I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Thank you everyone.
I would like to remind everyone that we are being live taped and streamed by WMCTV. And to my right, we have a new face. I would like to welcome Chris Deio as the new school committee member that we did a joint convention last Monday with
school with city council. So, welcome to your first meeting. Yes, we're happy to have you. All righty, moving on. We'll do the presentations. So, the Malber High School student advisory committee. Um, hello. I'm I'm Ela. Um, I'm the
senior class representative um this year. And what I wanted to talk about today was um better AP um advertisement. Um I think their school does a really good job at giving us um an opportunity to have AP classes that most class most schools do not give us and I think that
more students should be taking advantage of that um at their school. Um when I asked the adviser, which is the person that takes care of mo of most the AP um stuff, um I asked her like how many students are on like taking more um taking AP classes this year. And she
said that there was 139 students taking um filling up 328 seats, AP courses seats this year. And most of those students are basically the same students taking multiple um AP classes. And I think more students can take those um AP classes because um they're usually
scared of not take of taking AP classes because it's either it's too hard or they just lack confidence and just taking that leap and taking a challenge. And I think that one way we can make them feel more confident, empower them to take this leap and like taking the challenge of taking an AP class is by
maybe like give us like um the opinion from like AP um students that from AP students. And one I was inspired by Dr. Murphy um an honors chemistry student um teacher at her school and she last year she did an AP STEM ambassador program
and what she did is any students that is taking AP um science class was um an ambassador and basically they were talking about their experiences in the AP STEM class and they were like this is how it runs this is the work um this is what we do in a normal day and we just
talk to them about our experience in the class and we have an info session as well give them the different infos about the classes and then go into groups tell like ask them like if they have any questions tell them anything that they need to know about it and this year just I can just visually see like in the
hallway like in the different AP classes AP science classes I can see that there are more students taking those classes and there are students that have never taken an AP class and that is taking an AP STEM class you would never think they would but they did and I can see those students also I remember seeing those students in those info session that
asking questions about should I be taking those AP classes or not and they did really did take the classes this year and they were they did feel more um courageous I guess you could say to take those AP classes and I think what we could do this year is basically the same
idea but just make it bigger only um instead of doing it for only STEM classes we can do it for all AP classes and one way we could do that is basically we have a little theater which is in an auditorium at our school and there we could just do the info session and then go into groups in the little
theater and as well in the the gym them and then we can ask them if they have any questions about the different AP classes and then ask them like questions like we can tell them about anything that they might need to know. Personally um I took I take um three AP classes but before I took them I was skeptical
because I did not have a lot of informations about those AP classes. I did not know if I should take them or not the expectations but I still took that leap. But there are students that just need some type of guide and some type of like confidence to take on those um um those just challenges and I think
that we like their peers would really help them um have more courage on taking those classes and yeah thank you guys for listening to me. Um yeah >> thank you. >> Any questions? >> Do you guys have any questions or
>> not really a question but I I think it's a great idea. I know in the past we've talked a lot about um challenging the students that everybody should take at least one AP class during the time that they're at MARA High >> just to you know give them that kind of
collegeish experience. >> Yeah. I definitely think a lot of students can take it and they have the cap capability to do so. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Well, it sounds like your experiment worked last year. Hopefully we can wear. >> You're good.
>> Okay. >> Awesome. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Next. >> Who is a tool impersonating? >> I think Maggie. >> Hello everyone. Uh my name is Atul Mador. Um, and I'm presenting for Maggie
Morsy, who is the junior or junior representative. Good evening, school committee. My name is Maggie Moresy, and I'm your new junior SSE representative. I'm so sad I could not be here in person tonight, but I'm excited to meet everyone in December. Oh, tonight I will present on the topic
of the effects of transportation cuts on the students of Malbor High School. Over the last few weeks, I've been speaking to my peers who ride the the buses and one who is reclassified as a walker this year about the new issues they've been facing. Bus one and bus 20 run the longest routes and pick up students from
multiple large apartment complexes. I spoke to one of my peers who rides bus one and she said that her bus is late almost every day and multiple mornings has been an hour late and multiple mornings it has not even shown up. She does not have other transportation to school so she was not able to come to
school on those days. case her bus never showed up. Her bus dropping her off late school every day has also caused her to struggle immers uh immensely in her apier classes because she always misses instruction and class time for her assignments. I have heard so many
stories just like hers busing delays that are taking away numerous students classroom time and impeding on academic success. I spoke to another peer who rides bus 20 and she said that there are not enough seats on her bus to pick uh to fit everyone. So that most days there
are pe people have to squeeze into one seat which is definitely not safe. Another new issue is that they have been presented to me is that some buses do not have a consistent bus driver with one pier sharing that her bus has a new driver every day which leads to delays and confusion.
Alongside the issues that have been happening with the buses, the expa expanding walking zones have created new problems as well. I spoke to one of my peers who rode the bus last year, but it was lost due to cuts and now has a 40-minute walk to school. She says that the transition of her schedule from
riding a the bus to a hilly two-mile walk every morning has been very difficult. And as this year goes on, she's starting to lose motivation to walk to school every day. And without the push to go from school to go to school from a family member, she has started to skip school on some days. Her
story is one of many from Alber High. For many students who don't have the motivation or family pressure to attend school, this will lead many students to become chronically absent and start struggling academically. Additionally, as we hear the transition to winter, the walk will become much more difficult. In
the peak of winter, we will have several days below freezing temperatures and large amounts of snow and ice on the sidewalks. I also know that many of the sidewalks in Malra stay unshoveled during the winter because they're technically private property and are up to the owners to shovel. Walking a long distance through snow and low
temperatures is unsafe for students, especially for those who don't have adequate jacket and footwear. Finally, those issues led me directly to # choose MHS. I know that one of the district's main goals this year is to get eighth graders to go to Malbor High instead of choosing as AMSA. I believe
that the transition cuts are having and will continue to have a negative impact on the outcome of choose MHS. Malborra High has large areas where no busing is available and operation operating problems still continue to exist. On the contrary, both Aspen and AMSA guarantee transportation for Malra students who
wants in. For many eighth grade families, Malbor transportation is a main factor for where they will go to high school. So the students guaranteed with busing might have a higher chance to go to other schools. I won't pretend to understand the complexities of your
ne negotiations with NRT last spring and I definitely might not understand the costs that have grown immensely in re recent times growing to this cut but the effects that this cut has made on MHS are detrimental. Thank you so much for your time and please email me any questions. Have a great rest of your
evening. >> Thank you. >> Thanks at >> Maggie told me that she would be actively watching. So, if you guys have any comments or anything you want to share, I think she's actually watching on the live stream. >> Um, Jade is actively playing volleyball
right now. >> So, I am your standin, Jade. For those of you who don't know, I am Mary Ellen Klein. I'm the student council adviser and I advise these guys as an extension of that. Um, so I will stand in for Jade today so that tool doesn't have to do all the talking.
Good evening, school committee. It's great to see you all again. My name is Jade Anyongo and I am a sophomore SACE I am the sophomore SACE representative. Tonight I would like to talk to you about concern that many students and families at MHS have brought up the current structure of our CP and honors
classes and specifically the fact that these two level two course levels are current are being taught together in the same classrooms. At Malber High CP and honors students are currently combined into one setting. The only difference between the two is homework and slightly different tests. The system is not the
normal for other high schools and doesn't benefit either level of students. The combined classes do a disservice to both sides, being too challenging for the lower level students and not challenging enough for the honors level students. The separation of classes allows for each group to receive instruction that's better suited to
their learning pace. A classroom that combines CP and honors classes forces teachers to teach in a way that tries to meet in the middle, which ultimately leaves both groups unfulfilled. One of the cons of being of having combined classes is the that the transition into
taking all honors classes could not be bigger. Many students said that they have struggled with the jump from the combined class to an all honors class. Honors students have been struggling with workload and classwork. Struggling to adapt to what honors class is supposed to be like. This is a huge
factor to why other schools are being chosen over Malbor High. many families begin to look elsewhere because they believe MHS isn't academically challenging enough. I believe that the separation in the two course levels will be extremely beneficial to students and also the school as a whole. I believe
the students will be able to thrive in a setting like this. If you're in a CP class and think that you're ready for the next level, you could be moved to honors. And upon that switch, there would be a significant change to the classwork and lessons and not just a packet. Students would be would find themselves being challenged.
Additionally, this structure is helpful to stu to teachers as well. They can formulate lessons that are curated for either honors or CP, not having to worry about making sure that it stays in the middle of the two. Ultimately, the separation of the two courses will be both effective and beneficial to both students, teachers, and possibly even
the reputation of Malber High. That's all I have for tonight. Thank you for your time, and if there aren't any questions, have a great rest of your night. >> Thank you. Yes, Miss Hennessy. >> Um, thank you. Um, is there a way for us to get an understanding of how many um,
current classes are held as CP and honors combined so that we can have a better understanding of how many kids this is affecting? And I'm not expecting that this second. I'm just asking that I think that would be helpful for us to really have a better understanding. >> Certainly that figure exists. I just
don't have it on. No, >> I didn't think you were going to whip it on out there, man. But I think that would be really helpful for us to understand. Sure. >> Thank you. Anything else? Thank you. >> Hello, my name is Sophia and I am the
freshman representative for SACE and my presentation is on choose MHS. So a quick agenda of what will be spoken about is the experiences that we offer, the spirit within our school and our communities and why other students decided to choose MHS.
So here at MHS we offer sports programs, a diversity of clubs, musical showcases and programs, college credit opportun opportunities, job opportunities, and academic resources. So for sports, we offer a variety of
sports and athletics varying throughout the school year seasonally. And for clubs, we have a diverse range of clubs to choose from based on your interest to meet throughout the week. These clubs can be added to future applications and leadership roles are often um sorry elected by your peers.
Within the musical program, we also offer string instruments, wind instruments, and chorus. Some additional programs include chamber ensemble, marching band, and ac capella. Our spring through winter musical performances occur every other season due to preparation with smaller performances ran by the drama club. Each
rule is important to get show running and each raise funds for our school or promoted charities. At Marbor High School for upper classmen, we offer AP classes. Credit from these classes allow students to earn college credit, skip introductory courses, and graduate early, saving time
and money. And at Marvel High School, we offer work permits that come of job recommendations that can be sent in by teachers and other Marvel High School staff. These can be found in each grade's guidance counselor's offices and inside of the main office. And here at MHS, we offer a service
called academic intervention. This is put into some students schedules so it's easily accessible and is available to every student if required by test scores or requested for additional help. Requests can also be made for teachers during lunch or post school hours for assistance in any subject.
and the Panther community. We share our support and pride through fundraisers, spirit weeks, pep rallies, and food drives. So, Marvel High School uses fundraisers to help the communities of Malro. Some examples of fundraisers are bake sales, spirit day sales. The funds would go to
clubs and charities, penny wars, and etc. And at Marro High School, the students take spirit weeks very seriously. This is shown in competitions throughout the week for best dressed where you submit photos to be nominated and for what grade participated the most. Most prep rallies happen at the
end of each spirit week. Each grade wears their color beginning color awards and the rally representatives compete in games to win for their grade. It brings our school together and increases student morale. And for the canned food drives to increase to increase our points for grade participation. Students can donate canned goods. This supports
those who are who are less fortunate and increases our school spirit in mocker. So why did other students choose MHS? I've spoken to some peers throughout my grade and within the school and these are some key notes that like they said
and one huh sorry one student said I chose Marvel High School because of the teachers and the musical opportunities. It's an exclusive community where I can express myself and feel scene. And then I chose MHS because it's very accessible for me and my family. my schedule can be adjusted and is free for the opportunities that they offer. And
another Marvel High School student said, "I chose MHS because of the sports. They're available year round, a fun stress relief, and a motivation to do better in classes so I can participate in my sport." And it just says other school cuz I didn't know if I was supposed to put the actual names in. So, it says, this is referring to Asabet
from one of my friends that do attend. Um, it says, "At the classes are very challenging, especially if you choose to do honors or AP classes. This is mostly because teachers assign lots of work giving you two weeks of school work to be done in one week or um shops aren't guaranteed and that's a huge letdown
when it's revealed you don't get the one that you want and then choose MHS. Any questions? >> Any questions from Miss Sophia? >> Yeah, >> I have a question. So um aside from presenting this to us is this are you
using this presentation to show to other people as well? >> Uh it can be used for that definitely. Yeah. If chosen in the future. >> Can I make a little suggestion that along with the AP classes that you talk
about the early college high school because that's a big thing that we have here that people outside of MHS might not know about. Right. Thank you. But it was a great presentation. Thank you. Thanks. >> Anything else? Good. >> Thank you, Sophia.
