##VIDEO ID:-aVlIucXFPo## good evening and welcome to the Thursday October 24th 2024 meeting of the school committee uh we are starting our regular meeting now it is hereby open uh we will have an executive session at the end of the meeting I would invite those who are here in the studio to please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and for all all right so just for those who are um here in the studio we are not only we are broadcasting live but this is also being recorded so that people can access this uh after the fact that aren't able to watch us live or that want to see it more than once so the first item on our agenda is public comment I do not actually see any members of the public here um so we will move into recognitions are there recognitions that anybody has that they would like to share okay then we will move into reports and Savannah let's start with you hi everyone I hope you've all enjoyed your week so far last week was spirit week so Tuesday through Friday people dressed up in the themes that student council had planned and then that Thursday we had a meeting during Flex block where teachers went over the swatting incident that happened and asked us how we felt about it any suggestions that we had for the school or any questions we had and then finally when we went over the Alice and shelter in place procedures and while incidents like this can be scary and disrupting to the community I wanted to let you guys know that after having this meeting it was clear that the majority of the student body felt safe and cared for and felt that the incident was handled by the staff and First Responders very professionally and efficiently Friday we finished that week with senior transition day for the first half of the morning we had a class meeting where we filled out forms for senior Halloween graduation and the senior project at the end of the year and then we went over the calendar for the remainder of the school year to end off that day we had pep rally so the Freshman did a great great job of selling their class shirts which normally isn't the case but for the first time we had a unified basketball game at pep rally which Not only was great because we had a great team but there were representatives from every grade so all the sections of the athletic center got really into it and then two weeks ago the senior and junior girls football team started their practices in the mornings at 7 a.m. um and I believe we're going to be starting weekend practices soon so this is a great fundraiser for the classes and the date of the game this year is different than the date of the Fall School play so we hope to have less conflict and greater turnout for both events and then today we took the HSA survey which is a whole school survey done a couple of times a year and I ask you a range of questions primarily focused on your character your relationships and the environment of the school there's also a senior night football game going on right now where 2025 is hosting the 50/50 raffle again the last game did a great job with the raffle and the winner ended up giving the money and the winnings back to 2025 which is awesome and then Saturday morning the Juniors will be taking the PSATs which is going to give them a benchmark store score of where they are in regards to standardized testing that night we have our homecoming dance for seniors and juniors and the student council has been working really hard to get decorations and sell tickets and set up the athletic center and parents have been really nice and generous with buying our decorations finally senior Halloween is coming up and the form to conf the form to confirm your cost costume is due tomorrow so that's just for administration to confirm that your costume is safe and appropriate and from what I've heard so far teachers and seniors are really excited for this event and it's one of their favorite things at HHS so that's all I have for you guys today that's great who won the penny wars penny wars seniors seniors okay yeah well done seniors any other questions thank you so much for being here thank you so much I'm going to do that 5050 we'll you hear back thank you so much enjoy your night good night night that moves us into the superintendent report all right thank you so this is superintendent report for Thursday night October 24th 2024 um in tonight's report just a very quick update on the CPAC Fall Festival the elpac family get together and then I want to spend some time um talking about the safety training that we practice in our schools so here's some pictures from Jen Su uh oh no sorry this is seag um these came from Megan ooy today and the this is just the CPAC getto Together Fall Festival that happened last Sunday and you can see there's a really lovely picture here of the little library that the CAC has donated to the Hopkinson public schools and inside here would be books that would be appropriate for families with students with special needs um they had a teeny weeny little ribbon cutting that you can see over here um when we met with them they said we are going to exercise our sense of humor and because this is so small we will have the world's tiniest and did they oh they did I'm sure it was really tiny um but you can see they had a great turnout I think they had like almost 200 people oh and the same is true for the elpac I think they had about a hundred people and they had their annual family get together as well I think there's was the day before on Saturday so thanks to Jen suker for these photos um so I did want to spend a little bit of time talking about safety training um I will start with some things to note um when we do training in our schools it is always designed to be developmentally appropriate so if you have a student at the marathon school or the Elwood school and you ask your child have you ever practiced an ALICE drill your child will absolutely say no uh we we always practice those when there are only faculty and staff in the building um because we don't do that with the kids the kids do get get some evacuation practice because they always do fire drills and they do them in accordance with the fire department's you know regulated schedules so there there are opportunities for evacuation but when we talk about an ALICE drill per se our youngest kids aren't doing that um one of the reasons we do that is because it causes some angst for kids and we know this uh because kids will report it but also last year we did a district climate survey and we surveyed parents and faculty and staff but we also surveyed our kids all the way to third grade and last year in the fall at the Elmwood School we had some wiring issues and the kids have kept having to go outside because there would be a fire drill and then we would fix the wire when we thought and then there would be another fire drill and then there would be a wiring problem they'd be outside again thankfully it's fixed um but one of the kids actually a couple of the kids on that survey wrote about how upsetting those fire drills were in the fall so I put a call out box in there and I don't think you can read it but it says my school is a bit scary to me because at the start of the year there were many false fire alarms um so that's kind of the reason why we try to be really de developmentally appropriate with what we do so if you're a Middle School Parent you probably know that yesterday we did an intruder drill um and I the first thing was that you know there was an intruder at the front door then the Intruder was progressing down the hallway to the brown gym and then um the Intruder was in the brown gym but surrounded by police so at that point everybody could leave leave the building and it was interesting to see how teachers made decisions to either leave the building or not leave the building but one of the things we didn't ask the kids to do yesterday was to leave the building with their hands raised which in an actual emergency that's that would be a thing that we would do and again it was not to Insight angst for kids but it was really just to make sure that um our our teachers were practicing decision-making based on where the um alleged Intruder was according to what was being said over the public address system uh last last year in the fall we we thought that we hadn't really done that kind of intruder um training for the entire District in a while you know we'll do it when there are a pair of professionals and teachers in the building but our custodial staff for example know that it's happening and the cafeteria staff know that it's happening and so what we wanted to make sure was that every single person in the district no matter what position you have whether you are student facing or your non-teaching staff did come together and have a civilian response to active killer training and we did that it was provided by law enforcement on September 18th Last year um so I you know people will say that