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[Music] good evening the school committee Workshop business executive session of January 27 2025 will now come to order this meeting is being recorded and will be made available for viewing on
the methan public schools website secretary would you please call the role member doaga present member dunan here member Keegan pres member Maxwell here member shilia here member wette here mayor borgard here everyone is here we'll begin tonight with the flag salute move excuse me excuse me I'm so sorry before we get there we need to accept the agenda first need a motion
in a second to accept the agenda second motion from Member Willette second from Member daglio any discussion not we vote all those in favor I I opposed the eyes have it and now we'll rise for the flag salute I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible
liberty and justice for all has anyone submitted public participation no no nothing in writing all right at this time I'll close public participation uh for future reference if you're unable to make a meeting in person for public participation you can send an email to Martha seroy M ois meu. k2. ma. us before 3 p.m. on the day of the school committee
meeting superintendent I'll invite you to start the discussion regarding the vocal climate and learning survey data thank you I'm actually going to turn it over to Dr golovsky Who has the presentation for you tonight so we have sort of two things woven um our vocal climate uh data and our strategy plan and I think uh drasi did a good job of kind of explaining sort of how those are part right so our data is part of what we had in our action items for our plan so we want to share that with
you tonight and share with you our next steps for our parent survey um before we talk about the strategy plan Dr kbski thank you so there's a presentation um on the monitors and in your packet which summarizes the the vocal survey data um from 2024 so I'll give a bit of a background on what that is and talk about the scores that our schools
and District received in comparison to the state so vocal serves to provide information on student perceptions on the dimensions of Engagement safety and environment and collectively those three account for um what desie calls uh School climate so the questions are largely based on the conceptual framework from the US Department of Ed's School climate survey it takes
students about 20 minutes to complete participation is voluntary and student identities are never shared and the students that have the opportunity to take this survey are in grades four five 8 and 10 and it comes as part of the spring mcast Administration um and as you can see on this chart here our participation is really high um and it is optional for students to complete so we um thought
it was worth sharing with you tonight seeing as um 93% of all students opted to take the survey um as compared to the state rate of 73% and Below you can see the participation by school so again vocal focuses on three main dimensions of school climate engagement safety and environment and this
chart shows the sub headings under each of those Dimensions the ones that are highlighted um so participation in the engagement Dimension bullying in the safety Dimension and instructional environment and the environment Dimension they all um come with a separate score so the district receives the overall index score for each category and school climate and then each of those highlighted areas
comes with its own separate score so on this slide we have the scaled index results for school climate engagement safety and environment the first row showing the state the second row showing the district and then beyond that each school's individual breakdown so um for the grammars it would be grades four five and eight combined and of course the high
school would just be grade 10 and you can see that we are um near above or on par with the state um and most of these areas and this slide shows those indiv individual scores um again from the highlighted chart here under each Dimension this is the breakdown of
those indiv individual scores so participation is isolated from the engagement Dimension and that would be the score listed here bullying is isolated from the safety Dimension um and then the instructional environment from the environment Dimension so whereas the district average um for the participation element of Engagement is 50 is 51 the district was at 50 whereas The Bullying um score for the
state was was at 46 the district's at 44 and the instructional environment the state was at 51 the districts at 50 um not to say that we're aiming to match the district we're uh the state we're aiming to exceed um because some of those scores are um moderately high and if you're looking for the language um that the state uses in terms of what
is favorable in each category um when we're talking about the index scores which would be all the categories within each Dimension if we're looking at a score that's 70 or above that would be called most favorable uh 51 to 70 would be favorable 31 to 50 is somewhat favorable and below 30 is least favorable so I just wanted to take a moment to focus on the engagement Dimension so we have
the cultural competence participation and relationships under this heading and these are the scores for grade 10 so MHS with the highest favorable response rates so that would be 70 or above and those were ones that students rated as always or mostly true so I isolated um the questions so you can see or the items they were
rating a little bit of um gives you a sense of what students were thinking about and then there's a comparison between the state and the school scores for grade 10 and you'll see those teal um arrows pointing to a couple rows and those are rows um where we had um more than a fivepoint difference between where we fared and where the state fared um in