>> Thank you. >> Okay. All righty. Believe that concludes the presentation. Correct. So, we shall move on. Superintendent report. >> All right. Uh, good evening everybody
and thank you to our students. Uh, it was great hearing the different issues and updates. uh took lots of notes and we'll have lots of followup as a result. So uh appreciate the time, effort, energy they put into that. Um so a few
things on my report for this evening. We are going to start with a um presentation from the managing director from Focus Schools uh who has submitted an um proposal for our next strategic plan and portrait of a learner. Um
Carrie, can you hear me? Okay, >> I can hear you. Can you hear me? Okay. >> Yes, nice and clear. And so before you get started, Carrie, um I know the school committee had the electronic uh version in your packets that went out, but you also have hard copies of front if it's easier. Um and Carrie's going to
go through um an overview of what focus schools can do for Mororrow public schools as it relates to developing our next strategic plan in Portrait of a Learner. So Carrie, kind of perfect timing coming on the heels of uh choose MHS >> for sure. And I've been looking at the
sign um behind two of your school committee members, transforming education. And um honestly, this is really uh what this work is about. Transforming education for every student every day in every classroom. No exception. So when
you're ready, I'm ready to get started. Um just let me know. >> You're ready to go. All right, awesome. Well, thanks for the warm introduction and I can't wait to meet all of you in person, but thank you for welcoming me in um sort of this
visual space tonight. Um I'm really excited to have the chance to talk with you a little bit about our proposal. Uh and really at the end of this conversation, I hope to have accomplished four things. So number one,
um why this work matters for Marboro Public Schools. and why do this thing called a portrait of a learner and um a strategic plan also. Number two, to teach you just a little bit about focus schools and the kind of partnership we
will bring to you. Number three, to go through uh briefly our fourstep process to get from this idea of portrait of a learner and strategic plan to impact and everything that happens in between. And
then last but not least, um our sort of promise to you, what we're going to leave you with at the end of this partnership. So those are the four sort of talking points tonight. Um does anyone have any questions about those before I switch to the next slide?
Turn it up a tiny bit. >> All right. So let's get started uh with one of my favorite focus schools visuals. I hope you can see this um on the screen in front of you. uh and and let me give you a little bit of an
inside uh track on what the what these visual shapes represent. So um on both of the visuals, one on the left and one on the right, you're going to see some sort of ovals and circles. And think about those things as your
systems, your structures, your programs, your departments, etc. And then On both visuals on the left and the right, you're going to see arrows. And think about the arrows as the
schools and the people inside those schools, the adults who are there to serve the graduation caps, the students that enter the classroom doors in Marboro every day expecting to be delivered the best education in
Massachusetts and across the United States for that matter. So, what you notice on the visual on the left are the systems and the structures and the programs and the curriculum, those oval and circle shapes, they're working really hard, but they're not exactly
aligned. And so, the schools, the arrows are struggling to do what we're called to do, our moral imperative. Um, they're struggling to provide great education in every classroom every day for every student. Truly no exception. And what a
portrait of a learner and a strategic plan do when they work together is they guarantee that all of those systems and structures and curriculums and things will become aligned allowing the schools to work smarter not harder for the
students that they serve. So that's why this work is really important for Marbor right now. You have so many great things happening. I've had the chance to meet with a couple of people in Marboro and learn about new curriculum across grades prek through grade 12. There's great TV
growing uh going on. There's strong leadership. There's people who drive in the parking lot to do right by kids. And by by developing and implementing a portrait of a learner and a strategic plan, you'll get all of those things working in harmony and working together
to ensure that we have impact for all students. So that's why this work matters. So why focus schools? Uh what you see before you uh is two numbers. Uh the number 21 that represents the number of
districts that we have worked in in the state of Massachusetts over the course of our existence which has been um 25 years now. And the plus one is something that we're really really proud of. uh for the last two iterations um DESIE has
asked folks like us to submit proposals to be what's called an approved provider and uh we were approved for 5 years and that um that expired so we rewrote again uh and we were approved a second time so we are now again that proud approved
provider uh for DESIE and one of the services that they've approved us for is strategic planning uh and so we're really proud of that. I'm proud of the work that we've done in urban districts across the state of Massachusetts, rural districts across the state of Massachusetts and of all in all of our
partnerships of our job is to work ourselves out of the job day one by building capacity in the people that we get to serve. We work way beyond Massachusetts, but we know Massachusetts is really important to you. Um, so we wanted to share a little bit about where we've worked um and and
sort of what we do. And another point that I always like to add or to share is that every single member of our team with the exception of our uh chief financial officer and my admin assistant, every single one of us have
been educators. We've done this work and we've turned our schools and our districts around by building systems and structures that get results for the kids we get to serve. So that's a little bit about um focused schools. I just want to pause for a moment to see if you have
any clarifying questions before I go on to the next slide. Like, can you tell me more? Can you name some of the 21 places where you work? Anything at all, and I'll try to answer it. >> We're good. >> All right, I'm going to keep going. So,
our promise to you, uh, when we start this partnership, we don't come in and, uh, throw everything out and erase the dry erase bar, excuse me, and start from scratch, but rather we build on what's already working because people are
working, as I mentioned, really hard. We just want to help you all work smarter and align everything towards this north star, which we like to call portrait of a learner. what we want for every single student who crosses our graduation stage in Marboro. That's our north star. So,
we're going to build on everything that's already working. Your commitment to engaging and involving all stakeholders, remembering that every voice matters and counts. Um we want to continue to build on your infrastructure and your systems so that this work lives
beyond um our partnership with you lives on for many years because it becomes the way you do business in Marboro. And then we also promise that by June of 2026 we will deliver two final products to you that have been developed in
collaboration with you. And those two products are a portrait of a learner and a strategic plan which then can be fully implemented beginning on July 1st of 2026. So that's our promise to you uh if you
choose and and we hope that you do to engage in a partnership with us because um we are really looking forward to partnering with you to do to do this really important work. So, here's where the fun stuff is, and you can read in detail tonight after the school committee meeting on pages 9 through 12
of that big staple document that you have in front of you. Uh, you can read some of the details behind our process of getting to this conversation to two key driving documents, your northstar, portrait of a learner, and then
strategic plan. the ways in which we as the adults are going to live up the portrait of a learner and make sure that it's happening in every classroom every day in every school, no exception, and that the adults are equipped and empowered with the tools they need to
make sure that happens. So, we're going to go through this process um knowing that you can see some more details on pages 9 through 12 again, but let's start with step one. So step one is really sort of this information gathering stage. Um in this
stage or this part of the process you will see us looking at all kinds of data attendance data survey data uh impact data interim assessments formative assessments listening sessions survey
data etc etc so that we can get a clear picture of a couple of things. what's working well in Margar public schools and what's not yet working um so that we can use that data to build both portrait
of a learner and the strategic plan. Number two, we are going to start as I mentioned just a second ago really talking to and with people because we believe everyone's voice matters and counts. That means talking to community people. That means meeting one-on-one
with each and every one of you school committee members. That means hosting listening sessions for families and for students. That means administering surveys and using the data from the surveys to sort of look for patterns and trends. And that means developing what
we call a steering committee that's comprised of a representative group of people who will sit around the table with us and serve as sort of the leaders of this process where um they're working alongside of us to look at all of this
data um to decide our next steps figure out how we're going to continue to engage stakeholders etc. which will then lead us to step two. But before I get to step two, I want to pause here to see if there are any clarifying questions about what this getting ready uh part of the
work looks like. >> We're all set to continue. >> It's moved on the ground. I have two colleagues who will be um in the space with me. Um we'll all be sort of meeting and working and talking and chatting with people as well as sort of digging into data. So you'll see us um you know
present and asking you to join us for some conversations as well which will lead us to the second part of our process and that's really developing our vision of our learner or our portrait of a learner. uh and and making sure our
mission, what we stand for and our values, what we believe in and our priorities all start to line up with that portion of the learner vision and the complimentary competencies, the things we want our students to know and
be able to do to achieve that vision are solidly in place. So at the end of this phase um what you can expect is um the steering committee is already at work. All of the data has been analyzed and we
have a sloppy copy draft version of a portrait of a learner that we're ready to share out for feedback and that portrait of a learner. Obviously we think about a portrait of a learner is what we want for our graduates. We create a portrait of a learner so that
the competencies roll back all the way to prek because the prek classroom is um equally as important to this process and getting kids to graduate with what they need um to fulfill whatever their life's aspirations are as the grade 12 teacher.
So that's the rule up our sleeves really working sitting around the table looking at data making decisions and coming up with that north star what we want for all of our graduates. So I'll pause there and see if there's any questions
about that important phase. >> Nope, we're good. All right. So, we're halfway through the process moving into uh part three, which is something that's really, really important to me. Uh, as somebody who's been in education for a
very long time, this is where sort of the rubber meets the road. And if people don't commit to this, the portrait of a learner is nothing more than a beautiful poster hanging on a wall. So this is when we say okay if this is our final
portrait of a learner. What does that mean for the adults in the building and the adults in the community who are wrapping their arms around this work? How do we take the portrait of a learner and develop our own smarty goals? The
things that we hope to achieve, the things we hope to do, the things we hope to stop doing, start doing and make quarter turns around. and then developing some really strong action steps. If these are our goals, how are we going to get there? Kind of like
backwards mapping. And how are we going to know when we arrived? So that becomes the complimentary strategic plan like how we're going to make sure we achieve this portrait of a learner because this is our promise to the students that were
just at the microphone to the podium as well as all of the other students across our district. So that part is the development of the strategic plan which will then as we said be completed by June 2026
and that's when we implement and we help you um with implementation by giving you all the tools um that you need to make sure that what we've developed actually takes root and takes hold and gets momentum. So, some examples of some
things that we'll leave you with is a way to track progress. So, we have some simple and some not so simple um tools or ways that every four to 6 weeks the district will pause to say what's working, what's not working, and what
will we do about those. And typically that means we make some slight adjustments to our action, what we're doing as those that serve students so that we can keep the momentum going. So, we leave you at this launch phase, communication tools, how do you share
this widely with the entire city, um how do you use your social platforms, what are some social posts that you can make, all those kind of goodies as well as sort of this nuts and bolts, how are we going to track our progress so that we can measure the impact of our work on
the outcomes that we're getting for students. So, that's page 9 to 12 in just a few minutes. Um, I know there's some more detail in there. Um, but let me pause again and just make sure no one is feeling fuzzy about any of those
steps because I've either not made sense, talk too fast, or missed something really important you want to know about. Okie dokie. Well, let's keep going then. So, um, I just I just want to show this slide to you because it's really important to us. that in the middle in
those all caps we have a little phrase called all means all. Um and we certainly believe that to be true whether we're doing portrait of a learner, strategic planning, ILT work, data work, it doesn't matter. We believe truly all means all. We believe every student every day, every classroom,
every voice in every facet of the community all of the time. We believe that circle around all means all staff, family, community and students need to be in involved in this process from start to finish and beyond. And so we
have multiple ways as I discussed earlier that we make sure that happens because this isn't a plan uh a portrait of a learner and a plan that the district adopts. This is a portrait of a learner and a plan that the community
adopts. Uh and so we're super proud especially of the work that we do involving and engaging students. We just finished a strategic plan and one of my favorite things to do um was I was one of the f one of my favorite things that I did was meeting with a group of kindergarteners to tell me what they
hoped that they would learn in school so that when they graduated to be whatever they wanted to be um we would have given them the tools to do so. So we meet with all kinds of students and really seek to get their input and feedback throughout this process. And then just to remind you, um, you
know, again, I learned the hard way that we can do really cool work. It becomes this really beautiful poster. We have t-shirts, we have banners, we have all the things. And then it's business as usual. So this slide is really, really important. This is the strategic plan work. How do we define it success? How
are we going to work smarter, not harder for the for the students that we serve? How are we going to track our progress? Not once a year, not at the end of the strategic plan, but every four to six weeks to ask ourselves what's working, what's not working, and what will we do about both. How are we going to work
ourselves out of a job by building capacity in everybody? The school bus drivers, the pair professionals, the superintendent, the admin team, the families, the community, the students. Our job is to build capacity in those that we get to serve so that we can
ultimately work ourselves out of a job. And when we do that in any system, not we, but us, God divine, we as all of us the adults, um we're able to sustain impact and you're able to get the growth that I know that you want uh for all
students and we believe that when these things are done with Fidelity, 100% of your students should grow and should achieve. And we uh feel super excited about possibly being able to be a part of that work. So this is when again that
rubber lead to road um if we don't get this in place the strategic plan the portrait of a learner sometimes does not does not take root. So um these are our deliverables for you then we sort of summarize uh we promise
to leave you with a unified vision of a portrait of a learner because everyone will have had a voice. We promise to leave to leave you with systems and structures that will help you sustain progress. And we promise to leave you with tools to measure the results that that reflect what every community member
wants for the graduates of War Public Schools. And that um colleagues, friends, school committee members um that is the end of this presentation. a very short summary of I think 39 pages or something inside
of that packet. You have people you can call. You have examples of our work. Um you have more details about what I just uh provided an overview uh around but I will pause Dr. Noel and open the floor if anyone has any questions. Um I do
want to make note before I pause. If you want to email me because something has come up, feel free to do so. Question after this is over, there's a phone number there. You can reach out to Dr. Dalco. He can get any questions to me. But if you don't mind, let's open up the floor and see if there are any
questions. >> Yes, sis. >> Sorry, just a a question that I have around the budget and it's like based on number of days. Is that days within district? Is that offsite? Is that the compilation? Because there were three um
people within the group. So, I'm just trying to get a little bit more insight. Um cuz that's Sorry. I mean, 21 days. >> That's a really good question. Yes, that's a really good question. Um I
would say percentagewise. So, Ashley Santiago is our data geek. Um she's on our our team. um and she would be taking maybe two days to do the data analysis of all the surveys that are coming in right she's and she's writing all the
data reports etc etc but I would say 90% of those days are booth on the ground in-person days where we're meeting with teams where we're you know onsite doing graphs uh running listening sessions etc
etc um um the way we work with the budget that's a really great question. If we don't do the days, we don't bill you. Um, and if we go beyond the days, that's on us. We don't bill you. Um, that is, but you will get the product that, um, that we promise. And, um, we
never bill you until the day has been served, if that makes sense. I don't know if that answers your question. >> It does. I guess we're probably I think there's probably going to need to be a little bit of a lever of um, tracking and and where we are in the process probably.