even that kind of training is a little disconcerting because you're watching a lot of video that the police provide for us um and it's a lot even for adults and then every newly hired teacher in the summer when Mr LeBron does his new teacher orientation uh the school resource officer sergeant santor and I go in and we do all of that Alice training for people so that even brand banking new teachers are not in our classrooms unless they've had this kind of protocol training um what's safety structures do we have in place our community doesn't have in fact have a school safety task force uh fire officials are there the Hopkinton police School administration including our facilities folks and Hopkinson Youth and Family Services we get together four or five times a year we spend about 90 minutes together on a Friday morning every school building then has its own crisis response team and this is made up of a select group of faculty and that group of Faculty have a higher level of participation and practice um with times of emergency and when we think about the kinds of drills we do we always do fire drills in accordance with the law but we also practice weather drills that's one of the things that the fire department likes us for us to do and of course we talk about sometimes we do a tabletop drill sometimes we simply practice using the public address systems for an intruder drill so there are all different ways that we practice practice those things the last thing that I will say is even though all of our teachers are trained in what we would say is Alice Alice is technically not a drill it's a protocol used in the event event that we have an intruder in the building so that's important and on that slide I have put all of the words that correspond with that acronym alert lock down inform counter and evacuate and I have bolded and put in red the word evacuate and I'll explain that in a minute so what is Alice it's that acronym that stands for alert lock down inform counter and evacuate what isn't Alice it's not a fire drill and it's not just a lockdown I think sometimes people imagine that when we go into when we activate an ALICE protocol people immediately lock down um if we say two people there is an intruder and that Intruder is at the main office of this building if you're in the middle school and you are downstairs in that sixth grade wing and there is a form of egress that's about 20 feet from your classroom door you're never locking down you are immediately evacuating that building one of the things that has been found over time is that when schools used to just immediately go into lockdown it really sets up a classroom so that kids are kind of contained in there and when we talk about active Shooters what we'll say is that if you are in a classroom and you're sitting you are kind of that fish in a barrel Target but if you are a moving Target you are much harder to hit even for trained law enforcement so I bolded the evacuation uh letters there because really that is always the goal is to get people out of that building and away from the threat so for example yesterday at the middle school um knowing that you know the Intruder was at that front door people in that sixth grade Wing could leave when they decided to announce that the Intruder was going down toward the brown gym uh there were people who were also in that front hallway at the middle school who thought okay he's going that way if I get these kids and I run right now I can get out that door before he can get back to me and it was interesting to see how people were making decisions so when we talk about alert we train all of our teachers to use really plain and specific language all we want people to do is to keep saying where the Intruder is and so if I'm a classroom teacher I might say I am in the wing at the elenwood school my room number is X this is Mrs so and so I'm next door to so and so and that person is running in the direction of the cafeteria and what we have learned from law enforcement is the more times that you identify where that person is they start to get very panicky and wonder if time is running out for them so that's one of the things that we train on is the public address system we also make sure that people have many means of communication whether that's texting emailing or an app that we have um that the teachers are welcome to use especially at the middle school and high school called crisis go what is that uh when you have crisis go on your phone it's just another form of communication that you can so it's an app it is yeah exactly uh so no matter what the method is that you are using to convey information to people you are only communicating information so if I were in that front hallway at the middle school I would not pick up the public look a addess system and say well guys I see that you know if he's down by the brown gym I'm going to try to get my kids out of here now every person is sort of an independed contractor making a decision and so you don't advise people what to do you don't have to tell them what you're doing you simply make a decision based on facts in front of you I think we all know what lockdown is and I've already talked a little bit about that so you lock your door you barricade the room it's still important for people to do that but we have to remember that Alice goes in no particular order all of those things they I mean once you I mean the alert would very likely be first unless you are a person who sees that person and you lock your door and then pick up your phone so there there's no sort of rigid um sequence to that it can happen in whatever order makes the best sense for your safety and to um like mitigate harm um so we would want people to be able to get out of the building but if you have to lock down you have to lock down when we think of what just happened in Georgia that person who was the um attacker left the room and came back with a gun when he came back to his classroom he went to turn the lock on the door of his algebra classroom and because that room was locked he went to another room um so we encourage our teachers to keep all of those doors locked there are sometimes when we we wouldn't do that but for the most part all of our doors are kept in a locked position all day long our kids would gather away from the door they're very quiet they're attentive to the teachers's direction we ask people to silence your phones but don't turn them off because that's a means of communication for you and again that Cho choice to evacuate is really up to the teacher the teacher is the person who is making that decision um at that time um inform form that's your continuation of alert uh you are constantly informing in real time and again we want people to be timely clear and direct that effective communication is something that'll keep our Intruder off balance and it saves lives um to counter this is when we ask uh people to create distractions and so I would never want people to believe that we are asking either our faculty staff students to take on some kind of an intruder but if you get to that place where we talk about like a last ditch worst case scenario um we do ask people to throw things to SC dream to tip over desks to do anything that would create a distraction and then evacuate and what we've learned over the last um perhaps decade is that getting out of the danger zone should be everyone's uh Big Goal so when it's safe to do so get yourself out of that danger zone when you're leaving the building um whether you you think or you don't know or it may be that the Intruder or the threat has been neutralized we always ask people to leave the building with their hands um above their heads um everyone is really their own primary decision maker U teachers will sometimes say what if I make that decision to leave and there are kids who say I'm not coming with you um at like middle and high school levels I mean obviously we're going to encourage them to do whatever the teacher thinks is the most safe but realistically a high school kid could say I am staying in this room because this is where I think I'm going to be the safest um at the elementary level we would get every one of those kids out of there to the very very best of our ability um and in the face of danger really our our instinct is to remove ourselves from the threat and that is how we have trained our people so so far this year every one of our teachers has had a conversation about evacuation everyone has practiced a fire drill not everyone has done analice drill but as we said like our kids would at the elementary levels marathon and Elwood would never be doing that anyway um so I wanted to share all of that with you because I am sure that there are people in the community after the squatting event who are sitting around thinking well what kind of training do people have there are probably six or 700 people in our district and if you are working here you've had