good evening Hollston and uh welcome to the April for nope 17th uh meeting of the Hollston School Committee uh welcome to uh April break and um so we'll get right into things um calling us to order first the
item is our consent agenda which just has our minutes from last week is there a motion to approve the consent agenda second by Don all in favor okay um since we are at the beginning of uh of spring break we do not have student
representatives tonight so we will skip right to um school committee individual comment um I'm concerned about the state of our democracy but other than that I have nothing else to say so just small stuff small stuff that's it cool and and public education in general
i'm going ongoing stress for me i'm let everybody else feel no no comment okay uh and then I am um I think I'm good as well
um since there's no one in the room uh is there anyone on Zoom who would like to make public comment if so just unmute yourself there you go hey Barbara just wishing everyone a great spring break thank you okay thank you Barbara thanks Barbara that was wonder that was actually the
best public comment uh we've we've ever gotten so thank you please there you go um all right well we uh are are 30 minutes ahead of schedule so uh so uh Mr mloud if you uh would like or or Dr k
I'm not sure who who's going to kick us off with the uh the data presentation sure k's going to pop that up for you [Music] all right so Dan and I are going to take turns on the slides just um to move through this
but for those of um you that have not seen this before in the audience on Facebook or wherever else this is a followup to our August presentation we did one in August 2024 and last year was the first time we
started doing this particular presentation and part of the reason is it's been a shift um we had moved away from looking as intensely at data and we really have tried to find that balance with data and assessment so the August presentation had a lot of new
information and our data dashboard has been a big part of this journey and and the work that we're moving forward with so this is kind of part two to that i will say one of the things that I didn't want to forget to mention before we get started is Deian and I have been talking a lot about the data and the the timing of the data and we really think this
would be beneficial to have a once a year um presentation but maybe in October or November connected with our school improvement plans and goals because most of the data we have if we had the MCAST data all at once we'd already have the US news and we'll report it comes out in September for the
Boston magazine data so I think that might be the sweet spot so we'll some of the new information from last time and we'll have some of the old information here as [Music] well all right so the agenda items that we're going to talk about we have eight
comparison districts but it will show up as 11 in some places because Dover Sherburn and Dover Sherburn are shown three times in our data dashboard but it's actually the eight comparison districts that we've used in the past and currently we have niche data US News and World Report Boston Magazine School
Digger MCCAST and then the recommendations and the progress we made on some of that work and it's only been eight months since this last presentation but given the data dashboard and the the roll out that we've had we're encouraged by the work that we're able to do with some of that [Music]
information so these are the eight districts as you can see ashlin do Sherburn Franklin Hopkin Medway Milford Milis and NICT and we just looked at kind of the the districts that are closely aligned with us and neighboring to [Music]
us all right uh good evening everyone so niche is our first uh ranking we're going to talk through a little bit uh this actually has changed from last year a little bit uh they removed SAT so you can see here the highest weight
is state assessments which is MCCAST basically and then the interesting one 17% there the second one is best colleges ranking so they actually look at where our graduates end up in the rankings of those colleges and that
impacts our score only second to MCCAST and then all the other ones are your typical uh based on their own rank of best color correct their own rank it's a best color so it's it's all a little interesting
it's all data is all about how you display it and explain it all right so we'll show where we are this year so this is our trend data for um obviously back to 2016
so we are this year 52 and last year 51 and you can see the trend and feel free to stop me if you want to uh discuss any of these or want me to explain it more i think we just should clarify the reason we did our bars upside down in this in other presentations is the lower the number
the better so we kind of wanted that to jump out if we did it the opposite way it looks like it's wrong for people to visually understand so good point all right that was the district ranking again it was 52 this one again just so you can don't confuse the
numbers is 55 that's our high school so niche does both high school and district so you can see where we fall this year uh compared to other districts around us all right back to you so I mentioned US News and World Report we don't have
updated um US news and report for this year but it does take in the college red index rank college curriculum breath index rank state assessment proficiency state assessment performance graduation rate rank and underserved student
performance and one of the things that we've talked about here um in the past is AP scores impact very widely in this particular ranking system and um one of the things that we have not done in Hollist that we are trying to shift to
and have started to shift to many districts that offer the wide range of AEPs that we offer will have students they have to they're required to take APs here it has never been a requirement and it really hasn't been as strongly encouraged as we would have liked to as
well the challenge with it is that many of our AP um classes are offered three terms and then the students finish up in the third term and then they take the AP test what's challenging about that is because of our model the half year
halfyear model the kids could not take it even if it's a halfyear class they couldn't take the AP test mid year and count it as a final whereas in other districts many districts will count the AP at the end of the year would be counted as a final and the kids would be exempt from that so that actually encourages them to take it more widely
and it does impact the uh rankings consistently um moving forward with US News and World Report and this is the one that's interesting it's 2122 data so that's important with US News we don't fully understand why because most of the other measurements
include recent data this one lags for whatever reason but the good news for us is we're actually our our rankings are improving for US News and World Report you can look when we presented in 2020 the 2023 um data we were 2026 in national
rankings and number 76 in Massachusetts high schools this year we've moved up to 1,66 in national rankings and number 62 in Mass high schools again this is still two years old so we're we're encouraged with some of the data we're going to present later in this presentation that
we believe our data is going to show more improvement when we look at US News and report in the next coming years with the current data and then diving a little bit deeper on those u improvements this is the actual scorecard which informs those rankings
to last year's on top 2023 where we were 76th high school and now 62nd high school but you can see the improvement in scores and then also for those that have seen these presentations it's that AP exam
uh data that basically um drives is the biggest driver of the rankings so you can see that pretty clearly with that top line top two lines there that was my emoji by the way for the take credit for that math reading
and science proficiency what is that based on do we know um math reading science proficiency at the high school so that I'm going to guess is just the high school uh MCCAST data data the 10th 10th grade and nth
grade yeah yeah and not everybody has MCCAST but they use state proficiency um scores for that okay again sticking with the high school uh this is the slide comparing last year versus this year as far as um where we
are versus surrounding districts so again you can see we've improved from 76 to 62 and you can see how others have improved we will say most of the other districts around us did improve with the exception of Ashlin and Medway not to call them
out but just just to give you some context um All right in the past we've used Hopkin since it's our one of our closest neighbors for comparison purposes because they have obviously an exceptional ranking so this past year
they were number seven we were 62 as we've um shown in other slides but again this just highlights the um the AP priority that the ranking has you know looking at ours compared to theirs and then looking
at the other yes they're more proficient in the other areas but we know the AP based on that first slide is the biggest driver of this particular ranking us News okay and then the high school um gave us some really
um detailed data based on the AP program for your uh review and questions obviously if you if you feel free to ask them but we do feel like there's u since we started encouraging the AP uh making it a priority there is
improvement for example you can see um second line total AP course enrollments has increased this here uh the AP courses went down and I'm sorry that's that's on there's a note on the side they believe because
um some students were taking online APs the previous year but I just want to point out too if you look at the in 2022 to 232 students were enrolled almost the same this last year 321 but the significant increase in the number of
APs they're taking so if we could get those students to take the test more of them than have been currently again those rankings would increase significantly as well do we know what AP courses we all need you know there used
to be things like AP human geography available online do we still offer those or do we know which which courses we reduce we didn't get that detail and I don't even know if it's a reduction or just that they didn't have enough students enrolled because sometimes it's just it's still offered but not enough kids we don't we're not able to offer it
so we're not I wouldn't have that detail right now i just want to point out I'm sorry to keep emphasizing this but this is informing the US news ranking primarily which is 2122 data so the future actually looks bright for that