the positive side of things so that is known to be significant um if there's a difference smaller than three the state says that that's considered a slight difference um and five and eight um would be would be significant and worth mentioning so teachers promote respect among students was very high adults at our school are respectful of student ideas even if the ideas are different from theirs um and then highlighted at
the top thought it was worth mentioning in the engagement Dimension grade 10 students their scores met or exceeded the state scores on 16 of the 17 items and here's the grammar school slide you'll see that some cells are grade out and that's because each grade level has different phrasing for their items um with what's appropriate for their age group even though some may follow the
same the theme so these were items that were rated um as highly favorable as well and then I thought you may be curious to know where were we um below more than three points um the state rate in each of these areas so in cultural competence um we were not below and I
and and buy more than three points in grades four five and 10 just in grade eight two of the five items showed that difference um there were a few areas in the participation area of grade five especially um and then in relationships all but grade 10 and I will say grade 10 and each of the three dimensions that I'll go through engagement safety and environment they were not
below the state in any and here's the safety Dimension emotional safety physical safety and bullying so in grade 10 13 of the 16 met or exceeded and remember none were below that three-point differential and then there was um one that stood out and that was I am comfortable reaching out to teachers/ counselors for emotional support So
eight points above the state there the next slide is the grammar school slide so these are favorable responses as compared to the state I am happy to be at our school stood out for um our grade four as did I tell my teacher if my classmate is being bullied
my teacher will help teachers don't let students tease each other um even with the state in grade eight and then here are the items where we may have fallen three points or more below the state average so again none in grade 10 um half of the bullying SL cyber bullying in grade four but then you can see in grade five only one of the
seven items were we below and and then in grade eight three of the eight and so it varies uh by grade and by aspect of Dimension and I will say that there is some um a wave of variability between as the survey progresses from grade to grade um so across the state you will see scores typically being higher in four they'll dip a little in five and eight and then when they go to high
school they rise a little bit um what our high school increased significantly more um and we saw some of that variability um from year to year within the same school and the grammars and this is environment so again instructional mental health and discipline environment this is the high school slide so all of those arrows indicate areas that we are significantly above which would be um
most of those present Ed here indicating that teachers are supporting students even when their work isn't their best um one that stood out was in my classes mistakes or even failure on an assignment is viewed as a part of learning teachers focus on my understanding of the material not grades teachers give students a chance to explain their behavior when they do something wrong in 13 of the 14
items the student scores exceed eded the state met or exceeded and here is the grammar school slide with the most favorable ratings for each grade the one that has the biggest difference in the positive way for grade eight our school offers guidance to students on how to mediate conflicts and here are the items under environment that differed from the state
by more than three point points meaning that the state was higher than our grade level scores so none in grade four none in grade 10 um and a couple in grade five and eight under instructional environment and one in grade five so coming soon what do we do with this information I've mentioned a couple times the youth participatory action research
groups or teams um that will be formed at each upper school and high school their first retreat in District Retreat is coming up next week and it's going to be facilitated by up for learning a group from Vermont in that whole session we'll focus on using this vocal data to identify the areas that the adults and students want to work on within the school um and to make better as time goes on also
we have developed a climate and culture survey that will be sent to parents and Guardians the survey topics are very similar to those of the vocal um in terms of school climate safety and engagement and these questions are de were developed by Panorama which is adapted from the work of Dr gelbach and his team at Harvard Graduate School of Education and the results will be presented at the next Workshop so I included the questions so
you can see the types of questions that will go out to families parents on each of those areas so hopefully as we gather more of this data we'll be able to triangulate the data to identify some areas where we need to improve um generally we found the vocal data to be very
positive particularly with the grade 10 scores um and they give us some some um leverage areas to maybe make improvements as time goes on happy to take questions thank you for the presentation so what um I'm going to do is I'm going to try my best this meeting especially at the last meeting to uh utilize uh the timer tighten things up and uh perhaps increase our efficiency so we'll have five minute uh speaking
turns and then if if we have a particularly uh I don't want to say a subject is more important than the other but if we have the topic of significant interest we can have two rounds but for now let's try to keep it to five minutes a piece uh so we'll start with membership Alia so first and foremost I think this gives us a lot of good data to show the positive work that's going in and how it's impacted the students I think that that was one of my first takeaways when I
