margaret. Hi. >> Hi everyone. How are you? >> Your last for tonight Margaret. So >> it's very nice to see you all. >> So >> sorry that I couldn't come in person. I'm actually still here at the Lynch Center helping out with extended day. But it's great to see you all in the Zoom. >> Okay. Well, let you go right ahead. It's
your turn. >> All right. I'm going to share my screen. So hold on. Here we go. Go. Well, I want to thank you all for inviting me this evening to share a little bit about the beep school improvement plan. Um, this plan is really a continuation of the plan that
we had last year. Um, you know, be families stay with us maximum three years, sometimes just two years, sometimes just one year. So, the council might change often year to year or every other year. So, we do have a new site council this year. Um we had a very short organizational meeting about two
weeks ago and uh people wrote into the PTO and they nom they wanted to be nominated to be on the site council and then we had a meeting and they were elected to the site council and this will be our site council for the 2025 2026 school year. It's very nice mix of parents from across beep and all our
different locations and a very nice mix of educators and specialists in the program. I really have to start this evening um however with a moment of gratitude. Um 2024 2025 was a very big year for beep.
The entire program all 23 classes moved to a school day schedule. Several of our classes had already been school day our special education classes. But the entire program last year shifted from an 8 to 12:15 day to a regular school day. 8 to 2:30 on Monday through Thursday and
then 8 to 1:40 on Friday. And that was a big lift for all of the educators in BE for the Paris, for the teachers, for the specialists. And I just wanted to extend my gratitude to all of them for making it such a successful launch. Um, and I really have to say an extra special thanks to the uh food service team at
Driscoll, to Gabby and her team because they prepare the beep lunches for the Beacon, Putterham, and Lynch sites since we don't have cafeterias at those sites. They prepare them on site at Driscoll and then they get delivered to those Beep locations by um the food service um employees. So I just have to extend my
thanks to them. And also I would be remiss not to thank Lisa Marie Pedro who retired after 20 plus years working for BEP um at the end of the school year last year. And always I'm grateful to the parents who share their children with us and trust us with the care of their children.
>> 2024 2025 was a big year for Beep and I put a lot of highlights here um for you to take a look at. I'm not going to read them all. One of the things that I would really like to highlight, and this kind of goes along with what Dave was talking about about that transition from from middle school, from elementary to middle school, is that with our work through
the coordinated family community engagement grant, Erin Hearnie worked with the librarians in town and they organized some kindergarten meetups at the libraries throughout the summer. And what we did was we organized meetups based on where you're going to school for kindergarten. And you can see here
how it worked and how many families went to each of those events. They were very successful. And it's just an opportunity for families who meet up before school starts. You're going to be a Baker kid, you're going to be able kid, you're going to be a Hayes family. You get a chance to meet each other before school starts, right? And it's a really great opportunity to sort of build that big
public school or Brooklyn community as you start in um in kindergarten in in um in Brooklyn. And I would also like to point out that last year we were able to offer a um a training uh a certification course. Rachel Craigan or offered it for um educators who wanted to get their
prek to2 moderate disability license. It's a new license offered through Desi and several beep educators and kindergarten educators participated in that training. And you can see there were lots of other things that we did as well and we moved out of Clark Road. That was a really big move as well. And we moved our administrative offices here
to the Lind Center at 599 Brooklyn Avenue. So always when we think about beep there's a lot of budgetary impact. is a big program, 23 classrooms across the seven locations. We're always looking at the revolving fund to continue monitor revenue and expenses. We look at the cost of the curriculum materials for our
English language arts programs, for our math and for programs. We also think about our professional development costs and how we can build a budget for the PT goss for um for BEAP educators. We built music into our budget and we have an instructor, one instructor who goes to
all the sites throughout the year and that has been a very nice addition to be have one person who teaches consistently across all the classrooms in the in the program. And then we're really looking to build into our budget um stipens for student intervention teams. We don't have a student intervention team in BEAP
and we are piloting this year um happening um as just a pilot to see how how that might work um for next year. So, we aligned our school improvement plan goals with the district goals. And so, this first goal is really just about tier one instruction, right? It's about
that basic instruction that all students that go to be get. And we focus particularly on literacy and math and particularly to align our programs with the with the programs in in kindergarten, first grade, and second grade. So, you'll see on the next slide that we are using foundations and we