particular ranking if you look at the trend data for our AP improvements all right this is our first uh proud to share our data dashboard one of the u dashboards in our dashboard within our if you want to call it that and this is
apologies hard to see but you can see um on the left side are AP exam results from last year and it's nice you can see the um I guess the most popular courses right the most AP test takers and their results as far
as proficiency so four and fives are in blue threes are in gray and then the ones and twos and reds yeah I think it's important because the bar we were looking at the way the years played out they just the length of the bar is what they um the dashboard has focused on but
it is significantly increasing and you see that now we're up to the 40 AP scholars and 20 is it 25 um scholars with distinction and then scholars with honor the gray scholars with honor is the highest it means they're taking I
got to double check it's they're taking three or more uh correct the AP scholar is taking they're getting a score of three or higher on three or more APs and a score of three or higher on four or more APs for the AP scholar with
distinction score of three or higher on five or more AP exams for the scholar with honor so I think that data tells a nice story that we are seeing students increasing take increasingly taking the AP exam so again couple years from now
we should definitely see this um showing in our results for the rankings so the years are are out of order yes we noticed that too it's because they they did the length of the bar and the height of the bar it's the way the graph um so 22 it was sort of and then it dipped
down in 23 23 dipped a little now we're back up in 24 i have a I have a thought on that but I'm just curious if you had any any No we we wondered the same thing we uh we're going to reach out to the our vendor and kind of discuss this well
I think he's just asking why 23 is smaller a smaller number of students in these AP scholar distinction areas in 23 versus 22 i don't know for sure yet uh that is something we wanted to look into we didn't notice at first that that have
swapped until today we looked at it and said something's wrong with that i would like to see the data dashboard people didn't it go digital or on some of the AP exams in 23 for the first year and we had some crashes too which was like college board i feel like I did and then
you had to retake it like a month or two later if you so chose yeah and that could be why that is showing but was it all kids in 20 I'm just trying to think of it 23 kids were freshman when co hit for some are you able to look at this
data by group too great like track are how many students with dis are we improving like students with disabilities multilingual learners low-inccome students taking advanced courses yeah great question we we we can filter the data in that respect we did not do it in this one we can definitely
do it for the next presentation no I was just curious if that was something we were looking at yeah we we definitely could see you can see all of the students names and how many tests they take on this particular one and then there are other filters that you can apply but we just wanted to get the general data for this discussion
could you just I don't understand what the what does 288 in the red column under physics one versus 169 blue No no but we don't have that many kids right we don't have that many kids not every kid takes AP physics one and it adds up
to more than the class do we know what that is is that over time oh no it's just one year but how many kids well that be a lot of kids yeah we'll have to delve into that over the whole class it is a lot english
lang i mean are we sure this is not Is it Is it definitely one year or is it over the last 1 2 3 4 5 6 years so it could be 23 screenshot of them so 2024 the one on the right i think that's what it is you just said David i'm sorry because all a
lot of the categories the second one the third one the fourth one they have more students than we have in our school right yeah i was going to say the bottom right is definitely 23 24 we took that right off there but Dan screenshotted a separate just just trying to show you the volume of student wanted to see the volume of students that are taking the
um exams does this in general make sense as far as like the the number of students we think in general take those classes like is physics one the most not say popular reason no one likes physics but kidding i'm kidding but no joke uh but is physics one definitely the most
uh taken AP class ap Lang is way up there but that's number two yeah well I guess that is there anything they're doing in physics one that's pushing them to take the test i do not get specific you know that would be teacher specific too again part
of this you know for example when I was principal for the day the other day um asking students um are you taking the AP exams and I think I mentioned it a couple weeks ago too that the students have said well some of them are falling on prom day or different things so a lot of it comes down to the encouragement
that they get and this is where and I was going to talk about this later but this is where with a new schedule it's going to open up some opportunities as well because with fullyear classes there's a possibility that we could have the students take it as their final exam as I mentioned earlier other districts
as a it's if it's required and then it's counting as a final exam again we're going to just see more kids take it and the rankings again will all start showing the results that we would expect from the caliber of our program here at high school so we will follow up on that particular
graph and clarify with title pro something more concrete any other thoughts about this no I I appreciate the breakdown on the AP awards too because that kind of gives you an idea of how they're doing
so we just wanted to highlight this and I know Joanie and Ida are going to talk about this more on May 1st with the curriculum and intervention presentation but we're excited to see the biiteracy um seal program increased in volume karine is really doing an awesome job um
encouraging this program she was doing I think it was last week that students were taking the tests oh it's been multiple yes multiple sessions last couple weeks they've been taking it and we'll get the results later this year but she's expecting to see 30 seniors receive the graduation honor and there
were 16 last year so over time we're seeing a significant growth in this seal of by literacy which is also encouraging and highlights the language program here at Hollist High does that include students who are taking AP French exam that may not have taken the seal of biiteracy
no the exam is totally separate from seal get the seal of by literacy if they get a four or five on the AP exam i couldn't hear you i'm sorry she said they get a they get the seal of by literacy if they achieve a four or five on the AP exam that would be a question I'd want to ask Karine if she's included
that in this number that could be that could be an addition too right so can you look into that with her multilingual learners um pursue the seal of biiteracy too okay yes wasn't there we're encouraging more to take it though yes wasn't there a different seal of bi
literacy slide in here earlier that broke it down by how many in Spanish how many we took it out because it just seems so busy so I we did take it out it concerned me because I thought it said that only five in French received it this year and six in Spanish as compared
to like 33 in French a couple years ago we saw that too that the French definitely seems to have decreased and that's again something we'd want to dig into i think that's something we did ida might be able to speak to a little bit more as well okay can we just make sure we follow up and provide that back to everyone and then if we can just follow
up with some questions on it too because I didn't understand why French had gone down so significantly too yeah and that's why I just wanted to mention it here because she is going to present on that so I will make sure that Ida says that for the May 1st presentation okay
well what so um why I did take the AP I'm sorry the seal of literacy last year in French um all of the students failed it except for I believe one or two and then there were supposed to be a um a retake of that but not all the students
I think were not communicated with it was sent as like a a blanket email like oh you should come to this um this retake of the exam but they didn't know that they hadn't passed it the first time so it looked like oh this is just you have an option to do that and so you
know like for example Wyatt thought that he had passed it so he didn't go right and then he didn't get to take it so then there's no option for him to take it his senior year until way late so and he was away so there's no chance for him to take it during this time because he's
in France so so he's taking Did that number that five was that for 2024 2025 because I do know that they've taken it already this Yeah i don't know i think that was they've had multiple sessions already but the number I think that was for this year because Karine sent us
that data it was 10 for this year it's not good yeah it's not good so we can ask maybe I to bring that back that slide yeah that's why I didn't want to get into it too much tonight i just wanted to highlight that the program is growing all right moving on to Boston
Magazine so Boston magazine uses high school method methodology and it's compiled with the most recent data available with MCCAST um desi SAT scores and it's calculated September 10th so when we presented last August we didn't have the
current um Boston magazine rankings as well so we'll share those tonight yeah there were two rankings in S September so after our presentation two of the rankings came out us News was the exception all right so uh this is a comparison of
last year's SAT data versus this year when I say this year it's a last spring's SAT um so just want to draw your attention to a couple things um our evidence-based reading and
writing er improved at least the highest achievers from 18 to 22% and the number of test takers was 28 last year versus 30 this year but we like to see the percentages percentage
increases is more reflective and then everything else we we studied this pretty um carefully there was either drops or increases but they weren't dramatic in most cases so it seemed to
be pretty the years seem to be pretty equal overall and so again the SAT informs this ranking which is Boston magazine so this is just high school keep in mind not the districts so that's where the SAT plays in so we're at 45 um year
before we were at 40 and then you can see the trend all the way back to 2014 for the high school only and very busy slide this has all of our neighbors plus Hollist High in red and that 45 ranking and how it fits with