Okay, >> we um do sort of this running tracker and we know what we did, how many hours it was, etc., etc., so that you all have that. It's very detail oriented. Um if you want us to do it another way, we can
certainly do that. But um we're very I think we're very transparent about our days. >> Yeah. >> And that includes everything that we don't have to fly, if we have to stay in a hotel, whatever the case might be. That is that's the cost. But thank you for asking that question.
>> Okay. Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Any other questions? >> Uh I it's it's not necessarily a question for her, but I know that you used this firm. >> Yes. >> In your last district, so I presume
you're bringing them to us because you had a good experience. >> They do excellent work. I've had the opportunity to work with focus schools in one capacity or another. uh back to the early 2000s. Um so they've done a lot of work at varying levels from
coaching to instructional leadership team work to strategic planning work. Um most recently um they did work with us on our last strategic plan in my prior district. They've worked in Athal Wilson. They did Shrewsbury public schools. Uh they've worked in New
Bedford, Worcester. uh lots of different um lots of different districts with all great success and our um colleagues and counterparts have always spoken incredibly high of their work. So I did I did a couple of uh follow-up check-ins
um just to see recently how their work has gone in in other communities like Watertown and Shrewsbury and um I know it's they've had a really good um a good outcome in all their districts. And I want the record just to state that we did have other submissions. So just
because of the glowing recommendation of the superintendent, we did explore other options. So I just want to make sure that is transparent um as well for the community. So okay, there anything else? Nope. Okay. Thank you, Carrie.
>> I lost I'm not hearing you. I see someone talking the gray suit, but I can't hear you. I just want to say thank you. >> Oh, you're welcome. >> Yes. [Music] >> All righty. >> Please reach out with questions, but I
appreciate your time and I hope you have a great evening. >> Thank you. You as well. >> Thank you. >> All right. Bye. Bye. >> Bye. >> Okay. So, continue your report. >> Great. Uh next is a brief October
enrollment and attendance uh student attendance report. Um as of our October enrollment submission uh submission data, we are maintaining um steady enrollment of just under 4,400 students. So we are at 4,389
students, but we know that that kind of can eb and flow. Um and uh but that's where we are currently. Um for our attendance um our daily uh overall attendance averages for our elementary schools are just about 95% a little bit
higher in most cases. Um our early childhood center is just a little bit below at 94.3%. Again that's a daily average attendance. Um at Woodco Middle uh we are just under 95% for daily attendance at 94 uh 94.8 8
and at um Malbor High School um they are at 92.8 date. So, just under 93% overall. Um, we're going to hear a little bit about in a few minutes the impact of attendance on student achievement, which I think is probably pretty obvious for a lot of individuals.
Um, but, uh, we'll be sharing some data around that space. Um, so to our uh, families tuning in, um, our teachers cannot teach empty seats. We need our kids here. Um, and so to the information from our high school students about the
transportation issues, uh, I am going to show that clip to NRT tomorrow morning. We have a meeting with them and their legal team at 8:30. Um, it's public record, so I'm going to open the meeting with that highlight. >> Uh, just to prove a point. >> Okay.
>> U, but attendance is critically important. So, um, wanted to make sure that we will continue during the, uh, academic year to give updates to the school committee and to our community about our student attendance. We are also going to be including in our monthly e newswsletter um, the Panther
Connection um, our school attendance by grade. So, to our families listening in, if you happen to attend, you know, good now and your child's in second grade, you'll be able to see what that attendance looks like monthly. Um, attendance is really important. I can't stress that enough. Um, so, uh, just an
update on enrollment and attendance. >> Thank you, >> Mr. Chair. I'd like to suspend the rules. >> We're going to suspend the rules for >> to move up the MCCAST accountability presentation.
>> So, there is a motion on the table to move up the office of teaching and learning report and second. There's any questions, comments, or concerns to suspend the rules. Seeing none, all in favor? Motion carries. So, we will now move to the Office of Teaching and
Learning, the 2025 MCCAST and accountability results and next steps. >> All right. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And as you can see, the team is all here tonight and on standby as needed. Um, the Office of Teaching and Learning and
the principles are unified. I want you to make I want to make certain that you hear and feel that tonight when we talk about the next steps that we are putting in place as a result of our 2025 MCCAST data. So, starting right off with the district
accountability data, just quickly highlighting that the district as a whole represented by the six tested schools is not requiring assistance or intervention and 52% of targets were made which qualifies as substantial
progress toward targets. We have brush broad brushstroke goals as a district. This is just to name a few and you will hear in more detail these goals from Superintendent Defalco when he gives his report in just a few moments. But based on the 2025
MCCAST data and the fall NWA data, we are identifying instructional priorities for each school. And again, we have representation from each school in the support around each school present tonight. We will be utilizing the office of teaching and learning and the office of student st services led by assistant
superintendent O'Brien to my left to establish a system of support around each principal in each school. We will calibrate our system for providing feedback from informal feedback through learning walks which we have been conducting routinely to formal observation feedback through the
evaluation system which we have recently calibrated with a structure that all evaluators will be using. We will connect all professional development to our roadmap goals. And finally, we will empower assistant principles and educational team leaders to be
instructional leaders alongside each principal because they cannot do it by themselves. Very excited to announce that uh Wickcom school is not in status of requiring assistance or intervention. Principal House and her team worked very hard to
turn the curve with instructional practices at Wickholm School and as you can see um they have made 65% substantial progress toward targets last year. We are not exactly where we want to be when it comes to an accountability
percentile, but we are g trending in the right direction and we are confident that Wickcom is going to progress and move forward when it comes to an overall state uh percentile level. So just briefly looking at their achievement data from sixth grade and
what I want you to pay attention to are the um bars in red because that's the percentage of students who are not meeting expectations. So that's what we're going to focus on for this presentation. When we go through the achievement data, we want that bar to decrease. We want those students who are
not meeting expectations to go into uh partially meeting expectations or preferably an uh meeting or exceeding expectations category. So we're always looking to shrink that red bar. And as you can see from 2024 um to 2025 we went from 44% in grade 6
ELA to 37% not meeting expectations which is trending in the right direction. Just a slight decrease from 24 to 25 for grade six math. Grade six was an area that we were very concerned about. That's a hard transition year coming from fifth grade to sixth grade. And
typically what we found is that the MCCAST results show that accordingly. However, this past sixth grade year has um proven us wrong there. We're starting to uh turn the corner and make progress starting right out the gate from grade
six. So, if we can continue this system of building um achievement from our primary grades and then hitting those transition years from five into six and eight up to freshman year and high school, we won't have those gaps or
those lags in education and achievement. Um we will be preparing students from a transition from primary school to middle school or from middle school to high school in a position where they're ready to hit the ground running. Looking at grade seven ELA, uh the
achievement data in the not meeting expectations decreasing from 46% to 38% from 24 to 25 and in grade seven math uh slight decrease from 34% to 31%. So again trending in the right direction.
8th grade is just a slight decrease from 37% to 20 in 24 to 35% uh in 25. We expect that to decrease even more dramatically with the implementation of the IN2 literature
program. There was a lot of bumps in the road, if you will, to get that program running effectively and and onboarded. And now that we are in a position where we have gotten through those bumps in the road, we expect to really take off with our ELA instruction at the Wickholm School.
>> AJ, can I can I just jump in very quickly? just uh to everyone tuning in at home and um just a reminder two points two points of achievement swing is significant. So we just met Friday with the chief accountability um and
data officer for um the department of elementary and secondary education Rob Curtain and it was just a good reminder that when you see a two-point change it's actually a significant that's a meaningful change. >> Grade 8 is a bit of an anomaly. you've
got low percentage of um not meeting expectations already, but we did go in the wrong direction. So, we'll be looking at our math instruction to make sure that we are trending in the right direction in grade 8. Um and then transitioning sorry, to the
focus areas for Wickcom around that data that you just saw, the achievement data and then moving the students from not meeting expectations to partially meeting or exceeding expectations. So, Principal House did a lot of work last year with her instructional leadership team and her partnership with Desi
through targeted assistance and she established a system called a plan do study act otherwise known as PDSA. So through that PDSA cycle they were looking at specific instructional practices at Wickcom school getting a gauge for what was happening in the
classrooms developing a system of support and PD around that instructional practice. uh presenting that information and working with teachers during their professional learning communities and then circling back around to make sure that what was being taught and trained during those PLC sessions was taking off
and living and breathing in the classroom. So that cycle cyclical you establish what you want to work toward. You provide training and support around it and then you monitor to see how it's taking place in the classrooms. So we want to continue that. We want to replicate a lot of what we learned
through Desi or with Desi uh moving forward even though um principal house is not getting that direct support uh provide intensive support around the new co-eing model for level one and two EL beginners and ELA classes. This is crucial and kudos to principal house for
getting this up off the ground. She was ahead of the curve when it came to establishing a a schedule and a structure for this right from the summer months to make sure that when we hit the ground running in September, the teachers knew where they were going, what the expectations were, and all we
had to do was provide support around her. Now, the support we need to accelerate because, as you can imagine, it's a little difficult to transition into this model when you have never had beginner students in your ELA classes and EL teachers have not supported EL students in this capacity before. So,
we're moving quickly and we're getting this up and off the ground. But again, Principal House and her team are forward thinking when it comes to this practice and we think that we we are confident that we will see results as um positive results and outcomes from this model. R.J. >> Yes.