looked through here and saw some of our scores compared to State my question though is where did we deviate the most so General nature is to highlight the good things and to completely ignore the bad ones so I think I'd like to be I'd like to see the the ones where we where we failed miserably because I think those would show us our areas for improvement so that' be something I'd
be interested in seeing um the 24 index slide and maybe I'm just not reading it properly it looks to me like these are percentage scales so the state is saying that 48 on average 48% of kids feel safe at school and in methan we had 46 is that am I accurate in my assumption of what these show
their scaled index results because there's a different number of items in each in each Dimension and which e section within each Dimension um so for the sake of reliability they've scaled some of the the numbers to make them Equitable in terms of the the the amount of weight each topic has under the dimension but for the sake of argument you could you could think of it that way um except that it's not yes or no answers either it's that I
always feel safe I mostly feel safe so the degree to which a student feels safe all the time maybe I think no matter how you slice it up on the I forget what that scale is called but you know the yeah the Linker scale or whatever yes that one no matter how you slice it it's still 46% of kids that don't primarily feel safe and I mean
for 48 at the state level so you know I mean nobody's waving any Victory Flags here I just I guess my concern there is that's something I think we need to focus on and fix I know that the state says 50% is um favorable I I I don't I don't know who came up with that measurement at that specific level but that would be something that I'd be curious to get more into and see how we could do it um my last one is the the bullying because that is an issue that
we all see emails on I feel like weekly um I'd be interested in seeing in the lower schools how the four of them marked out in the Raw data and the bullying because I anticipate it being vastly different at the high school so we can try to align across the district and be more consistent with adherence to our policies sure I can I can follow up and send you that um some of the
bullying items specifically I will say um between the schools was really comparable um score-wise so I'm happy to do that and if you're looking for the areas where we aired um I think the slides that for instance slide 10 with the plain um the less color of where we're below the state in in three or more items those would be the areas that I would look to first um so
in grade four says we fell below more than three points Below in four out of eight bullying cyber bullying areas which is 50% of The Benchmark and I know that it's it's it's tough to make percentage accusations with this kind of data but just that that is four out8 is 50% so for conversational purposes it it just it doesn't
present well and I be look I'd be hoping that we could do better and I know the state said 50% is favorable which I have just a fundamental issue with yeah I I think it's interesting um because just in that year from grade four to grade five it was four of eight and then in grade five it was one of seven so that's worth digging into I think is your point and then it goes back to three to eight so I mean it's it's aular maybe I don't know but I just think that there's more information there
that we could work with to help frame what we're going to do next thank you five more seconds on the clock look at me member Maxwell um so I I'm very thrown off by this report but only because I think that I'm thrown off by a lot of the surveys that we do because when they're presented to us they look like you
were saying they look like they're in our favor and everything looks great here but when you actually look into it you know it's not so good but um the other issue or question I had really was did do the kids know that they have the option to take these surveys yes so they are actually told you do not have to do this so you have to read it um yeah um
so and and 95% or 95 93 93 93% of our students do this so across the board 93% of the students do it that that includes special ed that includes El students that includes everyone so 95% of our students are doing this test okay um yeah I don't know I just I have a hard time with the
surveys that are being produced I guess across the board so I mean I can't imagine any four fifth sixth or eighth grader feeling like they can fill out a survey saying yes my teacher helps me when I don't understand the assignment when if they don't help them they're not going to say that in a survey that their teacher could potentially look at you know I that's just something I just something I'm thinking but this is just yet another survey
that I find hard to believe so other questions discussion done of it okay so just a few questions and one comment I'll start with I'm really intrigued by the membersip brought it up the bullying cyber bullying um numbers um only because I really hope we Circle back because the same questioning
will be given again as part of the mcast package correct yes in the spring okay so I hope we Circle back whoever's here next year to see if there was any difference since we've implemented the cell phone policy because I wonder if that plays a part because we we know that we implemented the cell phone policy because of all the disruptions in class and and so many of the disciplinary issues and bullying issues
were related to misuse of cell phones so I hope someone makes a note so whoever's here next year can talk about that I'm intrigued about the youth group that will be having the retreat who gets selected for that and like what's the protocol for that because I'm I would think a lot of kids would like to be part of it especially in the after schools how does that work yes so there's um an advisor advisors or or as we call them adult partners because adults
