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welcome to the Monday February 10th 2025 meeting of the Dennis shouth Regional school committee please stand and join
me in the Pledge of Allegiance our pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you we will start with our stupid representative report from Ava Deo hi everyone just me today um I hope
everyone had a good week um so at Dy we have juniors are beginning to think about SATs um we have two dates this school year in March um and then one in June or May I think it's June um sports news senior nights are starting with basketball and hockey this week um and girls tomorrow boys hockey on Wednesday and boys basketball on Thursday uh spring sports are just around the corner and um our musical we have
auditions it's High School Musical um Wednesday I'm really excited guys um and the drama club is also competing in a onea play theater Festival on March 1st and then everyone is just excited for February break on starting this Friday and that's it thank you thank you so much next we have our midcycle progress superintendent evaluation
process Dr Smith thank you very much uh so uh here we are approximately halfway through the year just take an opportunity to provide this committee with an update on superintendent goals um uh emailed the committee a link to this presentation on Friday so you have access to all the links I'm not going to pull up each bit of evidence um both for your um brevity of the meeting and for not boring the public um to death um but each of
these things are linked in here I'll speak a little bit to them um and and you can either stop me at any point in time or at the end this is obviously a spot for questions um and I'll come back again at the end of the year and update on each of these but just to begin so here are just a reminder of the five goals that set out at the beginning of the year with the focus indicators as you remember uh we collectively determined that there'd be uh five goals for
the superintendent to work on this year or organizational Effectiveness uh supporting the implementation of the math curriculum uh kada 12 uh doing some analysis around barriers to early literacy in the district working on public relations and then continuing the work around district and school safety planning uh each of those had some Focus indicators from the superintendent rubric tied to them I've got those uh in bold next to each of the each of the goals and these were all uh
approved and voted on in uh mid August so moving through each of the goals just sort of updating on where we or where I am with each of these um this goal was driven from the report of Entry findings that provided to the committee in if I remember correctly it was about April last year and one of the findings from that report was really some work that we can do inside the district around enhanced improvements within the district around systems
really about sort of the way that we do the quote unquote business side of school um and as a as a school district included things like modernizing our systems some of our business operation systems um things from the way uh we do like leave forms to uh to attendance to um business operations Etc and to things like creating consistent standard operating procedures so some things have
been established and some things are process some things are also just about sort of the way we operate with our partners um on the both in Dennis and Yarmouth so uh the committee was very involved obviously with our difficult budget process last year and I reflected on that process at the end so sort of living from those lessons last year started um and built upon that process where we started a little uh intermunicipal work group um with leads the chairs from each of the
boards and committees along with the school committee chair myself and the um uh the lead staff from each of the uh towns as well as the uh superintendent and the finance staff at the on the school side to start the budget process very much earlier than it was traditionally done so you'll have links to the agendas and some of the communication uh starting all the way back in November which is very early for us on the school side we don't have a lot of our information but we did have a lot of our
expense information that we were able to start and really work on building relationships we met again in January and actually John and I had a meeting today with the uh chairs from the two Finance committees to continue building um new systems and new processes to really help by the time we get in front of the full boards and by the time we get in front of town meeting that everybody's had their questions answered and we really have built support for the budgets um secondly working with a special education department uh working on
developing a uh process for referring and placing students in out of District so you'll see a link to that process um then similarly working uh two bullets down from that working with the office of instruction for developing a curriculum resource adoption process so not my job to select the curriculum resource materials but ensuring that we have a process how are we going to get to those big decisions um I skipped over a bullet
which is the detail process for getting the budget materials that come before you all so um how do the staff we all responsible for bringing um myself and when it was David David the all the information that we need to compile all the budget documents to bring to you so what is that process what are the guidelines what are the recommendations you'll see um this year's um uh detailed budget me memo that goes out to all them that outlines the process that's link linked
in there as well and then as you all know on the um oh I just lost the phrase uh strategic plan we have a goal to uh really develop a long-term capital plan so one step in that process is to uh capture all that in a in a in a system in in a way to I I uh collect all the things that we need to put in our Capital plan in order to collect if
we're going to get any design specs for anything costs pictures etc etc and then be able to push that out publicly so we found a system is actually already the one that the town of Yarmouth uses it's called easy CIP so we actually have purchased and secured that and started to set it up um for us to be able to utilize so there's some initial steps along that so a lot more work still to do but some steps already that have been put in place and these tie back
to the two Focus indicators um one around fiscal systems again just to reiterating the I think a lot was learned last year sort of had a crit tunity um which is a good opportunity to really build and Forge some relationships and I really didn't want to let that opportunity go build from that build from those relationships and sort of keep some of the promises that I made last year about starting early having conversations often tended a
lot of uh select board meetings as well while they're starting their budget processes to learn to understand what it is that they need um and bring from our side information to them to help them in their processes uh and then I think this proactive work has really helped diminish some of the sort of US versus them um I know attitude for lack of a better word that may have been started to build up which is really gets around the managing conflict some of the proactive
work um instead of finding ourselves in Conflict building the relationships ahead of time understanding what it is that people need getting them that information as uh as early and as often as possible so that uh we can build some trust um and build some support through that trust next is the math curriculum implementation uh this year I've really shifted towards empowering I don't know if I've mentioned this in front of this particular body I know I've mentioned it
internally with the team a lot you know coming into this role I came from a curriculum background I came from an instru curriculum instruction background uh so it's it's definitely my passion and my heart so and I have an office of curriculum and instruction and so I have to let those people also do their work so it's been a shift for me this year to really Empower those people to do their work and set goals and expectations for those people without doing their job for them and so really empowering them to along with the principles the principes
or the instructional leaders in their buildings uh to really get a strong assessment of their current state of affairs when it comes to curriculum and instruction and assessment uh and then we've been focusing this year's last year's instructional walks are really a big part of my entry work understanding getting where we are and then using that to get a a real Baseline on where uh the curriculum is where our instructional strategies are and using that to um move start to move forward as