everyone else close by all right Susan this gives you Well I'll I'll let you do this slide and then I was talk about Oh yeah this is me all right school digger we kind of forgot about school digger but it is a factor in real real estate so we thought we'd
bring it to your attention um so school digger was on September 25th is when the calculations came out so they use a rank score system so this is just a sample district it's not Hollist schools but I just want to kind of explain so Lincoln
Elementary is 15th out of 100 it gets an 85% rank that's a 085 you can see the other three and so what this ranking does is average those three to generate a rank score and then that informs the district rank score so
it takes all the schools in the district combines them and averages them to give a rank and so we landed at 59th in 2024 again this came out late September if you think so the 351 districts we always talk about project
351 so I mean 59th out of 351 is pretty strong we're we're pretty solid here okay next slide is we put Thank you Dan for putting this chart together um one of the things we're going to talk about tonight is the trend data for ELA math and science with
MCCAST and the biggest thing we want to highlight tonight you're going to see some s I think quite nice improvement in our student growth percentile which is really important people want to focus on meets and exceeds and yes that has a lot of value but student growth is a trend
over three years so you're looking at the same cohort of students and how fast they're growing in comparison to their peers when you look at meets and exceeds every year is a different cohort of students that you're looking at so it's not the same kids that are getting compared to another so yes those numbers are important to our comparison districts but the student growth
percentile is really has a stronger value in how we look at the growth of our students in in Hollist so if you look at the trend data here this is again um from our data dashboard you can see that um looking at our
students meeting and exceeding is for ELA we're up 18% from the state average last year if you look at our student growth percentile though 58.7 is up 1.3% from LA 1.3 from last year but 8.7 is compared to the state so the
meeting exceeding is is getting better but also the um student growth percentile is really what we wanted to highlight here is that for grades three through eight or the high school three through eight okay th this particular one doesn't show grade 10 in this it's a three through eight
comparison because of the three-year TW for student growth in the next slide so this was really something we wanted to highlight we were really pleased to see our growth here from 2019 to 2024 in 2019 we were at 45.6 average
student growth percentile we're now at 59% and if you look at our comparison districts it says 11 districts it's really the eight that we talked about but they break out Dover Sherburn and Dover Sherburn do Sherburn and Dover Sherburn it's it's three times so one out of 11 which is really one out of the
um the nine but that's significant growth for Hollist that's why we like to highlight that because that really matters and then compared to the all districts in the state 17 out of 354 for growth again significant growth for our students in
ELA and then we did break in the next slide we broke out also the meets or exceeds you can see our growth here as well um the meter exceed it's not quite as strong as our student growth but in general we're still doing well six out
of 11 or six out of the the nine for the comparison districts 57 out of 354 for the state but again I I still think that the school student growth percentile is even more valuable because it's comparing the same cohort of children versus different cohorts every year
okay switching to math my former uh career all right so math um again this is 3 to 8 we just want to draw your attention to the um the state this is the state average the dotted line and then you can see
how appears to be growing the delta appears to be growing and then that's informed by the 21% above state average and then the scaled score is 12 12 points above the state average and we're seeing that growth in the bars as well on the um on
the right bottom right correct and so just like the ELA this is where we are in student growth percentile so second out of the 11 districts and again looking at this uh we're pleased with this obviously across
the state uh the increase is steady over the past several years as far as moving up the ladder yeah we we were at 162 in 2019 up to 25 out of state that's that's really significant testament to our teachers
and our programs definitely and then this is the percent meets or exceeds again not as um high in the ranks as as far as STP so we we're six out of 11 compared to our neighbors but still showing growth on
the if you look at the top line we're still showing growth from 51% in 2021 and and holding our own 62% the last two years and again looking down here at the state growth uh we did drop a little bit from last year but if you look at the trend
9953 up here to 45 in the state all right science we don't have student growth percentile for science because we don't do it in three consecutive years it's in grades um five and eight thank you five and eight five eight and 10 10 and but if you look on the left side
students meeting or exceeding again up 4% for Hollist from last year but then up 22% in comparison to straight the state and you can see again the green line that are we're trending up significantly um above the state from the past so that's great to see and looking at the bar graphs you can see
the growth there as well so if you look at our meet and exceed that is showing us as four out of the comparison districts still again if you look at the trends from 2019 up 79 up to 36 compared to all districts so
again we're really seeing some significant gains in our student growth and that's exciting to hear and uh nope all right so what action steps have we taken and this is a little bit I guess awkward because this is all data in the
past right so we're just trying to continuously improve on that data so we did obviously you saw a lot of the data dashboard tonight we are using that you know almost I know the schools are almost using it daily so it was very helpful for this presentation too yeah
and you'll see Joany's um team talk about this with the interventions as well this dashboard is is really a gamecher for us we did get a late start with it when we talked about in August we were still it was still getting configured so we didn't get to start as early in the years but already it's making a significant improvement in how
we're able to access this data and disagregate in so many different platforms and formats and I think I understand for the interventions how you use the data dashboard but how do you use it for all students beyond just the interventions like how has that helped
this year like how so data things like that beyond attendance data yeah the attendance data has been significant we put that in the goals but also one of the things we've been working on as a district is our um concerns about equity with our um stu our students of color
and low-income students that we were still seeing inequities and that data has been something we focused a lot of energy on is how do we move those students along we also saw when we presented um on math earlier some of our students that were students of color that were not in our higher levels were
actually overperforming students that were in our higher level math so that's that's what we've started to dig into is why is that happening what can we do differently and again that's part of our discussion about how do we open up more doors for our students going into the higher level math when um Karen has
already shared with me that the numbers going into algebra 1 next year are going to be stronger than usual because people want to have that opportunity and students will struggle and we do have this gap year this year because of the fact that anyone that was in grade seven
going into grade 8 this year has not had those math eight standards and we talked about how those were moving down into grade six and grade seven so that by the following year um the school has a plan to help adapt for those students but those are the students we're looking at now the students that have the potential
but weren't maybe identified properly so that's one of the areas I'd say is that's been a real focus area for us i'd also say at the building based leadership meetings they're using it on a regular basis to talk about how their school is moving in a positive direction and what they're seeing with the gaps
what they can do to make changes in a positive direction so as Dan said the schools really are using it on a daily basis in so many different ways but they're starting to change the conversations around data which is a
really positive thing to do and um it's a it's done in a non-threatening way and it's a a positive conversation and looking at all the students in a grade so so it sound like looking at
student growth tracking students advanced coursework um enrollment or like the annual metrics that you're really diving into can you use the dashboard to track are we on progress throughout the year toward advancing those things yes because on our data
dashboard I'm going to jump in you have and I ready there you have dibbles there you know I mean like you so you are having that Dan was talking about dashboards within the dashboard those are dashboards that we have yeah so it's the real process is what's been helpful so that's to go to your point like
that's the buildings are having those rich conversations right around that data and looking to see what the growth is or not growth what do we need to do um interventionists are using it all the time to progress monitor you know but yes this is where it's been helpful too is where our interventionists are the
teachers overseeing those interventions but then in some of the buildings we have tutors that are so they can help support the tutors and put those groups together so they'll talk about that May 1st and that I feel like is a huge um it's been a it's it's been a heavy lift it's a very positive lift but it's been
a heavy lift it's been a huge learning curve for them to use it i'm going to be honest i mean it it was hard because we work in we are going back still Dan back me up we are continuously tweaking how we are tracking intervention groups because we're like okay we need to make
it work a little bit better for our interventionists and tutors so I mean it's still kind of a yeah they're using it so much they're running out of like yes intervention group names you can't use the same name seriously it's a good problem we have to create new naming