>> Can we just I'd clarify for people listening that this is a real change in the way we practice for ever. >> Yes. >> First and second year students coming to this country that don't speak English were pulled out of a regular classroom
into a separate classroom to learn English and we are changing that. We are keeping them in the regular classrooms now. So that's what >> Thank you so much for making that point >> at Whitcom school and we're looking to change our program model across the
board. Um Wickcom again is a bit ahead of the curve with that with this co-eing model. >> I have a question on that please. Are Len and Michelle able to provide direct support for ELA to make sure that you
know everyone's got exactly what they need and they're in there on a constant basis to really make sure that they're supporting >> Yet, >> please do. >> If the green button is on, you're good to go. It's >> on. Um so some of the support yes Lyn
and Michelle and office teaching and learning have been in the building continually um supporting our ELA and EL teachers on this journey together. Um this was a decision that was made over the summer and so teachers are walking in new to this. So, we've ensured that they get an additional PLC block in their week. Truly just dedicated to the
EL and ELA teacher to do the co-planning piece. And we're also walking through like the six models of co-eing, giving some education around co-eing, what that could look like, um, what it might look like. Um, and then also in the rooms giving direct feedback on the model happening in the moment. Um, and so
recognizing we have to be flexible. Yes, it's the first time we're doing it, but if we don't hold the bar high for all students and give them access to grade level content, um putting a ceiling on their learning, and that's not fair. So, it's why we made the shift. Um we hope that, you know, it's there's going to be bumps in the road, but we are putting
all of our support. Jen Ryan, who can be here tonight, um has been a big movement piece behind of it. Just making sure that we hear the teachers, we see it happening in the rooms, and we can pivot as quickly as we need to to give them support. >> Yeah. >> Great. Thank you.
>> So, just taking this one to the fish finish line. In addition to what you've heard so far, uh starting October 25th, Principal House and her team are going to be uh offering attendancemies funded through the targeted assistance grant. So, we're fortunate to have that grant
funding. Students will be coming in on Saturdays and uh receiving sessions that focus on re-engagement in school as as well as academic remediation. Uh we will be introducing a math tutoring program and we do have Heather Russo tonight too and
Heather Rizley um one of Principal House's teachers has been instrumental in getting that up off the ground. >> Yep. We received a grant from Metro West Community Foundation. Um I partnered with them thanks to Carol Cohen actually who connected us last year and they were
very willing to hop on board was able to collaborate with Milford Public Schools and their middle school at Stacy um to see it up and running there. So, we're going to be servicing 20 students in the sixth grade for every um all year. Those 20 students um parents have been extremely thankful. They're going to be meeting after school two times a week.
And then we have some celebrations planned for them throughout the year. But the important part is it's directly connected to the HMH into curriculum that we use in math classes every day. Um so it's it's not um teaching remedial math to students. It's giving them like just in time support for the math we're teaching during the daytime. So it's
offering an extended school day to those students who need it. Can I ask math-wise, is that going to also be something concentrated on that group um like grade seven where the the math dipped on the the higher end? So, are we going to be able to target some
of those that kind of seems like it slipped a little bit? >> Yep. Uh it it definitely did and it's an area that we're kind of shifting some support to within the building. Um and we are going to be looking at like leveraging this program so that we're
piloting it in sixth grade. What it's doing right now is it's taking work partnership students in college um and it's partnering them. So it's high impact tutoring virtually. So we provide SA education with a curriculum that we use. They work with the students who are currently in college which is a great
connection for our students. Um and they meet with them virtually in the room with our teachers like monitoring it. So, um, although we we're working with Saga to like increase the amount of college students wanting to engage in the program, um, it's a work study for
them, we recognize that we could kind of shift our own model to meet this needs and and um, Dr. Defalco and I have talked about funding for that to make it happen. So, >> and that will be a common theme that you'll hear throughout the presentation, Mrs. Tennessee is that shifting of
support based on the need that's been identified for a content area and a grade level. Um to wrap this one up, the high quality instructional materials as part of special education um group work is something that Assistant Superintendent O'Brien and I have been
talking about to make sure that special education services uh are utilizing the highquality instructional materials that it's not just happening in the general education setting through inclusion services. She'll speak about that a little bit later on tonight. So, thank
you, Principal House. Moving on to the high school. As you see here, highlighted is the high school is not requiring assistance or intervention. We are however a bit concerned about the data from 2025 because you as you can
see uh the annual criterion reference target percentage went from 79% to 27% from 24 to to 25. So that's something that principal Sarapina and I have been talking about making sure that we don't let that dip identify and us as a high
school and we turn things around to make sure that we are headed in the right right direction so that accountability percentile doesn't go below 27 and in fact we move it up. Yes. >> And if I could just add a couple pieces of that um we'll talk in a few moments about our accountability results. Um these are the achievement results right
and then there's a whole accountability structure that DESI has put in place for this. So the interesting thing that you'll see toward the end of this uh is the accountability ranking for the high school actually went up. Uh although R.J.'s talking a little bit about um the decrease and actual the number of points
we attained. One of the things we discussed with the chief of accountability and data for the state was that overall the uh 10th grade results across the board went down uh quite significantly. So, um, and you know, while there's a lot of
conversation about some of the why, u behind that, um, we're not really that interested in kind of state talking points, we really want to get into the local data and address the issues here. Um, but we do know there was a really large vote, you know, that took place
last year, uh, that took a little bit of the pressure off the assessment itself. Um but we are still using the results to help double down on what our kids need uh for for math literacy and science. Uh so with that you'll see the high school
actually achieved quite a few points uh for things like chronic absenteeism although their numbers are still high for moving their e students uh for students taking advanced coursework. Uh so the high school has a variety of data points. Our drop rate is down to 1.4.
It's the lowest it's been. Um so, uh MHS, choose MHS. Um they're doing some incredible work overall. We've got work to do as far as achievement. Um but if you're if you're remembering this piece, when we look at the accountability slide, it might feel um kind of like a
conundrum like how did that happen? So, I just wanted to explain that a bit. >> With regard to the achievement, you can see looking at that not meeting category from 24 to 25 in grade 10 ELA, we did increase. Yep. >> There's a difference called one of the
kids. >> It's last year's grade level. >> It's not the same kid. >> Correct. typical. So my question is how what do we compare with NPS once you're at one group one
group falls with another falls from another what are we doing about the group that fell it's gone past that's the one I'm worried about concerned about getting our numbers up is great >> but I want to make sure that the kids that we've passed on that have the
problem have also been helped what are we doing to make sure that happens that's my bigger concern has always worried to me more about a pile of students names that has about any one kid in that pile. We don't. I know we care about the kids. I know well we care about the kids, but MCCAST has always
seem to care about that pile and not about any kid in that pile. That's what we're saying. That's why I want to make sure the public knows we look at this. It's not the same group of kids that's getting worse or better. It's different groups of kids and different groups of kids have different needs. They have different abilities. They have different everything. So, we have to keep that in
mind when looking at these results as well. >> Yep. Thank you, Mr. Cruz. So there there is certainly a variable there. Um one way that we are using that data from a cohort of that is transitioning from a grade level with this data. So grade
four as you'll see with uh one of our schools coming up there was a low achievement level that stood out to us. So we have and I'll mention this as we move through the slides targeted a lot of supports with the grade five students. It might not be all of the same students but it's going to be the majority of the same students in grade
five. Can I just add to that? I love that question because there's actually two ways we that we have been looking at this. Um, so we do look at the year-over-year results for a specific grade because it helps us identify either instructional challenges that we
might have in any particular grade span or curricular gaps that we might have. So when you look at, you know, for instance, the high school ELA achievement and you look at 22 to 23 to 24, you actually can identify some patterns and trends that emerge that could either be instructional or
curricular. However, when you look at the cohort, to your point, um that's really powerful data because those kids are real time right in front of us and we can adjust what we're doing and the principles do based on those results. This data, and I just want to state
this, is an autopsy. This is like dead data. This was last spring. Uh but it's important. Um we use this and marry it to our beginning of year uh NWA data to really help identify what those response to intervention or those like tutoring
groups are going to look like to get to the crux of exactly what you're asking. So this data point married with our beginning of year data point is really important for us as it relates to intervening on on the behalf of kids. So thank you for that question.
So moving on to grade 10 math. As you can see um from 24 to 25 given what Mr. Cruz said the different cohort of students but overall the achievement data from grade 10 uh did increase from 16% not meeting
expectations to 22. So based on that data and based on the NWA uh fall um screener data, principal Sarapina and his instructional leadership team have started to identify areas to focus on for MHS. So starting
right with empowering lead teachers, that's a new framework. We have a lot of departments that are not represented um directly through the office of teaching and learning with a content supervisor. So we again are empower empowering the ETLs or the assistant principles or the
lead teachers in this case to be able to provide support to departments when it comes to PLC meetings or department meetings or day-to-day support with instructional practices. Shift passive learning to active learning in all classrooms. I talked about this um at the last school committee meeting. We're
trying to limit the amount of screen time and increase the amount of active engagement when it comes to instruction in the high school classrooms. establishing a co-eing model for ELA and EEL teachers for level three and four students. Uh currently we have two sections offered. This was something
that we are afforded the opportunity to do by um some shifting of staff based on low enrollment numbers and um Lin Medallion, Michelle Blair and principal Sarah Pina took some pretty swift action to make sure that we repurposed the EL teachers and started to get this co-eing
model up off the ground. So currently two sections offered in grade one in grade nine and one in grade 11. Conduct routine learning walks and provide immediate feedback to all teachers on how their planning and practice applies to the MPS expectations for instruction. And again, that's a common theme you'll hear with
instructional rounds or or um learning walks to make sure that we are uh providing informal and consistent feedback aside from the evaluation system to educators to uh hold a level of accountability and provide them a little practice before the game when it
comes to the formal evaluation system to let them know yes, you're doing a nice job when it comes to the instructional priorities as outlined in the road map. And then finally, evaluate root root cause and dropout of dropout and chronic absenteeism rates for subgroups and develop action plans. And that's
something that assists superintendent O'Brien will speak to a little bit uh later on. She went to a training today that talked about root cause analysis for those areas. Any questions regarding the high school as I move along here?
richer school. We have already talked about at previous school committee meetings about requiring um assistance and intervention. We looked at preliminary MCCAST data and principal Richards has already taken multiple steps to establish an instructional leadership team and a system of support
around her educators at Richer School. Um we are concerned about the accountability percentile it being uh richer school being in the lowest 10% uh of schools in the Commonwealth. However, we are confident that with these
instructional supports placed around educators and principal Richard's instructional leadership team as well as the partnership that she'll have with Desi, which was afforded to principal house last year, we will turn the curve quickly with your school and get them into a a higher performing status rapidly.