a district and set some goals um so you'll see here linked here are systems that I've put in place uh uh walks that I have with the the principles specifically where we focus on their buildings District teams that we have in place um where all the leaders participate and then um specifically around mathematics you'll see linked in here with my support the stem director uh has developed a support plan for implementing
the K12 curriculum resources um and excuse me and you'll see that the support is at multiple levels of the organization I know she's come and presented about this as well and what we see is that part of my job is to monitor the success of implementation and what we have started to see is this is the K5 data specifically pulled out and what we see is where we've provided support
around K5 math implement ment ation it's where we've seen the best Gap closing in the district for with our data we saw 5 percentage Point Gap closure up toward uh uh in Rel in relationship to the state um and we showed some data also I don't have it in this particular slide but we I know we showed some data uh when the principles came and presented uh their mcast data we've also seen significant Gap closure for our English Learners and our students in IEP specifically in math specifically in these
G grade levels this is where we did the focused work last year and so we've expanded this same strategy up all the way through grade 12 um because the data is telling us that this uh these early results and positive results are indicating that we should continue this strategy in regards to early literacy uh the this goal uh is tied
directly to uh Str well both are but also tied directly to strategic initiative one um where we want to ensure and specifically there's an initiative within the objective one which talks to initiative onea talks to specifically to improving tier one instruction for every student by establishing clear expectations for high quality tier one instruction providing professional learning um and regularly monitoring for improvement uh so this has included us being
more focused during our uh learning walks this year and to determine where our literac this starting all the way back at the beginning year determining sort of where our literacy curriculum was in relationship to the state standards and so it started at the beginning of the year and you'll see links to uh some emails that I sent out as well as some meeting agendas where we were working to establish where was our
C curriculum in relationship to to uh the state standards and what the expectations are for students at each of the grade levels specifically we were focused on early literacy so in the K5 range those were the principles I was Rel re um meeting with and the central office staff that are responsible for those areas and then uh as the committee is aware we we sort of had some additional pressure based upon uh a lawsuit that was filed out of Boston um but that helped accelerate um a
process that the team was really already starting to arrive at um and so I worked closely with the director of humanities and outlined a process for us to shift away from the current uh literacy materials which will happen over the next uh 18 months it's actually already started there's a team that's starting to gather to do that work um and that's again there's a link there to that whole process and then worked on communicating that out to both the staff um
the committee seen the communication out to the families but you'll also see a link to the internal email that went out to the to the entire faculty so that the faculty was aware that the shift was going to be coming um as well as um the the communication that went out to our families as well and this ties back again to my role and responsibility when it comes to instruction and curriculum the big piece here being um
in ensuring that our curriculum is tied back to the most current research around effective instruction and there's a lot of Buzz around the term science of reading um and it can be put into one box or the other depending upon um how folks sort of want to sensationalize it but big picture big zoom out the science of reading talks about largely is this ever evolving body of research around what's effective
reading instruction and it talks about like all the processes that go into effective reading instruction and um it isn't just about phonics instruction which is some people sort of want to make it just that one thing but what it does say is that no effective reading program can ignore phonics construction and pheic awareness instruction um but it can't be solely based upon those things it has to
be comprehensive doesn't need to be a whole reading instruction lesson but um but it does definitely has to have those components to it um and so we need to make sure that as we move forward that our program definitely has those components in it um it's really not a conversation of either or which is sort of if you hear the concept around the reading Wars it sort of tries to push into an us or them type of a conversation or a this or a that it's not a this or a that it's a both and conversation um the challenge that we
really found ourselves in is that our reading program is based in something that's called the three queing system and the the research has been around for a while and I linked to a couple of examples here um the research has been around for a while that indicates that the three queing system is not the most effective way to teach kids how to read um and so it's we're at the point in time where we need to be listening to what the body of research is saying we need to move away from that method
and move to a more effective method because our teachers are all working really hard um in order to get students how to read so we have the responsibility I have the responsibility as a superintendent to ensure I'm putting in the curriculum in front of teachers that are making sure that their efforts are being utilized with the most effective resources so that their energy is going essentially in the I'm trying to think out the best way to phrase what I'm thinking that that their energies are going into something that's
been proven to be a effective and they're not spinning their wheels on something that is not effect not the research has been shown isn't effective because that's just wasted energy um the next bit uh is one of the district Improvement goals around public relations so another piece that came well all this was largely tied back to the district Improvement plan or the Strategic plan I mean the report of Entry findings or the district uh strategic Improvement plan um but was
a need for uh Republic uh public relations and so this had this goal had a couple different parts but the first was through the support of the committee was establishing a new position for the uh Communications community relations coordinator position um and so that began by conducting a comprehensive search process um some of that is outlined uh in some of the
um EV that I provided and then once that person has was once we had Leela in place then meeting with her on a regular basis to start to St goals and expectations for what that position shall evolve into um so we begin you'll see some links to evidence uh during her time here we've set some goals to boost um some of our social media presence that was some of our that was sort of lwh hanging fruit so you'll see um
metrics on in work that she's done to increase follows interactions uh reach views Etc um from my specific role I still work to maintain a regular District communication schedule I'm 90 well I'll say I'm like 808 to 92% effective on hitting every two weeks getting a message out to the district so still maintain a regular District communication um schedule Leela's been reviewing like districtwide policy and procedures
so this one kind of ties all the way back to the first goal she through her then through the superintendent um recommended the district website and social media policy for the committee to review and ultimately approve and put in place um and then specifically I've been working on as I mentioned previously regularly attending more board meetings um whether it's the official board meetings or some of the other Town's subboard meetings I don't know smaller committees um in order
to have make sure the the schools have presence in each of those and then the last is linked there um as long as you get to it quickly before it closes um you'll see that the district has recently put out a survey to the broader School Community because we're interested in getting feedback from the community around our communication systems again that's something that Leela is working on working with our consultant from or our not really our consultant our lead I mentioned the thought Exchange program before so we with