have been using Hegrity for two years now. This this year will be our second year for foundations, but it'll be more widely used across the program. We had two educators who went to training last year, Rachel Craig and Megan Kelly, to become trainers to to other teachers and trainers in the program so they can
offer support for teachers that are adopting the foundation's work. And then we're also looking at other types of tier one curriculum. So curriculum that all beep teachers use across the program. And so we use focus on prek from the Boston public schools. That's just a resource. We don't t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t typically use it, but it's a great resource for pre-K
educators. Second state, everyone uses the pyramid model. We all use We Play, which is out of Nor Eastern, which is a um a social emotional um program and a physical movement program. Um we use that across the program. And then we are really looking at a scope of sta standards for the program. What is the
scope of learning across preK and what does that look like in the program? And I put in here an example of time on learning for pre-K students to show you that we are trying really hard to align with the way that students will experience kindergarten when they move on from beep.
Our second goal is about community. It's all about community. It's about the BEP community, but also the larger public schools of Brooklyn community and the town of Brooklyn. And with our a coordinated family community engagement grant, we have lots of opportunity to build those relationships from when children are very young and right until
they come to beep or not beep some other school in Brooklyn and then when they come to kindergarten. And as you look here, you will be able to see the different ways that we building community in the community and within the BEP community. I've highlighted some of the new things that will be offered this year. We're going to be offering
two family support groups. one will facilitated by our SLP, a social worker and one of our team facilitators and they will focus on supporting families of students with identified needs and then just general parenting as well. Those will be offered once a week in person at the Lynch Center. We also have
partnered once again with the Children's Museum to offer a six-w week math program to the community and that will happen here at the Lynch Center as well. Families sign up and and they and they come and they work with their children to learn how to develop math skills at home. And then we also do a lot of work
with um community based at at Brooklyn housing at family aid. We offer a ages and stages screenings through our community playgroups. So families can identify if their children have any needs and how they might be met either in the district if they're old enough to get their screening or outside through
early intervention. And then our last goal again is really focuses focuses on our pyramid model work. We have been doing this work. We started in 2019 right before the pandemic. Margaret Olm is our desi coach. We have been hanging on since
then. Um I'm very proud that we continue to do this work because it was hard to continue to do it throughout the the pandemic and afterwards. But this is a very normbbased, very research-based program that really looks at the positive behavior interventions and also
works with families and schools. And it has what we call a benchmarks of quality that you measure how well you're doing and the progress that you're making as you use this program. We meet once a month as a leadership team um to discuss the program and how it's going and then
you can you can look you can click on the links and it'll take you to the different data portals and things like that. And then of course our our final goal is school day be as I said before last year was the first year that we were all a school day schedule. This is the second year we continue to moni
monitor these particular things around the program. At our first site council meeting which was very brief so we'll have another site council meeting in a couple of weeks. We're going to look at the enrollment and lottery considerations. One of the things we're really trying to figure out is how to better manage the lottery because when you look at the way the lottery rolls
out in the program, we this past year, let's take for example, we offered we had 80 people who we offered a spot to, but then they they didn't they canceled that spot or they didn't they didn't take it. So, we're trying to figure out how do we not necessarily lose people in that first round by being more strategic
and streamlined in how we do the lottery. Um, we're looking again at the budget implications and then we're also offering our own extended day. We have two programs, one at Lynch, and one at Partam. Make sure that we're meeting revenue expectations and also staffing issues as well. And I had a great meeting with Joe Albuquerque where we
looked at beep spaces and about leases and thinking about those things as we move forward towards the PE pierce um building project um and looking towards the future. And that is our beep school improvement plan. Wow, Margaret,
>> you got on a lot, Margaret, very quickly. Thank you. >> It was probably too much and I just Please feel, you know, after you have a chance to look it over, I'm happy to come back. I'm happy to talk to any of you about any questions you have about the work that we're doing. But we're really trying to align our work with the
district's work. And remember that beep is about exposure. It's not about mastery. It's about exposure, about opportunities to learn and grow as a community of learners as little children before you move on to the law to the to the larger um public school system. That's helpful.