So, just looking at the achievement data um here in 2024, 28% were not meeting expectations. In 2025, 35% were not meeting expectations. In grade four or sorry, grade three
math, um we see that uh 39% in 2024 were not meeting and 36% in 25. And then Mr. Cruso, this is something that stood out to us. If you look at the grade 4 ELA achievement data with 41% in 2025 not
meeting that's caused us to immediately say we want to do something for those grade five students that currently uh are enrolled at richer school. The same for the math achievement where you have 45% that did not meet expectations in 2025. So again, utilizing the data that
we have um may not be the most timely, but in conjunction with NWA data, we're getting an accurate picture of which students need accelerated remediation. That's okay. And and where to focus. So that being said, I'm just wrapping up
with the grade 5 ELA achievement data. Uh 32% and not meeting in 24 and 30% not meeting in 25. and in math 27% uh not meeting in 24 and 38% not meeting
in 25. That's principal house's grade six. So she you know has utilized this data as well to make sure that she has um interventions and accelerated support systems around the students that she has inherited from not just richer school but all the grade five uh classes at our
four elementaryaries. Richer has really really started to streamline their focus. Utilizing highquality instructional materials during small group special education is something that we want to make sure we have at the forefront of our of our
thought. Establishing a system of accelerating >> can interrupt one second. This is updated. So you'll see a couple of these slides that were updated from >> the packet submission on Friday. >> And we needed some time to really make sure that we had So you're going to see >> more bullet points here. But that's a good thing. We're working
hard. We're gathering uh our priorities and we're we're clearly outlining them. So, establishing a system of accelerated intervention starting in grade 5 that kind of dials back to when we were asking for uh an intervention coordinator and a specific interventionist for the upper grades
focusing in grade 5. So, Principal Richards could do what she needed to do with that group. uh work with the richer instructional leadership team to routinely provide comprehensive supports in all grade levels. Continue to partner with TNTP to successfully roll out the Into Math program in all grades which will lead to
improved overall student performance in mathematics. So Heather Russo is with us tonight. She's been doing a lot of work with the consultants from TNTP. We're utilizing that same strategic advising uh structure that we utilized for the into reading program um to help with the
onboarding and the launch of into math grades K through five. It it's a bit ironic because now we don't have the support in uh into reading. So we're feeling a little bit of that tension and that stress because teachers are trying to now balance both. We have a sustainability plan but a lot of the
focus has gone on the Into Math program when it comes to direct consultancy. But thank you to Heather Russo and our partners at TNTP for assisting with that. Uh partnering with DESIE. We're waiting to hear from DESIE and but what we're looking to do is as soon as we're assigned our representatives replicate
some of the success that Principal House had with the PDSA cycle or maybe some of the uh structures and systems that we had put together in Wickcom and how they might be applicable to richer school. analyzed the effectiveness of current special education supports and interventions to determine factors
contributing to low student outcomes and establish an actionable plan to improve achievement and growth for students on IEPs. Again, Assistant Superintendent O'Brien will speak to that a little bit later. And then finally, research, design, and implement before and after school programs that provide intervention and enrichment
opportunities to student support to support student growth. So again, Principal Richards has been taking a lot of steps to get some systems in place right down to afterchool interventions um in our core content areas and enrichment opportunities as well. And
that's a key point too like we're looking to accelerate or remediate learning loss, but we're also looking to provide a push to students with enrichment opportunities as well. You okay over there? All right. Uh, moving on here. Sorry to
unless there are any questions for Richard. I'm sorry. >> Um, thank you for the update first of all. Um, I appreciate that because that was one of the things I was wondering was like the TNTP, we've got it on some of the different schools didn't have it here. So that was the consistency thing
cuz I think what we've always talked about is that we want to make sure even if Richard's numbers were showing maybe a little lower, let's not, you know, be unaware that our numbers needed still improvement in other places and we've
got to get everybody on the same page because they're all funneling in to Wickcom and then eventually the high school. So, thank you for the update and I think that's just looking for the consistency that we can have in each school that will be hitting the same students. Thank you.
>> Yeah, I truly appreciate that comment because there might be some things that are specific to a school based on the data, but we will immediately replicate that if it's going to leverage a student output that would be universal across the board. So, you're going to hear
about that with um Jarwick School in particular as I move forward here because Principal Patel has not waited to use her data and already take some steps to put to put program changes into action. We see success with that or we understand the justification. We don't
say, "Oh, that's a Jarwick specific thing." We work with the Office of Teaching and Learning and our leadership table to make sure that we can replicate that at our other schools as well. Um, and I'll show you some examples of that momentarily. So Jarwick school now >> Dr. Yes. Can we just go back to Richard? So I guess
>> my concern looking at the data like how far back do you go when you do a deep dive because 2022 2023 2024 the 2025 they're consistently decreasing. So based upon the next grade of fifth
grade, how are we taking that cohort I guess and finding that data for the grade five when consistently it's I mean grade four math consistently grade ELA they're consistently decreasing. So I guess how far back do you go with the
data to see what the needs are and what are we missing? To answer your question, I think you go back for that general baseline of how how where the academic deficits lie as
indicated by a standardized test, an MCCAST test, right? It it's a it's a difficult test. It's not a whole representation of a student's learning, but it's >> right. I'm not a test taker. I I I understand that, but I guess >> there are indications
year after year that we're decreasing. So, I mean, it's great that we're doing all the work now, >> but I don't want to lose sight on 22, 23, and 24 because there could be valuable information there that we're missing the mark on. Would that be a fair assessment to say?
>> Just to jump in. I I think that's a great point. Um and and one of the things that we are doing is the actual analysis that you're talking about. So we are going back multiple years and we're looking at it from both like year over year to see if we have issues with
instruction, issues with curriculum and then what are we doing for those students. So you heard a bit about uh like the math tutorial program that the middle school is putting in that is to address some of those students. Sure. >> Um right that have come up from fifth grade that had some struggling
mathematics results. So it is it's it's it's what you're saying it's critically important to do multiple years of analysis to really get under the surface of what the issues are. >> Right. We also have to redefine the
definition of um kind of equity and how we approach certain things. So, one of the things that Dr. Scaza mentioned was, you know, some after school programming that we're looking at for the richer school. Uh and we're looking at expanding our community partnerships to bring in some other
enrichment opportunities. We may not have them at all the other elementary schools right away, but we're targeting certain schools to address exactly what the kids are saying through not just this data point, but other data points that they need. So, we're looking at a variety of data points to do that as
well. >> And I guess my concern is, and I don't mean this disrespect to all the work that you're doing, but now we're moving to a larger school of 950 students for an elementary school. So, like what what are we missing here? Because now if we
have a bigger school, I don't want to miss further things within with such a large elementary school. I I guess >> that is such a great question and that is exactly what we should be talking about because right now we have a richer school of about 500 students in the larger building about 950.
>> The systems and structures piece of this work is so important, right? And in the in the new richer project, we we've really kind of built it into a almost like a lower school and an upper school, primary and upper elementary that actually has the infrastructure as far as an assistant principal, the
interventionist wraparound, the adjustment counselor. So that whole child approach um and something that we're trying at the richer school now with the intervention coordinator. There's a there's a really important piece to that position that looks at not just the data and how we're coordinating
the actual interventions for students as it relates to this group of students needs math intervention on fractions three times a week at 45 minutes, right? And here are the data points we're going to look at to see if we're closing that. but also what are some of the instructional gaps we have in our tier
one like our regular general class that need to be addressed as well whether it's through lesson planning or just informal feedback you know kind of peer-to-peer feedback so we the reason I'm using that to answer your question is because we need to get this right
like right now because we're about to expand that that student base by another 450 kids so those systems and structures are critically important >> right seems on this. Foundationally, we've got to really do
a better job of pinpointing where our foundation foundation needs more strength, >> right? >> 100%. And and it can't be a matter of we have 180 days and we and we get through each day. like we actually need to have and Carrie talked a little bit about this uh which is one of the reasons I
believe in this structure these four to six week cycles where we're actually progress monitoring our kids >> right we're not just looking at a beginning of year NWA middle of year and end of year but within those three data points we actually have really tight progress monitoring periods that have to
happen to ensure that we're narrowing the gaps for the kids who need them but Katherine to your point accelerating the learning for the kids that are ready for that too, >> right? It can't just be about the students who are in that red zone. >> Um, >> well, because it it's it speaks to
exactly what the young woman was talking about where it was the CP and honors being together, right? We can't let somebody get caught. They can't move forward because they can't go fast enough and we can't hold them back either. you know, that expectation has
to be held high and we have to figure out how to help them to get there. Not right, oh well. >> And it just doesn't work. >> No, you're right. And gone are the days of like we just report out four times a year in a report card. Like we just can't function that way anymore. It
needs to be shorter, tighter data cycles. And we'll actually talk about that in the goals later to progress monitor the outcomes as we're going. >> Again, only being chair for two years, I don't remember this much information about MCCAST last
year. Granted, I don't like to see the numbers where they're at, but it's very refreshing at the same time that we're diving this deep. >> Yeah. >> To be transparent and say, "Hey, look, this is the issues." So, kudos to the leadership team and all the work that
you're doing into into all of you. You know, again, it's it's a it's tough to hear and tough to see, but again, I don't think we've had this much in depth of like this is our plan. This is what we're working on. So, you're doing the work. I'm excited to see the results.
So, I just want to make sure that that's clear and and I appreciate the dedication to make these numbers better so we can choose Malboro. So, thank you. But please carry on with the other schools.
Jarwick School, as you can see, not requiring assistance in or intervention as an overall classification and substantial progress toward targets with a accountability percentile of 32.
Looking at the achievement data from grade three in ELA, 25% in 2025 not meeting expectations. In grade three math, we had a jump from
the previous year tested year with 33% not meeting expectations. In grade four ELA, we had a decrease and we had immediately seen some trends in grade four with
instructional practices that we wanted to highlight and replicate. So, Principal Patel was quickly looking at the practices on the grade four team at Jarwick School to see what was leading toward results as such.
As well as grade four math where you can see in 2025 17% not meeting expectations is a pretty solid number in comparison to a lot of the others that we've seen. Grade five ELA,
25% not meeting expectations in 2025. In grade five math, 32% not meeting expectations in 2025. Principal Patel also took steps to look at the um student responses, the essay
responses, those are available um to principles and immediately she noticed that there was a concern with the output um the written output on standardized testing on the MCCAST test. scored for conventions and idea topic
development and there was just a wide range of how students were responding and what they were not being scored on and it wasn't necessarily because they weren't producing anything. It just wasn't it it wasn't clear enough as to um what they were producing and the
conventions that they were using and the miscored opportunities that were happening. So, we're working on really tightening up writing instruction. Throughout my years as a elementary principal and being in Marro, we've gone through a number of writing programs and
now really staying focused on the core curriculum in terms of into reading and looking at what standardized testing is is asking students to do in terms of either composing an essay or responding to literature. We want to make sure we're preparing students for that. It's
not just a good test taking um skill. It's also a good skill for lifelong uh written output when it comes to applying for a job or any written prerequisite that you might have for your career or in college moving forward on in life. So, we want to make sure that we're
focusing on written output. In addition to that, utilize highquality instructional materials during small groupoup special education and EL instruction. A common theme that you'll see re-evaluate writing instruction as I mentioned to develop and establish a structure that enhances student output
in conventions and topic idea development in all grade levels. Chris Henry as our director of instruction and edtech and Jen Ryan have already taken a lot of steps. are actually meeting with the principal group on Thursday this
week to um explain a structure and a system that they put together that all schools will utilize. So again, not just specific to Jarwick, but kudos to Principal Patel for immediately recognizing a deficit and and um taking steps to um rectify it.
Continue a partnership with TNTP to successfully roll out the Into Math program. utilized the Jarwick school ILT to provide regular actionable feedback to educators using the walkthrough tool. And then finally, based on analysis of NWA, so that's the more timely data that
we have from our recent fall um screener, uh student achievement data and UFly, that's the University of Florida Literacy Institute assessments to identify next steps for an RTI plan. to speak to what Superintendent Defalco was saying there in lies like now you've
got the data now you've got a structure through response to intervention and you're giving students specifically what they need as a result. So that six week cycle of monitoring that and making sure that students are making progress is imperative to that. So, we're doing that pretty uh well with the
structure that we have for ELA for math. That's a bit of a work in progress because we haven't traditionally had an RTI model for mathematics, but we recognized that that was something we needed to do and we're taking steps to do so. >> So, R.J., can I just ask a question? Y
>> So, does the into reading have a writing component or we still have a separate writing? >> It has a writing component. >> Okay. >> Um what Yeah. Can you talk in the Thanks. >> So, there's two two pieces to it. There's the response to reading in the
inter reading um program and then separately into writing. What we were noticing as working with Chris Henry and Jen Ryan that the interwriting and inter reading
genres don't always match up. So what is necessary is really that response to reading um and just providing structures and formulas for students to become better writers and respond to literature more
effectively. >> Great. Thank you. And one other thing just tomorrow another day can you send us the new focus the updated focus areas for the different schools? >> Yes, absolutely. Thanks. Moving on, we have two more schools and
then we'll wrap things up. Uh, Superintendent Defalco will assist me with some of the accountability data um, measures. Kain school not requiring assistance or intervention. Um, 47% moderate progress toward targets with accountability percentile of 26.