conventions for the intervention groups but I will say we get requests it's it's probably once a week at least from an administrator in the school asking me can the dashboard do this or add this functionality so we know that tells us the schools are really using it and they
want to see additional features and again we're just in our first year so yes and open architect has been very cooperative and helpful with this but what we're hearing too is more and more districts are moving to open architect so we may not get this um all these wonderful changes moving forward but I
think we have been at the forefront correct me if you think I'm wrong but they have been very attentive to our needs and they have made changes based on what we need and they are making a lot of positive changes for everyone in June July help me out open architects so
the summer it has a new interface that's being launched so they're their energy is focused on getting that launch be having that launch be successful I think so they're everything we're sending now they're like we'll get to it in the summer are preparing for this gigantic launch that's why JerryLiel and I think
I mean your grant money has been used for this because it's been so important that we keep this it's more Jerry's yeah yeah yeah we we believe we're we're fairly um confident that we'll be able to renew another two years with some of JerryL's
grants that's great so some of the other action steps that we started um recommending last August again it's only been eight months and not having the data as early as we would have liked you know we're definitely showing progress and we're excited about the gains but it's still been a very
short time frame here so we need to continue to identify the gaps where the state standards need to be more explicitly taught we need to continue our professional development in all content areas math has been a huge focus this year it will continue to be a focus next year but other content areas have
to have really targeted strategic professional development as well and that's I think that we've talked quite a bit about that in our PD conversations about how much time we can give in the 24 hours for teachers next year specific to content um learning and ongoing professional development we do feel
confident and and excited about the fact that we now do have the systems in place that we will be able to analyze longitudinal program data and student college and career outcomes with this all of the things we talked about tonight so that's exciting with that dashboard facilitating that process we talked about we're already seeing even
before the encouragement of this year I know that Mr the list I think put it in the handbook and they're strongly encouraging students to take APs and not requiring yet but you can see even prior to that we're already seeing the trends up for the students taking it and then the schedule in 2627 will allow for students to take AP exams in lie of
finals so that's a shift that Mr would like to make um as soon as he can with that new schedule and I really do think you're we already see given that we're looking at data for the rankings from 23 24 is actually two years prior and we're already seeing um significant
improvements the last couple years that we showed you tonight that we are really confident that we'll see those rankings improve um particularly for that US news report we're swapping new for finals are we going to require them then that's again I don't want to speak for Mr list
yet but that's the trend that's what he'd like to do he's going to work with the teachers this year and it could be one of both it could be you take it you don't have to take the final correct or it's mandatory or it could be a combination because we're also shifting the culture and the expectations for students because some of them have never
really thought of taking them that they want they want to be challenged but they haven't thought of taking the test and in my mind I'm thinking if I'm putting all that time and energy to be challenged why won't I take the test and we do offer some scholarship money I think at the high school for students that need um that can't afford to pay
for those so you know we we really do want to move in that direction i hear the increasing encouragement for kids to take the AP exam but um how are you also looking at increasing pathways for different students to access advanced courses
this is where the so this these are the conversations that's starting now and because as you know we've had some challenges with the schedule kind of locked students out and that is some of the work that Mr liz and I were talking about in fact today we're going to um probably have them come back in a couple of weeks to show you some of the pathways that teachers in math in
particular were already talking about we're going to have some of those changes happening for our students that are going into nth grade next year and then they'll have a whole new schedule the following year so teachers have already started thinking about that and this is where if schedules um if the middle school or high school are going to change any of the levels and it
sounds like there's an interest in adding levels so if that's going to happen we really would encourage that to happen sooner than later because the work the sooner the teachers can start planning for that you'll get those pathways mapped out and I so you know I know that you have that committee
starting to start up but the later they get that information the harder it is to plan for that and that's where we have gaps so I I really would encourage that um I know you have a schedule started but once that gets going if we could make a decision sooner we'll we'll make it work or whatever direction we go
well I always want to encourage taking more AP exams i I do when you're looking at it in the context of whether it should be just the AP exam in lie of a final or maybe a final which is often a great practice for students before they
then take the AP exam um if we have kids that are taking four or five AP exams in a year that's $500 for a family on top of Yeah and they haven't determined and they may just have $1,000 of fees in a year the biggest part though of the
rankings is taking one 30 it's like 30 for one for one of the rankings it is other rankings do look at multiple multiples but one other way to increase AP's exams I think too and you know you look at it when you look at how Hopkin
has 81% taking at least one AP exam where we're at 64% they do offer AP classes to even their freshmen right they have freshmen taking AP biology um we're very limited until I think sophomore year and even sophomore year
it's maybe two or three classes that you could take you know yeah definitely i think this is all good conversation that will be happening at the high school next year as they as they plan for 2627 and the new schedule so the first data report that you guys
did was December of 2023 and as I look at the recommendations from December of 2023 they are very similar to the continued sort of action items that we have now mhm i mean purchase a dashboard and now it's purchased a dashboard utilize the
equity audit to examine curriculum offerings with an equity lens arch 13 arch arch 3 strategic initiative number one that's identical to what we have now continue prek 12 plus alignment in the curriculum in all areas so I and it kind
of it goes on and the final one was develop an exam requisite for AP classes um so we're now you know a year and a half after this and I guess what I'm what I'm not really seeing is sort of what the progress is in the use of of of
the information that we're we're we're doing are because the we're still talking about sort of the the same things and I get that some of the work is just ongoing but what are the what are the results of the ongoing work that we've done how is how is this been used um you're talking
a lot about how it's sort of being used but we don't really I guess I was hoping for a little bit more in this and kind of a a regurgitation of the information that we've already kind of received multiple times now um it's it's it's nice to see that in some places we we we
increased uh in in rankings but obviously I mean rankings while not unimportant and certainly probably more important in real estate than than in day-to-day student outcomes um I I just I I I'm not seeing
the I someone help me hear what I'm trying to say limited in seeing the actions taken we're looking at a lot of data here this is good but the actions taken learning from the data i feel like we're just assessing still assessing the data versus using the data to inform
what next steps we should take so I I think we are doing that you know that this is where we we've showed you some tremendous growth in our student gains over the last few years um the data has been looked at that way the the the staff is mapping it out it led to a
curriculum review process where we we just purchased a brand new math program anytime you purchase a new math program it's two to three years implementation we're in year one of implementation so a lot of the data that we're looking at has helped inform the curriculum review cycle um I'm seeing significant gains
the fact that we were able to our middle school being a national blue ribbon school with all the their data has improved tremendously um so and we're actually talking just over a year since our first presentation on that there was a a shift and I talked about this last year in 2017 and that's where you can
you saw some of the data start to drop and then it's coming back up again there was a discussion about we're going to unshackle the teachers and no longer look at MCCAST data and that shift did happen when I started here in 2020 I we weren't presenting the MCCAST data we
And I'm not all about MCCAST data i'm I think we're showing you multiple data sources tonight because we shouldn't be looking at one specific we should be looking at multiple data sources but I I'm seeing our district actually show significant gains over time it doesn't happen overnight and the rankings are only you know a snapshot in time as well
depends on what what you want to look at but to me the biggest thing right now the fact that we have students showing significant growth in number one in ELA um comparison districts I the fact that those students of the same cohort have grown that much is is exciting to me but
this data is two years old right not to mention so it's before this data the rank the first rankings report so well it depends on the data so it's the MCCAST was from last fall okay falls data so so one of the recommendations from from December of 2023 uh was
