good evening and welcome this is the February 24th 2025 meeting of the school committee call the meeting to order 510 this meeting is being both audio and video recording like to ask that everybody please rise for the Pledge of
Allegiance I pledge of allegiance to the flag United States America the for which it stands one nation under godible liberty and justice for all okay roll call Manny if you can
start us out please Garcia student representative Williams brur Gregory Thompson Gordon Smith superintendent of schools Sarah trulio Pamela Blair assistant superintendent for business secretary okay thank you all I have minutes for approval I take a motion
please I move to approve the February 10th 2025 executive session meeting minutes made by Sarah second by Amy discussion all in favor say I I I those oppos nay that motion carries 4 zero
next please to approve the February 10th 2025 regular session meeting minute motion made by S second by Amy discussion favor say I I I those oppose nay that carries four to zero as well
um Sam excellent succinct Min thank you for those being subcommittee Sarah today William for good to go Amy Manuel the
only thing I have is panum is March 7th or March 8th next week tickets are on sale how do folks get those uh at the door that's a door perfect are you and you're in it Order ahead of time or no are you able to order ahead of time I'm not sure
okay I don't think so Mr Page no we traditionally have sold them um during the lunch block I honestly I'm not sure if we're doing it different this year because we do have new staff member who's overseeing the process obviously Mr K retired last
year so if we were to sell them in person ium would be next week I'll see I can get an update on it okay thank you okay thank you oh yes please Gordon um at your places you have uh the insert
from the reminder that's design and AD and if you flip through I give you all the winners and out of 54 winners you have I believe 34 that come from the East Longo Public
Schools you have elps participating long participating and um H wilham participating um and so our students at various grade levels U develop an advertisement for a local business and
um if they get utilize the ad not only in this insert but um I believe the company utilizes the ad in you have winners is For Cami and then you have many businesses
Long Long Meadow and H wilam represented here but pretty neat to see 34 of our students uh represented in PR yes very cool I wanted you to have that okay excellent thank you
Gordon moving forward we have the 2425 elps midcycle school reports okay before I call up our first school I I did have since this is already up uh we had our beam the first of two days uh beam signing and so we
did get some nice crowds this afternoon I just figured to see them um they had nice Sunshine out there as Mr Paige writing his signature in bold marker um couple students started us off and then
uh people started to really trickle in which was neat to see um I don't know if this was the track team or is that just a bunch of students Key Club Key Club came through the big group after the meeting this afternoon which is really cool and then we had families at various
times come through as well which was neat so I wanted you to see that and we continue tomorrow with the beam signing um before topping off ceremony on Wednesday um and so 2 to 4 we're open uh
different people are Staffing the the table out there and the markers and the beam is right outside a nice experience everybody was excited and it certainly helped that was a little bit higher temperature out there uh and we actually had Sun
covered for tonight so on your way out you can't sign it I just I know I'm just kidding sign in Lane if you want if you will sneak out there um with that said we'll move in we have our entire leadership team here or shouldn't say the entire I know that there are some we have other commitments tonight that
we're conflicting um but we start with metal Brook and we have our school midyear status reports and so miss Lo and Miss Biden going down there ah so our first slide there has to
do with attendance of both the reminder um we're really focus chronic absenteeism and that is any Stu any student who has missed 10% or more of their enrolled
period in we have sent home a communication in the beginning of the school year to families proactively reminding them of whatever our attendance policy is we were provided with lawn signs um but we got ours kind of late in the fall and the ground was pretty hard so we made the choice to reserve them and now it's completely
Frozen and covered in ice so we're going to put them out in the spring as a renewed Focus um just to provide additional reminders about attendance we've been printing our monthly attendance reports and sending home letters for all students with five or more since as you can see there most
recently in February we sent 168 letters home um and then we've also been steadily making referrals to our district care coordinator for students with higher rate chronic absenteeism um the total number of referrals that we've made has been 17
with five of them being for the month of February if you could go to the nexts um we've been making steady games over the past few years reducing our chronic absenteeism rate from 27.4% in 2022 to
18.4% in 2023 down to 8% last year we hope to further reduce that this year to 6% as you can see we're currently at 10% and as a comparison to where we were at last February we're at 12% so we feel like we're in a pretty good position to
be on track with meeting our goal of six the chart that you see at the bottom of the screen is from Panorama and this repres presents how our yearly change in chronic absenteeism is broken down by grade um I it took me a little while to
process this but a negative number on there is good um and so for kindergarten you can see we're negative -2 over last year for first grade negative3 and for second grade negative4 so each grade level in in of itself has made improvements um Statewide I did a little
bit of research in and K as well as opposite end uh junior senior year are two of the worst areas for um chronic absenteeism so that's pretty well in line with what we're seeing Statewide um for average
daily attendance so popping back up to the top there we have a goal of I just lost my spot sorry um 96% we are currently at 95.2% and last year at this time we're at 94.6 so again we feel like we're
pretty well on track to meeting our goals um digging deeper into this a little bit getting to know what is impacting um that 10% of students that are having issues with chronic absenteeism right now that reflects about 47 out of our
479 students I did remove prek from those numbers because Desy doesn't count that towards our chronic absenteeism rate of those 47 chronically absent students that we have 11 of them have been identified to have known health issues that are impacting their
attendance and that includes a range of conditions um that are chronic and require more frequent absences from health reasons we've also had two students who have been out for an extended period for surgery and one for partial hospitalization 17 have been referred to
the care coordinator um of those 17 one family has directly refused to um speak with her and then one consistently no calling no showing scheduled meetings and one has not returned any calls or responded in any way
um one additional is working with the grade level counselor because it was really determined that it was more of um they needed access to community services so we felt that was more appropriate referral and we've helped with um Pam support to get this student um
transportation because it was a a single mother with a 10-month-old baby and no reliable transportation um so having difficulty getting um child to school um one of those bubling already referred one we've met with and 16 hit the
threshold after I made the last round of referral so Maggie's going to be a little bit busy next month when I print out the report on Friday um that frequent family vacations and outof Country travel also continue to be impacting our attendance rates we're
thinking about taking an additional step of creating a completely different letter to send home to the families who have hit that chronic level um letting them know about the care cord coordinator and that the care coordinator will be reaching out to them to provide support but we're just exploring that we just started thinking
about that in the past week or so one of the points that Miss Lo just made your chronic absenteeism rate or number um regardless of whether we identify medical situations where
there's leg legitimate reasons for being out it's it doesn't matter it still gets lumped in there um so you can't separate although it's good for us to know those things the unfortunate thing is you can't separate it out or Desi doesn't let us separate them out they actually
have um that data in terms of if we've deemed something medically excused they have that but they don't separate it out when they put the number together and those 11 kiddos with chronic health conditions are really pretty significant
things that are impacting kids so um the second part of our goal has to do with um piloting which is the Deo student strengths assessment um we had run a round of benchmarking in the fall on that and our help our hope in piloting this system is
that it will help us better identify student strengths and areas of growth within the social emotional competencies um we chose Desa because it's aligned with both second step and castle and it's a strength-based assessment which is very different than a lot of the other um deficit based assessments out
there um next slide if you don't mind shows our fall to winter comparison for Desa um as you can see we we moved 3% of students um from
the blue up to the green I've lost my place on my notes again I apologize up to the strength category um 3% of our 479 students K2 is 14 students so I think that's pretty good um for fall to winter
um the percentages basically break down with 86 or 479 students in this um strength category 355 in the typical category and
38 in the need category and then on the next slide you're going to see a further breakdown of that SOA mini is our Universal screener everybody gets that it's a short set of questions we do that three times a year any student that was
identified as being in need digging a little deeper gets the Desa 2.0 and that is a much more in-depth screening of student needs some of the students that show up as need on the mini don't necessarily show up his need when you
dig a little bit deeper on the 2.0 and you can see in every one of the social emotional competencies we've pretty good improvement from Winter Administration um I didn't put this up on the slide but breaking it down just so you know what
our interventions look like in the fall 12 kindergarten students qualified and were picked up based on our Desa results for small group instruction we were able to after the winter Administration discharge five of those 12 students so just under half of them because they'd
made enough progress where they were not showing up as need and we were able to pick up two additional students um who didn't show up his need the first time who did the second time for first grade that was uh 14 qualified based on their Desa scores 10 were
picked up the others were not picked up because they received support from oural or social skills or Autism programs um we still screen them just so that the teachers have the information to work off of well we discharged five so half of the students again and we were able
to pick up to new and then for second grade 14 um came up on as qualifying we picked up nine three of them um were not picked up because they received support from other programs one student moved and one family declined the support of the
counselor and then we were able to discharge three and pick up four new students for the next round so we feel like we're sitting in a pretty good place with our umal interventions right now we were able to do a lot of that because of the addition of the third counselor this year so that's made a
huge impact um and our counselors really feel like their ability to get in and do those Second Step lessons weekly instead of just for 10 weeks make for the kids teaching and learning okay um so unfortunately our second round of
benchmarking assessments begin next week so that data is not available but we do have progress monitoring data um as we talk about our map right now um we use the universal screener for number sense a usnf and it's an interview based
assessment um evaluating foundational number sense skills so it assesses counting numerical identification numeral identification and basic operations and this helps us identify learning gaps and needs for
intervention so for kindergarten um in December 151 which are all the kindergarten students were assessed using the usns 10 students identif were identified for math intervention so they scored basic or
below and then teachers could also recommend additional students for assessment um that did not they weren't flagged on the usns but they were seeing some issues in the classroom um so and in first and second grade St that we looked at the students
who were already receiving the intervention they were reassessed and then teachers identified additional students for screening and they were assessed and students in that group the ones who the teachers identified um were given a portion of a math recovery assessment just to get a
deeper understanding of their skills and to figure out what types of intervention they need and the first grade 21 students were assessed four made enough progress to exit the intervention seven continued and eight new students were
added in second grade um 23 students were ass test two exited intervention 11 continued and four new students were added the next steps for math would be our March benchmark assessments next
week and then after that we'll hold data meetings with teachers coaches interventionists um Administration and we're going to collaborate look at that data our coaches will facilitate the process they'll use protocols to analyze student data and strategically group the
students based on their needs from the assessment and go into those targeted intervention groups if you go to the next slide please we'll talk about Ela literacy when they're in intervention what resources are the Educators using is it
from math recovery or is it more from us um the bridges program is that's connected to ma yeah okay okay I think I have the literacy up I'm also blind um so the assessment
tool we use again is Dibbles Dynamic indicators of basic early literacy skills that's used for our progress monitoring so in December for kindergarten we had again all 151 students were assessed 40 students scored in strategic or intensive
categories strategic is some risk of falling behind and intensive is at risk and requiring targeted interventions those 40 students were further assessed using the QP QPS quick phonic screener and integrity
assessments so 19 students were identified as needing intervention in Reading in kindergarten in first grade 89 students scored strategic or intensive during the fall benchmarking period and were progress monitored again
in December using the dibles of those 89 students 7 D students were making sufficient progress 19 students underwent additional assessments using QPS integrity and then the intervention adjustments 18 students received
intervention in the fall seven were able to exit intervention 11 students continued intervention and four additional students were added um bringing that to a total of 15 students in second grade 97 students
were progress monitored of those 97 63 were making sufficient progress 30 underwent additional with the qts integrity and the adjustments for intervention 25 received intervention in the fall nine students were able to exit
intervention 16 continued intervention and five additional students were added bringing the total to 21 students next steps for that after our March Benchmark assessment we will hold the data meetings again the data will be
collaborated um collabor analyzed to rece uh reassign targeted intervention groups um we'll look at the interventions we look at the Children's attendance in those interventions if the interventions seem to be working with enough time um if they're not what are
the next steps or different options to you so the data meetings are really important um and then on top of the benchmarking um that some of the are yeah the progress monitoring some additional things we're doing to we're
changing the way we look at data and determining intervention groups through the CPT framework um we're planning fun and interactive events so Mrs Boland um our math coach is implemented a schoolwide snowball fight challenge