that training the locks on each door those are just deadbolt locks they're not so that's well here's why we say that sometimes they're locked and sometimes they're not we have magnets that will actually go over the piece that goes in into the lock and so the door would be kept in the locked position and if you keep that magnet on there then um kids can continue to come and go freely but the door would always be closed so if there was an alert that said there's an intruder in the building instead of fumbling and they'll say you're a migdal immediately gets hijacked instead of fumbling for your keys and going over the you'd walk to the door tear that magnet off and close it and it would be locked the only times during which we would not use that magnet is if we had a child who was an eloper um which means that we have a child who is kind of a runner and in that situation you can slow your Runners down if you don't have that on there because they have to spend a little bit of time turning the knob to get the door open and it just slows down some of our our our youngest hopers and there's one SRO at the high there just one school resource officer correct I believe that the there is in the police budget budgeted for two SRO currently we have one um and he's really responsible for all five buildings but spends the majority of his time at high school middle school you'll see the other thing the police have been doing for us this year is they're doing lock checks and so they're they're often on our campuses and people will say it feels disconcerting to hear that doorn knob moving but it's you know a guarantee that someone is checking and our doors are locked from the out and the SRO is the only good guy guy with a gun that I guess is the way to look at it yes okay yeah but there could be the B there's a budget for two sro's at a time yes and they those two would spend their time amongst the five school buildings is that that's correct and I mean to um go back to the swatting incident in under four minutes the police were in the high school yeah so that that time feels very very good that the response time is ex excellent has there been any um determination of who may have called in or where the swatting call came from I think that they said um was it St Louis Missouri I think some in the midwest somewhere in the midwest what you mean that's where the call was traced to or they think the person was physically in the midwest like the number was I will say that well I don't know I think it came from an IP address so that could be anywhere yeah holy but I think that what they're saying is that it came from the Midwest but I would have to go back and look yeah that's really a question for the police yeah just for folks at home too the SRO are funded out of uh the police budget not out of the school budget and so I know in there was a time that we did have two SRO um but because of Staffing within the police department they weren't able to keep two in the school buildings yeah it would be nice if we get another one back to get one back yeah I know that was a lot I know you weren't expecting oh but thank you um as far as evacuation for at least the first floor classrooms are there methods to be able to exit out a window on those first floor classrooms I suppose based on the size of the window opening you know I don't know that you would ever be able to do that say at Elwood school because they are those tilt-in kind of windows and the space is about that big yeah other questions okay than you well thank you I found that really enlightening thank you yeah we do spend an awful lot of time with training all five buildings all right so after that heavy note um move into the school committee chair report uh payroll warrants s2500 7 s 2507a and s258 have been approved warrant 25-26 25-27 25-28 25-29 25-30 25-31 s and 25- 032 um have been approved and they're also in your folder um in terms of things that happened uh in the past two weeks there was another budget advisory meeting today there's not a lot to report out on the town side they're trying of shore up with the revenue is going to be to the best of their ability as we're going into budget season obviously we haven't started with our budget presentation so there's not a whole lot that we have to give back to the town for updates from us um I do know that there is somebody from the Appropriations Committee who's planning to be here in person once we do start that and the select board usually either comes in person or they watch remotely so that's all that I have are there liaison reports that people have I went Jamie was there too I was was telling Dr kavanau today I went um Gentile holiday has been invited to present at a um like School continuing ed program in Nova Scotia and so she did a practice presentation and it was the most enlightening presentation I have ever seen because knowing people that have children that um face challenges you you don't ask you know what's it like and Jen was presentation is so vulnerable so open open and she just shares and it it just it knocked my socks off and and I think it would be I I think it would be wonderful if H Camp would ask her to do that presentation so that if people want to know what that life is like she's a great speaker she is she doesn't think she's a great speaker she got great information absolutely absolutely so that's all I have um from youth commission they spoke about workshops on Stress Management and motivational speeches for the students uh led by priia vasu Devan um Youth and Family Services are having some focus groups on mental health and substance misuse in December um they're encouraging participation in Hopkinton organizing for prevention and the library is doing some accessibility improvements through a sensory Grant and they'll be refreshing the teen and children spaces all right if that's it for liaison reports uh that moves us into new business uh and Mr lbr is up with the mcast report all right thank you uh good evening everyone it's good to see you all good to be back at the table with all of you um and really excited to be able to share with you some information about the mcast that our students took last spring the results that were released this fall um and tonight I'll walk you through those results and some of the context that frames uh what that means as well as what we do with all of that information so members of the committee you all have in your inbox a copy of this report um so I'll just Geto um first off if you filed the news in September your your phones your newspapers your TV screens probably had uh at least one or two of these headlines Cross Your Way talking about how um across the state uh English language arts mcast scores declined from last year how math scores remained flat and science technology engineering Assessments in grades 5 8 and 10 had modest gains but nothing to be excited or proud of tonight what I'd like to do is talk to you a little bit about what hopkinton's headlines look like which is a little bit different than um what is true for the state of Massachusetts what I can tell you is that most grade levels in hopkington have returned to pre-co Performance levels most students and subgroups have maintained or improved performance over the prior year most students and subgroups continue to outperform Statewide scores in both achievement and student growth all schools and the district are meeting or exceeding the measurable targets that the state assigns to us and all grade levels rank in each subject I'm sorry rank high in each subject when compared to districts across the state of Massachusetts so before I get into talking about scores I want to put into context and give a little refresher and some points on on what the mcass is what it does What It Is What It Isn't So it's important to note that the mcass is part of each District's comprehensive monitoring and evaluation of student learning so you can see on the screen mcast is certainly one of the data sets that we look at each and every year for the grades and for the subjects that it's available but that lives against other things that we use all the time we have a host of locally developed assessments that our Educators and administrators create we have benchmark assessments that we provide to each student uh at various points of the year for various purposes we engage in ongoing progress monitoring and there's a whole lot of informal and ongoing assessment which can be everything from a dipstick at the end of a lesson to a teacher observing certain behaviors responses things like that so what is tested on the mcast um you've heard me say this before so that you this is likely just a quick reminder students uh participate in an ELA test in grades 3 4 5 6 7 8 and then again in 10th Grade the same is true for math students in fifth grade 8th grade and 10th grade take part in a science technology engineering assessment sometimes abbreviated stte