>> So questions or comments? I have one. Yeah, Mark. I just I this this can't be answered quickly. So you So don't think you have to come back another time. But you know, I I am really a strong proponent of full day
universal free four-year-old programs. And I'm just wondering, you know, do you have any sense that the state might step in or what will be our next steps for making that happen?
>> I think, you know, and I think in some communities for for instance in Cambridge where they've invested like a ton of resources in in a universal prek model. Um, in towns like Watertown where they've built out that model a little bit. Um, I think it would so it would be lovely if the state would step up,
right? Um, and then there would be a there would be work to do around the partnerships with the the community-based preks because the way that it works, if you want to have universal preks, we wouldn't necessarily be able to offer that in the public schools of Brooklyn. We just wouldn't have enough space for every student that
necessarily would want it. So, you have to have those partnerships with the community based programming and then work with that program in terms of the curriculum that they um they use, the assessments that they use, their pay and salary scale for their educators. Um I have not heard very much conversation
around that more recently. I think people have just been sort of um thinking about lots of other things. But it would be a very it's a big goal. Not necessarily not one that's not it is attainable, but it would require a lot of like thinking and planning and in partnership with the Commonwealth,
right? It wouldn't be something that necessarily the town could undertake, I don't think, without some additional support. >> Thank you. I'll keep thinking about it, pushing for it. Me too. >> Yeah. Thank you, Margaret. Anyone else? Bob.
>> Yes. >> Hi, Margaret. Nice to meet you. >> You as well. >> Um, I have a a question that I don't know if it's appropriate or not, but >> go ahead. >> The relationship or lack of relationship or impact of that new early education
program that's led by Vicki, I think. And >> what can you talk about that a little bit? The story there? >> What do you mean? So, Trust Early Learners is an early childhood center that's over here on Harvard Street, right on that building right there. Um,
our former principal, Vicky Nils, was one of the people that was involved in opening that school. I'm not really sure that she is as involved as she was when it first opened. Um, I know there are former um, uh, uh, Public School of Brooklyn employees that work there. We
actually have a great partnership with them. um they offer their space for us for playgroups for our family play groups and for our community based playrg groups. Um and we go there and we offer some screenings there for for families in the community as well. They offer they they were awarded a grant
through the town to offer to work with other um community- based early childhood centers for professional development and to offer some uh you know tuition assistance seats um as part of that work which is a really great benefit for families, right? because there's not enough of that in the
community or or anywhere in the Commonwealth. So, I feel like we've built a really nice relationship with them. I met with them over the summer actually. Um we chatted about their work in the um in the community and about the professional development they're they're offering to educators in the in the town of Brooklyn and they've been a really
great partner around our our community based work, the family playgroups and um a space for us to go. So, that's been that's been very nice for us. Um, and that and to build that that presence in the community is nice as well. >> How many kiddos are in that program? >> I don't actually know. They have younger
children there as well, a little bit younger children than we have. >> Um, I believe it's designed to be around 80 plus students, but I actually don't know their total enrollment right now. >> Okay. >> Thank you, Margaret. >> You're very welcome. >> By the way, great job on your report. >> Oh, thank you so much. I I love talking
about beep. >> I know you do. Well, thank you, Margaret. Thank you, Margaret. Actually, I just like three minutes over, which is a >> No, I I I congratulate all my colleagues. You did a great job. I was listening as I was helping out here with the kids. So, it was a great night.