where classes earned snowballs by completing ST math puzzles um and she put those up right outside the office so on their way toch bun they could see how many snowballs each class received by completing the puzzles and they were really into it and um the winning class
will get to make snow with Gigi and Mrs Boland um so that was a kindergarten class one that so we'll be setting up that pretty soon um we are creating coherence by implementing high quality instruction materials with Fidelity interventions
we're using are decoding Duos um or Orton Gillingham OG if necessary for literacy and bridges for math we've been visiting the classrooms both as school-based admin team and with um Mrs Brown to monitor the planning and pacing
of instruction we're meeting bi-weekly with Mrs Brown and the instructional coaches and we're prioritizing professional development during alternative times like staff meetings and weekly common planning times um at the common planning meetings
our coaches are leading structured sessions to support teachers W wisdom and illustrative math um we're looking at pacing we're looking at deeper concept understanding and efficient lesson planning um they can help identify needing more Focus streamlining
repetitive content they're basically breaking down the units ahead of time for us what can we what do we really have to focus on what do we have trouble with last year um what can we kind of skip if it's a little repetitive adding in resources for the teachers to use it's been really great to see and be a
part of um um that's about it I have how does the information travel from the exiting second graders to of the exiting second graders who have participated in these
interventions to the Two element uh upper elementary schools um it depends on the student for some of them that we being followed by act all of the ACT notes with up with them um beyond that we typically will provide like a list of
what the students were receiving so we do uh placement cards that we fill out for each individual kid and on the placement card it will say whether they were receiving an intervention or not receiving an intervention for uh whether they were getting counseling all of those different things and then those
fors go on to the respective schools no I has been in uh Panorama I'm not sure if Dibbles is in Panorama yet so you can actually go back um when you get to the upper grade levels and you can see where their I ready scores have um hit
basically at every grade level since they've been taking it but we do have to double check if dibles now is in Panorama and then our last goal as you can see we have a beautiful newground that is tasted in snow and ice
um so it is not safe for kids to play on playgrounds in the winter there there um as you can see the the snow doesn't get cleared from those areas um so we we are waiting patiently for the snow to melt so we can do a little mini grand opening ceremony for our new playground um the
new playground equipment just so that you are aware is designed specifically for our younger students it's really designed with ages three to five in mind um our other playground is designed for ages 6 to 12 the size of the equipment is smaller um and this playground in and
of itself is smaller so it won't be that every class gets an opportunity um to play out there at Rec time what we're going to do is prioritize um outside of the lunch and recess block our pre our preschool gets priority over utilizing this playground during our lunch and recess block we are
going to prioritize two to three classes for each lunch to play on this playground and we're going to utilize um the playground for classes who have students with Mobility challenges we'll get first priority at utilizing this as a whole class um and then beyond that
prioritize the younger age students since the size of the equipment is made more however all of our little guys have been very um excitedly watching the construction of this playground and I'm getting little notes in my box about when can we play on it um so I want to make sure every class at least gets
chance to get out there and and have their dedicated time so I'm going to create a schedule where every class signs up and goes out and has one time and then outside of that um I'm going to send a message to families as well letting them know about this because it will be open to families outside of
school hours to utilize what is it we're doing in the in the spring we have one more thing to complete this playground the ground workor after yeah there's there's no seating so um there's no grass out there yet so once that snow first melts it's going to be um very
muddy just as a reminder this was an Esser funded project the last of the Esser Grant so I think we have about $30,000 sitting there for the springtime to finish that up they're going to do Hydra seating and they said that it'll take just a few weeks that to kind of
set up properly until then it's G be a bit muddy um and then the the last part of this pool is really focused on character assemblies um focusing in the past we had just done General character traits
but this year we're really focused on character traits that celebrate diversity and treating others with kindness and respect so our first one I told you about in the fall was with um five fingers a graphic street artist from Norwalk Connecticut um he came up and spoke to the kids and read his book
love more than ever which he describes as a small gorilla street art movement attempting to shift the Paradigm from hate and bigotry to love and acceptance um he's coming back in the spring a the mural for us that is going to embrace those values and it's going to use
pieces of um student suggestions into the mural originally I had chosen a couple of indoor spaces and when he was up I was showing them to him but he's really very intrigued about painting on the outside of the building since he is a graffiti artist um he also has
training and Fine Art too so don't be too worried um but he was looking at the spot between our two gym doors um which I think would be pretty interesting to do something out there it's sheltered and covered so it wouldn't get too weathered um and it would be the first thing people see as they're coming up to
our building every parent every it in the morning coming through Carline I'm assuming that since it's on the outside of the building I'm going to need some sort of approval for that I'm not sure what the process is so if anybody knows please feel free to um our next is outline of
process um our next assembly is coming up the end of March um it's been planned by our principal's advisory Council and it's going to tie into the central theme we've been working on as a district with Dr Jessica Pepple her work is really focused on the concept of sustaining a culture of belonging so we have actually
chosen belonging as our next character trait and and we're going to read the book the smallest spot of a DOT um and then we're going to do a kind of schoolwide project where each student will create their own dot those dots will come together to make a class collage and the class collages will come
together to make a schoolwide collage representing the diversity across our school and we have one more to plan after thank you very good thank you both appreciate
itally Maple Shade see up next all right good evening everybody Mr Martin all right okay ready when you are all right um so uh terms of boring the whole child
um good news is if you look at this number we are above our um ourly uh goal and with that being said this has um been a a real nasty season of illness so there are some things beyond our control
we're trying the best that we can to you know create an environment in which our students want to come to the school um and we're partnering with parents you know in order to to get them there um so the good news is despite these uh illnesses um you know we are still we're
not where we want to be but we are above our goal as I said in previous meeting we utilize a system to determine uh who the students are at most risk the ones are that aren't coming to school the most often and who the most chronic you
know um absentee students are and um I'm able to communicate effectively and regularly with uh parents in order to ensure that that I am stressing the importance of sending their child in terms of data I know that the gone through the the the data as a whole um but I will slow down a little bit um
and just allow everyone the opportunity to be able to look at the graphs as they currently stand I'm going get the next steps in the bullets um coming after this but where we are right now as you can see we have uh 26% and 23% um
students um in the green um and then 32% students um in the yellow um and though we want uh less yellow and more green um I am happy to see that we don't have a sizable majority of students in the red we constantly want to shrink that number
and push it closer to the the yellow so that students are um they're partially Meeting those expectations here is our um our reading uh scores for the year as they currently stand yeah sorry okay um and here is our yeah
sorry um here's our our growth um percentages for the year as attached to the um the reading uh scores again I'll get into the next steps in a little bit but I did want everyone to to be able to see this if you want to move on to the math can we stop there for one second so
uh Connor when you look at the 32% who have made less than 19% % progress towards your typical growth has that been a topic of conversation by identifying who those 93 students are and talking through why what's in what's
prohibiting them from being able to make that typical growth not not not in identifying who those particular students are because as of right now the the focus of the school year has been to restart the curricular initiative back to square one with the Fidelis
implementation of the the two curricul um in this case you know wit and wisdom start to start from square one so the focus of the teachers has been to implement collaboratively and with Fidelity this tier one because this is what we're looking at when we see so much yellow this is a it's a it's a tier
one concern that we have so how to shore up um the the tier one instruction across the board so implementing it with Fidelity with consistency um you know and I'll get into the planning that has occurred grade level um wise in order to
to maximize the effectiveness of the curriculum um with that being said you know we we do look at I data we do look at the trackers we are able to to look to see where students are doing to recommend them for next steps so looking at that particular graph I can't tell you with certainty that we have looked
at that particular graph in order to make next steps um the focus of the year has been less so on you know the the graph and digging into the data so much as it has been um a major focus and push on the tier one instruction across the
board for both curriculum and similarly here is is math um so it's almost half and half in terms of uh green um and yellow distribution but what should be noted celebrated is that if you were to compare the the math um and the the the readings have less
students in the red um in math um than we do for for ELA which shows um all of the work that we have done um in and around math instruction and building a culture of mathematical and resilience for our
students and here is the growth will be true for this correct and here's the projected proficiency that's as if we took mcast the day that you administered I already correct that's is no additional growth that is no addition grow all right so here here are the next
steps here's the ter but here is just the the larger conversation shade so you know as I stated this year it was a very big um at the end of last year you know uh the
district uh you know that um we were going back to basics going to implement the two curricula of of math and wit and wisdom you know with Fidelity so this would have been our third year um of
implementing these curriculum um but we're treating this really as year one so previously you know the the first year that we launched them we you know we messaged out you know get to understand the curriculum as best you can continue it with year two but you know after looking at everything um we went back to the drawing board and said
I think that we need to to internalize this curriculum across the board to ensure consistency so that no matter what classroom uh child happened to be in in any one of the buildings they were receiving um comparable and consistent um education from class to class to
class which builds in The rhythms and the routines and the rigor and the expectations from class to class to class to um to to calibrate the expectations for our students so that when they move on to the next class um it's that much easier for the the the next teacher who accepts all the
students coming from all the different classrooms to pick up where they left off because everyone has had that um that similar education um due to the the tier one implementation so that is that has been the work that has been the focus um this year um in terms of
implementing and in terms of collaborating with one another to ensure that there is similar pacing so that no one teacher is you know that behind um their counterparts so that all students in the building and all students in the grade levels and um all students across
the district are close in pace so that consistency again is more prevalent than we have seen before so that has been the focus I don't there's coordination then with Mal said across the district great you know that has been in heavy lifting
um and I give I just want to to give a shout out and an acknowledgement um and appreciation teers who have done everything asked of them and are doing an incredible job at lifting these curricula um which are and I'll be honest they are they are not easy to implement they are incredibly dense and
we expect them to be experts at this and they doing their jobs incredibly well um in in increasing the levels of rigor and expectations for our students while being able to meet them where they are with that said there is always a need for um for further support um so we
continue to utilize um Deb duville um our reading specialist who is able to provide reading intervention to identified students using mcast data using I ready data using um teacher um recommendations so we're able to calibrate that together with one another and then identify the students who would
benefit from that this is our first year um implementing math intervention in the building utilizing the bridges intervention system so we are collaborating with ano our math coach who looks at the the math diagnostic at the end of each round to identify the
students who could receive um intervention services and then coordinates with David axelrad um our GT and enrichment teacher who also has taken this on to be our math interventionist um they um they coordinate with one another um they um
collaborate with the uh the classroom teachers and using additional screeners within the bridges intervention system identify the students per home grade or per Home Room who would be able to benefit from additional um support in math and we're able to revisit at the
end of each diagnostic um and see if any students are able to move out and which students are able to move in um so over the last couple years we have had success with our after school um you know tutoring support um in years
past primarily it has been um only math um because we haven't had an official math Intervention Program so the fact that we've had it this year it allows us to be able to um you know utilize some time after school to build in Reading support so last year you know 19 out of
the 20 students engaged in last year's um program achieved either partially meets or a meeting on mcast test so if that um you know holds true then we'll have similar success next year as well so right now we are um we have 18 students enrolled in after school
reading support utilizing I ready my path along with additional materials brought in by our tutors um and um I'm beginning the process of identifying students who might benefit from math and then um I think it's the the first or second week of March um we'll just swap
out and get the next group in and focus on March um until the end of the year um H when you say using I already my path is does that mean they're accessing online instruction or are they receiving lessons based on their path from a educator they are um it's online it's a
combination of um my path online Okay um and additional materials provided by the the tutors to break up the monotony of just being on uh on a my path for so long um so this is the first year that we're we're utilizing math centers um