that comes a you know a customer care person and that person um has worked with Leela to create create the survey because we want to know of the tools we're using so of REM mind of um our website of our social media how are folks engaging with all those things uh what type of information did they get from where um what could we do better in different places etc etc and long term over the next six to eight months we're going to be doing a website overhaul
also we're going to be looking for information from this on how to overhaul the website and by we I mean Leela um so again this starting to reiterate some of the similar things there is obviously some overlap in these goals um but been working to try to build upon the relationships established last year um and excuse me I think I hope um
that the the messaging that both that I send you all as a committee plus the messaging that I link you to plus the examples that you'll see um as you move through the evidence I hope provides you a strong sense of my written communication and um minus my periodic moments where I can't find a word I hope that my uh except I'm having one again right now my moments here at at school committee provide you some witness to
my oral communication skills um and then through both our newsletters our timely communication you know unfortunately had to send a message out right before coming tonight for those of you that are on our remind about you know we've been engaged as a community in some swatting calls they try to stay as timely uh as possible on keeping the community up to date on what's going on uh with everything in the district um the thought exchange has provided us an opportunity to engage with the public in a
different way um in a back and forth as well as reflect back to them what we're hearing we we've used that internally as well just just about to finish the first round of analysis on some um staff climate data which I'm looking to quickly reflect back to the staff and then dig a little bit deeper on that data um so I think these provide some some good opportunities for engagement with the community plus as a um District we've invested in some tools that allow for families uh who whose
first language is not English to be able to engage with us as well we're thoughtful about that um we could always get better but I think we do take some purposeful steps in in engaging all families and then lastly is the school and District safety planning um you know and here it's been a good shift for me where last year I think I took a role in really trying to get this group off the ground and then this year I've really
worked to empower um this group to transition to where I've actually transitioned the leadership of the safety team to officer pascar Roa um and he and I now work collaboratively to talk about the agendas but he's now running the safety team um which I think is more appropriate than the superintendent running the safety team and I am now use my position as superintendent to move things forward um but he's taking on more of a lead role as a lead s safety officer for the district um and so
things that I've specifically has done you know I was responsible for as the chief executive the certain things I have to do like we can't enter an agreement with I love you guys unless I sign the papers off and I agree to do it um my office I'm able to move things like once we determine what um materials are going to get master distributed I can quickly get those things ma uh distributed and and get them literally off to the printers and back and get those things moved quickly um and
then the worked with the sro's to develop the the the schedule for the the training including when they came into the presentation here plus the follow-up parent trainings that happened and were offered at each of the schools and worked on timing so that we're going to communicate that all out that we're going to do it around school safety week I had a a communication that went out to the families at the same time the schools were all going to do Communications out to the families and then it was going to be followed up by all those PTO meetings um and
then we've established a team to implement the tech a tech-based emergency version of this so it's going to be supported on our Raptor program the the next level of that training is coming for us at our next safety meeting so um so a lot of the background work's been getting done now like user management and a lot of stuff that has to happen on the background um then the safety Tre team will get their next level of training and then we'll start to work on imp m in and pushing that
out to uh to the staff um and then we've been working myself again sort of something that only the superintendent can do um working with offsite Partners in the in the unlikely um situation that we ever have to evacuate offsite and reunify offsite um I don't want to have to be figuring that out on the Fly I want to have umus established with some off-site locations that can handle different volumes depending on the amount of
people that we might have to evacuate offsite or reunify offsite um working on establishing those M us um with Community par Partners so that's stuff that is in work um on Theus I think oh and then um so again the S response protocol we had a comprehensive plan in place um that I think the the challenge was this as I sort of assessed coming in the
our partner on Public Safety side really knew what they were would to do in a crisis on the school side it was a little less clear and in some places I think they knew it a little bit better than in other places and transitioning to this SRP it's it's much cleaner it's much simpler and it allows us to move to a tech-based solution um because it's a uni it's not Universal but it's used in so many different places that it fully integrates with the tech based solution we wouldn't have to
take our Dy program and make it fit into this other one um this the the I love you guys SRP is used in so many other places that it's already in this other um Tech based solution um so it'll make that that um integration much uh much easier make it much safer and much faster for us to do some of the and more efficient for us to do some of the the things like reunification and um uh student accountability Etc um and and then
at dur again during the rollout phase we've uh we communicated through multiple channels um we worked hard to have the sro's available both publicly I shared out Nick's video we recorded obviously recorded the school committee meetings but shared that out timed it you know if you're interested in watching it it starts at this particular moment in the school committee meeting um and then they were available uh at each of the schools if people had wanted to go and have
them a more personal intimate meeting with that SRO and ask specific questions about that specific school to try to address family concerns all right I know there was a lot of me um but I'll take any questions any questions from committee Jenny Mark are you so thank you for
the update this is really important that we are not you know looking at these things just at the end of the year obviously um so we know how this is all going this um this tells us a lot about what you've been doing and uh couple questions first are you getting the support that you need from central office from building admin from staff you know because without that it's hard for you to move your own to move these goals forward so I want to make sure that that's happening and then I
have some other questions yeah so I've got a great team um and so we I'll be doing midcycle like reviews with all of them in I think we started scheduling them for right after February school vacation um and checking in on each of their goals I think one thing did a little bit differently this year than last year is uh working with the committee um to get my goals in place really early so that by the time we
had our second leadership meeting in the summer um part of that was me presenting them with my goals we had already had the the Strategic plan in line so really working to line all of our goals up so we're all largely rowing in the same direction it'll get Tighter and Tighter the longer we're all working together um but no I really do feel and and some of the systems that I talked about like all the the regular meetings the regular walks um I meet with just the principles now which is a new structure I put in place this year that I
didn't have last year um so I do think um I I do feel I have the support of the team um and uh you know again we're all still still getting to know each other a little bit but I think um we're all we're all we are all um working together and working well together at this time great um I'm so glad that we have our community and Communications coordinat in