sometimes the shorthand is just science this year um students also in e8th grade took part in a Civics mcast now all these sessions are two sessions each so each third grader will have two sessions of ela two sessions of math over the course of two days the Civics test uh just to point out we are last year you might recall in 20 2023 uh we were one of a handful of districts that piloted the assessment for the state this past spring uh all students in the state at 8th grade took the assessment as part of a field test and this coming year it will be operational so the spring of 2025 all students will participate in 8th grade in the Civics assessment and we will get um data that compares students to um the standards as well as to how they're performing against their peers across the state and with all these scores the state assigns accountability determinations now mcast is one part of it there are other parts of it student attendance for instance is one of the factors that um the state looks at so you can see on the right hand side uh in the darker blue this is um broad comprehensive support for for districts that are um requiring that and then on the opposite end um meeting or exceeding Targets in hopkington we fall into the schools and districts not requiring any assistance or intervention um our Middle School is is noted as making substantial progress towards targets and Hopkins school and the high school are noted as meeting or exceeding those targets you'll note that I'm not talking about um Elmwood or Marathon because um Marathon student students don't take part in any Assessments in the Elmwood School only our third graders do so let's get into the achievement let's talk about the results from the mcast I want to note that this is a 30,000 foot view that we will highlight just a few pieces of it but really truly I am plucking out a few pieces amongst uh volumes of data and everything I show you tonight is available to the public it exists in the public domain and everyone can find it on des's websites so when we look at the scores students and their results are categorized into one of four achievement levels starting at the bottom students can be noted as exceeding expectations meeting expectations partially meeting expectations or not meeting expectations you'll notice that each of those ranges accounts for about a 30 point uh span from one to the other all right we're getting into numbers now all right so if you take a look what I've done is I've highlighted the percentage of our students at each grade level who were noted as meeting or exceeding expectations at every grade level so I wanted you to see the historical there 2019 being the last time pre-co that students took the test 2021 we returned with a part-time test 2022 23 24 back in testing as usual so the the 2024 column on the right gives you our percentages uh from students who took it this past spring so so it's important to note that the state has identified that there was a decline in all grades from 2023 you'll note that that's not true for us we actually went up in grades 5 6 8 and 10 there were slight declines in 3 4 and 7 and those declines were relatively less to when compared to what the state um what the state was looking at he also notice there's also we look at you know for instance a grade level so grade uh if I take grade six grade six in 201 23 74% of the students were meeting or exceeding in 2024 that score went up to 77% so that's great when we look at sixth grade but the students who are sixth graders in 23 are different than the students in 24 so if you actually take a look at the 2023 results for sixth graders that was 74% if we follow them to seventh grade we see that they went to 64% so that's something that we want to make sure that we're looking at we're not just looking at the good the good parts of gains but also where we see some sort of decline because we want to make sure that we're not not losing that and that we're we're able to note that you'll look again on here our eighth graders in 2023 70% of them were meeting or exceeding um on the English mcast that score jumped to 90% in 2024 isn't that the wrong right because they would be ninth graders right so there is no ninth grade test so they jump over right so that's I apologize I apologize thank you thank you for that so yes so they would go they would be two years of jump I appreciate that yeah so if we take a look at math similarly the state saw a decline or no change in most grades however we saw the inverse with gains or um status quo in all but two grades and again we nearly outpaced the state by around 40 points at each level regardless of of movement and interestingly um at grade 10 we had 28 students who had a perfect score wow and they're their growth their um growth percentile was a 77 which I'll talk a little bit about in a minute and then if we talk about science Technology and Engineering you'll see some pretty good scores there we went up from the year prior in each one of those exams I know Dr cab I'll shared this a few weeks ago but I want to make sure that you get a chance to see it again these are the Statewide rankings and so if you look so I'm going to take let's start with grade three grade our grade three students who took the mcast in 2024 they ranked six in the entire state of Massachusetts and that's out of seven districts so that means that there was at least one tie in there there there was exactly one tie in there um so we ranked six um across the entire State you can see all those those scores there grade five and grade 10 were ranked as third in the entire state with our 10th graders um that number is wrong it should be three um but our 10th graders and our fifth graders doing very well in math you can see similar similar reason to celebrate um I mean one that jumps out to me is our fifth graders wow who ranked first in the state and there was no tie wow I share all this with you not because it's a competition and not because we are trying to say look look how great we are um but I think it it highlights that really good stuff is happening in the Hopkins I would think that it also highlights that the curriculum work you guys have done particularly in MTH is paying off I would think so I would think so yeah and I'll talk a little bit more about about how this shapes what we do with our curriculum um moving ahead really quick I'll show um some really nice science rankings as well so what I'd like to do now is just again I'm just going to pull out a couple of highlights so you can get a sense of what our growth has been over the course of the last few years so I made this as small as possible thank you um so this is one highlight our grade three math scores if you take a look um we had in 2023 25% of our students were exceeding expectations in 2024 that went up to 30% and what happened was our number of of meeting expectation students again different students but percentage points moved from meeting to exceeding if you take a look at grade five math you can see that there's a consistent increase and a consistent decrease if you look across from 21 to 24 I circled The partially meeting and not meeting because these are the students that we really want to rise up to um exceeding and meeting you'll notice that those numbers declined each year AC across the board or stayed um within Striking Distance of of one another chap but those numbers or percentages those are percentages okay those are percentages I mean they are numbers yes but they you're right they're not raw numbers they are percentage they are percentages if we take a look at grade six you just see a high level of students performing at at high levels in in English at grade six particularly exceeding expectations and if I switch over to grade six Math again you'll see a jump from 23 to 24 of 24% of our students exceeding expectations that jumping up to 33% but that's a different group in 24 it is a different cohort but I will tell you the test I I gave to myself was I didn't recognize it unless there was also growth with the cohort okay yeah but this achievement is nice to see of course and then grade eight uh Ela again seeing some really nice scores what's important about those really nice scores is it's high achievement it's also high growth so we had a a TW for there and again I'll talk about growth in just a few minutes grade 10 Ela similar um high scores and we're moving kids up from partially meeting and not meeting into that meeting and exceeding so I showed you and then grade 10 science again polling kid up you see that we were moving kids out of partially meeting moving them up into um into meeting so I showed you some some things for us to celebrate and be really excited about there is a lot of opportunity for growth in any in any set of data when we look at assessments I'll show you just two quick ones the first one is grade for ELA we're noting that we're watching what we're seeing between the meeting