within our our math curricula as attached to the um the illustrative math curriculum so um previous to this the the only supplemental um U material that we have provided to our um math programs has been ST Math we have had a lot of success with with st maath we met our
goal last year um the the kids love it um we've bought in as a school um but this year in order to um you know provide more flexibility and more variety with what we can provide for our students um we have engaged in math centers so the first couple of months of school
the focus was to um you know really train our teachers on that get them used to that um allow our students enough exposure with math Centers before we re-engaged fully with st math so now on top of illustrative math we also have um students engaging in math centers and
stmath um and much like um Meadow Brook um we engaged in the the snowball challenge um and zitto oversaw that um we have our winter waddle um and we're getting ready for March uh mathness um so it's great for our students to get
engaged um in math um friendly competition great about ST Math it's um very goal based every student knows exactly where they are where they need to be and the teachers are there to always support them and all of this work
um is uh weaving in and out of the focused CPT meetings that we are having this year that are facilitated either by our math coach anzo or Heather Brown and that has been great to have everyone um in the same room grade level to be able
to dive into the um the content expectations um and again going back to that uh consistency from from room to room to room having everyone in the same room with um our math coach um and or our curriculum director has allowed for
a very healthy conversation might have and to support that um you know the the the tier one implementation of the fidic uh fidelus curriculum um in January everyone who
taught Ela um was provided professional development around comprehension by hea Brown where they um through the um uh scars boro's rope I don't know if anyone is familiar with that but if you um were
to visualize two ropes and together uh that that is what comprehension is one rope is represented by word recognition and the other um language comprehension um and each one of those two ropes um are comprised of various strands themselves So Gone are the days of just
looking at a paragraph and determining the the main idea and supporting details it's much more complex and comprehensive than that um so all of our teachers were able to get intense professional development on the larger behind our curriculum so that if they have a larger
understanding of the why behind the CC and um better implement the what of the curriculum um and on that same day our teachers Any teacher that taught math also um had uh professional development by anzo on the importance of
manipulatives and how to use manipulatives in order to increase um their understanding of any math um idea um that they face on a daily basis which going back to the graphs that we had looked at so if you see a number of students um in the
yellow who are you know one grade level below it doesn't mean that they can't access grade level material it just need just means that they need additional support and being able to lift themselves up to that grade level so having a professional development on the effectiveness on manipulatives how to normalize manipulatives so that no one
student feels left out or um singled out for using manipulatives and that just becomes the the process of of how we engage in math um will help all of our students be able to um shrink that yellow and move towards the green our
teachers within CPT have analyzed um mcast scores to identify um you know larger trends that you know we have seen the previous year in order to just be aware as we move closer um to the mcast test um and implement the the curriculum and this next bullet is the one that I
think is is really important in terms of of planning um and implementing the curriculum CPT is incredibly important and I'm glad that we have it built into our schedule you know being able to stop and reflect and think um is important for us as professionals but I need to
acknowledge that 45 minutes um is not a lot of time especially when you have to you know uh you've had a full day of teaching and you drop your students off um at gym and you come and you sit down and you have to take off your teaching hat and you have to put on your um curriculum designer hat um or your data
analysis hat um the time goes by incredibly quickly um so as soon as uh momentum starts to get gained um the kids are back in class so I'm a big proponent of uh release days we've had a number of those where our grade level teachers are able to um collaborate with
each other for hours on end either a half day or full day um either with um for math our math coach and for ELA with Heather Brown to look at the entirety of a unit um backwards plan um collapse lessons that uh are repetitive or
redundant um you know slow down on on other larger ideas that that need to be focused on um so those those lesson planning days are are really really important for um the internalization of this curriculum and is that provided through
a sub budget through coverage by Paras uh mostly by Paras yeah mostly by Paras um basically comes through the sub budget through the sub budget yeah okay we are currently in the process of revising um our act process um so when a
student um is identified as just struggleing the classroom we want we always want to get better at how we're supporting that student um and what supports are in place so my student support team is currently creating a draft um of how to um revise the ACT
process when they're done I will take a look at it I will have um Mrs Sullivan take a look at it as well along with uh Mrs Brown to provide um some feedback on it in addition to the fact that we um are going to be revising our mtss
practice and protocol um so that if there is a student who has been identified as needing additional supports rather than immediately just um uh uh you know recommending that student for specialed um testing and evaluation what are the things that we can do so in order to answer that question we need to
provide more tools for our teachers in their toolbox which is where mtss comes in so these two processes in tandem will allow for greater support for our students and then uh this year um I I'll get to some data in a little bit around engagement but we've had a high level of
Engagement this year and one of the the reasons why um is you know we were fortunate enough to receive an $188,000 um Grant from El um to procure 24 VR headsets to support engagement in the um
in the classro um and to support the um the learning that's occurring in in the core classes so in short bursts of 15 20 minutes our students are able to have a virtual reality experience Rel at ated to what they're learning um in their
classes um I was just in um one today in third grade um our students have just finished up in that particular classroom exploring space um in wit and wisdom so they went to space um in in in virtual reality and there's different um there's
different types of uh virtual reality experiences so in some um they could walk across the surface of the Moon others it's a 360 picture that they can look around some it's a 360 video they can watch um and others it's um when you have it
on it's not actually anything other than what you are seeing like I would be looking at all of you however there's a cube that you can hold up and it will attach itself to the the camera and it will um superimpose an image over that Cube so in this case our students were
able to to hold the moon in their hands and really examine it and and look into it and um you know really uh see what the surface of the Moon looked like in fourth grade our students were able to um after finishing up um the circulatory system in wit and wisdom they were able
to literally hold the human heart in their hands and look in the ventricles um superintendent Smith and Mr Pearson um happened to pop in on a couple days when our third graders uh were in the ocean and they they happened to swim with sharks uh so that was fun to see um
so that was just sh a nice boost for our kids because curriculum um it can be dry um and it is very rigorous and this is a great way to um support what they are learning and just and build in some smiles too is that subscription based
how do we get the experiences themselves where do they it is subscription based um and I'll have you I'll be asking the PTO to fund it in two years once the subscription runs out came through the grant okay yep
okay all right um and all of this goes to uh back to why we're really all here and what's all about uh the themselves you know especially at at at our grade range we want to make sure that yes we are
pushing our students with rigor yes we are preparing them critically thinking it's something that I I think a lot they are entering a world in which truth not certain and and Truth is is different depending on um what website you are looking like so the the more our
students are able to um have critical thinking skills the better prepared they are for the world that they are inheriting um with that being said I need to make sure that our students um feel cared for and they feel supported um in
a them so some things to celebrate here um we have some students who's demographics um and to be a little bit more vulnerable um and tend to self-report a little bit lower traditionally speaking as you can see here here um in these areas we have a
number of questions on our Panorama students of these demographics are self positive yell average um so there's always work to be done certainly but this has been um a massive Focus for
Maple Shade in embracing all students and allowing every student the opportunity to have a platform to celebrate who they are and I believe that those celebrations are paying off and them feeling comfortable I think you go back one Gordon no one no go back oh no go back go forward go
forward there we go um so everything in uh blue um the numbers have either stayed the same comparable to the have um increased so as you can see um at this time you know 90% of our students feel as though they have supportive
relationships which is really what it is um all about um and engagement going back if you sh that engagement on the the lowest the lowest um rowly um 89% of our students are self-reporting positively with
engagement and what's notable is if you compare it to um the percentage last year at this time so um our students are um they're engaging higher and as you will see they are self-reporting that they are able to push through when they
need to at higher rates um so here you know uh we we dropped one point um in having a teach from school but still it's only a point and an 85% is is very very solid I'm very proud of that number um but the number I'm I'm
very proud of is that that bottom one that 91% um do you have a friend from school who you can count on to help you no matter what one of the um as you know if you if you remember this year we're really um you know focusing on you know being made in the shade where we strive
to be hardworking actively engaged determined to succeed and empathetic in all that we and we've been stressing that empathetic piece um a lot lately so how to be a good friend how to understand where someone else is coming from um and this um with the social
emotional lessons through second step provided by our um adjustment counselor and our guidance counselor um you know every week is reinforcing all of those those conversations and the work that we're doing um to to make sure that our students know how to be just good
people okay and this this 87% that I have I have highlighted that's what it comes down to um I want that to increase but to have 87% of our students say that they feel like they are part of a community at my school that is um
all right um you know and uh with bullying um you know I want bullying rates to be zero I don't want any student to feel as though they've been the target of bullying um but the good news is you know 82% positive correct
they weren't the target of bullying they have not of students have stated that they are not the target um of bullying um and what's great is that even if they state that they have witnessed bullying or if they have been the target of bullying they acknowledge that the
school itself and those within the school has made an effort to stop bullying from happening so at least they feel as though work is being done to support them as much as possible um you know our positive feelings is the the area that that you
know um needs the most work um it didn't drop the the numbers didn't drop that much but they did drop consistently um um which is something that you tend to find um you know in the winter I mean if you were to ask me about my positive feelings compared to the beginning of the year I mean my numbers would drop
too um but uh at the very least I mean we had major growth in during this past week how often know and yeah I want my three to five um grade level kids feeling loved for sure so that's a sign of
Celebration and engagement um I excited about going to school every day that stayed the same how interested are you in what you have been learning that increased um when you feel like giving up How likely is it that you will keep on trying 94% of our students say that
they will keep on trying and more than and that is know learning isn't easy no two people learn the same way um and it's important that you just don't give up and you find a different way how much do you pay attention our students are self-reporting that they're they're paying attention um at high levels um
and comfortable with asking their teachers questions which was not the case when I was a child I and that's something that I stressed to my kids that I was the kid that I was afraid to ask questions um and shame on me that's my fault um it's my it's my learning it's my education and I should be
actively engaged and I shouldn't be ashamed to ask a question so the fact that 89% of our kids are comfortable asking um questions goes to show that that relationship piece that they're building with their teachers is is benefiting them in their own learning um and again uh this this this last
question is very similar to when you feel like giving up How likely is it that you'll keep on trying um we'll try in a different way so they're they're showing um and they're self-reporting that they're being flexible and um and there's not one about accessing their
learning they're trying multiple ways um even when they get stuck so um all of this is supported by a number of initiatives that we have in place um you know we' just had our International Food Festival this year
you know every year um it just seems to grow we had more countries represented we had um you know more people packed into the cafeteria is a way to celebrate backgrounds and where we are you know I
have um described this that um the International Food Festival is just um reflective of the fact that all of us at Maple Shade are jigsaw umces that went put together make up uh the the jigsaw puzzle this picture and we all come from
different places and we all bring with us um different cultures and being able to Showcase that um it's very very successful we have a number of spirit days and clubs um to again just generate um you know interest uh as we go along outside of the classroom know we
implemented a 50th Day this year um the week after it was the week after um Halloween everyone dressed like they were from the 50s so was just like Greece all day um it was a lot of fun um you know we have our holiday spirit week um we had our 100th day where everyone
dresses up like they're um 100 years old um we had our Valentine's Day um so we have a number of days to just you know celebrate and have fun while learning um and in terms of recognizing students and and and allowing them to to feel as
though they are part of our school um at the end of the month you know I will you know announce that Ramadan um is is going to be coming and um we allow a space for our students who practice Ramadan um so that they don't have to
sit in the cafeteria and be surrounded by food as they fast and so you know they they hear from me that you might see some of your classmates you know not in um the cafeteria and this is why um and you know last year when I did that
you know to to have students um start beaming uh that you know their their uh their celebration um was recognized and and and parents were very um appreciative that um their their culture was uh recognized um throughout the
building um that was important we also have Black History Month um throughout the the course of February um in uh uh morning announcements um we partner with our TV studio um club and they put together packages of figures within