So, principal Pantazopoulos and the team have been talking about some immediate focus areas for KAE. Looking at their ELA, grade three achievement data. Um, from 2024, there was a 20% uh students not meeting expectations to
36% in 2025. For grade math achievement data, 22% in 24 and that increased to 33% in 25.
For grade 4 ELA, uh 20% not meeting expectations in 24 with a slight increase to 22%. So we're we're trending in the wrong direction here. And then math, we have a slight decrease from 24 um with 19% not
meeting expectations to 17. And then rounding off here with ELA grade five, 19% and 24 not meeting expectations to 27% in 25. And finally, grade math achievement data
15% not meeting and 24 to 18% in 25. So utilizing that data in conjunction with the NWA uh fall assessment data, principal Pantisopoulos has immediately identified instructional priorities in specific
grades. She has um focused math instruction in grade 4 as one of her immediate priorities as indicated by the fall NWA data. She's utilizing the Cane School ILT. And I should just mention that an instructional leadership team
isn't something that's always necessarily existed at each school. And now we have an instructional leadership team at each school that is supporting the principal with these focus areas. Uh again a common theme of utilizing the high-quality instructional materials during small groupoup special education
and EL instruction partnering with TNTP to roll out the in math program and then an analysis of NWA student achievement data and UFly assessments to determine next steps for response to intervention. That's something that I had highlighted uh on the previous with the previous
school. >> So who's on the ILTS? Um, on the ILT, I help me out because I might miss a member or two, but typically is the assistant principal, the educational team leader, you have your lead teachers for the grade levels. Um, you might have
your reading teacher and your math interventionist. And I believe that tends to round it out. Uh, we do have content supervisor, I'm sorry, e coordinator. Thank you, Principal Richards. E coordinator as well. Uh and we do have content
supervisors who are dedicating some time to make sure that they are supporting the specific buildings too. >> Great. Thank you. >> And then finally, good now school uh not requiring assistance or intervention 62% substantial progress toward targets in a
accountability percentile with an accountability percentile of 28. ELA grade three achievement data um play increased from 24 to 25 with 27% and 25 not meeting expectations.
Grade three math uh increased from 24 to 25 with 31% not meeting expectations. So again we're trending in the wrong direction there. Uh however, grade four ELA uh significant decrease from 24 to 25 in
the amount of students who uh are not meeting expectations from 38% in 24 to 26% in 25 and 19% not meeting in 24 for grade four math and 17% in 25. So identifying some
of those uh instructional practices in grade four is something that Principal Collins has been working on as well. what's working and how do we replicate it? And then grade five ELA achievement data um from 24 31% not meeting to 29%
not meeting in 25. And finally uh grade five math 20% not meeting and 24 uh increase here of 25% not meeting in 25. So based on that data in conjunction with NWA fall assessment data we are
looking to do a number of things and one thing that we have seen it during our ELD services and the pull out model um is that we want to re-evaluate what that looks like and and principal Collins and I have been going into EL pullout
services and I've started conversations with Lin Medal and Michelle Blair around um the curriculum uh how we are marrying reading development with language anguage acquisition and making sure that we are doing due service to both. So if we find success with that and we are
identifying the priority areas of what the shift might look like with EL services at goodnau that would be something we would immediately replicate at all the other elementary schools partnering with TNT for the IN2 math roll out. Um building administrators will be working on using observation walkthrough tool and calibrating
observations to provide clear concise and meaningful feedback. We've talked about uh clear is kind and making sure that we're not giving fluffy feedback to our educators, providing clear recommendations and then holding um ourselves and our educators accountable to those recommendations. And then
finally, Principal Collins has highlighted an enhancement of family engagement by creating more opportunities for families to be actively visible and involved throughout the school day and within the broader school community. and she immediately recognized that that was something within the fabric of the good now
culture that needed to be addressed. So kudos to her. Any questions specific to good now school? All right, I'm at the tail end here and thank you for bearing with me. As you had noted, this is the most comprehensive MCCast data and
accountability data presentation that I've given. This is my fourth year giving this presentation, but I appreciate your comment, Mr. mayor in uh highlighting that we are trying to make sure that we're showing you we are taking steps and not just presenting the data but presenting what we are doing
with the data and I've already started. So you see these state percentiles here. This is a just a a big picture um and this will be shared with you. It wasn't in the original presentation. A big picture look at where the percentile ranking was in 2024 in the right column
uh to the left column of 2025. So, the green just highlights an increase in percentile ranking. Um, and we spoke to Richard and Kane and what we're looking to immediately accomplish to turn that corner and make sure their percentile rank uh improves this coming testing
season. And then Superintendent Defalco, who is wellversed with the state accountability system, is going to give us a little bit of explanation and clarity around where Marorrow Public Schools earned points and some of the successes that are indicated by those those points that we earned.
>> Thanks. And I'll just run through this quickly because I already touched on some of these things, but so there's there's two there are two pieces to to this work. The first is obviously our achievement and growth, right? So the student performance and then there is a set of other indicators that come into
play. We are essentially each district in the commonwealth is awarded points for how uh they grew against themselves as it relates to the targets that the department of education set for us. So any place that you see up here where we
were awarded points, it means that we either were approaching, met or exceeded the target that DESI set for us. So these just highlight a few um and um as a district we made substantial progress which is actually very good in terms of
the ranking on how Desi uh uh lays this out. You might recall way back there used to be like levels, level one, level two, level three, right? All that kind of went away and the Department of Education has reset their structure a few years ago around how have districts
been able to make progress towards the targets that the Department of Education has set for each district. Um, and so you'll see a few highlights here um for our um chronically absent students. And as a reminder, that's 10% more of school, which is 18 plus days of school
a year. Uh in our grades 3 to 8, our current rate is just over 18% from last year. Uh and so we actually were approaching the target that the Department of Education set for us. So we're not quite there yet, uh but making progress towards. Um, for our English
language learners, the Department of Education lays out this uh, language acquisition model that looks at acquiring certain benchmarks each year for six years. And that's essentially kind of the like the book ends, if you will, from year 1 to year six at Desi
expects our students who um, English is not their first language to be able to acquire that language over time and how we've made progress towards that. Uh, so we actually did okay. We got three out of the four points that were available to us. So, we made some progress there for grades 3 to eight. Um, for high
school, we earned all of them. So, we actually received all four of our points there, which is great. Um, for our high school uh student growth, we received six of the eight points. Uh, so the target SGP number is 50, right? That's
like your average growth. You'd expect to be in the 50th percentile. Uh, and the high school uh made substantial progress in that. I think we were at 53 in English and we were around the same for math. Um, we received all four points for our drop rate. So, we
actually exceeded uh the rate that Desi set for us. So, our current drop rate is at 1.4%. Uh, so a big shout out to all of the adults at the high school that are working really hard to get our students to stay in school and to get them across the finish line. Um, we met our target
for our chronic absenteeism. It is way too high still. Um so 30% of our students are still chronically absent. Um and one of the things that I want to mention here um again I mentioned that we met with the
chief of accountability uh for DESIE last week Rob Curtain. One of the things that he shared with us was a recent study that they had finished around the impact of chronic absenteeism as it relates to student achievement. And you can uh your students who are chronically
absent can be anywhere between a full or a half uh half to a full uh performance level behind their peers. And uh so again to our families listening, we we need our children in school. They have to be in school. Uh
just their sheer attendance, as you would assume, has a significant impact on their achievement. And at the high school, I know Mr. subpoena is working hard with his team uh to ensure that we're keeping those kids engaged and keeping them keeping them in attendance. Um for our students in advanced
coursework, these are juniors and seniors that took our AP courses. Um 61% of our students uh enrolled in an advanced placement course, which is great, but again, always pushing the uh envelope on that. We heard this evening that we've got some more recruitment
work to do there. Uh so we're happy to hear that. Um, and we'll take that challenge on for sure. And our current graduation rate is just under uh 83%. So again, overall as a district, some of the headlines, uh, making some progress,
not where we want to be. Um, sorry, questions. >> Two questions. One, how are the targets determined? H >> how do they decide what their target is?
>> Interesting question. So the department of education precoid had um a different measurement algorithm if you will for what was expected for
achievement for attendance. Um that has changed. So, if you were to pull up our accountability page, you could look at the district or look at by school, you will see something called um a path to recovery, a recovery path. Um what the
department of education decided to do postcoid was actually reduce the targets they were setting because schools uh collectively across the commonwealth were not even reaching the lower targets. So they changed their
algorithms and have actually scaled back what the expectations are as far as meeting those goals. So I I share that only because if you look at that accountability page, you'll see language that says like recovery path and it might read strange because that's a
postco thing. So it's more of an algorithm and versus it started from the um the no child left behind and remember then there was this thing called gap having so trying to cut your gaps in half right Jesse's done many many iterations of this they have scrapped
all of that and now we're all in recovery whatever that means but it's a less aggressive target >> usual with desi when you say things now I have more questions than I >> now when the targets every person every every system has the same targets,
right? >> No. So, that's Sorry. I don't know what just happened there. Um, but um in the world >> I know. Uh oh. So, no actually um what I appreciate about this model is
you there are two different buckets of uh data that Desi looks at. It is how we are comparing to others in our grade span. So grades 3 through 8 or high school and how we are comparing to ourselves, our targets. So this data
that we're looking at here is how we're comparing to ourselves. So our targets are unique to Malber. >> When they're awarding their points, what's their point system? How do they determine that? >> There are two different uh buckets of points that are awarded. There are the
aggregate, so it's all students, and then there's the lowest performing. So we each year get a list of students provided to us from the department of education that are kids that have been with us for two consecutive years. So they have two years worth of data. Um so
yes, those students can count twice. Um as a matter of fact, they can count multiple times because they often will fall into other student groups. >> Uh low, you know, potentially low income, not always, potentially e, not always, right? Special ed, not always, that kind of thing. So we are actually
given points based on two um buckets the aggregate and then the lowest performing. Um and one of the things that R.J. showed on this u on his slide. RJ if you want to go back to one of the accountability slides and we'll highlight it. Keep going back to like the good now. Go back to the beginning
of the good now presentation and I can show you very quickly right here. Okay. Right here. So you'll see there's a 2024 and a 2025 um percentages of points. So Desi uh
basically scales 40% for 2024 um 60% for 2025 and then you can see the criterion reference is actually the number of points that we got as it relates to the targets they set for us. But you'll see the accountability percentile that's
your norm reference. So that's actually how we did compared to all other grades three through eight schools. >> Clear as mud. >> Clear as mud. >> Dr. Sky and I are going to have a conversation about anything on that page. You have a lot of questions, but I'm not going to take time here. Um, but
I'm just say I mean I mean it's there's no there's no discretion. I mean certain things mean certain points. The person doing this assigning of points can't just decide to give you less points for other reasons than what's there. Right.
Correct. So if you are approaching your target but have not reached it, you can receive anywhere from one, two or up to three points. Um if you did not meet your target but declined, which we did in some cases, you get zero points. And that is the case for all areas from
achievement to growth to attendance um to graduation to drop rates to your L progress. It's like a whole formula that's based upon how close you were to meeting or exceeding that target. will be your zero through four points. Okay, >> it's reinforcing my decision not to take
statistics in college. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. >> Okay, that's >> just quickly a comment. Um seems like you've got a lot of information to put right in front of NRT about how important it is that they get our kids to school >> every day. >> Every day. >> Every day.
>> Every day. Every hour that they don't get our kids to school counts >> 100% >> on them. >> Okay. Anything else? >> I just want to quickly acknowledge the principles in the office of teaching and
learning for being here tonight and uh afford them the opportunity to excuse themselves after this presentation should they choose to do so. They have schools to run tomorrow and a lot of hard work to do so. If you would like to leave after this presentation, please do so. Thank you very much for being here tonight and thank you school committee
and Mr. Mayor. >> Yeah. Thanks for coming. >> Okay, moving on. >> Yeah. Okay. Um, >> so we'll go back to your superintendence report. >> Uh, yeah. Okay, Jody can go after. >> Yeah. >> So, uh, this next piece is sort of the
so what, now what of all of what we just saw. And I'm going to try to run through this. I know it's getting late. Um, just waiting for the option to become available here so I can Here we go. Uh hang on.