and students are seen as equal as part of the Yar um and they're in charge of organizing the group at each school so in the upper school we're looking at students in grades six seven and 8 um and at the high school we're looking in students 9 10 and 11 um and they're they're a small group but so it's relatively manageable of 10 to 12 students so each um student has the opportunity um to complete a Google form and
put their name in the Hat to be selected for the group um we're hoping that um a lot of students are interested in in the opportunity and take part in it and ultimately we would like the group that's selected to be representative of the student body so you don't have to have straight A you don't necessarily have to have already been the most involved in the club but you have to have the desire to be vocal and want to make an impact on the school Community um and be a leader in some
way um and so those groups will operate separately and then they'll also come together as an IND District team um and the up for learning is guiding that work and supporting the advisers um or adults uh to make sure that the work continues so the idea is that next fall there'll be PD sessions that will be run by students for teachers um to talk about the work that they've done and where they would like to see things go and make sure the work's carried out and
this is Grant funded um through a competitive Grant we were awarded from Desi um and is it 10 to 12 students from each school yes totally okay um thank you that that's and where's the retreat going to be um it's going to be at the timiny media center okay oh I thought was okay I know a little bit add a little more to it okay and um the parent survey how is that going to be distributed how long will it be open for
um when will we be able to see the results um we'll have it open for at least a couple weeks I would believe it's going to be translated and available um in many languages so you'll be able to see them I could provide that even at the next Workshop who's pushing it out is it through the front is it through the superintendent's office or okay your office okay and it'll be
posted in in many ways as possible so we'll use the infinite campus we'll use talking points there'll be links in the school newsletters um yeah easy to scheduled and structured in the how we get the results back uh the languag is again that's the last piece that Leisa has to work on is the the languages and the setup of the message going out so very soon is this similar to the one that um the district did a few years ago where we even had Chromebooks aail able in the lobbies during
some big what was it yeah what was it parent conferences it's similar to that the questions look it's similar but it's uh paired down if you recall that one was uh fairly large that was given to us by desie right and we or the Coalition it was by Des it was a combination of groups but it was really long um so this one is uh more condensed and it is a combination as Dr glad
said Panorama is is a very widely used uh software here um that does family and student engagement surveys in conjunction with what desie has put out for what we should be asking parents for family engagement so we're we're not Reinventing the wheel and creating our own surveys with us right we we're trying to use what's already been created and scales that have been validated thank you y did I miss anything with that response Dr glovsky I just
think we're we're also cognant cognizant of the length of the survey um to make sure that we get a lot of participation as well remember Willet thank you so we us in a like good scale methodology on the survey or is there going to be a combination of like it and other methods um the items listed here are lered scale um there are a couple questions at the
beginning where I ask um what school or schools do your do your students attend um how many students do you have in the system so just some ideas of how we might want to filter the data to drill down it where we need to get better and how um but these are all ler skill so the the surveys that were uh finished by the students were submitted to the state they reconciled the information and submit a report to your
attention can I have C that report so this data is in the secure portal which we have access to so I could I mean physical copy of the report so I can do a de I could download it for you yeah right again I'm not you know making any type of accusations but I always like to do a full analysis and a deep dive on the data well download it and send it to the whole committee yeah because I am I am concerned about
um the first page of having low benchmark scores and then you have very favorable scores page after page after page so I want to reckon cell so if we have areas of concern and again any social scientist they have the liked scale will be able to pinpoint these are your areas of strength these are your areas of weakness and I think as a committee we're obligated to work on the areas of weakness and I think a good positive presentation vehicle is something we should
applaud but also the areas of weakness that we have to work on as a committee um so that that data should always be presented to the committee the original paperwork uh now going forward um because I need to look at the original numbers the original paperwork what was submitted to your attention from the state um and again just there was something I can't reconcile at this
moment um as you know years of studying the social sciences and working in the political field that it's not driving right now but again looking at the original um survey that was brought back to your attention and having that raw data might help me in that regard but I I appreciate the strengths and the participation rate is very important and again um is you're saying it's going to be through like a survey monkey that the the parent parents are going to be
filling out this and so what is the Integrity of that because you would be going submitting that to the the state or to that outside the harid group okay so how would that be vehicle resp
conducive to that and because of the diversity of languages the traditional you send out a survey and you have a envelope and they would forward it to that won't work okay so this is something so the Integrity of the survey is going to be protected the confidentiality is going to be protected okay and then