black history both past and current to celebrate similarly we did the same thing with Hispanic Heritage Month um and we have our our second year of our bipac club which um was so popular that the um number of students interested doubled from last year to this year and
again I am eternally grateful to um Natalie and burlin for allowing us to come over every week so our students can be mentored um it's just a great experience um I just to to see the Elation from our kids um it it it really
is it matters um as does our Rainbow Club um to have a safe space in our building um so that our students um feel safe and supported and seen um that is an important Club to have at this moment in time um we constantly uh recognize
perseverance um and grit and productive struggle through our academic Adventure Awards recognizing that learning is not always easy and that the most significant learning comes when it is scary and challenging and to push through and persevere they should they
are academic Adventures so monthly we have students um celebrated for their academic achievements and their academic Adventure Awards um an offshoot of that uh dedicated to St Math um comes our persevering penguin Awards where
students are shouted out and they receive award on our TV studio um where they have been um sh shouted out um by their teachers for just really pushing through um with st math because ST Math can be challenging it is um it's not
language-based there are no directions you have to problem solve yourself you have to problem solve your way through um whatever is being asked of you um it could be very challenging and for our students that to be able to to push through that those that were struggling and are able to get through and don't
give up um are eligible for a persevering penguin award um and then any student that is caught uh living by being made in the shade gets shouted out and they help co-host the um the announcements with me so for all of
those reasons and just the day-to-day relationships um that are cultivated by our teachers who go out of their way to make sure that every single kid in this building feels safe and warm um this leads to all of the um positive uhal
celebrations that we saw on the prior slides thank you questions good okay thank you Conor appreciate it Emanuel same as last week we're gonna run along if you have homework or
anything you want to do okay at any point just give me a wave and you can next up sella and Mountain View hi everybody so I will also start out with attendance um our midyear attendance
data is uh almost exactly the same as last year 95.5 year to dat uh that 84.7 from February 14th um we were really struggling over
the last month or so with illness um a frequent call over the walkie-talkie for a couple weeks was Mr Potter uh we need you in various classrooms to clean up um
we also had a really bad flu situation uh several students were out multiple days with fevers that couldn't be brought down so we've had a lot of sickness at Mountain View with staff and students over the last so uh 7% of our
students are considered chronically absent uh that's 20 students that have missed more than 10 days of school to this point um reasons vary um we do have students with chronic medical conditions
unfortunately I've had a couple of students who have had some um unexpected family deaths um and they were out for some periods of time um and but like Gordon said whether it's a valid reason
or not it's included in our percentages so um that's where we are now on the next five slides I'm going to show you our academic progress to date in ela and math uh this is just the
outline of our goals which are the same as the districts um on the next slide you have our reading data at this point uh 54% of our students are considered proficient they are in the green section of the
graph and we are up from 33 3% in the fall and the current projected proficiency which is on the next slide I put the typical growth and the stretch growth numbers up there at this point um
our proficiency for typical growth is 37% and stretch growth is 44 this is in Reading as I said last year it was um we had 40% of our student exceed or meet
expectations on mcast and it did closely mirror the projected um proficiency from I ready last year so um I'm hoping that we beat it a little bit that's the goal
but um as of right now this is where we stand in math um on I ready we had 52% of our students are proficient right now up from 31% % in the
fall and for projected proficiency um in math with typical growth we would be 46% and with stretch growth 57 last year 51% of our students exceeded or met expectations in
math um in the afternoon session of professional development on January 29th did a data dive into the mcast item analysis to identify the standards that our students did poorly on last year uh
none of the questions were released last year so we don't have the opportunity to see exactly what was asked but we can use the analysis to focus on these standards in class and during our mcast after school program our mcast after
school program is running currently for reading math starts on Wednesday we are doing um it by invitation for grades four and five so invitations for the program were mailed to parents of students who scored close to the
threshold between partially meeting expectations and meeting um on last year's mcast I followed up with emails to parents that I hadn't heard from um after I mailed home and um before we did
send home the invitations the mtsf team spoke to um everyone on their grade level teams to make sure that we thought we had made good choices with the students selected and um they did agree so we are having um our eight Ela
sessions started February 3rd and run through March 31st on Mondays after school and then eight math sessions will start this Wednesday and run through April 16th I have two teachers at each grade level one for ELA and one for math
um in grade four 20 students were invited we wanted to keep the numbers small so it was meaningful um we had four students who were invited for both Ela and math 10 for just Ela and six for just math a
total of 11 students responded that they will be coming so about half of what we invited um in grade five 33 students were invited four for ELA math 13 for ELA and 16 for Math and we have a total
of students signed up for the sessions um and again one teacher for each subject was our after school after school from uh 2:30 to 3:30 Mondays Mondays for ELA and Wednesdays for math I wanted to separate it so some students
could I actually did have a parent uh reach out they were invited for uh I believe it was for math and she wanted to know if he could also come for ELA so of course I said yes but um I would have liked a higher response rate but I know
after school sports and other activities sometimes conflict all of my academic data um the next part of the resource are they using they are teaching by the standards they're using what they can from the curriculum but they're also
going back and use release questions that we have from the past um they're both all the teachers involved have been teaching the subject areas for a long time and have administered mcast for a long time so they're using what they
feel will definitely help the kids Move Along um I could get you specifics if you wanted them but thank you um so the next slides are about our Panorama survey results for midy year
and the Sabers mid year um we only I know part of our goal is also to survey staff and parents we only do that at the end of the year so um on the Panorama survey um our results improved from the
fall in four of the six categories one category remained the same and one slightly de declined the two categories that stand out as having lower favorable responses than the other four are the challenging feelings and the positive
feelings and I want to explain those a little because the Sabers data completely kind of contradicts those two categories so um the challenging feeling section asks how how often students felt
mad lonely sad or worried in the past week and 76% of the students responded favorably so it's the other they weren't feeling exactly mad sadder angry okay um I have a problem with the response scale
I'll be honest the scale says almost never once in a while sometimes frequently and almost always I feel like some of those are a little bit redundant and especially when you're dealing with eight nine and 10 year olds for them to
tell the difference between those I think is a little much so um the other part of it is is that sometimes falls in the middle and it's considered by Panorama to be an unfavorable response so kids who answered that sometimes they
feel mad lonely sad or worried it was only 6 to % responded frequently or almost always so had we counted sometimes in a positive way the percentages would have
been higher um same thing with the Positive sections I have two problems with this section the they are asked how often they feel excited happy loved or safe and I joked in the leadership team meeting that
excited in my opinion is a very strong word um I don't know how many of us say we're excited to get up at 5:30 in the morning to go to school um I find it to be a strong word but um with the
statements again reading those five selections and sometimes being seen as unfavor um 48% of the kids said they were excited but if you put in sometimes put up to
88% so that's a big difference and a big swing just by one word in the choices um if sometimes had been favorable 92% would have been happy 89% would have been loved and 97% would have
felt safe so I think it makes a big difference if we could tweak that for the responses um and then lastly on the Sabers um which stands for social academic and emotional Behavior risk
screener as you can see these are all three grade levels three four and five the purple are the students who are low risk based on the questions they ask the light pink is some risk and the dark pink is high we have no students in the
high-risk area which is a positive Sabers only uses a fourpoint scale never sometimes often and almost always and it assigns points between zero and three for the responses so to the statement I
am happy if students answered almost always they get three points if they say almost never they get zero so when you look at the percentages here of the students who are in the positive range you see see why the scale I think helps
but also um the point assignment to the responses is a little bit more accurate than just assigning the five different categories um so I'm happy with the
result can say that um Second Step as Connor mentioned we do teach second step to grades three four and five uh Nick Hutchin third grade I teach fourth grade and Miss Campbell teaches fifth grade Mrs pelic used to teach uh fourth grade
but because of the switch in her schedule this year we didn't have anyone to teach fourth so tag I'm it I have to say I like being back in the classroom teaching it's been a very long time but we feel that the Second Step curriculum
is a little bit infantile for grades three four and five um Norma and Nick and Amy have mentioned that that to me in the past but now that I'm actually teaching it I see how they feel and we are looking into some more research-based programs to use there's
really no focus at all on bullying there's no focus at all on social media which is huge unfortunately at this grade level um so we're going to look into something else um I can tell you
that Monday the DA's office is coming to do three um separate assemblies one for each grade level on social media and gaming and all of that and we're going to have a parent I'm sending out invitations tomorrow they're going to do
a presentation for parents that night are those in the morning by chance they're going to be in the morning am and I are coming Monday morning well yeah third grade I know because I was gonna we'll come to the we'll come after them you can come well um Hillary Coughlin I know invited all of you to uh come for re Across America she invited
um me also and some other people in the school but um she asked for me to have the third grade assembly be last because some of you are coming um first thing in the morning to do the reading so great we'll do third grade last but the fifth and fourth will also be going on
probably when you're done reading so anyone's more than welcome to come cool thank you and all I have did you have the data around uh typical or stretch growth in the packet I know that was what the
goals were based on I just wasn't sure had it on the slide typical and stretch growth for talking about no sorry I meant the one okay of students who are actually going to meet it that's okay I don't have that I'm sorry I thought this is we were
looking for no problem you okay thank you excellent thank you next up we have um Clark with pear and
good evening everybody all right we're ready to roll right keep the trend going of um by looking at our attendance um and there's you're going to hear a lot of common things uh we are at 95% average daily attendance Chic ABS is at 11% for a lot
of the same reasons that you've already heard you know we have a lot of illnesses family vacations hospitalization type stuff there's a lot of stuff that goes into that number but if you slide for us Gordon um you're all over this it's a big push for us to try
and reduce the absenteeism because we realize that being in school is the Cornerstone to success for the year so we're trying to leave no stone on turn when it comes to that again our student intervention coordinator is on the phone for a good chunk of every single day reaching out to individual students families that are chronically absent or
tardy we've made a lot of use this year at the district um over and work with us on some of our biggest cases um and she's finding you know a lot of the same challenges we are with unresponsive families um you know calls that don't get return meetings that people don't come to it's a
challenge uh We've we've done quite a bit to try to Partnerships local businesses to try and have our incentives both longterm and short terms we always have drawings we like to celebrate them when they are of course we're doing our due diligence with the letters sent home to
families of students that are 10% more days we've actually gone to houses this year not wake some kids up get them to school on time um so really trying to turn over every stone that we can to make sure that we have our kids there we got our counselors have
training tools for engaging some of our families who have time getting their kids to school on everything including even having to file a couple cras this year to try and get some court support for a couple of cases and we're hoping to see improve down a percentage point from
where we were last year so small steps but we want to much bigger steps going forward all right um if you've not had your fill of I ready data yet we have some I ready data for you around teaching and learning so these are our recent winter diagnostic numbers we did
take our diagnostic uh the week of December 9th so we're still halfway point of the the numbers are showing positive Trends want to see we have more green and a reduction in the yellow and the red so you can see you know the numbers there for
yourselves um how we are trending in the right direction for ELA and if you go to the next one for math you will see the same the drawing why our yellow and our red um are decreasing which is the whole purpose of what we're trying to do speaks to multi cured system of supports
but where are we with the U Learning goals again for year we wanted 65% of our students laa 55% in math only 35% of students to reach their stretch growth and 25% in math so again we weren't even quite halfway through the year but I think
this is the numbers BR was looking for a moment ago um you can see where we are at on the our median score per reading is 89% so if you took our entire student body right in the very middle progress you know kind of blows
away our goal there 65% so we like that but if you look at it from a grade level perspective grade six we already have 47% of our kids by December 9th had made their typical growth goal for the year 50% in grade seven and 49% in grade
eight so we are well on track to trying to meet the goal that we had set for ourselves for the stretch growth which the numbers more in the 30s we got 20% of our kids already met it in sixth grade 19% in seventh grade and 16% in grade eight to meet our goals there as
well so same question um Steve when you look at the 38% for typical and the 44% for stretch of kids who have made less than 19% progress towards those two Targets is that are those kids have they been
identified do we know because that's they have been identified every single quarter to look at because we try we shift our interventions quarterly based on the data so we meet with our coaches our guidance counselors teacher put and we look at those kids using I ready