provide ongoing professional development in all content areas so do you have some examples of how this this data and the information that we have was used in professional development do you want to talk yes so Dana you want to jump into
so we've had um PD from both I Ready Inexl on how to interpret the student data how teachers can use that to assign students who are lagging um with their mastery in a specific
Massachusetts standard how they can group them how they can push out work to them um so it's being used for one tier one tier two it's being used to progress monitor the intervention groups um but they have had multiple PDs on that which
they continue to do and have discussions about how to look at that data how to analyze that data how to use that data to group students how to push out work to students with very targeted instruction for what a specific student doesn't understand so So that sounds
that sounds great i guess that was sort of what I was hoping would be part of the the presentation and that we would get tonight would be something like that so can we I mean we can either the committee can sort of send sort of follow-up questions i mean I I thought that was sort of what we had asked for but maybe we need to be a little more specific about what exactly it is that
we're looking for because I would love to know that sounds great and I'm sure it is but to somebody who who works in a bank I I also don't have any clue what it means um and I'd like to sort of just see it so that I can kind of understand it because it does you know um at least for me help and I think it might also
help the community understand how we're using this data to inform decision- making for their for their kids so I think this is where um the end of year goals presentations will have that specific to each school we you know most of the rankings is based on high school um some of them district but if you look
at some of the work we've done like with Hagerty at the elementary schools they they've looked at all of the the data and reading and that is literally informed the purchasing of Hagerty and the explicit instruction there i know that Jamie Slaney talked about that in her mid-year goals updates the tremendous growth there so that is going
to be part of those conversations they'll be presenting data on that but if you have specific things that you would like them to present by school please send it to us i mean this is more of a general district-wide lens if we dig into the schoolwide lens they can tell you um more specifics about how
each school is using the data to inform their instruction that's what we like to hear at the the end of the year progress is um they did a great job presenting like here's our data at the beginning of the year their MCCAST data here are the things we're going to focus on and now as we come back at the end of the year reflection on that so based on those
actions we took here's the progress we made here's the things that we learned here's what we need to focus deeper on for next year is it is it worth doing that over two meetings so doing two schools and I mean sometimes I will admit that it gets a little it's hard to
follow in and understand it yeah and it's an interesting thing because we're we're looking at last year's data for the 3 through 8 if you were to plant the end ofear presentations by the principles last year that would tell you
that would explain this year the data that you were just presented on specifically for 3 through 8 and actually for the high school too yeah it's a good point and I hope they would they would share with us their current data like maybe data correct but like we won't get the new MCAST data the new AP
stuff or whatever until like October and that's why I think this could be important moving forward that I again I strongly recommend that we do this global rankings data assessment district-wide presentation in October or November either it probably should be separate from the goals you could do the
goals first and present this after want you know they need to just give you a heads up too Dian help me out here I apologize for putting you on the spot do you remember the window for I ready and I ac June though correct correct so the problem is the principles will not be
able to report out on end of the year data for I ready and I excel if you're asking them to do it sooner that's I just want to be very clear about that yeah because they won't have taken it well I saw you have two presentations occasions one in in the fall with the sort of all the data that you have and
then sort of and here in these action steps and then this is what we've done over the course of the year and sort of and how we're progressing against each other goals in the mid year and the end of the year but I want to kind of pull it out from just necessarily not all we can do it as part of for this year part of with the the school end of year stuff
but I also think it's a separate piece of information it is it's broader than just the can can I just get a more specific too on the action steps on slide 30 where it says continue prek to
12 plus alignment of the [Music] curriculum what are we do i mean we we heard a lot about curriculum maps initially but what's going on right now in terms of continuing to do the alignment yep so those are conversations in the curriculum meetings that they're
having that's what the curriculum coordinators are working on um it's kind of really looking at that scope and sequence making sure that you know the grade ahead and the grade below um are having conversations we've been we've
greatly improved with having building based curriculum leaders that um it's like really exciting to see I'll just give you an example like um Carla Krauss who's the STEM person at the middle school and Ashley Buchard who's a STEM person at Miller get together all the
time and are having conversations about what they're seeing right and what they're not seeing so um just kind of by restructuring it that they have more time to have those opportunities they are looking at that all the time in a continuous basis and then using that
knowledge in um either faculty meetings or curriculum meetings that they have to kind of drive that mo work forward you know in this grade we saw that we're lagging in this so where which grade is going to pick this up let's have a conversation about this and that's and
you're going to talk about that May first but I do that's exactly why um at the middle school we talked about I think um a couple of presentations ago about the teachers having moved down some of the grade eight standards to grade seven and seven to grade six that's that is also part of the work they're doing they're constantly looking
at where they can cover standards differently and how they align so that work has been ongoing mhm we just had a Miller leadership meeting today and there was a conversation also Brian was talking about um having a conversation about some English standards and they
were doing that in a curriculum meeting at Miller and they were talking about um we're going to be talking about standardsbased report cards when we do the presentation on May 1st for the elementary schools and they were having a conversation about um where the standards need to touch be
touched upon and what they're doing for that standard and show the pro the progression of your what your understanding used to be in third grade versus fourth grade versus fifth grade um so they are having those conversations all the time and we'll be coming back once the standardsbased
report cards are finalized we'll be able to come back and share those as well correct and in terms of curriculum review I know it says implement the new curriculum for math below it but what new curriculum have we identified for what have we reviewed this year that we're bringing on new
curriculum for for next year we are we have been working on the ELA curriculum review and the meetings are going to have to be restructured um we're not going to Do you want to take this i mean I think
we're going to we we do need to look at when we're taking teachers in their um classrooms because that's been quite a challenge and um trying to make sure teachers are getting their prep time has impacted our ability to do the reviews and so we're coming up with another plan for that so we are actually probably
going to we're going to have to restructure how we're doing this a few years ago we did some of that work um in the summer that teachers did some of the hours and then they would continue that work after school and I think that's the model we're going to have to go back to given some of the recent changes that
we've been um asked to look into i don't know how anyone else feels but I guess this is like my thing but I would really like a recommendation on you know whether we we want to ask our high school students to take the AP exam if they take one AP
test i personally would would ask them to take at least one at least one right yeah now I I'm not going to I'd like to hear from from Mr list and and yourself about whether that is is your recommendation than before we could do it but it's it's been a year and a half now since that sort of was a
recommendation and that was the recommendation that Mr list came to um last year about that he was going to because we knew that we had the same schedule that he was looking to strongly encourage for this year and his hope was to then transition to requiring at least one for the following year so that is
where he was on track with and I do think um the hard part next year is you know we we were foreseeing a new schedule for next year we're not having a new schedule next year but I still think we should be trying to move in that direction i think the positive intent of
allowing the student to decide final or AP will guide that like if they have to take both I have to take a final why would I take the AP well but that's that would be for the for the new schedule i don't prefer not to wait though no I get it but next year we could require first one or more you're in a position where
if we don't have enough scholar that'll certainly help in the in in the future but so can I also just add that that was not something you can do kind of midyear because you're making a change in like a handbook change and we only make handbook changes like during the summer for the implementation for next year so
like if the recommendation was from Mr list at the end of the year that he would like for us to make that handbook change that students would take at least one AP exam if they're taking an AP class then we could we could do that but I think that's part of what he was
moving towards anyway we should be careful too not to scare away a student from taking an AP because now they're forced to take the exam we got to balance that out mhm but you just show up and you just take the exam what I'm saying is if I have to take an exam I may not take the class just as simple as