the results of their individual surveys how is that going to be reconciled is it it doesn't go to the school system it would go to mon okay okay all right okay just similar to like the the student surveys and then you were submitted into Boston nobody okay okay so this is something separate for us the only
information that comes to usie St okay so this is an added vehicle that we're doing with the parents directly okay
okay excellent thank you my microphone Vice chair um you mentioned that the students are going to have a PD for the teachers is it possible for that presentation to come to the school committee so that we can see what the what the students came up with and what they feel needs to be worked on yeah I'm sure they would love to really really
useful yeah they would love to do that great thank you great idea all right I think that'll do it for the uh vocal uh presentation at this point we'll move on to the discussion regarding uh the strategy plan quarterly review okay
all right so as a reminder we are in the first year of our strategy for district Improvement plan and the first objective is to accelerate uh literacy development and language acquisition across all subject areas this is not a new slide but just a reminder of the focus area so in quarter
one I presented to you the topics in the gray table um and in Quarter Two I'm highlighting uh the following areas as it relates to literacy and language acquisition so the learning acceleration Network walkthrough data the common lesson component guiding document Benchmark 2 Administration and the K through 4 Ela pilot so a little more on the learning acceleration Network l and uh walkthrough
data this is our um tntp coach who had been with us previously in our gleam workor who continued work with the district through this acceleration Network focusing on um Upper School classrooms and um the literacy um development as time goes on so this is from um our coach's second visit to the district she visited
23 classrooms viewing their lessons 20 of those classrooms were working on reading listening comprehension and three we're working on writing so a culture of learning um you can see the difference between site visit one and two the darker colors meaning yes um then mostly somewhat um and then the pinks being not yet so so were students
engaged in the work from start to finish and that does not mean necessarily that the students were sitting quietly and filling out whatever paper was in front of them um we're looking for more than just compliance we're looking for commitment to the work as well so in site visit 2 um you can see that in 52% of the classes um that she visited students were committed to the work and fully engaged and mostly engage in 26%
and so that's an increase from site visit one which we're pleased about still some work to do and um the somewhat um category and so one of the actions that we're really focused on um and have been focused on is the is the lesson focused on high quality text so in order for that to count per se for this category the text needs to be out students
need to be interacting with it whatever the activity or lesson is they need to be digging back into the actual text um and we found that in site visit one that number was slightly higher the reason for that being just due to the time of the year and the lessons that were observed some were working on the writing components some were engaged in a debate or discussion that didn't have the text out and therefore didn't count yet
all classrooms were with the curricular texts which we are pleased about the second action um that we're really focused on is that the questions and tasks integrate the standards and build students comprehension of the text and its meaning so we're looking there for the quality of the question to make sure it's its grade level appropriate and in line with the standards so we're seeing an increase um
in student in site visit two as opposed to site visit one um and and we're pretty picky on this so although the question may be related to ELA or may have something to do with the standard Loosely if it's not followed to the degree that the standard is written and we're not considering it grade level appropriate then we're not qualifying it here so we're really working hard on that um and you'll see too that core action three has very much to do
with core action two in core action three we're asking if students are responsible for doing the thinking so we don't want students to be passive receptors of knowledge we want them to be engaging in complex questions and texts and creating that understanding and working together to do that and that's probably our most drastic increase was in core action three um so with the land Network we've been really leaning in to three because
it's hard to have um three without having core action two which are those difficult questions um and so that's been working out for us there um I'll just go through all the objective one then I'll ask for questions at the end this is the common lesson component guiding document um that I shared with teachers across the district um teachers
were asking for something to kind of ground them in their planning and to be clear about what the district was looking for in terms of strong lessons when we visited their classrooms so the portion at the top of the document um is taken from the desie uh teacher rubric and standards for teaching which talks about what we're aiming to do with th public schools and then the blue sections just
talk about what we'd like to see posted or lived in to make the lesson solid so we'd like teachers to think about or Po and post that overarching conceptual question that students are working to answer over the course of a series of lessons the learning objective which is what the student should be able to do by the end of the lesson the language objective what the students will need to learn to successfully accomplish the goals in terms