scores classroom scores anecdotal information about how the students are performing in class so that we can adjust those um tiered interventions that we have to try and get the kids need the most help the help that they need so our rosters are constantly shifting from our
interventions and which kids to our interventions in enrichment as well so yes we have identified those kids it's a shifting cast as you'll see in a minute here on the next slide see how we're moving the kid scale saying reading the kids that are
three or more grade levels below again that median score is 117% progress towards their typical growth 59% have already met their target for the year um so yes we know who those kids are and it's a I think it's a constantly evolving process to try to keep those kids identified to make sure
they're getting the interventions that they need all right and then all right so here's again our numbers for math again the goal s uh for math were a little less in ela we're looking 55% typical growth for the year grade
eight at uh excuse me grade six we were at 36% growth 7 28% of the kids have met their growth Target 47% in grade8 so again we're on track to make that and for our stretch growth you know more modest numbers there but we're going to keep pushing on that 5% of our sixth
graders have made that goal 6% of seventh graders have already made it and 133% ofers have made their which is 25% is what we were hoping to get so we're making some progress there but we do have more work to do and we can again see how we're affecting the kids at the
different levels of already ready making pretty good growth with our kids that are pretty needy now identifying those kids and trying to get them what to need I think that our again our tier thing is something we're always looking at trying to figure out a way to tweak it to fit the needs of the kids that are in front of us I think that we do move those kids
but it's going to be a constant battle because every quarter that cast of kids changes we need to see what they need for your current seventh grade which was last year's sixth grade they they stood out as a cohort in terms of their performance on mcast it was roughly a third that were meeting our exceeding
expectations as opposed to some of your other cohorts which were sitting more in the 40s and 50s um there's a sharp difference here between their performance right now as seventh graders in terms of reading versus math are there different interventions that are
offered that are yielding stronger results in Reading as of right now than they are in math well um I mean of course there're different interventions I mean we're using in our tier two interventions I think a lot of what we're trying to do
being a a later slide here is we're trying to get a lot more of um datadriven instruction math so we' put a lot of um Capital this year into our I ready Mastery assessments and then following that up with the DAT to see
what is going to reveal and what we're we're realizing is that when we do an I ready Mastery check is it doesn't necessarily match up with the pacing from the IM math instruction they're assuming that you have prerequisite skills that they haven't learned yet um
so we're going back to address that and they're starting for the second half of the year with a new round of activators or they're trying to address those deficits that they have that are dragging down some of those scores we're trying to make entire math process a lot more data driven we talk about also the
moving level of math they're going to be in the following they algebra tee having all of that mapped out so there's a lot less of subjectivity whether the teacher thinks that you're ready or not we've got multiple data points from I uh multiple Mastery checks classroom
performance even attendance cut scores what we've indicated are going to bring you to success in that math so we're trying to look at it from a kind of an overview process with multiple data points to try and get kids placed appropriately and to maybe change up our pacing a little bit to get the kids the
prerequisite skills that they're going to need thank you so um you know here performance level growth in quadrant which is showing High they're there for all three grades for
ELA out of the three hour seventh grade this has been kind of a strange phenomenon the last few years they always come in there they in the low growth but high performance and I think it's because of their approach because this always flips by the end of the year they focus on foundational skills I know a lot of proportions in the first half
of the year so they think that's an integral skill to have going content in the second half of the year and by the end of the year they're usually our highest per on mcast when it comes to it so I think the approach has Merit but that's where we stand right now we're you know we're in a pretty
good spot as far as our performance and growth for I ready we go now projected proficiency um if we meet our typical growth goals for the year we will be at 54% meets and exceeds on mcast in ela we
were at uh I believe 46% last year so that would be a nice jump if we hit our stretch growth 64% meets or exceeds which would be a really nice jump so of course the stretch growth would be our goal and hopefully we will get somewhere near that that number have similar maths
um if we hit our typical growth goal 48% for the year we were at 40% last year so it would be a nice 8% jump and if we hit our stretch growth we set for ourselves 55% of proficiency U meets plus succeeds on mcast a very nice jump
as well so we're pretty uh excited about our numbers we know we have a lot of work to do we're going to hit those goals um some of the things that we've been doing this year to try and get those numbers going in the right direction we are revisiting the instructional block that push in we've
had that expectation has changed that we have our lessons set up with a activator mini lesson engagement summarizer wrap up activity but trying to fold all of our new initiatives into it whether it be co- teing whether it be the regulated
classroom whether it be our push for engagement how can we revisit these things to make sure that we have the basics and still pushing the work forward we are in year three of IM and I think we're getting better and better that with each year as our teachers get more comfortable with the process and I think we saw some of that on mcast last
year we saw a little bit of jump forward we are focusing a lot Mr Julio on our sixth grade and how looking at the data we can push that instruction forward too we want to see classroom grades match closer with what we're seeing on State Testing so we are looking at the data there our Ela is undergoing a curriculum
review this year so they'll be adopting a high quality instructional materials for next year that are Desi approved um I think we're down to two that we're piloting right now reading reconsidered in fish tank so April we should be taking steps to decide which one we're going to want to go with next year we
are forming a committee it's going to be part of our March faculty meeting to examine our enrichment block and see how we can improve this so enrichment is kind of a multi-faceted tool for us we use it for um wait when our our special education students are addressing the
goals on their grid we have a 30 minute block each day so for students that are performing on or above grade level they're getting enrichment a little something extra in some of their content area some extra Labs some exploratory stuff some highly engaging material that they don't normally get to get to inro
but it also provides us a tier two intervention for kids that are struggling in math and reading but aren't quite low enough to qualify for some of our tiered programs we have so many seats so we want to look at our enrichment block because it is kind of all all over the place depending on who the kid is look at what we do well where
we need a little bit more cohesion we need a little more rigor so that we can start to push some of those kids forward who are on that tier two tier one cusp and try and get the uh most we can get for our buck for enrichment we are taking steps with co-teaching this year we really post it quite a bit I haven't
put a mandate on it but I've asked all my teachers to get comfortable uh with the language so that we're speaking from kind of a common place to look at what they do well kind of identify the model of co- teing that they're doing and see where they can also dabble their toes a little bit to get try something a little bit
different co- teing in our eighth grade um with our Learning Center trying to get those kids a little more access to some grade level material working with grade level peers and science and social studies so we got a lot of co- teing going on there we've always had a co- teing model that's kind of based on our
inclusion teacher in each class so we just want to build our skill set around that now that our um special Educators have u a little more freedom in their day with the ETL being brought aboard they have some opportunities to engage in some co- teing and kind of uh get our
kids engaged in a different way all right we're always looking to of course evolve our intervention programs we're saying we look at those quarterly kind of see what we need to tweak I know this year for 8th grade we've uh in our tier two intervention for our eighth graders really looking at focusing on informational texts because it's
something that they struggle with on their I ready data giving them real world tasks that are informational I know they were reading a driver's manual trying to make sense of that so you should feel a little safer on the roads because they're doing a great job with it they're ready to get their license they'll be doing well uh our coaches
still do individual cycles for teachers we've moved it non maath and Ela to working with social studies and science teachers here on some writing and some reading stuff as I was alluding to earlier the mcast item analysis and retes that we're doing in math um so we're looking in
areas that we're struggling um what do we need to revisit sometimes it's a pacing issue sometimes it's just something that uh mcast shows that we just scored lower than we normally do so how are we going to revisit that and it's being a big push in our department meetings this year all right so um our
last is is um inclusive and supportive culture and climate and in this section we really want to make sure that we tap into our students hear their voices get their ideas um support students you know where they are push them further as they
need to be push provide some leadership opportunities and other growth opportunities and even really help teachers Foster more collaborative and respectful and trusting relationships with your students so um on our most
recent Panorama survey we have our survey data um so we're pretty happy with this data right here um most of these these numbers um in these categories are pretty positive so 92% of our students I feel you know feel like they have
supportive relationships and we've been really pushing that all year long you know through our advis program to checking in what students is needed our guidance Department um students really feel that they have someone that they could tap into when needed in terms of Engagement we're really excited to see
this increase here um we've spent a lot of time working with teachers on ways to engage their students differently we had to help them um clarify to the students what does that actually mean in terms of the questions on the Panorama survey felt that there might have been a little
confusion around that and once that clarification was made students were able to respond more accurately we we feel um again like I said and one of our biggest areas is really figuring out how can we engage our students more in the learning the everyday process of
school um in terms of our school climate um we didn't change here but again very positive same with school safety um in terms of challenging feelings and positive feelings you know we have some work to do here but we're still in the 99th percentile nationally in this area these categories and again
these are favorable responses the questions like you know how often do you feel happy how often do you feel safe um hopeful excited things like that so obviously to work on that um if you can switch to the next slide but some of the things that are driving this data um
Steve already kind of alluded to a lot of that in terms of like co- teing we're really spending a lot of time with that um engaging our teachers differently so that their students can see them in in you know different ways and really tap into them um especially with that Learning Center coming in eth
science um but just on all levels not just the eighth grade you students seeing their teachers in a different way more positively all the adults here supporting um has been huge and the teachers are really buying into that then of course the advisory lessons we've really been trying to establish
what does it mean to be a part of the birching community what does community mean what does it look like um what does it mean to to show respect to yourself to your peers to their friends you know how do we engage with each other appropriately on social media things like that like really in-depth
conversations and that longer advisory um period that we have every Thursday um has been going a long way and kids are really sharing they're feeling more comfortable to share their thoughts and they're feeling more heard um and so we're seeing some positive response there um as you know we've engaged with
the academic leadership Association for the last two years um last year we had a full year PD around building strong you know um positive trusting relationships between teachers and students primarily um creating a sense of belonging those
are the topics restoring relationships creating a third space and the third space is basically like students can safely be themselves at the same time being as being social and then also really authentically listening teachers really listening to what kids are saying and really responding to that
appropriately and so this year while we're not giving explicit PD on it we're now really implementing and following up and we're seeing a lot of that like when we're doing our walkthroughs we're we're looking and you know what do we see in the room what are we hearing in terms of the conversations between teachers and
students and it's very positive um and then continuing to support teachers as needed in those areas so um T who was Al who the CEO of academic leadership Association wife they're still very much involved they're in the building twice a
week we also meet with them monthly we're really looking at student data student house how are students responding to these interventions to the support they they go to Team meetings the teachers all those things so we really just trying to strengthen what we've already done pulling back a little
bit but then following up Mak sure that everyone have the um and then as um Steve also referenced really getting into the nitty-gritty the basics the core revisiting the instructional block so we have more cohesiveness you know consistency across the school so we
don't just see Rel drawn practices in one room and not necessarily other we want to see consistency so what does it look like when a student first walks into the room how are they accessing the lesson for the day where where you know how are you as a teacher explaining the focus how are you rolling out your
lesson in a way that students can really you know respond to in a positive and favorable way and really tap in how are you following up as needed how are you you know checking their learning through exit tickets or things like that um so just core best practice races and then
also a lot of teachers have really great Innovations around these areas that we're sharing with one another so that's been that's been pretty positive um the coaches are running that and the teachers are really um appreciating that a great round of learning walks right before the break everybody's really
excited about this saw some really cool stuff yes that was really exciting um a couple other things that are not on this slide but I think it's important for you to know we also like I said really want to hear the from the students and get their voices so earlier this year year we held some focus groups from various
different um populations in the building so we had bipac we had elll sped a core General Ed group lgbtq um we wanted to just hear what do you feel how are you how are you enjoying your year so far how are you responding to some of the things that