that for a lot of kids just deciding to take the exam and just getting I think we should encourage for sure wait but I mean I'm just saying but the recommendation was made in December 2023 we why can't we decide that now for next year not I mean based upon recommend
based on recommendation yes but what what changes we should make to the program of studies and the curriculum as our correct administrator so if if that's what he suggests that we do then sure but so that's why I I I I posited as a question can we can we ask for a
recommendation he's I think he's already going to bring forward recommendations for changes to the end of the year i can share that discussion and he can bring that up in the program studies discussion that is what he said last year i don't want to speak for him but that is what I heard him say when he presented on this topic
last year is that he was going to move and try to shift to encouragement and then um many many districts do require at least one um but but but the reason this is timely also doing this now though is that we do want to see if we can we need to have some sort of scholarship fund or something so I want
a better understanding and analysis of what the the potential thought on the need would be for that because I don't want to implement something and then not have the money to be able to support those kids that that can't afford to take the exam so we're in the middle of the budget season right now so you know some of these things are driven by
decisions that don't aren't necessarily optimal for for timing for um and I know they do have money set aside i just don't exact amount but he so far it has not been a problem what they've been able to um the students that need but if we expect more then yes that would change that's that's the
point right now you're not some kids may not be taking it just because they can't afford and they don't want to ask now if we're saying you're going to take it but we'll get you a scholarship that I can imagine it's going to go down the demand for for for those scholarships what percentage of students require
assistance that do take the AP exams oh I wouldn't know that off the top we would have to ask special education how much support they get for that and what the accommodations are i really don't know no I think Oh financial side financial support yeah i don't I don't know that you know
a lot of times I don't know if we're going to if he's going to be able to give you that because as a past principal myself I wasn't privy to that information it's because that's confidential you know what I mean like counselors knew it but even as a principal I did not know that but we know how much we budgeted and how much we spent right
that we could probably find out like how much we're giving well so oftent time and I don't know about the high school but like things that we're funding at the middle school um it's like a parentto parent or it's like a there's a fund source run through the PTO that
that goes through to the counselors to pay for things confidentially so that's like not even run through the linearly so I just we'll we'll check on it i know he told me that there was money available i just would have to dig
into but I know within our student activities accounts we do we do and have the ability to cover uh cover tuition and things that might need to for specifically for field trips or for things like that or whatever within student activities so
maybe you can follow up Mr list on just on the financial piece of it i did want to u mention just if you go to the last slide Jod Renee um has been really helpful helping set up the dashboard helping to train and support
staff with the dashboard it started out with just administrators having access and then we did move it to the interventionists and tutors and then um we'd like to get it more out to more staff but we also don't want to overwhelming them because when you the more data you look into then you start
also questioning things and we want them to question but we also don't want to overwhelm them because they're also trying to grow their craft and learn new math resources and other things as well but she's been a real help with this process thank you she compiled all the um not the the dashboard was the easy one i just took screenshots i got the
easy job she was compiling all the other graphs and another product so awesome thank you yeah any more questions okay we don't have any policy though we had 20 minutes set aside for policy not
sure I was thinking there um central office uh updates so I have just had more um round table discussion at the high school the other day i you know it's been uh fun being in
the buildings you know a little bit more and and getting to talk to kids as much as possible i had Monday I had my high school um principal for the day and then Tuesday I had my roundt discussion so I did get to talk with a lot of kids more so on Monday than Tuesday i think they saw me so much on Monday that they were
kind of like I don't need to go see her on Tuesday but um it was great to be in classes as much as I could um throughout the day and then today we had our unified basketball game at Rams with our fire department and police department so I was planning on attending and Dan and
I were actually working on the data again so did not get to attend but um they had a great time and it's always it's near and dear to our hearts to see our kids enjoy playing basketball with their peers so it's wonderful on Monday I had the pleasure
of attending a 18 grant convening with principal list and Tom Lec a teacher here at the high school um we were awarded $18,000 mr journalist wrote the grant from 18 to implement the project lead the way program that you guys have
okay the um classes on this coming year it's really exciting there's over 170 districts now in the state that are using project lead the way um it was that's near and dear to my heart because I taught all hands-on but just so you know project lead the way they call it
APB based which means it's activities projects and problems in activities it's when the students students are building their knowledge and skills so that's like the teacher directed part of it then you go on to the projects part where the students are practicing their
skills that they know they they learn from the teacher and then finally in the problem they are actually applying their knowledge and it's all student directed so it's very exciting i've had it in districts I've been in the past fully buy in um it's really exciting to see
the direction we're taking and it's very exciting to see how passionate Mr lc is about teaching it and what he's going to be able to do at Hollist High School um I wanted to give you a quick update uh Dr kusca sent out a district newsletter
please check it out there is a student opportunities act update which we are recruited we are required to submit to DESIE so that's in there but they do ask about the steps that we have taken and in there I had to talk about purchasing
the data dashboard having professional development on the data dashboard that we have I ready um and for both progress monitoring and tier one and tier 2 we had a talk about um purchasing the Eureka math squared and the reveal math
which is both considered high quality instructional materials by Desi um I talked about the project lead the way curricular resources world language curricular resources that we purchased and then went into what we are going to
do um I talked about additional curricular supports for English language learners um a potential additional ELA teacher for the um elementary schools and then really um improving upon our
night that we had last year that Dan helped out with so much and Jody Renee we did over 17 local vendors for our multil- language learner families about resources they could access such as legal resources things like that so um
that's all on there so you can check it out it's included in the newsletter great thank you Jordan uh just to reiterate uh what uh Dr pesca had mentioned about the Rams unified basketball game um you know I just want to say a big thank you to Allison Ditto
Castwan uh and to Marie Reio who are kind of the the coaches uh of the team uh they it was a wonderful game to watch they blew out the fire and police department um so uh you know congratulations to our students um there
um got a chance to um talk with Chief Stone and um you know gave him some whether he needs to give his guys some some pointers um on their skill sets but um needless to say it was a blast we had um over 100 uh folks that were there uh
in attendance um music celebration um great time great fundraising opportunity for uh the program as well um you know there is another resident who happens to be an area administrator of a competing district um who immediately called their
director of special education and said why don't we have this uh as well so um congratulations to that crew uh to Jess bey bringing this here for us it's a lovely and wonderful thing that we have as a town of Holl um sub reports communications
I to report um policy and superintendent evaluation nothing okay budget no I think we'll have a meeting before our next school committee meeting we attended the the capital uh subcommittee
meet finance committee capital subcommittee meeting but else yep um the house uh budget did come out it was slightly better i don't know what the the finance committee is meeting tonight uh annoyingly um certainly not able to attend to see
what they're they're doing but I'm sure I'll hear um the House budget was slightly more favorable for us than than the uh uh than the governor's budget but they'll have to decide what they end up wanting to use as far as the model goes um so just quickly we need to just
change update our our capital request for May to um reflect uh a new recommendation for high school c high school supplies now that we're pushing off any change in the schedule until 2627 the materials we needed to to
implement that change are no longer needed but during that process um a number of things were identified that uh could needed need to be um addressed sooner um and would also need to be just adjusted in general like micros you know replacing microscopes and things like that it's uh so the
48,300 is now 23,600 um if anyone wants a breakdown of it I think I don't have in front of me but Dr jordan can provide it or we can just vote to uh update to that number number as you talked about last time yes yes is that Oh yeah did I put that
number in front of you yeah yeah good look at me so this is replacing existing it wouldn't be beneficial for 2627 when we do need to expand it would be beneficial okay having equipment that works is always bene so um does anyone have any more