expectations and the partially meeting expectations now to the point that was raised earlier we are comparing apples and orange to a degree um but we have to be mindful of Trends so if we're looking at all right we had 63% of our students meeting expectations um not to not to factor in the exceeding and that went down to 58 it's something for us to look at we want to make sure that that's uh not a trend that we see and then grade seven is also something that we want to look at we have a noticeable drop in our scores um from 23 to 24 so that's just something we want to keep an eye on it it's it's incumbent on us to make sure that we're not ignoring that is that 28% of the grade seven Ela not it partially meeting expectations that's 28% so about a third of the grade seven is not quite meeting expectations on this assessment yeah and they would now be eth graders and they're eighth graders yeah and you add in the 8% as well who are not meeting it pushes it over third so that surprises me it that it's that high yeah which is why you know which is why I want to make sure I showcase it tonight and make sure that you see it because it it just highlights the work that that we do as an instructional leadership team and of course right alongside our our building leaders and of course those teachers who are are looking at this data along with their building leaders to make sure that they're um addressing it is there a so from 2019 to 2024 kind of down in English but up in math and sste is there a corollary there that is obvious or obvious no yeah obvious no um you know there are a lot of factors that go into and again like I said at the start of this this is one snapshot in time really it's really important that we think about that but it's also important data and it's valid data so we want to make sure that we're looking at it there is no obvious um Silver Bullet for us so now I'd like to talk about growth we talked about achievement we talked about what what those scores are against you know aiming to get to 100% how how do you do that but what I'd like to do is talk about growth right now and we'll do that through the lens of looking at our subgroups now the state identifies various subgroups the three that we look at a lot are our uh English Learners and former English Learners our students identify as low income and our students with disabilities so I I'll walk through some of those and I just thought that this was a good visual to kind of frame our thinking we can have students who fall below the mark of proficiency who have made great growth we can also have students who still live in the advanced High achieving level who haven't actually made any growth so it's important for us to look at both achievement and growth when we consider these results from our students the student growth percentile is the metric that the state uses uh to to measure growth this is where we take a look at students who scored um a certain I'll just I'm going to go right through the whole process so uh if a student scores a certain um result one year he or she or they are grouped with other students not just in the district but across the state in a particular grade on the particular test and the next year they are compared to um how they scored in Prior years and so that's how they calculate that out that's a I can give you a much more robust explanation of that at some point but um the growth percentile ranges are probably the things to think about the most the state says that you have low growth if you are under 40% you're showing typical or moderate growth if you are anywhere in the 40s or 50s and if you are exceeding 60% you're demonstrating high growth it's good question about that so when when they're calculating what the percentile is is that looking at what the raw score is and you've gone up 39% over that versus going up 60% or I don't know if it's raw or scaled no so if you want after this I can show you a three-minute video that's going to explain it beautifully to you how it works they have a lot of numbers in it well no it's this will be the simplest numbers you've ever seen But if there were 20 kids who had the exact same mcast history they would be part of a cohort and let's say they all took the test in 2023 when that group took that test in 2024 and they all came with different scores what they do is they simply rank order them so the very top person would be in have a growth score of 99% the bottom person would have a growth score of 1% and they would fall but I'll show you this video it's the loveliest thing ever a quick question on that so if they're they're all in the same cohort and they move on to the next year and the kid that's at 99 and the kid that's down at one did they stay in the same cohort or they regrouped because the they're clearly performing differently in year two what must happen is those cohort get smaller and smaller you know and you have to have the same the the the your cohort to Dr kav's point you know if you scored a 480 one year you'd be with all the other 480s the next year Not only would you be with all the 480s but also the kids who got the the 500 okay so so there's there's a funneling of okay yeah so I feel that way all right so if we take a look at some of our our um percentile growth so right here you'll see that the middle column that's highlighted that you can see is predominantly yellow these are the student growth percentiles for all of our students when we look at them in the total aggregate so you can see that for instance our fourth graders on average landed uh had an average SGP or student growth percentile of 55% um if you look at fifth graders in math they had a student growth percentile of 65% now that's all students you flip to the next column you can see these the student growth percentiles for a subgroup in this case this is the subgroup of students who are identified as English Learners or former English Learners so again yellow being somewhere between 40 and 59 green being North of 60 so you can see the comparison there if you are in the aggregate or if you are identified as a student um who's an English learner or a former English learner if we look at students who are identified as low income and then students with disabilities would oh no cuz they're both 2024 I was was wondering if there was a diagonal move but it's not they're all the same here so if you want to see it all in one shot that's how we look across the board again that first uh shaded column is everyone in the Aggregate and then we break out our groups you can get a our quick visual picture of exactly how our subgroups are doing when we compare them against our um our students re large why are there the blanks for some of the years that means that there there aren't enough um students that the state would identify it as a representative population and that can change from year to year and what's pink mean really bad pink means it's it's it's what we would call low low growth 39 and Below yeah so [Applause] H that's our composite this year this was last year's and I'll do one little flip for you what's s swd oh students with disabilities okay okay so again this was this is this current year and then this was last year now what I'll do is I'll I'll show you a comparison of each of those subgroups 23 to 24 24 being the first column I'm just keeping you all on your toes tonight and then the second column is a year prior I shaded the orange if we had a jump in student growth percentile so you can see at grades five and 10 in English and in grade five in math for students who are identified as low income there was a jump in their student growth percentile why are some boxes blank again those are the ones that don't have numbers there's not a representation there yeah Jeff didn't want to show you the bad scores that's uh our our English Learners and Fels comp uh compared to 2023 again you can see an increase in grades five and six for both Ela and math and then finally students with disabilities the comparison with 2023 a lot of growth it's a lot of a lot of uh movement forward grades five and six eight and 10 in English and grades five and 10 in math would would one read those on a diagonal that the group fourth graders was 52 in 2023 funny you should say that and then may would move to 62 the next year it's almost like I planted that question there because I just wanted to tell you that but if you look at that on a diagonal yeah yeah yeah so let's take uh fourth graders in 2023 52% they move diagonally down to 62% this year so if I if I was really crafty I probably would have come up with a second color code to show if that that singular cohort made gains but you can see our fourth graders made gains our fifth graders made gains into sixth grade uh our eighth graders made gains into 10th grade no that that's not the right spread the eth to 10 sorry I did that again yep I really want to jump over that nth grade as if it's there right I appreciate