we've done what do you like what do you not like what can we do better um in these particular categories and so we got some wonderful feedback and we're taking that back in the leadership team and trying to incorporate it in some of things and initiatives that we're doing going forward um we're also creating
leadership opportunities like you said you want to meet kids where they are but then also provide additional opportunities to really challenge kids and motivate them and really make their school day like wow I'm doing something that I wouldn't normally get a chance to do so we're creating a lot of leadership
opportunities like um Conor said we have a Mel sha mentoring group so we have a set of new new set of eth grade mentors who are super excited um to plan topics of discussion to plan activities with these kids um last year was like every
other week now it's every week last year we had 10 kids we have 20 kids now we had to break it up into two sessions so it's it's a really exciting time for them we have our njhs um those kids are really really excited about some of the leadership work that they're doing they're tutoring kids at Maple Shade
we're doing different clothing drives Etc and they're more opportunities coming for them throughout the year we have um a graduate program for our I graduates you know so they've successfully um completed the program and I they've done everything that they we've asked them to do so now it's like
let's give them some really challenging opportunities that are fun for them in literacy in math um you know technology things that they wouldn't otherwise get they've um and kids are really um you know responding favorably that and this year for quarter or four we have so many
more kids coming up that are anticipated coming up to the point where now we're having to add an additional class for so we new it's a good problem bring the new kids the kids that are have already kind of gone through this I already graduate program will now move them up maybe to something where they can do
something like passion projects you know what are you passionate about let's you know take some initiative and some more independent work do some research put something together do some presentations some you know things they wouldn't otherwise be able to do and then whereas the new group that of kids who have
recently graduated from I um they can now take on the program that the first group did so really excited about that um of course we have some wonderful after school um offerings we brought back our drama club this year after a
Hiatus for a couple of years students are so excited about that um you know we have robust robotics program we have uh diversity Club Art Club fry Club so kids are really really excited to get involved in these after school clubs and
I think that's really helping to engage them um and like I said we're always looking for ways to engage to build community and then of course celebrate the kids when they do good work when they make these achievements so we have quarterly um celebrations on TV we just
did one like last week um and students are really happy to be recognized and their parents get a chance to see that it's on the website so we're really proud of that that's all questions T thank you both appreciate it we have Mr Paige all right just me
tonight so um as other schools did I am just going to start by um a little time to talk about our attendance data so the first slide is just a reminder of where we're at coming into the year the improvements we
saw our chronic caps andm both as a whole across the school but also in some of our different subgroups but there's also obviously Room to Grow um one of the things we did last year was uh establish an attendance team to try to look at how to support and also address some of our issues
around chronic cism um we did streamlined that process this year um where both Gary and an um took on overseeing a lot of the one notification around attendance and then two identifying and assigning support
when needed uh based on either um we'll just say uh temporary chronic absm or some of those prolonged situations where kids need that additional support if you can just jump to the next slide Mr Smith so snapshot is just pulled through Power
School and it gives us gives you an idea of where attend rates are currently um uh I put this information together back in early February and um on that date we had a 96.4% uh rolling average uh attendance um throughout the school year so we're
sitting at a really solid number um uh The Chronic absentee is scroll down in power school you can see those numbers um about where we stand um uh basically from 90% and Below uh in power school
our current chronic absenteeism rate is sitting at 7.4% which is different than what's in Panorama Panorama is reporting at 11% I think that is because of how we uh input our daily and then our meeting attendance attendance are the periods
are the um so I think there some discrepancies between how power school is reading that information how Panorama is reading that information um long and short uh in power school are chronic apps and teas and ra at 74 and in Panorama at 11% um right now just as a
um as a number we have around 50 kids who are um meeting that definition of chronically absent which means they are at below 90% daily attendance rates uh and um Gary and an have been working with one communicating to those families about their standing um uh um sending
out those warning letters because obviously at the high school it's a little different than the other schools where this is also connected to credits earned for those classes um so they are um uh communicating to those families working with those families to try to one re-engage and then to improve
improve attendance um I think so far they' sent out about 500 letters not to 500 students um but I think we've sent out about 124 uh Communications to students um just letting them know of what they're standing is some kids obviously when they
are um getting those notifications for being absent for classes they're getting it for multiple classes so they might be receiving multiple letters which is why you hear that number 500 we don't have 500 kids who are chronically absent right so um just you kind of understand how that piece works but we do send Communications for warnings and then
also potential loss of credits when kids get up to uh High numbers of absen that going back to conversation we had at our last meeting that as you plan forward for the incoming ninth grade would you consider putting attendance as
one of the pieces for competency determination don't want to say yes or no putting it out there more is like talking about what that might look like and attendance might be something to consider especially given that period attendance
leads to credits earned yeah I think i' have to we'd have to have a conversation around it um it's an interesting idea I'm not opposed to it I don't want to yeah yeah I just said it too now I'm not expecting an answer I meant more just like
something as we continue to think forward because the competency determination was for the this current yeah grade and 11th but as we think forward to the incoming ninth graders if they know might something to yeah we are
very clear with our students when they're coming in and Contin continuously through the their High School experience about the importance of attendance and also the potential loss of credit connected to that attendance we'll say we are definitely trying to
uh be I'll just say I don't want to say rigid but uh stricter with that policy in the last couple years just to make sure that students know that you have to be in school in order to one learn but then two get those credits you know so um so it's kind of actually could argue
is already embedded as a graduation requirement um but maybe you could give it some more teeth under that compeny determination and make it make something explicit connected to those classes that we talked about last time I'm processing in real time I don't
that's yeah yeah it's an interesting idea I'm not opposed to the conversation you know but um okay so the uh the next couple slides just go through teaching and learning uh and our Focus has obviously
been um on the freshman and sophomores when it comes to um math and English uh obviously that interesting wrinkle this year is some of our Baseline coming into each year is kind of where we stood with our with our mcast scores and data this
year is going to be different um um but our Focus was obviously uh making sure those kids had those skills to compation um they've the mcast in the past again on that math English scores um but you
see at the top uh it's a breakdown of strands how the kids did on their fall Diagnostic in ela um below that is their winter diagnostic uh the Highlight here which I think is great is five out of the six strands um our students performed at or above uh that ninth
grade level um in the different strands for uh that are assessed for ELA obviously the area where we still have some work to do is is grammar mechanics um and uh uh that's one that we have seen consistently over the years it's it's an area where um it's can improve
uh if we could jump to uh math um this is one and I know there's some questions around this one in the past because we do see a number of strands where stud based on theel diagnostic below grade
level the one I want to highlight where we did see um some pretty significant growth this year is on uh algebra and algebraic thinking strand where um when kids came in they were assessed at uh around a seventh uh 7.5 or basically
halfway through seventh grade level on the uh winter diagnostic we were able to get them pretty much almost to that grade nine level you know so we saw some some great significant growth in the uh in our freshman um around that strand which most freshmen do take algebra you know
so I think right now we have about 90% of our kids taking algebra and then there's that 10% who have moved on to Geometry so um uh so that's great to see um there's obviously still uh some gaps that we see down at the bottom where we have concern concerns around below uh that ninth grade level
for some of those um different strands at the the questions on the ISL for the diagnostic are are geared more towards we'll just say that those Middle School um uh standings is where they're they're falling and we definitely want to see improvements there and that's an area we
have to focus in on um this is kind of a a broader snapshot that gives you it takes the bars out and it gives you an idea of uh how our students performing uh so again uh if you put all of those strands together students are scoring at a seven
758 that's basically a 7.6 which is like a seventh halfway through seventh grade level on algebra then on the ninth grade side um they are scoring at about a 9.4 uh so it's great to see that in ela that the kids have um gotten up to grade level uh we definitely have some work to
do on the math side um specifically with the Freshman um but you can also see the system does break it down by what their average monthly growth is um they're growing about 19 points per month which is uh probably uh close to equivalent to what you might see as typical growth in ISL
um have to get that higher to close some of those gaps um in uh and try to meet we don't have that stretch growth formation inl but we would have to have that higher in order to get those kids back up to grade level um just to highlight a couple
things um if you look at where we saw some gains for our students uh in grade nine overall freshman on average improved level standing by 08 which is almost a full grade level on their Ela Diagnostic and then um for the Freshman they did improve almost at full grade
level holistically um from what we saw in the fall diagnostic to the winter di diagnostic even though there's still that Gap uh on the math side um and then the grade 10 team uh so last year was our first year where we ran that team model and at the end of the uh the freshman year
we to identify the students who might need that additional layer of support sophomore year based on uh their class grades uh theirl scores um and uh that cohort of about 25 kids it started at 25 there's a couple
we moved out so we're at 23 um from their fall diagnostic to their um to their winter diagnostic we saw uh the students improve their scores in ela by 29 which is is pretty decent you know because these are some students who do struggle then on the math side they
almost gained a full grade level from um from their fall to their winter Diagnostic and again these are our sophomores who um we identified as we'll just say most at need or needing of support so I seeing that big jump in their math scores was great you
see correlation between daily not daily uh quarterly performance and grades that are being assigned and that seventh grade performance on the diagnostic like are we seeing Educators
providing grades that are indicative of a grade level that is performing almost two grade levels below um I can I can ask that question that's definitely one we can look at with our so we're probably
talking mostly about our standard algebra courses that's something we can look at there and then earlier you mentioned the shift in data when it comes to mcast students are still required to take MC
they 100% requirement so I just want to be yes no I agree clear that that's our messaging to we will still be held accountable to the state as a community yes as a school district and so will our participation rate so if we
aren't ensuring that students are taking that assessment we will also fall in terms of our ranking in the eyes of Desi and the state accountability rankings if we don't have participation rates that meet that threshold so while it's not a
graduation requirement it is still a still a participation requirement yes and um we do have the ELA mcast coming up on March 25th and 26th of the high school and all sophomores are expected to participate and that's how we're Ming
yes and we are going to a similar approach to what other schools have been doing and also highlighting um the different scholarship opportunities uh the different benefits that the state is offering based on those scores uh which we'll continue to do um as we so the last slide here just goes
through uh our student experience survey data and the two questions that we've honed in on for the last two years um uh the first uh question is just around I feel a part of my community at the school and second question being uh my school's inclusive all backgrounds identities are Target for both those
questions is to push towards 90% um uh what you see at the top is how those student how our students responded to those two questions in the fall survey and um the uh second obviously the two at the bottom are how they responded in the winter survey uh they
were pretty consistent in terms of those um two surveys we saw a slight dip on that first question uh going from the fall to the winter um but we would love to see both those numbers pushing 90% instead of having eight out of every 10 students uh responding positively we
would love to see that at uh nine out of 10 um same thing we did last year which we're looking at doing in March and we're looking to align it with our say something week uh the week 14th uh is to those getting their feedback on what they're seeing in the data and how their peers are responding so not necessarily
them retaking the survey but just looking at some of the different data points that we get from that survey uh so they can just weigh in and tell us you know you know why their peers may have responded a certain way why certain percentages are good why certain ones might be areas to improve upon uh and say something weak is something that's
aligned with Sandy Hook promise where um they uh they push that messaging of of uh um you know safety in schools uh building inclusive spaces um uh making sure that people have those support systems and people to lean on um so
we're going to hone in during that week on the questions that one is aligned with their mission but also two uh connect with the stuff that we uh want to with that survey so when we're having those listening groups uh we're going to be asking questions specific to um the questions you see up here but also
aligned with uh the Sandy Hook promise um pushes for and promotes great Frank no I just really am interested in that correlation between the diagnostic performance especially as we're thinking about
competency when we had about how grades can shift from classroom to classroom so what I can definitely do tomorrow because we have it's honestly timely and it's I think it works we have a math department meeting tomorrow I'll bring that question to