place that's something that we've advocated for for a long time and I know you said that some of that work includes uh hopefully a website overhaul in the near future which is going to be huge um and you know both with that public relations goal and also with your first um sort of systems goal um I I appreciate that you're working on streamlining our systems and making systems compatible and align and I
wonder if part of that I'm hoping that part of that is um what we now have as calendars uh I don't you know this is maybe more of you know my experience as a parent in the district but you know when you're looking to find information about when something is taking place it's very challenging um and a lot of it is just you know if if people aren't putting things on the calendar then it's a faulty you know calendar but you know
making sure that there is a good process in place for staff admin student groups whoever it is getting stuff onto a calendar and right now if you go on the website there's a district calendar each school has a calendar the school calendars and the district calendar don't necessarily match there's different information on each one it's very challenging to find out when something is taking place so I'm hoping that that is part of
your systems and Community um thank you Mr Morris it's impressive that the degree of of your input your involvement your listening your Technique prevents misunderstandings over and above the usual tendency for pressures that affect families some from external sources not
just School sour ources um in the absence of a sense of being respected and listened to gives an opportunity for people with a hidden agenda to exercise it have you been able to it seems to me the way you've laid this out there's really no way somebody can put a particular PR Pet Project as the number one priority for their parents counsel or their
classroom are you able to sense the reluctance of taking of taking of the support as opposed to so much momentum and so much listening more or less sets the stage for everybody to be part of it um I think well I I guess I would say that but one thing I I think I did
a a lot of listening last year and tried to use that to set the Strategic plan um I think that now we're trying to stay true to the Strategic plan right so when different things come along to try to good bad or indifferent um and and I think maybe going back to to miss Lander's question a little bit as well there's a lot of things that come along that are good ideas too right and
we could Chase plenty of good like the state comes and they're like hey like here's like $80,000 to do this but this whatever this is I'm just will distract us from our three main strategic objectives and ultimately will divert our attention and dilute our resources and so sometimes it's not the right idea to chase that $80,000
even though it's quote unquote free state money it's not the right money at the right time instead we need to know where we're going know why we're going there and then look for the resources that will help us get there um and so that those D that Direction came from a lot of listening last year and we'll still continue to listen and still you know are we still going in the right direction and that's where I think putting things in place like opportunities um like like asking folks the community
like right now we're not just going to update the website like and we're not just going to assume we know what we need to fix in our communication strategy we're asking and um when as we're we're asking the staff around CL climate and um culture Etc and we're going to respond to what we hear um so we're going to continue at least that that My Philosophy is we have to listen I don't again I
don't know if I've said this in this group I I've said it so many times throughout my career that I don't know who I've said it in front of at this point in time but at different points in my career as I moved in well even in the classroom right in the classroom you have you have to make a bazillion decisions a day you don't make any less as you move up and they might just scope of them just kind of changes a little bit um and so as a decision maker I want make
informed decisions the only way you can make informed decisions is with information one of the best ways to get information is just to ask questions the more I can ask questions the more I can get information the better decision making I'm going to make am i g to get it right all the time nope I'm G to try my best and ask get as much information as I can I'm not sure I answered your question right but I tried yes thanks I uh yeah I I I detect the spaces
between the lines not just the lines themselves thank you Miss beus so uh some of your goals are are a national extension of everything you've learned in the listening tour and your summative report so to me the most interesting one or the the newer one is the public relations which I that is evolving and and I'm wondering I remember seeing I think it was at the end of the summer or early fall before
we created the new position uh just like all school systems do you're in the Pro we're in the process of doing a five-year strategic plan so you're required to get community parents stakeholders everybody's input so it was even posted on the town ad Dennis website before we created this position or before sort of your working involving so I'm wondering now you know what would you do differently what were what are you adding to it because we're still
working on the Strategic plan or what how might it sort of fall out now with what you have in place relative I just want to be clear relative to to the Strategic plan yeah so um well one specific thing is this well two parts so one I remember when I presented the Strategic plan specifically Mr new asking he wanted a progress update so next meeting you're going
to get a progress update um but uh so you'll see there I'll probably going to give you some more details because we've made we've you know I would say we're on track in some places and not on track in other places um which is probably just about what I expected um at the time I'm presenting um and so I would say that most specifically around uh the tier one instruction
in particular I would say um that we I used the phrase with the leadership team the other day that we started flying before we were ready to walk as a team um in in that analogy like we we were really like off and running and thought we knew where we were going before we had really even defined what it was we were looking for so
we internally needed to slow down a little bit like even some it was I was pushing the principles too hard and I think that was then Rippling all the way out into the buildings um so we've taken sort of a bit of a pause in the work so if I go back if I was to go back in the slides and some of the the multi-level work that was happening where the principls were being coached and then the work that they were then going out into their buildings to do um we've
taken a pause and we're instead doing a little bit of an internal audit for the next four months to look at some of the existing systems so the questions that have been asked at this table like around instructional coaching um but then beyond that so plc's professional development time um try to I have a list of them in my office professional development time coaching um faculty meeting time a lot of the existing structures that if I was coming in as a super well they're actually things that when I came in
as a new superintendent or actually even before as I was looking at the job that that I was excited about because I there weren't things I had to fight for right I didn't have to fight for early release time because it's a good structure to have I didn't have to fight for INR for coaches because they're a good thing to have structurally have to fight for plc's like in the schedule because it's a good thing to have professionally there's a lot you can do with them but more like how are we using them to support all these goals so one I think we would have spent a little bit
more time teasing out exactly how we're going to leverage all those things to actually get done what we wanted done so we need to get a little better of assessment on where we are then when it comes to the public relations side of things um we I think have a couple things out of order and that's what I'm going to present on um to uh next meeting um in that one of the things that we have
have in the plan is to um work on uh our core values as a school district and I think we we have some on paper but they're unclear on what they mean to us as a district if you were to look at our previous strategic plans and look at all the documents here for Dy there is several words