of in terms of that learning objective and then the agenda so what is going to be happening in what order in this lesson and we found that that's great for students to know what's coming up ahead in terms of agenda to know what the goal of the day is and then to see the bigger picture with the essential question um it just outlines that um the selected materials should be the core curricular materials and that they're are supplementary pieces as needed to support
or extend the lesson and just a little bit at the bottom about the structure of the lesson um so the activator should be a quick five to seven minutes where you're reviewing the objectives of the lesson um the heart of the lesson should be chunked into to various portions depending on what the the day looks like and then the summarizer at the end drawing students back to the objectives for formatively
assessing understanding and communicating next steps so to dat we didn't have a document that um uniformly I think communicated what the district's looking for in terms of a solid lesson um and so onboarding new teachers this would be something that would be useful for them as well um this is all uh information that has been communicated through the skillful teacher years ago and what's been sometimes known to be good teaching
and of course there'll be days that deviate from the structure depending on the content or um whether it's like a lab or a test or something to that nature but we found this to be useful as well the Benchmark to literacy data is just about ready it was close to being ready for this packet but there were too many students who had been absent and hadn't been tested and so I wanted to make sure that we had captured them all um so I'll be able to present that that at the the next
quarterly um preliminarily I've seen significant growth in all grade levels um and remember last time we talked about students that had been flagged because they scored significantly lower or they went really fast or scored below a kindergarten rate I showed a I saw a an initial decrease in that number of students too which is good and we are in the middle
of a k through four um School Ela pilot so our um contract with wonders 2020 which is our current curriculum is up this summer so it's um The Logical time to see what else is out there um and so we had selected three programs CK El education and wonders the 2023 version um they're both they both are all three rate highly on Cur rate and
Ed reports um and are standards aligned and seem to be rated highly for Teacher usability so we have teachers in grades K through four piloting each of those programs um and they're going to be um a wealth of information for us um and their colleagues and just seeing how they um find the program to be um and so they're going to be providing feedback back at professional development opportunities
I just came from um the Wonders 2023 um initial PD launch where the Publisher's representative and trainer had the teachers in the room with the CGS going through all the new materials and showing them um all the possibilities of that program so we will eventually hear from the Publishers the teachers will hear from the Publishers will hear from um other districts who are living in and using the curriculum
um and then ultimately come to a decision about what where we will go from here um and then I ended the objective one with the list of the PD that's been offered to date that relates to accelerating literacy and language development are there any questions or comments on objective one oh I'm
sorry I Che um this is a difficult question to ask so I bear with me but if we've been working on this stuff um for three years now and the teachers know what's expected why aren't the yes we're doing it consistently closer to 100% because it seems to to me like
we should we've taught the teachers how to do this and every teacher should be just doing it so why am I why am I seeing 30% out of 100% like why are those numbers so low I think it would depend on um which core action um I I could speak to like for instance I'm looking at core action two which is the the questions and tasks and so we
would like to see those numbers be higher um and we're finding that there's some work to be done in turn not just presenting the students with a question but working in small groups to make sure each small group has a question of that caliber that suits their needs to make sure the questions are ordered in a way that's appropriate and logical so when we're going through a series of rooms now
we see every room in the curriculum synced up to the exact lesson even sometimes but we're still seeing some variation between room to room in the way it's done and some slight little tiny shifts could really improve that lesson dramatically so that's the work now where it was easy to say okay you should be on lesson seven in this curriculum now everyone's in it and so it's getting teachers to the the
point of understanding where we're going to maximize our time within that lesson and where we're going to maybe expedite or move on or to use a small group so that's one reason why the um the core component document of the lessons is really helpful so we found that some teachers um were maybe leaning into one part of the lesson for too much time and then not having enough time to get to what we think really maximizes student growth so now we're calibrating those efforts so I agree we would like we
would like to see the yes all the time um grow and at the very least the yes and mostly um but there yeah there is some work to be done there as well can I can I add something to that I think because um when we first started this work with tntp which you guys don't have in front of you we used an observation tool with them to start the process and there are four components to that observation tool and we focused on the first two the first few years
because we had to change the culture of learning get to get to um implementation of the new curriculum especially in the Middle School um and we were really focused on high quality texts in the classroom that was our like the most important thing to us that kids were actually in text reading every single day in their classrooms um so as as we shifted over time now we're moving down to the last two pieces of that those four protocols that we're working