that um yeah everybody wants to forget ninth grade or ninth graders um but if you take a look at math uh 52% went to 62% and I'm not going to touch the eth to 10th again I almost caught myself um yeah those other three had declines though yeah so again we talk about the things we're highlighting and celebrating the Highlight can also be something that we need to note and think about carefully as we move forward and as you've heard us say before despite all of the celebration that we can talk about at any point in hopkington all means all and we talk about every student every day which means we've got work to do and the work is never done so I want to talk a little bit about what these scores Inspire us to do um call for us to do or reinforce what we're we're already doing uh to move forward with Improvement and what I've done is I've just taken literacy Math and Science as the three categories that have some parallel to what we're doing uh with the mcast so in literacy we're engaging in a great deal of professional development we've actually uh increased dramatically the amount of PD that we're providing to our uh teachers of of reading this year particularly at the elementary level so right now we are um engaging in some work about um the foundations of reading reinforcing what those are and really talking about best practices and how we can teach kids how to read at every at every level both foundationally and through some application that's happening inhouse with our new director of Elementary literacy we're also taking a careful look at our bench benchmarking and progress monitoring tool this really gives us a chance to have another set of data because if the mcast scores come out U months later in the next year we want something that's much closer to when we can make some decisions so we're working at that both along that and with our curriculum thinking about all right what is the best thing that we can put in front of our kids every day and at the secondary level grades 6 to 12 we're we're really doubling down on our work around disciplinary literacy the idea that students should be reading and writing in the disciplines as the practitioners in those disciplines every single day and we're looking at how we can embed that even lower into our elementary levels right now we're expanding our our growth of what what our social studies units of study and our science of study look like and how we can one of our primary dri drivers in that work is how we can make sure students in those grades are engaging in Reading in the discipline and writing in the discipline regularly may I ask a question about the um is the literacy director moving away from fontas and panel or is that still being focused on as far as as a literacy training education module for elementary considering the evidence that is out there now yeah so we we have not been using the Fest and penel um curriculum for some time if ever I know that we at one point there's a lot of the materials around we've had materials um I know teachers have been using the the um the books and the readers um but they were not um and certainly haven't in my time uh since I've been here been using any sort of um Core Curriculum that would be founded in that and when I talk about benchmarking and progress monitoring we we are carefully looking at the benchmark assessment system and seeing what um what what gains we're getting out of that or what or what how we can find assessments that might do an even stronger job of helping us know what our students are able to do or not do as as readers especially at the Early Elementary level so in math our Focus again at the elementary level fact fluency and math discourse you heard us talk last year about the introduction of number Corner as a one Avenue of how we can talk have kids talking about about math this year our director of elementary mathematics is focusing on fact fluency um not fact memorization not fact automaticity but fact fluency being able to work with those numbers because we know that if a student has those facts at their fingertips then the application can be that much stronger we're leaning into differentiated educa differentiated instruction at every turn and really shining a light on where we're seeing that the strongest and making sure that other teachers other grades uh get a chance to to build upon that where we see it done exceptionally well you know that this year we are in year one of a math 6 Plus program and we're working carefully on um on seeing all that that can bring to our students and make sure that they have everything that they need and again professional development right now for instance our sixth grade um Math teachers are engaged in ongoing professional development in differentiation in the math class which is a really great thing in science we are heating the call from um from the state's updated science curriculum to say how are students doing science not learning about science not memorizing facts about science but how are they literally getting their hands dirty in their science classrooms applying problem solving sometimes getting frustrated not figuring something out right away uh asking questions we're working on that and with that at the elementary level is um our pending adoption of a new science technology education um engineering curriculum that we'll be introducing over the next few years so that all students will get a guaranteed inv viable science experience uh with that we're providing professional development because no curriculum should be handed to a a teacher without the appropriate professional development for them to be able to implement that so we've got that and you might have heard me mentioned disciplinary literacy but that's certainly something that's coming in into the fold in our science development as well with everything regardless of what our discipline is we are leaning heavily this year into a multi-tiered system of support we're looking carefully at how we make sure that every student gets what they need every single day you saw that outlined in the district Improvement plan you've seen that outlined in Dr Kavanaugh's goals for the year part of that is looking at our learning support teams and thinking about how we can really wrap around students that are maybe not getting what they need and making sure that they can get that we're talking a lot about what small group instruction and co- teing looks like and really leading into that data use how can we leverage the data use how can we leverage that data and make sure that it is T it it's if it's not speaking to us what it can tell us when we look at it carefully and I'll say all the time with these mcast results we have to triangulate that data that's one set but when we're looking at a student that student is is a person and so we have to think about how does that point match the other things that we know about the student all the available data that we have and we really do have a lot of Rich data so for my my planning friends in the room I will just give a preview that uh we have set our dates for the spring 2025 mcast students across grades 3 to 10 will take the English language arts mcast somewhere between March 25th and April 10th students will take the math mcast between May 2 I'm sorry May 7th and May 21st May 15th to June 5th will be when students will take the science Technology and Engineering tests and students in grade 8 will take the Civics test on May 28th and 29th so with all that there's a lot of data there's a lot to think about but I will leave you with something that I hold to be true despite how important all of this is everything that it tells us when we think about our students we know that our students and their teachers and our schools are so much more than just the test scores they are important but they are part of the puzzle questions great recap I did have a question um just kind of you don't have to go back in the slides but thinking about some of the we were looking at the seventh grade ELA on one of your slides so is that data I'm assuming that the star assessments have been done for the beginning of the year is that a part of the kind of looking through triangular that data now identify which of those kids maybe had a bad day on the mcast versus kids that are in need of and I never want to make excuses for scores that aren't great Y and kids can like you said kids can have a bad day you know when kids walk in with something on their shoulders or they're not feeling well they might not perform as well as they you know that's not probably a wholesale claim that I would want to make to say oh none of those scores are bad because kids just said cold well I and I don't mean dismiss it like that but I do know that it's a reality yeah yeah and so that's why we triangulate because we look at this but we also and let's be honest most of the time the scores from the various points what the teacher sees in the