Okay. Um so in front of you this evening are my uh draft goals for the 2526 school year. This really and thank you for taking that out of order uh because this really is a response to what we just saw. So, we wanted to make sure
that we had all the data up front before we delve into the actual goals. Like I said, I'll try to run through these fairly quickly. Um, but we're starting with this premise of um our job is to help support our
students to be the best version of themselves. And so in the absence of this kind of portrait of a learner, this kind of new direction forward, um what you have in front of you is really
a summary point of how we're approaching the work this year. Um I have one year to kind of get this right. So I really want to capture the information correctly that I've seen, heard, and how we're doing this work, approaching this work. And this will be a good launch pad
for um focused schools if we're able to move in that direction to help really capture kind of where we're going next. Uh but the whole kind of premise of what we're going to see is how do we take the data that Dr. Scar just went through SCA just went through the information that
our uh principles were here to kind of speak to and answer and then really leverage the work we're doing to systematize. mayor to your point like how do we address these issues now so that they don't continue to repeat. Um so the focus of our work is around what
we teach how we teach minimizing barriers to academic growth but also that social emotional behavioral growth and we know what happens when adults get really focused on a few things and wrap our talents time and effort around our
students they do better. It doesn't matter if it's on a field, on a court, if it's a marching band, if it's at home in your own house. Kids do better when the adults are in sync. And so the idea here is to get the adults all on the same page. Dr. Skisa mentioned, you
know, that that idea of kind of feedback and providing the right feedback. We use the Bnee Brown clear is kind all the time, right? We want to be clear, direct, and supportive in the work that we're doing to help service kids. And so this is kind of the mantra this year
that we're using to help propel our work forward. So specifically, what does that mean? One of the things that uh Michelle and I talked a little bit about is this idea of evaluation focus standards. The superintendent evaluation process um
like all of the administrators and the educators for that matter is like wicked cumbersome and there's tons of indicators and there's a lot of things we can do. Our idea is to not do a bunch of things sort of okay but to do fewer things really well. And so uh we
identified some focused standards to which the school committee can and should hold me accountable as far as my performance in these areas. Uh if this is the direction that you choose to go around instructional leadership operations and our management, our
community uh engagement work and our professional culture. So, uh, we identified these, uh, focus indicators that link directly to the goals themselves. So, as we're walking through, um, we can delve into each of those. And I'm not going to read the
slides to you. Um, but I do just want to mention a couple things on our student learning goal. This looks really simple on the surface, but what you're going to see see on slides five and seven is actually like how we're going to do this because this is just the the the um
student achievement goal that we have had in Malboro for quite some time. Um and so we are going to stick with this goal for now. Uh you know given a variety of circumstances, but really we're going to get into the weeds of how we're going to do this in the subsequent slides. Um, but one of the things that I
do want to highlight here is that the school committee will be hearing from some of our instructional leadership teams across our schools and we'll be looking at our student performant performance results on our NWA that interimm assessment throughout the school year so that you're not waiting
and hearing once a year how we're doing. You're going to get these updates as we go. So the student learning goal is really broken down into two different categories, right? Again, it's like the what we teach and the how we teach. That curriculum and that instructional piece.
And again, there's just you there's three main focal points here for curriculum. And I'm just going to quickly highlight them. Uh the first is the implementation of our of our new math program. You heard a little bit tonight about our elementary math results. Um we have work to do. Our
teachers know that. principles know that and they're doing it. Um our our office of teaching and learning has really coalesed around this work and as you know the school committee uh through their approval um process we brought our
supervisors down. They're now K to 12, right? They're just not working at the secondary level. So they're in our elementary schools doing this work which is great. So we have a focus there. We have another focus on our ELA and ELELLL educators coming together. We heard a
little bit about this already at our middle school and really looking at that co-e model. One of the things we've been spending some time uh really talking about is we have these intervention materials, but we're not using the core materials
right yet. So, we need to start replacing these intervention materials with our core materials. Right? the kids aren't going to make progress if we're if you're reading at a third grade level and you should be reading at a fifth grade level. If you're constantly giving kids third grade reading level material, they're never going to get to fifth
grade. We have to give them fifth grade material, but then give them the supports to be able to access that. So, it sounds like sort of a subtle shift, but it's actually pretty important. We saw that with our ELLL students, with our level ones and twos. I'm glad Michelle you mentioned this earlier.
This is really important. Our EL students are getting stuck at level three and four because we never expose them to the English language and content level particularly as it relates to ELA as level ones and twos. We gave them a separate program. So we didn't expose
them to grade six, seven or eight text at that level and help them access it through a variety of sheltered English immersion strategies. Instead we took those materials out of their hands and gave them different materials. Right? So they're losing out when that
happens. So we've made that that significant shift at the middle school and we're going to see that happening across the other grade spans. Um and then the last piece is to develop um and R.J. And Chris, Henry and I spent a lot of time talking about this and very
thankful Chris is here tonight uh and can speak to this if you have any questions. But this idea of we really need to do a thorough review of our curriculum review and kind of curriculum storage if you will, a housing kind of process.
um we need to have a cycle in place where we are constantly reviewing in a very systemic way our curriculum and our assessment process and so we are looking to do that this year. Um and so those are kind of the three main buckets of
the curricular work that we're going to be doing on the instructional side of the house. Uh you have heard a lot about our roadmap work um and we are continuing that work. So there is going to be a um and has already been but a lot of support put in place as it
relates to our instructional roadmap and aligning all of our learning walks, our professional development and the work in our professional learning communities. So that's when the teachers get together to talk about student performance around those roadmap strategies and progress monitoring very tightly how the kids are
doing on a weekly basis not just you know once a quarter or once you know between the beginning middle and end of year. Um our instructional leadership teams will be deeply involved in those data cycles. That's what I was just referring to. Um, and we'll be looking
at who are the kids, what are the skills, and how do we know they're getting it? What do we do when they've got it, and what do we do when they don't? And cycling kids through that process on a regular basis. Um, so when you think about the work that tier one
is that typical, your general classroom instruction, we're strengthening that work. Your two and tier three work happens with your interventionists. Uh, sometimes inside the classroom, sometimes outside of the classroom. It depends upon what the issues are. Uh we're seeing a lot of the instruction
now happening through different um station based models that the teachers are using in their classroom where they're really leveraging that second adult to keep kids in either a review station where they're reviewing current skills or old skills, a reinforcement station where maybe they're with the
classroom teacher for a couple of rounds because they just haven't figured out how to add fractions with different denominators, right? or an enrichment station where they're really being pushed to challenge and grow. So, how does all of this come together? Uh, through our staff development. Right. So, this is kind of the other
piece. I don't know why it's not coming up there. I'm like a slide ahead. Oh, I don't know what's going on. Hang on. Sorry. Oops. Bear with me one second. My thing just kicked me off here.
We're getting this queued up. Um I referenced earlier uh around the student learning goal that we'd be looking at the curriculum, the instruction, but then also specifically what are the actual skills that we need to build as far as uh capacity in our adults to get
these pieces to happen. And so that is where the staff development and support comes in. One of the things we talked a lot about with the Office of Teaching and Learning is all of our professional development needs to be anchored in our roadmap strategies. If these are the strategies we're saying are going to
help get us the most leverage as far as improving student outcomes, then that's the work that we need to be doing. And it cannot just be with our teachers. Sometimes adults really like the idea of change when they think you're talking about
everybody else and then you're like, "Oh, I'm I have to do that too." Right? So I say that in just because this change is going to impact all of us. Every single one of us needs to lead different, needs to support our educators different. Um the buck does
not just stop with the teacher in the classroom and sometimes they can be on that end of the of the continuum and that isn't fair. We have really good educators that are working really hard. I believe in our teachers here immensely. I believe in our leadership team immensely. But every single one of
us has to has to lead different. And so we called it out. It's not just the educators, but it's the central office administrators. It's the directors, the supervisors, the principles, etc. We have used the mantra. If you are doing everything you've always done on October
14th the way you've done it, then you're going to get the same results we're getting. And that's a problem. We know because we just saw them, >> right? So we can't do the same thing and think we're going to get different results just because we hope we get better results. We have to do the work different. And that goes for the
leadership as well. So at the bottom of slide seven, you will see the ways that I am asking the school committee to hold me accountable for this. This is how I'm going to show you and we as a team will show you that this work is happening. So you'll see some of the measurements
bolded below. >> Um, sorry. Is it is it possible when you're doing your PD courses and such that um, you know, like how on the strategic plan we'll have like I don't know, you know, one A ties into here on
this goal, right? And there's a tie in. Is it possible with like the PD courses that you guys are offering that there's a way of tying it into like the road map, you know, wherever it's going to hit so that people can really
get it like I need to do this PD not just because I need to get my PD credits, but I need to get my PD credits in this area to help me be better. I'm here on my road map. >> The PD offerings, and I don't know if you want to speak to this, Dr. Scaza, but have to be connected to the road
map. We're getting there is the answer. So we have categorized all of the PD offerings to a roadmap topic which is a good start. Meaning when we're screening proposals for PD if they are all now
related to a roadmap topic which is good. It's just a matter of getting to the point that you highlight Mrs. Tennessee of where the PD requirement lies on behalf of the educator to ensure that that individual is going, "Oh, I
need I need the professional development in this area and they're just not choosing loosely with with a with a course offering." So, as a PD committee, we're trying to develop a system that's a little bit more tightened up around the if you have not yet received PD in
this area, then you are going to be partaking. that's your choice, right? Like I I guess that that's what I'm saying is if we can see because of the walkthroughs the identifiers that it probably would be helpful if you went ahead and took
>> that this you know but it has to kind of be categorized right so that person goes yep I got it you know we need to do that if we have that expectation. >> Thank you. Um so just you and I had spoken about
like a request I had in in our you know I as I've mentioned to you um earlier I sometimes struggle with um knowing that an expectation of a school committee is to
help to improve student achievement but getting from point A to point B is hard because we're not educators right And thi this presenta tonight has helped immensely I feel in helping to
drill down to what really needs to happen in order for student achievement to to get better. And so my ask for you is even on our um agendas if when we're
getting presentations or when you're talking about the data or whatever helping us to see where it connects to the work that we talked about tonight and to the goals in particular. So if
you're giving a presentation on X, you can say, okay, this is in support of goal number two and this is why we're doing it >> just to help tie that all back in for us. >> And to that exact point, even during the
evaluation process, so the middle of year and end of year are set up, this will be hyperl with the evidence and I will link the standard right to it so you can see which focus standard is connected to which piece of exactly what you're saying. Okay. And just to clarify, so for for us, that really long
cumbersome evaluation tool that we have to do every year that everyone loves so much, what he's suggesting, which I didn't know you could do, is only picking a couple of indicators in each category and focusing on them. So we're not feeling like we're having to come up
with um an evaluation on things that maybe we don't see in the course of our dealings, right? And so I think the whole evaluation process is going to be a lot more relevant um for all of us and and a lot easier to
do. >> Thank you Arian. Um next we have a goal around uh so shifting gears uh staff and student safety. Uh and so um we are
working with a uh cross department um group that includes uh individuals from our uh police, fire, the mayor's office, DPW uh to create um sort of the first of its
kind uh interdep department safety team. uh we are we are looking at strengthening both the hardware and the human wear of our school system to ensure that uh we are ready for anything that may come our way. So lots of good work happening in this space and very
grateful uh for our partnership with the other city departments. They've been tremendous uh tremendously helpful. Um you heard this evening a little bit about uh our next district goal which is the creation of a new strategic plan. And so this is pretty straightforward.