questions or Okay so I'll entertain a motion to u update our our capital request for $23,600 uh for high school uh supplies moved by Don second all in favor i will relay that to the chair of the uh
finance committee budget sub uh capital subcommittee um the uh we we just had a cap we just attended the capital subcommittee meeting this afternoon uh everything still remains very tight um and we are going uh diving into the the couch
cushions for for money so I don't know if uh Dr jordan wants to talk about that but we're looking back at past appropriations so yeah so um the uh Fincom has asked um the town departments to asked the uh acting town
administrator to have the town departments to look at um older uh capital accounts or that were appropriated at different points in time um that may have either gone stale or whether they're still in use and find some kind of like update line by line of
where they stand um even within the school system the school system I'd say that the predominance of the capital that we have is still in use um our big ones are the recently uh acquired the 1.25 million for the RAM's roof um is
still sitting there so that that's the largest chunk within the capital for for us um including um a small remaining amount about $121,000 in capital for um uh for HVAC uh we did do a
$330 something,000 uh rooftop HVAC unit at the middle school that we installed over the winter break um there are however uh there are some other smaller line items that let's say for example may have had you know $100,000 of technology line items at
different points that are wittleled down to like 2,000 and $3,000 or smaller amounts that may have not been spent against in the the last couple years um what they're asking for is that all towns departments go through their
accounts those capital accounts from past projects uh to see if they could that we could do some as a town do some sweeping of uh as the term that they used of some of these accounts that have very specific guidelines of what you can spend the money on um and that if we're
past those points and deadlines we can pull that into uh into the town so Dr jordan Dr cassie will work on a recommendation for us and then uh probably at the the April May 1st meeting we'll have a recommendation all we need to do is vote to allow the town
to release them and then the town can can do that it can also be done by town meeting but it's it's easier if we just do it and that way they can use it as for planning um okay any more questions about capital um okay moving forward i put on
here but I don't know if we have any update on the on the math leveling thing just in case there was there was anything but there doesn't have to be well I think we're we're still planning um and getting a ready to release a communication to invite U members to
join the subcommittee great um and then uh so I I' I've had a couple questions from from parents and stuff about the the eighth grade algebra one for for next year and how the geometry standards are going to be sort of delivered so I was just hoping maybe
we could get an update on that and then maybe have a discussion about well I'm just I'm curious how the geometry is going to be delivered uh to to students who aren't getting those eighth grade standards next year because they're doing a full year of algebra 1 yeah I did share some information that
Karen had shared um with me and and you know this is the gap year because um the the vote happened last May that we'd be moving to elder one for the 25 26 school year and as I shared in the past some of the planning had already happened that they've started to adjust putting the
standards down some of the seven into six and some of the eight into seven but it's not something that could happen in one year so the I you know I I don't want to speak too much for Karen but they the math team is working with her and they have um started to map out how
they're going to integrate it all yes we're still looking to put for students two years of math into one if they haven't done the math 8 so students that are going into algebra full algebra 1 we're getting math 8 and most of algebra 1 without those geometry standards so now they have to get make up math 8 and
algebra 1 um so in one year it's going to be hard for those kids to do but the teachers are willing to do that work and they're taking on that challenge but kids will have to do some of that work in another time frame because it still is more that they can fit into one math block and day and so that will be during
an arts elective or arts i believe that's what she had shared out but um but that's something again that they're still working out some of the kinks and that there aren't really any other times in the day because they have they have their four cores and they have um the world languages so that takes up five of
their six blocks right and will it be direct instruction or I'm just how will it be how will the students be learning the standards so I wish Cara was here to speak to better i have not been in those meetings with her but my understanding is that the teachers are working so that they
would end up having um some they would be looking at the kids taking some of that work through and then they would determine which standards they were struggling with and a math tutor will be available to help them just like they would be getting intervention blocks
so but it won't wouldn't be a teacher a certified teacher in the room necessarily no just like we do with our intervention blocks we don't have certified teachers doing the interventions either be similar to that model so what happens is the interventionist um and they also can do
some enrichment our intervention teachers oversee that work and they then they help the tutors then implement that work so that would be the same process i think I I don't know what other people feel like but I think it might be helpful if we can look to see if there's a solution that does allow for for there
to be some some an educator in there i don't you know obviously there are many many uh guard rail guides to to doing that because it would potentially mean moving um a teacher around or or or some other type of offset but I I do think that especially because it's for one
year um I did speak with Karen about this y her description of her plan for next year kind of alleviated some of my concerns where she talked about a specific person she wanted to hire who has a strong math
background would work closely with the um instructional coach in math and provide a model that was a combination of direct small group instruction and Il okay and the way that she laid it out um
is it 100% perfect but it sounded like it is a promising um I guess plan B I guess and I believe the person that she's thinking of is a certified teacher if I'm not mistaken so it was it just a bonus that this person
is the person seems interested in doing it for other reasons as well is very excited about it so again I don't know if she's finalized that position for sure but that's the direction she's been moving i think that that is great um I just think that there as soon as we we
have it solidified communicating that to teacher to to uh to parents would be helpful because there were some parents that were like "What you know my kids going to be going and losing art not only losing art but then just kind of like doing a self-guided tour of EXL for for geometry and and I think that's at least perception that I've heard from
from some people." Yeah I would say I mean the model works well now when we when we're looking again even though we're looking this is more I don't want to say enrichment because these are standards that they need so it's not really enrichment but in some ways it's enrichment because we're pushing them further than they would have been able to go before so similar to when our kids
are struggling we identify what the needs are whether through um the programs or through teacher input and then the interventionist looks at the needs of those students and then they help provide the support either through a teacher or a tutor model so it does
work very well um with our tutors in the building currently so I they feel confident that it will be a I think the questions we're getting are are parents are trying to balance like if they're making a choice for next year is it worth um thinking about the needs of their child and the way that their child
learns is this a good model for their kid um do they want their kid to have a double math block and give up one of their arts blocks like what trying to understand what the model will look like so they can make that decision right yeah year too yeah is it would it be feasible since there are a set number of
standards that we know we need to work into their schedule some way shape or form is it something that if once they kind of achieve those standards or then they can go back to whatever their normally scheduled arts I see I think that it would be the students a great
option as well pick them up quicker and not need as much support and might be able to do them independently there are some students that can teach themselves even without or even if they want to do a little on their own outside i would say the precedent for intervention even if that intervention is excelling a
student is um you are out for a chunk a window of time an intervention block of time 6 weeks whatever that is and then you go back into the course i think if you're looking at um accelerating a student or providing them some additional concepts a similar model
would could take effect as well we're intervening on both ends of the spectrum so so when we say we're pulling them out of an arts block other than art what else are we pulling them out of our unified arts um I I can't speak to I
don't know enough to say like exactly which of the ones that we're looking at cuz I'm I'm my guess is what is left out of that is is world language um we look at world language almost like the fifth core um in the town of Hollist so like that unless you know that doesn't fit
fit into their schedule so then you're looking at depending on the number of days in the cycle that you're that you are that she has planned will determine the art class that the unified arts class it would be so that could be that
could be art that could be a band or chorus or general music that could be um a uh computer science class um it is likely not um a PE and health uh due to some require state requirements that are associated with that and I'm sorry David
were you saying it could also be world language that they could be pulled on no I was saying that not all students take world language even though like we we the town that we almost all of our students take a world language um there are students that that do not um based
off of choice and needs um that they might be or things that they as a family and as a student are pursuing right and and maybe an important part is also again communicating that we have great programs after school like art club um and band and chorus that they could