classroom the mcast the star they typically are swimming in the same Pond and I know that at least my child I received mcast results this past week but I I didn't know if because we received the ELA and the math but the science technology and Civics were not included in that is that true of other districts I mean other grades where there have been multiple tests given that the like the St the Civics I don't believe there were scores released um and uh s would be released grades um five and eight and then for students that take um biology or physics in 10th Grade okay so I'll talk to you after that because I just I'm curious why some people didn't receive okay yeah we both have ninth grader did you receive I did not okay there's so much on television recently question two is it um I've heard parents say that their children get really really stressed out of incast do we some how survey classroom teachers on the level of stress students exhibit formally no there's no we don't administer any sort of formal survey of that but I I I know that our principles are in constant conversation with their teachers uh I know Dr kavana and I are often in in schools and and get a chance to hear from teachers and building administrators about that um I think it is a caseby casee you let me speak as a former classroom teacher so uh when I was teaching fourth grade there were some students not many but there were always a couple who were very very wound up about the mcast and there were others who weren't um and you know some of that it can come from a multitude of places uh kids hear things on TV they read the news they think this must be important if everyone's worked up about it um and you know some families you know see see it as a really important Point um so it the stress can come from a multitude of places because are they I'm I'm exceedingly old and um back in the day we took achievement tests sure so basically is mcast nothing more really than an achievement test well we get an achievement score absolutely and we also get the growth so yeah we're look we're meas what what the mcast does is it measures what it aims to do is it measures um students ability against the standards that we teach in the Frameworks okay thank you thank you for a very thorough and deep dive on that appreciate that there really wasn't that many more slides then well okay now okay so now let's go to the second part all right before he really moves into a second part I'm gonna ask that we move into Item B of new business which is the state budget ear marks and Jeff you are up for that as well oh my God here I am um so tonight uh through the superintendent I am requesting uh that the committee accept um earmark funding uh from the Commonwealth in Massachusetts in the amount of $66,667 this comes as an earmark uh through Senator spilka's office and it has uh it's broken out into two uh designated uses $50,000 for cultural proficiency programs in the hopkington public schools and6 $1,666 uh to be used in support of student mental health needs what precisely does that do those cover so this those are the parameters that the state gives us we actually have a lot of room to move what is cultural proficiency it's the new word for cultural hum humility so we're it's it it's really talking about how can we make sure that our community uh Embraces the diversity and awareness of of the variety of of stories of experiences of cultures that we that we bring so how can we support that how can we educate that uh it's something that the Hopkinson public schools has been putting a lot of energy into for the past many years as as have other school districts okay is there an example of that um you know so for instance we might bring in a a professional developer to talk with our teachers about um various experiences and what um a bias might look like across different um Avenues whether it be race gender uh orientation what have you that's just one example we could also be thinking about um checking out our classrooms and seeing you know do the classrooms represent and do does the curiculum represent who our students are in front of us yeah I think last spring we may have had a conversation about the cry up which is that yeah it's that tool that lets us go in and ident identify what's observable so the practic has become observable um the first pillar I think is one that talks about how we deal with families and Community I think pillar four is instructional so we've been doing that so this money can help go to those yes in fact I think all of that the work that we've done around that has been Grant funded or Desy funded y y and the mental health needs what are some examples of that curious yeah so uh we had a similar earmark last year from uh Senator Spa's office and we used that money in a host of ways we took a look at we did anal review of our schools and and learned some information about that we used um that money to do that we also used some of that money to Pilot a new uhal uh curriculum at the at Marathon at the K1 level so that way we could try try on new new curricula and new materials and it didn't cost the taxpayers of Hopkins in a time which one are you using so that one is think space okay yeah spent a lot of time at the Al and there are many out there in many options is that a good choice I don't know that one very well but oh okay I'll say yes okay what if you say yes no bearing so is there somebody who would like to make a motion relative to uh I moved to accept the FY 25 state budget earmarks in the amount of $6 motion by Jamie is there I'll second it second by Kyla all those in favor I it sounds unanimous unless anybody was quiet okay so it passes thank you very much for bringing that uh forward and then uh that brings us into new business item C which is the fy2 federal Essa entitlement grant funding that's also you okay so again tonight through the superintendent I am requesting the acceptance by the hopkington school committee of the fy2 federal entitlement grants awarded to the hopkington public schools in the amount of $199,800 6,827 title three $35,840 and title four in the amount of $10,000 and these are the federal um entitlement grants title grants that um come come from the federal government into the states and then Massachusetts allocates them using the metrics that they have before them thank you are there questions on the title grants okay is there somebody who would like to make a motion relative to them I move to accept the fy4 federal Essa entitlement grants in the amount of 9,887 motion by Jamie is there a second second by Susan all those in favor hi it's unanimous um thank you very much for bringing that thank you and that brings us into policy jjif which is the athletic concussion policy this is a first reading uh Dr Kavanaugh all right thank you yes so tonight you are going to see two head injury uh policies um this first one is entitled athletic concussion um this one if you take a look at the first reading came about in 200 15 and so we reviewed this because it's time for us to be looking at our athletic concussion protocol we do that every couple of years and so when we looked at it there was one part of this that we thought we probably needed to add uh so when you look at the purple font if your font is purple in the paragraph at the bottom of the page uh we crossed out a part and then retyped it so there's not much there that is really um in except for uh I think we've clarified that sentence a little bit about um sorry inter is anyone able to get access to this I so I couldn't that way but if you go through with the entire packet it is in like rather than the oh the L in the oh okay sorry sorry go ahead yeah okay yes so I think one sentence we added in there was one or more of these factors will likely result in underdiagnosing the in injury and a premature return to play uh and then on the second page we did sort of the same thing but what we have added into that was something that we found in the masc policy that says student athletes who receive concussions may appear to be fine on the outside when in actuality they have a brain injury and are not able to return to play incurring a second concussion can prove to be devastating to a student athlete and then it goes into the research has shown and you can see that's the text that we eliminated right above that so we made very very subtle changes to it but uh we are thinking that that is um something that is a little more clarifying as to the reason why U this is such an important policy because outwardly you can look like you're perfectly fine and ready to return to play um but U as of 2012 in the state of Massachusetts they started to take that far more seriously hence these policies that came about in the middle of the 2010s other questions on the policy or would' love to hear from the policy working group something that we um spent some time discussing was the in the first paragraph the wall involved