inside of a triangle but it's unclear on what does Dy stand for what do we believe um and I did a small exercise with the with the faculty at a convocation it was in my entry report too and I asked the faculty and the answers are all over the place which is okay but it then speaks to again what do we believe as a school Community what do we value because when the stuff hits a
fan you need to know what you believe in you know and what are you grounding all your decisions in um so I think I would have maybe even done that before launching a strategic plan but then it would have slowed that whole process down so I'm not sure if I don't know I'm kind of talking myself in circles here but I think we need to do that work um and we're gonna do that work uh I just I need to figure out who I can either partner with or or get it done with because all this other stuff keeps
getting in my way I have it it's literally on my whiteboard on all the steps I need to get done to get it done and and every month I kind of get half a step down the the list of things I need to get done but so I hope that answered your question it did than thank you great no we we appreciate the constant updates um you know and the links so that we can review the specific stuff too you know makes it a lot easier
to you know when we get to the the rubric which I see is attached as well um you know makes it easier to compile our thoughts and I know we said last year and I know said before uh the rubrics can be worked on at any time you have access to work on your individual thing you know it's not a bad idea to take your notes now you know so that you're not trying to think all of it in a couple months um you kind of keep your notes of what you've seen and what you think or how you feel and then
you know compile the remainder or whatever's left as we complete complete it towards uh typically we'll do it in March and April um prior to the uh elections of possible new seats want to make sure all the information is from the current body so um so thank you and I think our next part is our uh budget update from our budget I know we had our our meeting last week we had our public hearing
and any updates that happened since then yes and I forgot to update the title slide so I apologize already on the first slot because it is not February 3rd um so really no real changes to the final budget number um and I did even though I did update the slide deck and send Sam a new slide deck slightly different just because I updated a couple of the um I really updated two slides one that I did find a typo in but apparently not this this
one and um and I did find a um some of the data that I just had to update um again like I said a lot of stuff's been flying at me and um you we we're only a week in between the meetings but anyways so what I really the the purpose of this slide deck is and of this update is to address a qu two questions that came up at the last meeting uh so the question came up around the math interventionist and the elll director from the committee so um ultimately it's
the school committee's budget so I just want to provide the super superintendent's recommendation and the the data supporting that recommend those two recommendations and then get some direction from the committee um and then John and I we have based upon um some meetings we had with the finance committee today we have some other areas that we can kind of dig into that won't affect Staffing or anything we just have some other numbers that we want to look at that might that might reduce potentially the overall budget we have to
do some some looking there um and some of the other sort of lines um but um but those were two Staffing positions that that if the committee wants to add them in we'll obviously raise the the budget number that you saw on the uh what they say 10th so on the thir um and then so the committee is currently scheduled to vote your final budget at the next meeting um and then you do all sort of have
a placeholder for a meeting on the 10th if you want to deliberate some more which you can push all the way until I think it's we have all the way until the 14th um until you have to actually that's your drop dead date before 45 days before the first town meeting so just a little context for the upcoming couple of slides so again everything is grounded in the Strategic plan um is the uh where all the decision making comes from and so this is in
intended to be a response just to a couple questions that came from the budget hearing from the school committee um so this is was a um so just some initial budgetary big picture in information so related to the and I'm going to take them one at a time so the interventionist first so the interventionist at the middle school if uh it would require an increase to the overall budget the minimum sort of increase would definitely be we're
holding a placeholder of $75,000 that's M the master step five which has been the base that we've been establishing uh for a new staff position with a little bit of a caveat here if we're going to be looking for a math interventionist position um we're g to need somebody that's going to have a math certification um and likely somebody with some experience um to do that job so get getting somebody at Masters 5 might be a
little harder so it might be a more expensive position um and so a better estimate might be a little closer to 90,000 but um just want to uh you know sort of set that Benchmark uh and but we could also accomplish this just full transparency by removing another item from the priority list of Eco or greater value which I was sort of what led us to this conversation which included both the
positions yeah but to be clear we can't increase the budget uh you haven't set your budget yet we can't so at this point you just voted an initial budget but from from what to what Jen's getting to I believe at no point can we be
above their initial right I don't think we can I'll have to go back and double check but I'm pretty sure you can you still think we can I think you can until we vote the final yeah after the final you can't go up okay all right Mr Glen you had a comment yeah I I I think that's corrected we until we vote on the budget once we vote on the budget we can lower it but we can't exceed it but until we vote on it cut or change
yeah your preliminary my understanding and again I can go back and confirm but your preliminary is just your preliminary once you vote your final budget you can go down from there but you cannot go up from there just making sure thank you yeah we could just have clarification just so that we have the correct information thank you um all right so some gonna give some data and this is all ultimately leading to my conclusion um so as we look at some
cohort data uh going to look at it two different ways so these are groups of students starting from the 2019 year through the 2024 year the different colors are the grade that they started in right so blue are kids who started in third grade in 2019 Orange has started in two in grade four in 2019 and what you can see uh and then the the uh y AIS is the percentage of students meeting and exceeding and as you
can see as they move through the district over time the same groups of kids um generally speaking overall their proficiency tends to decline there are some Pockets where kids tend to rebound and there tend to be the same grade levels where the T the kids tend to rebound um some of their overall pers persist um proficiency so this says to me that this speaks to either or curriculum or
an instruction challenge this pattern if we look at it over a longer period of time and this is a little bit more convoluted and it's harder to do I would have loved to do it following the same and the same grade levels but it just became so hard to look at um but these are cohorts of kids each color is a different cohort a kid and some you know some kids start at different points in time but again is a similar Trend where kids and this because I wanted
to look back prior to covid because you know some people can make the argument well covid did that so again if you look prior to co you still see some of the very similar Trends some outliers but then I also have this all on a spreadsheet where I can look at the grades as well and again you see some of the same patterns that some grades then the same consistent grade levels kids Rebound in the same grades which again speaks to either a curriculum piece or an instruction piece um
and and then if I go back to I had this in the last slide deck um for my evaluation but this is it broken out in more detail so I showed you the aggregate of K to five together but this is each of them broken out so this is last year's mcast data for grade three in math grade three grade four and grade five and what you can see and this is where we did the focus