with them with and the last two are the harder two the last one on here is the harder the ownership of the kids um and making sure that the staff is actually using those high quality questions and not reframing them uh you know in a way that actually isn't keeping them at a high quality so there's a there was a real high focus on those first two the first few years and now we've we are confident in those and now shifted our work to the last
two components of that tool so there's that's a more uh pragmatic reason uh but I didn't want to lose that because we started that work with Mr Noble when we brought tntp on for the first time and started with the L curriculum and my last question is is there any correlation to student reading scores compared to the classrooms that are at this high
quality like that are in that 30% are are those students doing better than say a a classroom that is not at that 30% is not in that that high quality well I will say too that um this is just a snapshot so this is when the coach went through for those those visits on that one day for not even the full class that she was using to rate this um what what I'm seeing at the
at the upper school and that's who we're focused on here with this data is that most teachers typically have a section of students who's performing well um and then one who's a little behind and sometimes the growth is high and the achievement may be lower but the growth is high and sometimes the achievement is high and the growth is lower so ideally we want students to be growing and achieving um so we're
looking at both thank you questions discussion regarding one I I just want to go over like the walkthrough methods so the quick question is so when you go through these walkthroughs you obviously the teachers have will like be handed like a review after like to see where they hit there no because it's not evaluative so so we have when we do these walkthroughs it's very very it's very distinct from
an observation or an evaluation of an individual part of their contract so so our staff is very used to walkthroughs with groups of Us coming through their classrooms but we don't give them we might give them group feedback so we went through grade five we might give the group five grade feedback a grade five feedback um but we are not using those in individual evaluations now if the teacher which all often I want to say often happens uh you
know comes to the uh Humanity supervisor and says can you give me feedback of course they're going to give her feedback but that's voluntary does that make sense yeah and also how long like when you go to walkthroughs like I have walkthroughs and the uh my the people that come and observe me are there for like six minutes yeah no so these these with the group that we're talking about here are at least 20 minutes we spend in each of
the rooms uh I tend to stay a little I linger a little bit longer because I'm usually with some of the students but uh 20 minutes is the minimum that that will'll stay to sort of see a good uh amount of what's happening because if it's the beginning we don't want to just hit the beginning and not see what the teacher's going into and vice versa right um again this is not the evaluation process this is instructional right so we're there's five of us going into a room teachers are used to is coming in they know who's going to
be there they know when they're when we're coming most often they know at least the week we're coming maybe not the actual day if we have the schedules going around the district um so it's very different than the I'm going to come in as one individual and it's going to be your observation for your individual evaluation for your personnel file this is not that yeah no no the reason the reason why I asked like I have an individual observation but we also do these walkthroughs where the
district will come in with people more than three to five people and they come in they walk through but usually it's in throughout the Pod and they go through three four classes at once but the reason why I wanted to touch upon that was because when member uh Keegan was concerned about there there might be situations where they came in at the wrong time where they might be going through parts of their lesson that they didn't touch on the
checklists that's why I I was I want people to understand where I got this I that's why I'm asking these questions because if I'm in the middle of my lesson and I'm doing what's called in my district checking for understanding and we hit I might get eight out of SE and 10 because I didn't put the objective on the board but the objective was on my slideshow but they didn't see it because I'm Midway through my lesson I'm not going to put the objective at every point
of my lesson so that's why I was just trying to touch upon member Keegan's concern and that's why I'm asking is where were they in their lessons yep and that does happen uh we definitely account for that when we do the walkthroughs that we wish we could have stayed just another 10 minutes because we know we can predict what's coming but that can't be part of our data collection and so that might be part of our debriefing conversation but not necessarily part of the data collection because we we we just we're we're taking data on the time that
we're actually in there that's what our tntp Consultants are doing so again it brings the conversation around when we're debriefing about what we know is coming next or sometimes the administrators in the building we might say hey go ask them what they did next just so that we know what kind of came next so there is a part of that but we are only recording uh this this data is not coming from us this data is coming from the tntp consultant that's pieces you see here we're not generating that they are right