them um just we can sit down and we can um I'll tell them exactly what we're we're looking at in correlation between where the kids might be scoring below grade level and and how they're performing those classes and um uh we'll see what they have for feedback so right now we have two
standard algebra teachers and then we have two honors algebra teachers so um just get feedback from all four um we have a unique um terms of budget so while you're all here we have a bunch of items we're acting on later on tonight I just want to run through a
few quick things if you have a opinion or something you want to say about each thing that would be helpful if not we'll just go right through it so we're talking about school choice a couple extra positions uh potentially in the sixth grade 10 positions stepen Natalie
ninth grade 10 positions for next year you cool with that yep good um we were talking about increasing the sports fee from 149 to 199 it's been for 23 years I've always been against it but this
might be the year to do it agree okay we were talking about capping the virtual uh School enrollment pretty much where we're at now is that going to create any long-term state allows um when your enrollment in the two Commonwealth
virtual schools goes above 1% it allows a school committee to cap the enrollment it can't go below 1% so the cap can be 1% or higher somewhere between 1% 2% so um that was just it's timely in the
discussion because if we're going to do anything we have to get that uh vote to the state by the first week of March I believe percentage of our students who are currently enrolled we're at 1% now at 1% 1.02 would be capped is that gonna create a la a problem across the entire
District or by like high school middle school be across entire District it would be for the district yeah so you have 25 students right now in either the green field Community virtual school or Tekk Academy across many grade levels
they're expensive tuitions clearly yeah and we're at one% right now we're over one we're one we have 25 students across all grade levels that tuition doesn't come from us though yes it does it does yeah tuition is taken it's it's not school choice it comes through it's
taken out of your Chapter 70 Chapter 70 those 25 students instead of going at say 5,000 which is school choice they go more at the tuition rate for those schools I did not know that so when a student leaves here and they go to Teek
it costs they leave with let's say 144,000 to 17,000 workers worth of Chapter 70 okay wow um before you leave if you can talk to us about lacrosse and uh softball but
just the other one thing I want to throw out there is for Mountain View and the high school that last day of school we're going to by Nature it just bumps to Tuesday half day Monday full day both good with that the rest of the district will be Monday half day so we're gonna have to work out the busing issue but we
will good good I got a chance to talk about it but okay I know but I just want to get it out yeah are you increasing school choice for our grade levels too not this year we're not looking at that specifically just the 10 the 10 and 10
grade six and grade nine yeah just okay yeah we have the numbers in terms of enrollment um we're looking at a little different strategy this year okay okay thank you all so much for being here tonight um forward to
seeing yeah move that up to the next item if you don't mind take it if you guys have any questions I had also spoken to Mr M either way that's you have the he's here let's get um I take a motion to move
thank you everybody thank you uh 7.6 the next order of business please motion made by William second second by Amy any discussion all in favor say I I POS n it carries four to
zero in your packet good night Manny um you have a Steve leave that open please Daniel leave it open um you have a memo to all of you and to me regarding three potential waivers boys lacrosse
girls lacrosse and softball um just breaking it down quickly in both lacrosse programs about 25 individuals who are looking to sign up for this spring and um they're they want to ensure uh
because both teams have had uh successful seasons over the last few years they want to uh the athletic department is looking to ensure run a JV team and so some of those if we keep say 20 on Varsity some of those 20 will
probably play both play some some JV time and some varsity time but they would need to fill out with other numbers um to make sure that they have the JV team and Mr Paige if there's anything that I've missed yeah uh just something Kevin
always talks about and just to reiterate is no eighth grader is going to replace a um school kids so they're not there will not be a cut of a high school athlete um to move up a middle school player what's cross this is new why is this an issue now and even softball I
would say for a while numbers been low on and off for while where we we've struggled the field that team um lacrosse I'm kind of hoping it's a little just a little bit of a dip I can't speak to why those numbers might be a little bit lower at
uh at the youth levels coming up um um but I would hope that we would not have to come to you for that waiver next year and that we'd be able to replenish those numbers as we continue to go through okay any other questions on the waivers uh softball there is that one element
that um you know there's the possibility if they go below 15 players that they might have to have eighth graders play on Varsity right that happened last year and they're just trying to F The Varsity we're not going to we're not going to
field they would love to F the field the JV but right now we only have 13 while since we've had a JV unfortunately uh I would love to see that be re rebuilt as well and but for now it's just Varity we're just looking to fill out that varsity team right
now any other questions no I don't a motion to approve the waivers please make a motion to approve the athletic waiver for boys and girls lacrosse and softball made by Amy second by Sarah discussion say I hi I those
that carries four to zero one question yeah so that cap on Virtual enrollment is that effective immediately or is that effective you cannot um it can't impact any current student who's
enrolled so the 25 stay um I don't have a kid right now would um if if you said the cap was at 1% um we would not allow for any other students going forward to enroll in either the virtual schools unless we
came down under that 1% starting now starting now so it's immediate no new students no new students anyone is in it right couldn't put another one in now school committee also could look at maybe we don't cap it at 1% we cap it at
1.1% whatever number that ends up being terms of total enrollment so that would allow for uh a few extra spots yeah so I I do I am aware of at least one if not two students are currently in the weight list for Tekk so would this
automatically remove them from that weight list that's a good question weight list is not necessarily included in the memo from desie it's uh currently enrolled students is what they so I don't I'd have to ask okay I just want to be able to advise our guidance
department when when these conversations come up and families ask oh that's it's a great Point well what are chances they'll get pulled in this year does that happen is it yeah yeah usually usually when kids are on the weight list it takes usually like about one to two months before they get they move into
the we should allow them to move forward and then put in yeah would you recommend that I don't want to if these kids are on a track they've already planned this this is their plan just because they're over the number I don't want to take them away take it away from them I would
recommend just putting a freeze on any additional students going forward and any students on the weight list stays on the weight list something along those lines yeah um and there's only two on the weight list you're saying I know of at least one there might be a second I can I can find that number out from guidance tomorrow
um yeah we just might have to develop this whole 1% piece develop some type of policy so also we're in communication I know where my numbers are and what's to our staff you know yeah um well if we set it at one I imagine won't dip below one at least through the year I'd be
very surprised if it did especially if we had we might now be going slightly over it with already over we're 1.02 25 students but that's based on the enrollment the
district oh yeah so if enrollment decreases in the district and that number stays flat we could actually increase our percentage right okay so as I said this you know the school committee could it basically the cap has
to be between one 2% bless you um because I believe the law right now um dictates that it can be no more than 2% okay of as as District's total enrollment
okay the first time we've hit over 1% yeah yeah a district who wants the law I was just unfamiliar with um okay it's only because it because we were over 1% at O2 that it triggered it
we've never been notified before okay so have you guys voted to formally put that cap in place tonight he we will okay all right okay I'm not I'm not saying to know I just need to understand like so I
can make sure I so basically a family comes to our guidance Department tomorrow and says we would like to apply to techco we would have to tell them we capped as a district right thought we would come under whatever the threshold is do you have it by grade I can get it by grade but I right now I have it by
District by grade too oh who are in the virtu we actually can get it five grade have five kids graduating this year that opens up a couple slots right right yep yeah and we have a liaison
now it's nice to have a leaz on for schools and I saying I'm looking to push kids forward in it it's just good to have the information so I can communicate to that to our staff so they understand just presenting is to make school more engaged here not virtual
that's right all right good yeah we're good okay thank you guys Mr paig night Frank see you Wednesday capping off what's going off cing
off be there fos for us thank you Frank guys have a good night good night okay we're going to jump back into order we have the FY 2026 budget development discussion okay so in front of you uh
again to continue this conversation and remind everybody after updating all the contractual obligations for FY 26 as well as increasing the special ed budget lines a level Services budget is an increase of approximately $3 million or an
8.57% increase the past three years the school department has requested on average a 3.93% increase for level Services therefore we know that we have some work to do to try to reduce that before bringing it forward to the town um so
the chart here does uh group what those budget um next year's projected budget is in different categories and and of course the bulk of it is your contractual obligations and uh increased IEP needs the out of- District transportation for those uh out of
District uh tuitions um those are really the big ticket items for next year going to the second page here um the chart below shows the reduction in level Services request from the original 39 m858
4 to 37 m772 415 that there's a reduction of 1, 308,000 $169 different items that we had uh different strategies to reduce the budget down there um what I do want
everyone to notice is when I plugged it into this uh spreadsheet here you know that would be if we if the school committee votes to bring this amount forward that would be an increase to the school uh budget for next year of 1,7
77289 there are still many moving pieces that can impact both this fiscal year as well as FY 26 uh we continue to talk about them the next page is special ed sorry sure so the the 1 million
77728 is a combination of the increase of Chapter 70 that we're thinking we're going to get if the budgeters excuse me the governor's budget um holds maybe that increases a little bit but um it's going to be somewhere in that neighborhood and then
the 1.5 million that overall would take us to that level Services need it's also reflecting um I think the third or fourth page in your packet which is taking a look at some of the efforts that all of you in combination with the
um leadership team have made to well free up Revenue in next year's budget and look at maybe raising some Revenue as well as unfortunately looking at a few reductions that um might be
able to be taken given uh retirements and um enrollment of certain courses so that's where um you can take your leval services budget uh which is
the very first chart in your packet looking at a 8.57% increase um and reduce that request by$ 1, 38,1 169 if we were to implement these
strategies many of which are up for discussion and this one is um correct in terms of utilization of school choice it's got the 350 there um discussed a few meetings ago which was the 400,000
so the 1777 289 reflects the 50 yes yeah okay so that would be a 4.9% increase a significant effort given that we started at requesting you know we're
looking at level service not requesting this is what we present to the town as possibly a level one Services budget um and then obviously discussion continues with the town um as the town manager needs to submit a draft budget by ail
1st I believe yeah correct and so as I said um there are still moving pieces behind the scenes that unfortunately we we w we just won't know for a few months and things such as you know special ed circuit breaker reimbursement um will we qualify for the extraordinary relief we
won't know until probably April whether we do or we don't you know we did as you can see in 2023 we received $343,000 that would be great if we could get that that helps us this year which in turn would help us for next year as well we don't know that answer how much
will we get in circuit breaker reimbursement FY 26 we really won't know that until July when that circuit breaker is done after the year closes out I'm um I'm using same figure for FY 26 projections as it currently is you
know I feel that that's conservative we know that the expenses have gone up but again there's um eligible expenditures um in in formulas behind the scenes and and I can't tell what those are until they they get in there and they go through all of the services and
transportation as a component um so I'm using that figure there um you know assuming what I will say is that in the projected revenue of that 1.6 million plus the uh projected carryover 400,000 that's $2 million behind the scenes in
the budget spreadsheet for next year I've really used 1.6 million if that makes sense so I try to project out so already at if things stay the way they are now uh I'm already projecting that in FY 27 we would be able to roll over about
$400,000 if all stays the same another moving piece you know we talked about the school choice um I thought I should put that into the chart for you so that you could see um we get a flat amount um for each school choice student 5,000
,000 there is a uh special ed component behind the scenes in the formula and it depends on the services if there are services for a school choice uh student that also gets special ed services um so it could change but I felt safe just
putting the minimum amount in there knowing that that number will actually larger so I'm I'm projecting out if the school committee did vote in 20 additional slots that the minimum Aid that we would get or minimum uh school choice revenue for next year would be
$285,000 and some of that is all in the um you know the the strategies here that that have um been discussed already with the school committee so in the end when we get further down to 74 we'll vote eventally
on what we will call level one submission and that will be the 3772 number be unless there are changes in depending on our votes right depending on the votes if there's a change in school chice or change in one of the
fees we'd have to calculate right okay so we will talk about that a little more when we get further down that's unless there are questions okay Pam thank you for that uh uh discussion 7.1 discussion on
participation in school choice program for the 20252 year so in um connection or coordination with some of the budget discussions we've looked at school choice a little
differently um knowing that past years we've looked specifically at um some of the lower grade levels and um specifically at where as you look across in your packets
I should have said uh you have a look at our enrollment statistics um that we provided to desie uh We've looked at you know where we've had lower enrollment at a particular grade level and said okay in that next year we might be able to
invite X number of students in this year as you heard um from Mr Paige and um at least in agreement with head nods from Mr Pearson and miss o junga Andrew um we would recommend and we do think that we