tier one support for instruction leadership and coaching and you can see that's where we had our greatest positive gains and so this this data signals that we should not abandon this strategy but we should continue to support the strategy and build upon it in my opinion and at the middle school specifically the this the
schedule doesn't allow for flexible scheduling intervention scheduling so like they currently have intervention for reading and it's a hard schedule so you get scheduled into reading intervention and you don't get out of reading intervention you give something else up to be in it and so essentially this is tracking um and researches has shown that tracking is disad disadvantageous to
students and we don't have any data it's actually largely shows the opposite that the students that are receiving it on in Reading aren't benefiting from the intervention and so the reason why the superintendent didn't recommend it for a three versus a two was because there wasn't any different strategy for math than what is currently being recommended for the
which is currently being applied in reading so at this time it's not my recommendation that we support this until there's a different strategy different scheduling Etc on the El side so just some initial considerations there's like the provision of English language learner
instruction is required under mgl 71a um for anybody who wants to look up the Mass General law if you got a hard time falling asleep tonight um and then there's a whole series of guidance out uh expectations that outline um the requirements for the number of minutes for instruction um based upon proficiency level there's a whole slew of paperwork that's required for each step in the process from screening to notification to um annual
um uh program notification to if a student opts out of the or for the family Ops out um to monitoring for when a student is a former um English language learner and on top of that the district's program is regularly reviewed by the state um for compliance with all these regulations and guidance it's essentially similar it's very similar to the special education process with all the rules regulations and paperwork
it's not exactly the same but it's a very close parallel and as a district we employ two assistant directors for special education um and six team team chairs the team chairs are part of unit a um and they're all under the purview of an assistant superintendent um to maintain all the special education requirements and for not to mention all the you know special education teachers who do all the teaching and in
the El Department I have one coordinator who's a Unita staff member so Works a unit a calendar meaning is on a teacher schedule with it works a few additional days as part of their calendar year and then the English language learner teachers who teach the kids and that's it but they have largely the same requirements as the special education staff um so it's it's a from
a sort of in you know as I've mentioned before our student body for English language Learners is actually larger than we have five 595 special uh English language Learners in the district and 525 special education students in the district um our English our number of students whose first language is not English is I think somewhere in the ballpark I think I might have it on the next slide oh yeah I do 89
97 um so an equitable approach to Staffing would require that we ensure our our native English speakers have appropriate leadership structure and and quite frankly this is just me advocating I don't even have somebody at the leadership table every day who's working on this telling me as superintendent what our students in these programs appropriately need um whose expertise is in this every single day um so I'm sure I'm missing
things that um but just from what I sit and look at every day I I know that this is a need so this would be a recommendation that I would continue to advocate for a superintendent and remain as a priority three item in the budget any questions from the committee Mr Glenn yeah so not to go back on the math but just as an overall budgetary uh
question so if we were to hire someone at $75,000 that's just a projection can you go to $75,000 And1 or once we approve it in the budget can you go over it at all like you were saying that it could be the best estimate is $90,000 and so I'm basically asking if we asked for $70,000 and then you deemed later on that we needed a $90,000
you know it would it would reach into our operating budget but do you have the leverage to do that yeah we'd have to figure out somewhere else to pay it from but yeah and and at the end of the day so you know if the the experience and the education of the individual who walks across the door it the the collective bargaining agreement is going to determine where I have to pay that person or what the salary associated with that person is I'm going
to have limited flexibility on where I have to pull out the contract to see exactly I usually I might have some flexibility in granting them some years of service like if they had taught like maybe in a private school but usually it's sort of in giving them extra credit not in I can't uh wave away somebody's um like if you know if Mr new had taught 10 years at Public School in another District I can't say he you're coming in on step two that's that's not the way it
works so we could we could budget it lower and still event you know in other words when the budget comes out our our eventual e and D in other words if we save energy by save money by Saving energy in the school district or some other area it might allow for the that money
to be assigned to that position in other words at the end of the year we might not be in a deficiency because we found it somewhere else or we saved somewhere else um so my question is if we if we went if we appropriated or put in the budget $70,000 could that work for you I would rather not budget for something that I know I'm not gonna you know I'd rather us you know you
and largely you all say you know take $70,000 from or whatever it's going to be you want to fund it then we have to figure out either you want to fund it by saying move the budget up or you want to fund it and you direct us to find somewhere else to fund it from and we come back and say Here's Where we say it gets funded from and you say yes or you say no find somewhere else you know whatever that's our job that's that's what
that's what you pay us to do there else tell there no Jenny clearly based on these numbers we you know there are 525 students on IEPs and for and we've got two assistant directors for special education plus the six team chairs so you know we've got this structure there when it
comes to our elll students 562 students um and 897 you know English not first language um you know obviously we need more support there I'm just wondering is there is there something between going from one coordinator to um um to the elll
director which seem which I mean you know the numberers a little bit daunting um we need we need someone we need more coordination we need more oversight but we already hear from both staff and taxpayers that they feel you know we're and I don't necessarily agree with this that we are
admin heavy central office heavy that we have a large number of of admin compared to the number of students in the district I don't I don't necessarily believe that but it is something we hear a lot when it comes to our budget and is there is there a way to ease into this a little bit more hiring another coordinator promoting a a coordinator to an assistant director
is there something in between um just wondering about that uh and then so you know I I understand your reasons for not recommending the interventionist at the math interventionist at the middle school but I'd like to know so if a middle school schedule doesn't allow for this type of flexible intervention
and it turns into tracking which is not positive for our students what do other school districts do what do other schools do there has to be some sort of way to provide this kind of targeted math support for middle schoolers yeah I mean I don't have a clean answer for that one other than we have to investigate what the options are and
you know I know some data has been shared with the committee and and some of that suggests the well even even just some of the mcast data right where if you look at numbers where upwards of 60% of students are potentially not meeting expectations you also can't manage that through intervention the reality is intervention should manage 15% of your student population so it's speaks to a
larger problem that needs a different solution and on the elll oh sorry other possibilities that you've considered so I mean I I don't I can't pull it up now because I don't have that slide deck queued up but if you look at us compared to the state if you look at us compared to our all of our darkart districts our admin per pupil is not out of whack uh um and um you know