in extracurricular athletic activities U because I was asking are we specifically not things that could happen say at recess or gym class and this is for things that are happening outside of the school day the extracurricular yeah typically happens in Middle School and High School athletics and is there protocol in place if things like this happen during the school day during the school day Johnny falls out of his chair oh sure yes okay like that would be a family dealing with their pediatrician the school nurse that sort of thing I think this came about because there were very legitimate concerns that kids were being asked to go back into athletic contests when they may have sustained some kind of head injury and we weren't treating it as seriously as we probably needed to and all the research that has come out on concussions concussion protocols yeah so this does not include things such as ex other extracurricular activities such as uh participating in a play or like right if you sustain an concussion while mhm playing the in the band or something after well actually you think that we don't have a marching band though but no we don't right but I I was thinking more like it like a mic performance or something or you fall off the um High ladders doing lighting for the show right that is not includ right athletic should we have one in some semblance so I think the state was worried about athletes in particular right and I think if somebody you know were to get injured in third grade PE class or if somebody was to fall off a ladder you know certainly we would reach out to parents have that person go to their pediatrician the director would probably follow up and yes I think we've all become pretty versed in the problems with concussions yes especially seeing so many football players that have right and it's unlikely that you know you're not when you talk about the person on the ladder you're not putting that person back into sports probably never climb another ladder that's right maybe not not that night at least they don't do the high school sports they don't do Baseline testing do they they used to don't they they still do don't they I think they do I believe they do yeah okay so did this go out to the community do you know it did not go out to the community when you're doing it will though before because the first reading that's right to approve it and the change is very subtle yeah how you function yeah this is getting back to your Baseline before you can return to play sorry so oh no you have to have you can return to yeah yeah okay so we'll bring that back because it's a first reading and then we'll go into the next policy then um which is also related to head injury yes so this is not entitled compression it's entitled head injury and I think that this was the precur cursor to the actual concussion policy in Massachusetts so if you go to the masc website and you look for jlc you won't find it but if you look at jjif everyone has a policy jjif so what we really think is that this policy is outdated and redundant and it probably could just be eliminated which is what we're recommending okay and we checked and made sure there was nothing in that one that should be in the other one also we compar and state law always trumps your local policy so if we have to review the protocol for head injury and make sure that all of the people who are supposed to be trained and it have been trained um that has to happen every two years by law any questions on the elimination of this policy okay this is a little bit different um because it's an elimination not a change to it um I am comfortable where we're looking at a different the concussion policy and taking action on it tonight but if others want to wait I'm also comfortable with that I'm fine removing it too I am too is there somebody that would like to make a motion to that effect do we say remove is that probably the right ver um Elin you remove I think eliminate I moved to eliminate jlc head injury policy okay motion by Jamie second by Susan all those in favor I I okay okay there are none that that were opposed so that is unanimous uh and that brings us then into Old business policy AC okay so this one has gone out since um not today but um since we've been looking at it and I believe this is our third reading um what we needed to do with this policy as you'll remember is to just uh expand the protected classes here so we had to add in sex stereotypes and sex characteristics of in accordance with Title 9 they also wanted us to add in pregnancy or pregnancy related condition but we had already done that a couple of years back so that's in there um the other thing that needs to be in there is traits historically associated with race and for whatever reason in paragraph number well after the numbers that first paragraph it was there and I think we omitted it or didn't get it into that second paragraph So we added in traits historically associated with race alongside sex stereotypes and sex characteristics um the other thing that we did with this policy is we um talked about who that would extend to so school committee employees Administration faculty staff students visitors Volunteers in the school and parties contracted to work uh to perform work for the Hopkinson Public Schools so we did make sure that all of those folks were in there as well um and then on the second page we added some language from masc it should be a violation of the policy for any member of the school commit to engage in any form of disc discrimination and it shall also be a violation of the policy for any school Community member to subject any other member of the school committee to any form of retaliation so those were added and I think that that's about it it feels like a more I think cohesive policy now there anything from the policy working group you want to add to that no I assume the lawyers are good with this and do they have I'm trying to remember if we sent this one out to the we sent out um IAB which was the title 91 does this need to go to the attorneys I think because the changes that we have made are only in at I mean Tech technically legally the only changes we've made are really adding in sex stereotypes and sex characteristics I don't really think that it does and and that's in connection with what um the Massachusetts policies are correct it's in connection with the changes in Title Nine yeah okay I am comfortable with this but I again if there's anybody that wants to hold this for another reading I'm happy to do that as well I'm fine is there somebody that would like to make a motion relative to this policy I move to approve revised policy AC non-discrimination and civil rights notice to students parents and employees motion by Jam second by Kyla all those in favor and it is unanimous and is now approved that moves us into uh items by consensus okay as superintendent I recommend the school committee approve the items by consensus as outlined in your agenda okay great I wasn't sure if you would have to read every one of those like consensus we should do that more oh nice nothing better than we package yeah perfect I move that we accept the items by consensus is that yes second motion by Susan second by Jamie all those in favor I I and that uh is approved unanimously um the next piece is um just for folks at home we're going to go into an executive session uh we are going to adjourn from the executive session which means we will not be coming back here um again after we leave the table here um but I do want to just remind people our next meeting date is November 14th it's a regular meeting here and then we have another one on November 21st uh and then we are full on uh once we get into the 14th with budget and we will go many weeks in a row um without a break so we'll get to see lots of each other oh thank you so we go back to back November four said 1421 yeah it that has to do with the masc mass conference on November 7th and then also the week of Thanksgiving and then I think we have some back Tob backs in December as well oh just because we have more meetings then oh the phone gone out yet so all right so I would seek a motion to comply with or act under the authority of mglc 3821 A2 for the purpose of discussing strategy concerning collective bargaining with the Hopkinson Teachers Association because having the discussion in an open meeting would have a detrimental effect on the school committee's bargaining position and for reason B to comply with her act under the authority of mglc 30 a21 A3 specific to the review of executive session minutes for the meetings of May 16th 2024 June 13 2024 July 11th 2024 and August 22nd 2024 and then to adjourn the meeting in executive session so moved motion by Jamie second I all in fav oh yes we have to go roll call starting with you Kyla h i Chris I Susan I Jamie and I am an i we are entered into executive session at 8:19 thank you all for tuning in and have a good night