can handle um adding school choice students at the middle level in grade six and at the high school level in grade nine um you have going into those grades if you look here uh the fifth grade about
203 and the um 8th grade going into ninth grade you have about 197 students moving into those grades um in past years we've seen numbers of um grade levels that are well over 200 more in
the you know 215 220 225 range um not too long ago we had a uh 12th grade class that graduated I believe 225 students so right now our class uh
enrollment 6 through 12 is much lower than it's been um the years past you have the 203 coming in which is um just over 200 and you have the um 206 and seventh grade is you know your two
highest um grade levels in six through 12 so the I think the administrative team um feels the leadership team feels that can handle that increase certainly
would offset um allow us to look at that uh school choice money and help us with some of the budget C okay questions concerns just have a quick question um Mrs santinello noted when she was here that it might make sense to offer some
spots to possibly I don't know incoming third graders I don't know if um we would talk about third grade is at or second grade currently is at 170 so in past years we I think the most we've ever done is 12 eight how many
have we particular one year um but that wasn't at one grade level oh for the year I think yeah we've done 15 maybe in this it's probably in that list
good so the thought was 20 was an excessive amount or not excessive but a large amount already they're in the later years so they won't be here as long and so we won't have as many students I mean I don't know I we could
Scot saw other grade levels I just just think this was the strategy that we looked at and to not overburden the system especially with the younger grades and then we'd have them longer that's been our strategy in the past so asking just it's just a different strategy the
other partion we're going to look at some of the grade level um um enrollment yeah and so that may come into play next year if we have other budgetary uh constraints that we may have to consider then too so which would boost their uh
average class size so yeah okay got it thank you so with that I would take a motion if someone would like to I make a motion to accept the for participation in Choice program for 2025
2026 school year presented and offering 10 positions uh the sixth grade level and 10 positions at the 9th grade level for the 25 26 school year which you may have already said with 10 new positions at sixth grade and 10 new positions in nth
grade for the upcoming School motion made by Amy second second by Sarah discussion all fav say I I I oppose nay that carries zero thank you thank you uh discussion increasing athletic
fees currently at 149 the go to 199 which would create additional Revenue $30,000 $30,000 and the last time we've increased the sports fee at least 23 years at least 23 years
yeah question concerns I take a motion for that then athletic is one time per year correct one per sport first SP yeah we're one of the the few probably in the area um there are others I don't know them off
hand who have a a set fee others will um do it by Sport and so you may yeah they they tier it and so your more expensive sports have a higher uh user fee this would be for the
20 25 26 school year as well I take a motion for that please just I'm clear so that means a family could potentially be paying $600 and many do for child yeah for child for child yep if they play three Sports
yeah I will make the motion but I do think that in the future it might be worth revisiting revisiting and think looking to see what some of our surrounding communities do in terms of the cap again and just think because right if you have two kids or even three
kids in high school it could be it could be an extreme expense for some families and we certainly don't want to um we want to encourage participation not put barriers in front of people so it's a necessary evil unfortunately so I make a motion to
increase the athletic fee um for the are we doing just for the upcoming school year or is it uh it will be ongoing so but once we increase it it stays there so um make a motion to increase the athletic free fee from $149 per sport to
$199 per sport starting in the 25 26 school year starting in the upcoming 25 26 school year excent motion made by Amy second second by William discussion all in favor say I I I those oppos nay that carries four to zero thank you we have a
discussion on increasing the transportation fee currently at 270 per Rider capped at 540 per family The Proposal is to go to 300 per
Rider and that would increase Revenue by $177,400 discussion much to put on raising sports or the athletic fee potentially be $600 for family to add
for child to add another $600 into family budgets I think is too much to ask and I don't see us getting 7,000 isn't a small amount but it's also not as substantial pleas
yeah completely agree with S I think it can debilitating for many families to face that bill every year and raising the fee is can be really harmful yes and that's per child it would be capped at
600 soar it's 270 per child um but it's capped at um 540 so if you have three kids you only pay the two you have five kids you pay up to two and then it your Fe what I think is different about that is you're you're paying that starting
potentially in kindergarten through right yeah potentially as opposed to an athletic Fe which I still think is hard enough but you're paying that four years it's more of a finite amount of time as opposed
to potentially K to 12 for a child yeah and we like talked about we've made great strides with sidewalks in our community but we still don't have walkable school for all families who within two
miles so it's I that's a tough one I'm not okay I would take a motion anyway and then we can vote against if you want so take a motion to increase the please move to increase the
transportation fee to $300 with a cap of $600 per family for the Academic Year 2526 motion made by Sarah no that's second you can if you want William seconds any other discussion all those in favor please say
I those opposed say nay nay motion fails zero to four thank you good discussion okay next on the agenda we have a vote for the FY oh no we have approval of two memorandum of
understandings with the eela so you have I believe at your places you have two graphs of umand of understanding one is uh looking at
the development money that's set aside uh each year for members of Unit A and members of unit e um you reimbursed up to 650 or up to 450 for um work
workshops and so forth that are approved um this would be for next school year unless yeah was at yeah I'm sorry it's sorry about that
pass have one no have it up here um so that would uh the first one that deals with professional development that would for next year yield $126,500 we'd free up that amount of
money in next year's budget and then the second memoranda memorandum of understanding is around um extra days that our counselors across the district work and um it's needed this is none of
this is done without um some loss uh so we take 10 extra days five in the beginning before the school year five at the end of the school year with their Administration and do a lot of needed
work and reduce that to five for the next school year and so could be three at the beginning of the before the school year and two at the end of the year and then that um extra work would really fall to the administrators complete
and so the ELA executive board um in discussions with me have uh we've come to a tenative agreement on both of those that would yield 26,000 questions
concerns so the combination of the two would give us uh what's that 1525 yep and I was an English major nice work and confirmed it
I did it in my head Mr um so I would take a motion for the first one to Temporary TOS spend the $650 for unit a and the $450 for Unit E of individual professional development
reimbursement for the 2025 2026 school year still moved yeah that work made William I set you up for that made by William second second by Sarah discussion all in favor say I iose
nay that carries for to zero you time that and then a second motion to uh temporary reduce uh the elps guidance counselors um additional days additional
days from 10 to 5 for the 2025 2026 school year for guidance and adjustment counselors yes yes so Move Motion made by William second second by Sarah
discussion all in favor say I I I those AO I just think it's important to note how that that this is unfortunate absolutely this is um roof that just left here will do absorb that work um and it's also o a hit to fol that have
been doing this work for a number of years and doing it well very much so um the I think everybody challenging situation is trying to come together and be collaborative and creative and so we've been appreciative of that hoping that
continues and has been shown by the town that do the same thing and so hopefully tomorrow as we're meeting with them we're continuing that same effort okay 7.4 by 26 budget submission to the town manager looking for a vote on that 37789
815 no before you do that um the number uh now in terms of reducing the uh request the level Services request of 3085 458
right5 3 million5 the the number we were it should be the 37772 plus the minus the 17 minus so right now it's uh what we've been able to free up with the additional reductions remember
that's did I just say that no because we're going to request it still because you just took off the 177,000 so yes we have to ask for more add it in don't subtract it did in terms of the strategies because it's one basically you reduced
the request by no longer 1.3 it's now 1.29 0769 so you have to added right right so 3778 789 815 oh because you added it in yeah okay double check that I was just
looking what I you had already subtracted I was adding it back in and we got to the same place we did 7 89815 Le two ways to get there yes if not more agree
okay so with all of that discussion um so as we said this will be a level one in the past we've submitted a final budget proposal we're going to acknowledge that this is the level one because we have we will acknowledge that there is still work to be done and that this will probably not be our final
budget I believe we'll have more information tomorrow and then we'll continue to work on it based on information that continues to come in but as of now the request would be for the school budget for the 25 26 school year 37 m789
18815 and I will have to make some updates IM munus tomorrow and then bring that forward which Gordon will submit to um okay which inclusive of the savings from the two inclusive of the expansion of school
choice yes exclusive of inclusive of the increase of the athletic fee yes and it's also inclusive of six positions you reduce yes uh and that's through a combination of retirements and
um unfortunately uh low enrollment in certain electives as well as two position i s that currently have long-term subs and won't post for full-time staff I mean I think that's that needs
to be part of the discussion tomorrow is that we're already committing to reducing six yes in addition to working with our our teachers to um be creative and free up other money as well as uh the votes that you took today in terms
of school choice and raising fees so we're trying to leave no Avenue um uninspected I guess if that's the prop way of saying it unexplored thank you unexplored that's better I mean you can expect the Avenues too sure
exploring is better yeah way more fun no pathway an Avenue it's probably been explored any comments questions if not I take a motion for level one budet submission to submit level one budget to the town
manager for fiscal year 2026 as presented just the dollar amount oh that's 3779 815 815 37789 815 motion made by Sarah second second by
Amy discussion all in favor to say I those those name that carry score zero thank you okay thank you we've done the virtual school already okay did we talk about it
enough um sure I think the overview the reason that we were alerted by desie is because we were just um over 1% of our enrollment um the statute actually caps it at 2% no District can have more than
2% of their entire District enrollment of virtual schools until once over 1% committees have the um opportunity to put a cap in place um the discussion we
had with Mr paage also let us know that uh currently we have uh some students possibly two who may be on the wait list at one virtual schools what would you recommend for that um if they allow us
to um put a motion forward where we allow have to allow all students yeah um if we can add to the motion that uh students who any students who are currently on the wait list would be
Exempted from that cap then I can certainly talk to the Des liaison and make sure that that's understood or do we have to look at the appendix Fe first paragraph that letter to the commissioner doesn't that state this
effect as of the 2526 school year oh then that we'd be fine so if a student got enrolled at the end year year' be fine they would still be like I don't know grandfathered in yeah that solves you reading that SAR it's uh the
template letter that I sent you send back that's how I interpret that yeah no you're right that's that's a great uh patch thank you basically similar to votes you've taken this evening we putting it on the
next school year next school year and then it would so though we would have to re um you may have to look at it uh as long as we stay over 1% we keep
happening but you may have to renew it each year say yeah looks like in the chart of districts who've done it oh you may have to revisit each here we should be okay on the waight list because right
they would be rolled in cor it says they cannot be compelled to withdraw because of this vote to withdraw but that's the the students who are currently enrolled but the way is different well if you put in
the motion that it's for the 25 26 school year which is what this letter templ template letter is saying then uh then we're fine because if they get in they get in so you didn't you didn't cap it until the following year and they would so the cap would be
implemented for that year right that works said it's true that it's only a month or two they've been on the waiting list they should be Yeah March or April okay motion place an enrollment restriction
of 1% on the Commonwealth Virtual School effective in the 2526 school year Mo made by S second second by Amy any other discussion all in favor say I I I those
opposed D that carries four to zero [Music] you we didn't do the waiver did we do the waiver we did the W voted on it voted voted on it okay superintendent midcycle formative self assessment so in your
packets and together much A lot of it is what being presented not only by the schools but in our previous B meeting meeting in February presented at the district level um I also put together as I've done in the
past folders in the um drive stroer do you have access to that no but I will have it this week um which I need to get access um so I can go through highlights or if um
people want to meet with me between now and the next um committee meeting I can answer questions whatever the committee's pleasure is I'm happy to review it and ask questions if I have them okay
but that's it's unfortunate Gordon because you always get this comes at the end of the longest meetings we ever have amount of the work that you always do for the district we kind of just like all right thanks Orton but please know that we certainly acknowledge I appreciate that
but I think obviously it needs to come after the schools are presented and you have a lot of the data currently in front of you right so then it's actually meeting something in terms of different things but I mean it goes through as I always have done it
goes through our smart goals and then it goes through the standard some of it um becomes a little bit repetitive because you know something that's done for a smart goal if they're aligned to the standards which they should be um you're going to see that um bullet point
again but certainly I can go into more detail and questions on an individual basis committee basis if people would like to do that way yeah why don't we each review and if anyone has uh they want to discuss with
with superintendent uh you are certainly welcome to do so and then bring it back or done necessarily no BR back two we yep perfect okay good what good on or we'll call tonight all
right uh it's been a good productive meeting appreciate everyone's time uh Jamie thank you for your efforts tonight huh have to vote sorry did you want to
adjourn yeah I would take a motion to adjourn a long night without further delay motion made by William myam discussion in favor say I I those oppose nay that carries four to zero thank you we are adjourned