potentially be part of to try to fill that window if we're pulling them out for Y but I do to to Sarah's point the hope would be that some of the students that are flying fast will be able to return quickly if they need more support they'll stay a little longer and they said that Karen said that when she was here
well apologies to Karen for for doing that when she wasn't here but uh the board communication with with the parents uh just the better as as more information is is solidified and known i think one thing like you had said Hillary she told me that she's been having a lot of um one-on-one conversations with parents and people
are feeling better when they have those questions addressed but you know when it's uncertain there's going to be more questions about it i know we're using geometry as the mechanism for this but I like the creative thinking that Karen in the middle school is doing as far as how
we modernize even unified arts and the flexibility based off of like the desire from the community for like how the community evolves and what types of things they're looking within within that program and course offerings i think that that's a flexible area what do students want what do families want
to see within those courses or those those time periods yeah okay but I mean the nice part about all of this is the we're trying to give opportunity to more students to take these you know that's really about trying to open up more pathways for
students and for some it's going to be quite challenging um because they're they're pushing themselves but if they want to achieve we want to give them those opportunities great okay um good the uh last item on our agenda is
some some new business um and I think just just a quick bit of context and this is really more just to sort of start this i don't anticipate having a lot of conversation tonight unless it's needed but um you know during the uh discussion with the um the contract
negotiations there was we discussed the fact that now that the the teachers day would be you know officially ending when with the students day and the traffic and especially at the high school but also at other at other other schools for um for teachers that did need to leave for child care for you know other other
reasons um and so we we pledged as part of not obviously officially part of the the agreement but we pledged to look at uh sort of the flow of traffic uh getting out so I want just wanted to make sure that we were sort of honoring that commitment and we brought it up i don't know if that's begun or thought of
already but yeah so uh a major I' I'd say a a major start to it was really solidifying one our school policy around um uh our walk zones and our transportation policy um our walk zones
we can start to build kind of like where where our hot spots will be and how that will flow so we were able to kind of um do that so we're we're those walk zones along with eligibility will go out the first week of May to families um we'll
from there we'll start to kind of get um what our uh actual transportation our true act uh transportation needs numbers will be and where kind of our community placements will be and have a good understanding of our traffic patterns for our buses as far as pickups um that
said is um on our campuses um like specifically looking at like the Lynen access road for pickup and drop off uh for the elementary school um I have met uh Matt Robot and I have met with Robert Walker uh and James Keith to look at
that road what are we thinking shortterm and long term so I do have quotes for um a layover uh and then some like old groundup asphalt filling the big holes type of quote um and part of that
conversation which we've we've talked about in some of our capital meetings and some of our other meetings is um there on the the the capital improvement plan for the town um are some requests past requests for for this year next
year for improvements to sidewalks and parking lots at the on the elementary sc campus and the high school campus um the idea was to delay that until we had a good understanding of the traffic flow as well as uh the potential flag project
that will be done there and whether that will warrant needing to move from a single lane to a double lane to increase parking from there whether it doesn't make sense for us to spend $30,000 on an overlay of a road to then tear it up 9 months later to redo it in a different
way so that's kind of where that stands um I have uh met with the principles on a regular basis most recently we met today um to talk about um you know any uh conversations that they've had and to start to think about that again um I
have spoken with and and next week I'm meeting with Officer Keefe uh to look at the high school specifically i've spoken with um Chief Stone and Chief Cassidy as well um I have a meeting in the works for with Chief Cassidy and Chief Stone um as well to look at um you know
traffic flow as a whole in the community and what that will look like i'm gonna you know bat my eyes and really cross my fingers that I can get him to maybe escort us across uh Washington we'll see how that while that goes uh because that will help things but also just to kind
of get an update um on it it does seem that the bridge project uh arch bridge project seems to be on on track um according to the select board uh which will also have an in impact on our traffic flow as well
just just specifically because I don't I think you kind of alluded to it but have conversations been had to help uh get students and teachers off the high school campus more efficiently at the end of the day so so part of that is is our ability
to so is one is our traffic pattern on how we we're using that as far as working like that we have control over um and then part of that is some conversations with you know uh Chief Stone and our SRO as far as ability to to get traffic um out and onto the roads
and and cleared out um as well so but yeah our our the principles of plan at specifically the Woodland campus um how we will flow out so that we're not we don't have any stoppage of of traffic and when we're going to release buses versus when we're going to release
families um at those times in order to kind of prioritize buses to kind of get out and get their routes out and about so okay so did you say they know when when is a Woodland Street going to be open did they have an actual date for that i told I told them August 26th and
they left um I know i'm like I'm just wondering because I feel like I think the RFP I thought the RFP I thought the RFP was September one i've heard September 6th was the RFP so it's getting to be problematic for the first few days yeah well it you know the first two weeks of
school are always kind of messy anyway but for us to be able to map out being able to use Woodland need it more than ever though there's a certain resident who is posting daily updates on halls be happy he may be a former select board member but um that something's happening i
believe that something's happen it looks great i mean it is there it is happening it's It looks like it's a big project i can't It's a lot of money it took a lot of time there's no way it's done in like four months it's still four four and a half months it looks like a disaster right now like
that's what happens when you fix things you have to blow it up first and you bring it back together sounds like a kind of like anyway um um wait you just did you mentioned um you were going to comm
start communicating the first week of May with people to help them understand is that specifically anyone who's who wants to take the bus who is it just people who want to take the bus these are your So it's two uh pieces of communication one uh recently kind of
our spring newsletter went out with just some information about like what's looming with start times and bus buses yeah the what the communication that comes out the first week of is very specific to an to each individual family with their eligibility and then their map so it's every family will get their
own individual um uh email on how to register whether they're eligible we'll include the wa the the walking zones i'm in we're getting it out early because we're I'm anticipating a lot of questions and frustration as far as some of those
walking zones um what we are we we we will be advertising to some families um specifically the elementary schools on the far outskirts um in our walk zone uh we are looking at
um one of the spots is that we we are going to offer one bus stop for as a mass walk zone to there on the far outskirts of one of our walk zones that's the in our walk zone is the furthest of distance away from uh our elementary school um and there
are there's a high enough concentration of families to warrant just like a single stop in that space that we would offer to families for there otherwise the walk zones we've we've spent a lot of time looking at our walk zones as far as what makes sense yeah just glad to hear you're putting it out let let
people know and plan and adjust as needed so thank you all right well if there's nothing else that does bring us to the end of our our public agenda um we we do have a reason for executive session um but we will
release the public about two hours early so So you know You guys should feel free to go by the rest these last three schools they've been amazing had three in a row don't worry may first May I know yeah they've been they've been submitting maybe that's the
May 1 is going to be a doozy david will you have school choice numbers at the next meeting by any chance i think we said May May 15th was the Yep may April 15th was the the last day for applications for school choice we'll
then do an analysis of what we have and then we'll bring numbers to you all y thank you so I will I was going to ask Don know if you can get us um the budget sub potential date so that we can see when we're available just cuz people are some people are away next week okay okay
definitely do that um okay well I will now entertain a motion uh to adjourn from open session for executive session from which we will not return for the purposes of conducting strategy sessions and prepare preparation for negotiations with non-un personnel or to conduct collective bargaining sessions or
contract negotiations with non-union personnel and this is for the student services director and the assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction i think I said for you will not return but reiterating that do I have that motion so move second that does require a roll call vote frank yes
hillary yes joe yes sarah yes cynthia yes don yes and I am a yes thank you very much we stand adjourned into executive session thank you and good night