look at us compared to the municipal town government again you know analogy I use is if they either the Two Towns were putting on Wastewater without a Wastewater supervisor um you know there's DPW director assistant DPW director because it's necessary right um again we have one out of every five kids in this District as an English learner and I don't have somebody supervising that
department would we have you know two towns that run golf departments without a golf supervisor would we have a police department without a police chief fire department without a fire chief assistant fire chief uh I I understand understand where we're going and you know I think the
the amount for the el director was 130,000 so I understand um you know and we're looking at that but um you know to me it makes sense that we need that but again it just you know to Jenny's Point earlier is just that something that we need to do at all times is to look at all of our staffing and make sure that we're not too heavy somewhere I know when we had the budget cuts last year you know there were some administrators in the District that were're um that we
removed um you know so I think we're constantly looking at that I think you know our job is to make sure we're efficient so um you know if there's a certain area that is heavy um just like we've transferred FTE of Paris and teachers amongst the district you know um maybe it's something that we need to look at it sometimes in administration I'm not saying it's this year but um and then to Joe's point about the you know we're
saying 75 it could be 90 I I would say if we get to the point where it's decided that the committee wants to have this position regardless of anything that we would budget 90 or 100,000 I wouldn't say we would put oursel in a situation where we would cut funding of other items if we're if we're asking the talent for money and we haven't officially approved something um you know
$100,000 or $90,000 on a $85 million budget um again it's not going to make the towns happy because that 100,000 is split you know 7030 uh but again we're not talking about half a million dollars a million dollars but again we have to explain it we have to explain what the reasoning of why we increased because we've never increased from the from from what I've known from the preliminary to the final vote um but knowing where we started and knowing
the items that were on you know priorities we don't want to cut funding of any of those items because that's why they were on the first two pages um so if we added I you know my opinion would be that we would have to to change that amount that we discussed um which could could again could be future concerns with the towns as well yeah and I think you you know having a priority list as well is is to I think maybe to speak a little bit
to Circle back to your point having created a priority one of the reasons I wanted to create a priority list was to if at the you know we're working off the governor's numbers and some of the revenue picture will even further clear up as we move right so potentially something might shift and we we are talking about a position so it's clear from the committee what the committee's direction and and I'm not telling you all what to do just saying just
putting more information on the table that perhaps um something changes where that that becomes available in some way between even when the committee makes its final vote and when we're operationalized by next fall and if that's the case then that's why we have the priority list to go back to and and I'm getting a pretty clear picture from the committee on um where you would want to go and so we can come back to the committee and say okay so you know this
has shifted you know and is is this still what the committee wants us to do and if so then this is the direction we go and here's the impact because it's not just next year you know it's going to carry um into 27 and Beyond and I think the point of priorities is to discuss whatever didn't make it we're going to look at next year yep right so whatever made it in is going to stay to your point it's going to have an impact for future budgets um what didn't make it is we're going
I assume the building leaders or the department leaders are going to either a bring it up again because they it is a priority or it no longer becomes a priority um as well as the discussions and evidence we've discussed previously is that that grade three level is that three to five is most important um and we have approved that interventionist for the intermediate so it it may also be worth looking at what the benefits of that are over next
year so when we're at this table we can say we saw a benefit or we've seen an increase in scores or we've saw this therefore we want to continue it in the later grades um you know it's just my opin Mr new I see you raising your hand thank you I just if you could clarify for me so the district currently employs two assistant directors uh for special education and six team chairs correct all right and we have
one coordinator all right for for English language learners for English language okay so this elll director um well first of all who has the responsibility at this point for coordinating the elll program with the two assistant directors and the 16 chairs and the coordinator is that who who's in charge of supervising overseeing and directing yeah so the uh this year so last year the
elll coordinator sat underneath the director of humanities this year I moved her underneath the assistant super under Maria under the assistant superintendent for um pup services so that job the assistant superintendent job keeps expanding okay and so what you're with this proposal the elll director would be taking over that responsibility from that person yeah and and
expanded responsibilities but yeah okay and uh what is what are your thoughts as to what this person is going to need to have for a set of experience and credentials yeah so the person will there's a specific license that's required director supervisor for um English learner um is going to be somebody that's experienced either as an ESL well preferably has been
an well I guess it be a requirement has been an ESL teacher has been been through that program prefer be somebody who's been um has been in a leadership role within an El program um and uh has provided um some level of either coaching or um professional learning um and then either has or um because not all of our directors
have done supervision and evaluation but this role will have to do supervision and evaluation so um has the it's is like the same for like when we interview assistants uh principles for the first time they have a they have the so again so like somebody's done coaching before then they have like similar traits and skills that are necessary for providing supervision and evaluation and support uh because this job will um be will oversee
and supervise um the entire ESL department or El Department currently our ESL staff is at what number uh I don't have it off the top of my head but let's see I can it's roughly it's at least 20 individuals across the district is and and this director they would be her responsibility as well his or
her yeah his or her yeah okay all right so would there be administrative uh staff to go with this position okay they supported by existing staff you been talking about like an administrative assistant yes yeah supported by existing staff okay thank you Mr Glenn yeah so be I just want to be clear before we give you or I give you my perspective on what our marching orders are to
you I want to be clear on them um because obviously this is a cost benefit analysis and it's a projection but it's what we think will work we trusted you on that priority list I don't want to take anything from that priority list because we're trusting that you know what you're doing and and that's your job our job is to kind of you know do that cost benefit analysis and say okay what are we going to go to the community with
and before we go to the towns I you know if we change it it's okay because we haven't gone to the towns to ask for the money um but I just don't want you know that 75,000 or whatever that number is that tonight or whenever we're choosing to either or it's a $75,000 or we take away from that priority list I would like to fund it because our ultimate goal is academic performance right that's
what we want to do if we think something can work in $70,000 is a bargain if we if we think it's going to work um and so but I don't want to take from that priority list because I don't want you know like you did that pause before you know I don't want to I don't want to start flying before we're walking um so I just want to make sure I I would from my perspective say that we budget in that