Thank you so much for inviting all of us. >> Thank you so much and have a great evening. >> You as well, everyone. Stay safe. >> Yes. >> Thank you. >> So, that actually concludes our meeting tonight. We're going to meet again on Thursday. uh same same place, same time,
and we'll have five more presentations. Uh I know it's a little frustrating because there's so much information, but this is kind of how we do it. And um as they said, we can always call somebody back on a particular program or we can um find out some of the more details if
somebody wants them. But we do appreciate the time and effort that our administrators are putting into these reports. Um hopefully it's >> it's helpful to them as well as this to us. Bob and then Mariah, >> is there any is it possible to have a little bit of new business here?
>> Uh well, just a minute. Okay, hold on. Hold on. I'll get to you. Mariah, >> I just wanted to say how excellent I thought the presentations were. I really enjoyed, you know, hearing what the plans are. And just like last year where we started to pull threads across
schools, it was really great to see that increasing this year and really being able to not just pull the threads across schools but across years. So I really liked um being able to listen in today even though there was so much content we couldn't really spend a lot of time
engaging in it. That's okay. They did a great job presenting. >> Yeah. Thank you, Laura. Uh Bob, new business. Yeah, I just want to mention a couple of things. One, because I'm new on the curriculum committee, um I'm very very very interested in calling Jen
Martin in at a meeting and talk about WISP because I think that's been sort of on the agenda for a year or so maybe or maybe more. I don't know. But I I just want Jen, who I love, to come here before this committee and talk about the
program, that class, and share some data data with us if she could. So, >> we did hear from her last spring. So, we have done that recently. And in fact, maybe Betsy, we could find that presentation of the recording and we could let Bob know. >> Sure.
>> That doesn't mean we can't still bring it back. I'm just saying we have done it recently. Yeah, I think I saw that presentation and I think that one of the things that happened at the end there was there was an um an interest in having her come back with data, >> right? But she's not have a lot of new
data from her last presentation until later this year perhaps, but we'll take a look at it, see what we need to do. I mean, I wrote it down. So, >> okay. Thank you. The other thing >> that Robin knows about um I am very interested in creating a more robust teachers of scholars program as part of
our professional development in Brooklyn. Um I know that it was born here way back in the day with Henry Bolter. Um and then it's been it's been uh we've had fewer and fewer um slots
from teachers of scholars and my personal opinion having as I told Robin having experienced a bunch of teachers of scholars um as an English teacher at the high school um I just think that um one of my campaign themes was finding our center of gravity our academic
center of gravity um in the school system and teachers and scholars to me represent presents a very powerful statement about the academic center of gravity in a school because you bring in academic folks uh to spend days few days
with um teachers from different departments different levels in the system. So I'm just an advocate for teachers of scholars and um the the person who's in charge of teachers of scholars right teachers of scholars right now is Mary Burchinol the former English department chair and longtime
English teacher at the high school and she's spectacular. So those are my two issues wisp and teachers of scholars. >> Okay thankful okay and I see any more hands I will uh adjourn the >> Suzanne. >> Yes.
>> Hi it's Carolyn. I can't raise my hand because I'm in the car. Sorry. >> Okay. >> But I did manage to unmute myself. Um, so first of all, apologies for being late. I was again in an appointment that ran over. Um,
and hopefully there won't be too many more of those. Um, so apologies for being late. I'm in the car. Um, thank you to everybody who I I came in in the middle of Candace. I I
don't know who I missed. Um, but great presentations. Um, and then um I'll I'll just jump on what Bob said as well. Notwithstanding that there was um some presentation
uh about uh K through8 and 9 through 12 social studies curriculum last year. Um I would agree that um looking at what's going on
with nth grade social studies um is pretty important um whatever that looks like. So, I'll just second Bob's interest in that. >> Okay. >> Thanks. >> Thank you, Carolyn. Okay. And without
any other comments or questions, I will adjourn the meeting if that's okay. >> Thank you, sir. Thank you, everyone. >> Thank you. Update.