By the end of this year, we will have a new strategic plan in Portrait of Alert. That's an easy one to measure. Um, but very excited about this work because again, uh, we're going to not only take into account all of the information we saw already this evening. Uh, but really
lean into and listen to our families, our local businesses, our nonprofits, our municipal side. You know, what do they need in our graduates? what are the skills they're looking for? What are the strengths they're seeing? What are the opportunities? Um, and so I'm really
excited to get this piece moving. Um, and get the strategic plan uh in place by the end of this academic year. And then lastly, the final goal is around the richer school and the MSBA process. Um, pending an affirmative city vote. I we certainly don't know, but
pending that, if that is an affirmative vote, uh, by June, we should be in our design development work. Uh and that should be well underway. Um and I did partner with our own project manager and our architect on this uh to ensure that
um we we will meet our milestones. >> Correct. >> Um we will absolutely meet our milestone. >> That's the goal. >> That's the goal. That's the goal. >> So if all goes as planned, we should be here by the end of the year. >> So a lot of meetings about the school. >> Yes. Um
so that is the final goal for my draft goals. Okay, questions. False. Seeing none, let's move on. Last update. >> Uh and then uh my last item for my report. Um
super awesome. Our middle school kids are on their trip in uh to Japan. I was able to see them off last week uh with a lovely breakfast. I heard their speeches all in Japanese. Um they were amazing.
Like the kids are absolutely amazing and they should be home this weekend. It's so funny because the time change. They leave I think Friday at like 10:25 and they get home Friday at 10:35. >> So they're on the flight for 10 minutes
>> cuz they're flying back very >> the kids were like dying laughing when they made that up. >> That's funny. >> 10 minute flight from Japan. >> And then there they will be joining us in early November. Uh we've made our reservations for dinner and went to Wellies and took care of that which will
be great. And then we are ordering their um just their gifts for them when we have something a token of gratitude to give them when they arrive. So >> very excited to be here and we'll have the kids here and uh the staff here when they get back at some point to >> share about their trip,
>> of course. >> Okay, that concludes my report. >> Anything else? All righty. We'll move on to the office of student services and equity special education data programming and learner support. >> Thank you very much.
>> Today I want to provide um some information on the special education student assessment and accountability data. I do not have specific data. I will provide that in a future report. I think maybe might be all data out to me.
Um but recent MCCAST data assessment uh MCCAST assessment data for reading and ELA and math indicates that performance for students with disabilities in our district is currently below the state target. While this is an area concern, it also presents an opportunity to
deepen our commitment to equity and accelerate progress for our students with special needs. For our next steps, we're doing a root cause analysis and strategic planning to address these results. I along with director Chris Henry um will be attending the DESIE regional convening
uh which day one was today and day two is tomorrow where a root cause analysis of our district's data will be conducted to identify systemic barriers and address in areas sorry systemic barriers and areas for improvement. Follow-up action plans are expected to be
developed and submitted to Desi. And uh today as part of that there's an online portal that uh we were both provided access to which uh takes us to a success gap toolkit where we're able to um put in our data and identify the areas um
that we need to work on which um for us is our MCCAST performance for um ELA reading and math for um across all grade levels. But also we identified our um
our um graduation and uh dropout rate for um for special education students at the high school level as well as our uh stu the what's called the least restrictive environment for special education
students. We are below the state percent average for students who are in full inclusion classrooms. So we as part of this project will be looking at how does that impact our student performance. So
basically uh we have more stu special education students who are having more time pulled out of general education receiving their services in resource room classes with special education
teachers than on the state average. And that's not like our program, you know, our specialized programs. U we're talking about you students who are doing pull out for ELA um ELA and math and um part of my philosophy and it was um
brought up today uh is that um the amount of that the amount of time that um special education students are out of the general ed class um receiving um pullout services that special education
instruction is is supposed to be a supplement it's not a replacement for general education. So, that's something that we need to look at. So, um we're already ahead of the curve. We have initiated several key steps
um prior to receiving the the assessment results. Our district is actively developing a comprehensive action plan focused on instructional shifts and program enhancements. We're going to be implementing data a data cycle plan of beginning beginning of year, middle of year, and end of year
progress monitoring. We'll be developing a professional development um program based on um that um the work that we're doing with DESIE and then evaluation of key indicators.
In addition to academic performance, we're also addressing challenges faced by students with disabilities related to chronic absenteeism, high school graduation rates, and dropout rates. These factors significantly impact long-term student outcomes, and require targeted interventions. Our district is
committed to implementing strategies that promote consistent attendance, support students through through to graduation, and reduce dropout rates among um our special education populations. Throughout the year, I'll provide updates and specific data on students with disabilities achievement
and growth as well as their attendance and graduation rates. >> Okay, Miss >> Question on that. Um, I feel like it's been our approach to special education to try and keep as
many of our students here in Marorrow than having them go out for services, which I think has been a benefit. That's one of the things that Marorrow's done, I think, really well around special education. So I ask in comparison to other
districts, are we being compared fairly against other districts and are they keeping their students in their districts or are they putting them out to other places to have to educate
them? I guess that that's where I'm I'm wondering a little bit about some of this information because I feel like we've done a really good job of trying to make sure that people the kids are staying here. So it isn't um
this is it's not about the percentage of students that are in substantially separate programs which is um so we have there's three categories for placements. There's full inclusion which is students who are pulled out um who participate um
participate 80% or more of their time is within general education and that 20 less than 20% of their time is pulled out. That's considered full inclusion. Then partial inclusion is between that 20 to 60% of the their time is in a is a
pull out is in a pull-up model. What's considered to be um substantially separate is any students that receive 60% or more of their time in a special education setting.
Those aren't the students that were being penalized against or or as far as points. It is the number of students that we that we have that are getting 20 to the 20 to 60% of their time is with a
special education teacher where in a lot of other districts they're in that full inclusion. So we have too many kids in partial inclusion >> versus full inclusion compared to other districts. So that's where the work is that we need to do a deeper dive on how
many students that is why um you know is it particular uh subject areas is it ELA versus math is it particular grade levels and so that's the deep dive that we need to do in the data to look at the root cause um and how does that impact
um our performance um within you know MCCAST but also our uh NWA data. >> Gotcha. And so ultimately a model similar to what we're doing with EL in doing team teaching might make sense that would
keep them in the classroom but still get the supports they needed. >> That that may be one option. I'm I'm sure that there's probably many factors um as to why students are performing the way they are. So uh chronic absenteeism could be another. Uh, so I'm sure that
we'll have um a multiple um action step action plan. >> Great. Thanks. >> Okay. Any other questions? >> Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you. Okay. Let's move on. Acceptance of minutes. Minutes of the
school committee meeting September 18th, 2025. Motion to approve the minutes um from September 18th, 2025. >> Motion is on the table and seconded. Any questions, comments, concerns regarding the school committee meeting September
18th minutes? Seeing none, all in favor? Motion carries. Thank you. Minutes of the school committee meeting September 30th, 2025. >> Motion to approve the minutes of September 30th, 2025. >> Thank you. Motion's on the table and seconded. Any questions, comments, or
concerns regarding the meeting minutes from September 30th? Seeing none, all in favor? Motion carries. Thank you. Okay, moving on to public comment. Is there any public comment?
Public comment. Thor, just want to state your name and your comment. >> You have an address. >> Hi, my name is Thor. Um, I live at five McCabe Drive. Um, >> Thor, can I have your full name, please? >> Oh, Thor Smith. >> Thank you.
>> Sorry. Thank you. >> Um, I just wanted to to comment that um I thought there was um some good points about the uh the the different students and and the the changing bodies throughout the year. Um,
and I I was wondering if it would um it if it could be interesting to look at um the the information following a particular class to see if um there is improvement for that class as they progress through grade levels. Um, and I
also wanted to comment that I thought there was good information from the the choose Marlro information um that that the students shared. Um, but particularly the um the the one about um
uh students being in um the the college prep and the honor students being in the same class. um and the the them not necessarily being able them taking a middle ground in in in terms of achievement um with respect to that. Um
and I guess I'm I'm curious to know if that applies to other areas of the school as well. Um I'm interested to know like how how much it affects but if it if it applies to to other areas of the school as well where um potentially that might be happening.
>> Okay. Thank you. Is there any other public comments? Public comments for the second time. Seeing none, public comment last and final chance. Public comment for the
third time. Seeing none, we will close the public comment section. Thank you. action items and reports or policy. >> Um, thank you. So, tonight you have before you a number of different policies that we've been working on. Uh,
let's see. IH the internet acceptable use policy IHB social media policy ILB graduation requirements policy ILB- A the wellness alternate pathway policy
and IL which is the CTE policy. Um the CTE policy, just to make sure you all are aware, is something that we needed to get underway to meet with um a desi requirement that they had um asked to get this on the books quickly. So we are
trying to move forward on obviously responding appropriately and it's something that we were already really doing. It was just kind of formalizing it into a policy. So, uh, this is on deck for first read. Should you have any
questions or concerns, issues, please feel free to reach out unless you have something here tonight that you'd like to, uh, address. >> Any questions regarding your first read? Seeing none, okay, we will move on. Thank you.
Strategic plan and portrait of a learner proposal focused schools. So we had a lot of information at the presentation. So we just need a vote if we want to move forward with the focused schools for our portrait of a learner proposal.
>> Uh move to accept the proposal from focus schools. >> See motion on the table and seconded to move forward with focus schools for our strategic plan and portrait of a learner proposal. Is there any questions? Um the
question slashc comment is I just really want to understand around that budget as I brought up during the earlier conversation with Carrie. I I I understand that it's 21 days. I would love if she can really tease that out for you, which in the end is going to be for us
>> to really understand much more about um making sure that we understand and have a set round of expectations about what we're receiving within that um at different benchmarks along the way if possible. >> I'm happy to have her break that out for
you. Okay, sure. >> Thank you. Of course, >> Jason, a question slash question slash comment. It's encouraging that you've got experience with uh focused schools previously.
I assume anything that they bring back from clients as learnings post project. So things that would have um been done differently or looking back how they might have recalibrated a project that we would benefit from those learnings going into
whatever the the phase plan looks like. So, I'm assuming that's part of what we're going to get from them. >> Most definitely. Yeah. >> Any other questions, comments, concerns? Motion on the table and seconded. Can we do Let's do a roll call just so
we're all clear. Mr. Giri, we'll start with you. >> Yes. >> Yes. >> Yes. >> Yes. >> Yes. >> Yes. >> Yes. >> Motion carries. It is approved. Okay. Well, moving on. Reports of school
committee subcommittee mean anyone. >> Um, policy-wise, we are continuing to work on a few specifics. Um, you'll note with the graduation requirement policy being on, we are also pulling out the competency. Um,
>> why do I do that? C, the CD >> determination. Thank you. >> Determination. Sorry, my brain's a little fried at this point, but um that's being pulled out. So, you will see that coming fairly quickly. We just had a little bit more that we needed to put in place um specifically around ELA
and special education um notices and in that. Um but we're just continuing to move forward. You'll hear more from us soon. Thank you. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> Anyone else? Reports of school committee subcommittees. Seeing none, we'll move on. Members
forum. Yes, >> I've reviewed the warrant >> and we'll sign appropriately. Everyone's okay. >> Yes. Uh last week I mentioned or last meeting we mentioned that uh this past week was spirit week at Malbor High School.
>> What? >> Um we did the seniors won. >> So I'll get there. Um throughout the whole week we did like five five different themed days. Um and there were best dressed winners for each. If you look at the MHS Panther Spirit Instagram, you'll see the rankings. Um,
you all see the point updates and I was going to say thank you to Miss Klein for doing all the hard work of calculating the points and all that, but um, there was also a canned food drive. A lot of food was donated as well as penny wars which all the money gets donated to special Olympics and student council. Um, and it was an awesome turnout event
and especially in the last day, the spirit rally seniors came out on top. But it's just a great way to see how um, MHS spirit really is, especially for students looking to come. It's a great experience and um, those are the moments you'll really remember. So yeah, >> good. Thank you for that update. Can
congrats on on winning. >> Yeah. >> Uh, was Spirit Week better or worse than the robotics team win? >> Can you compare? >> You don't have to answer. >> Apples and oranges.
>> Anything else for members forum? >> Just want to uh >> welcome >> welcome our new member. >> Welcome. They usually meetings aren't usually this long. So I don't know if >> this was quite a meeting to have your be your first >> lot of good content though. So
>> I thank all the presenters, the contributors, enormous visibility and transparency. Appreciate that and look forward to working with you and the rest of the community. >> Excellent. >> All righty. >> Thanks. >> On that note, >> move to adjourn. >> Move to adjourns on the table and
seconded. All in favor of adjourning. We are adjourned at 9:54. Thank you all. Everyone have a great night.