money as opposed to changing what's on that priority or taking something else from that priority so I just wanted to make my perspective clear yeah and you know the com you know my my comment on that is if if your expect is um Dr Smith based on your notes is to not recommend I I would support I personally would support that decision um that you recommend not to fund it and to
in the in the hopes that as every other priority that we didn't approve if money not saying it's found if there's savings um between now and uh September one that we have opportunities to um you know bring things into the district that will have add value to the education um so I don't we don't have a specific motion or anything to change anything so again this is just feedback and we have time before that um and things
can change between now and then so again anyone have any final comments on that before we move on perfect uh next is subcommittee Representatives liaison report um school committee liaison to select board anything from Yarmouth Mr Glenn uh no just that they were optimistic from our budget standpoint and um and that they said Dr Smith is going
to be in uh to see them but that they were the initial uh position was that they were optimistic on the budget itself so thank you anything from Dennis perfect uh School building committee any updates there uh nothing since last Monday no uh so nothing nothing new short quick week y y um next we have the superintendent report excuse me a lot of talking today um
all right so just a couple of quick updates again since uh just last week so a couple start with uh couple acknowledgements so first just want to thank uh Alina Reen for donation to The High School uh specifically uh she's the director of marketing and business development for the Cape Cod Mall and she made a donation of a couple of different items that's going to support uh the graphic design and schools tog career program at the high school she
donated a kiosk that's valued at $4,000 three chairs V uh valued at $400 and a gift Tower valued at $1,000 um which again supports those programs at the high school so we want to extend our thanks and I know I say it all the time but without the support from this community is just absolutely phenomenal um and next I want just a couple of acknow ments uh of things that are going to be happening or have
happened in our community so uh we have two upcoming great uh events in uh our school Community um at the station Avenue school this week on Wednesday a jazz company will be coming to play for the kids um and then on Friday uh the hearts for Heroes um assembly um we'll be recognizing both the Dennis and Yarmouth police and
fire um and the Yarmouth Barracks state trooper um and and the first graders is going to be leading that assembly so um just great community events happening um as we're closing out this week and then at the um here at this school uh I think it was I think it was Jenny who last week or at the last meeting mentioned the All Cape music assembly so the this week the is the um that was the the senior All Cape assembly so this
week the junior All Cape assembly so for the middle school age students Dy is H hosting the junior All Cape assembly um it'll be here on I already lost which dat it is um but it'll be this week um roughly a 100 kids will be here um they'll be practicing all day and then they'll be hosting a oh it's on Wednesday and they'll be hosting a concert uh for the school and for parents um right here in our beautiful Auditorium so um Dy hosting um the
All Cape Junior assembly something for us to be proud of and then um I would just want to update the committee the uh really one item for today uh in the superintendent report is last week uh gave you an uh the timeline and packet for uh find trying to find David's replacement and then I mentioned um we had another executive um replacement we got the um uh the news that the prince of Dennis
uh uh principal de deppen is uh retiring so we put together a a search process for finding his replacement um and you have that in your packet so we will start um with the job posting that's uh going to be up uh this week through for about a month we'll have that posting opening uh and you can see the the makeup of the committee on the top there uh Maria will be chairing that committee as well
um along with a mix of teachers administrators parents um and then uh we'll start a screening process in the middle of March interviews uh again sort of middle to the endes of March and then uh we'll get into semi-finalist rounds by the end of March and site visits by the end of that month with trying to have an appointment similar timeline to uh when we have
the other appointment by the mid by the beginning of April is our timeline uh for that position we want to make sure we get out early get get good quality qualified candidates um in place um but you know you'll see uh that having a thorough oh and I I skipped over you know those a process in the beginning we want to make sure we get input this is obviously a huge change change for Baker but we'll do this regardless you if you're remember
from Station Avenue we did a similar process in Station Avenue on getting feedback from the staff Etc this is a huge change for our communities anytime there's a new principal change so we want to make sure um we and we're doing a similar one just like with the office staff for um finding David's replacement um we want to make sure we get input from folks on what they're looking for in the next um in the next leader uh but I'm Kevin's sake he's been there you know I was having
that conversation with Kevin I think he's hired everybody in that building um so you know it's going to be a real culture shift um for that building so we want to make sure we get the input of that group on what they're looking for um other than him staying um for the next for the next leader unfortunately no he he's he's in charge on that one perfect um and
the other thing I wanted to mentioned I don't know probably mention in the next meeting but uh I know today the Intermediate School uh wrote Valentine's for veterans um so I know that was something that was done today schoolwide middle school as well or just intermediate I think it was just intermediate intermediate the intermediate school did that today um so they're working with a group and all the students made Valentine's for veterans so very proud proud of the things that are going I know they also had Global
play day um that was celebrated so a lot of great things at at the schools that we have here and Global play day they enjoy playing non- electronic games things called board games that many of them probably had not seen before a deck of cards yeah um so uh it's it's great things that are happening at all of our schools um you know we hear the great things kind of to what Jenny was talking about earlier about the calendars there's so many great things going on all of our schools and unless you have
a child in that school you have no idea even if you have a child who doesn't tell you anything but like as as some of us members who would love to attend all these things we just don't know and again we hear about the great things in the high school because we have student Representatives um but you know having a centralized calendar that showed every day of the week and all the schools having it would be an amazing opportunity for the community as well as parents of all ages
um because the the children tell us nothing and I know some schools use the newsletters and the s'more but if you don't scroll down to page five you miss the most important parts uh until you find out about it after the fact but but uh school committee business agendas consent agenda uh which has the uh donation for the keios chairs approximately $5,400 for Lina Reen and then the last week's meeting from February 3rd 202 five Motion in a second all those in
favor say I I any oppos the stains wonderful bills requisition and payrolls which I have which I still need to sign um calendars um as already discussed I don't we don't have Friday off but apparently the high school has Friday off I know she was unless she's leaving early um but uh Monday the 17th is President Day so there's no school followed by the 18th to the 21st is February vacation with students returning back on the 24th and
then uh in March the 11th and 13th uh are parent teacher conferences for those schools that um do that um but all schools will have half days which do not get confused with early release days uh the timings and all those uh are posted on our website um and typically on uh social media to update what the difference between early release and half days um so we have that and then public comment anyone looking to speak for public comment seeing
none um I think that concludes our meeting we have a motion to adjourn we have a second we have a second all those in favor say I thank you reone we'll see you march