they're generating it based on their um data and data analysis that's what they're giving back to us we don't alter that one more uh Mr chair how many seconds do I have you still have 26 seconds okay last question um the the one of the things you brought up was uh teacher there's expectations of where teachers need to fall on on lessons so if I'm a teacher that's say I'm supposed
to be on less than seven but I'm on lesson six how is that held against that teacher because I might have a class that might be at lesson seven but I depending on the classes I might have two three classes at lesson seven but I have one at lesson six because they're just falling behind and I need that extra week to help them but I'm just curious how does that affect
that teacher when it comes to being OBS like observed in all of this yeah so I think that's totally reasonable for there would be variation lesson wise what we're looking at is to help Pace teachers who may be a module behind um because to cover all the standards in depth you need to get through all the modules of this particular Curriculum by the end of the year so we try to catch that early if we can and help help move people along while also support
providing the ample support for students which is the trick of it but yeah of course within reason other questions discussion regarding objective one I just I just have one question uh the common lesson components uh is that for all subject areas or are you just focusing as the first part is the um walk through
that we' just discussed those were for ELA those components are for all teachers okay well it it's basically looks like what good teaching should be and how is this clearly tied to the evaluative tool that you kind of talked about so this is part of the evaluative tool so it's not it's but it's a lesson template reflected yes so it's a lesson template right so this is what we have found in our conversation is that the skillful
teacher used to be our way uh and now it's it is not uh so we're trying to bring those components back so that we have a template in our system of this is what we need you to think about and it certainly aligns to this the rubric that desie has this isn't part of the evaluation packet if you would but certainly these are the lesson components that we would expect in any good lesson that should be reflected in standard one under lesson
planning does that make sense yeah it does I just think it's we're going back to the way we have to such a focus years ago Y and the expectation that everyone from K to 12 would be following this or the expectations you would build your classes your lessons Okay I just wanted to understand that thanks you're welcome and then when we're talking about the pilots we're talking about money aren't we the curricul I'm sorry the
curriculum the purchase the purchase of new potential purchase yes um which we need to be because the Cycle's ending for the agreement that we have yeah so we would be looking at the same so yeah I want to be really clear so uh one of the things that happened when uh my first year in this position after the deficit was working with the state and really figuring out how to best must um have line
items in your budget that are fixed and the best way for us to do that is the leasing piece of it and so we spent a lot of time talking with Sean Cronin who at the time was our DLS uh DLR DLS remember I don't know which department Revenue DLR um he was our oversight seer in methan and so he worked really closely with Mr Goin and I that first year on looking at leasing
because you know you're going to lease for over a certain time and that's a fixed number in our budget so right now our fixed numbers in our budget are uh the devices we use the curriculum material that six-year lease we did a six-year lease on our curriculum material and software so that line is in our budget so it's G we're we're we're absolutely going to do the same thing and decide what is the proper it may not be six maybe it's four five six last
time seemed to be a really good number because you you can't roll over curriculum every two years uh that doesn't work you need time to actually use it um so we would absolutely be doing the same exact thing and going whatever we select we would be actually looking for a six-year lease or again the the length of lease is to be determined but it's not it wouldn't be a new line I guess what I'm trying to say is that line item already exists in our budget and it's fixed and we're looking
to continue it to be fixed over the course of time anywhere we possibly can which again is why in the spring we have to go to City Council and any leases have to be approved here but the real approval and I don't mean fake approval but like contracts have to be approved here but the money because we are leasing it and it's over time the city council has to approve of those leases for the iPads the Chromebooks and they've been doing that we've been going to them for years for those so we're now up for that new cycle so this year
we'll probably have four leases in front of them instead of two because our cycle ended you're welcome at this point we move on to objective two member Maxell I just have one question is the new are the new Ela programs um I don't know if I'm saying this right but are the new Compu are they computer-based or will we have physical materials both yes they're
all both there's none that aren't either I don't that didn't actually that was terrible I'm so sorry that was recorded every every yeah every every curriculum material right now in program is both It's a combination of some some hard materials uh consumables textbooks things like that and digital and the piloting teachers have both in front of them now um and their students will have access to them too so
we'll be able to give them a test run objective two okay objective two um is to reduce opportunity and achievement gaps between student groups to improve outcomes so for this quarter uh I want to give an update on the blue engine strategic planning and classroom observations the High decide sessions
have been facilitated grades 5 through 12 and collaborative problem solving the final phase for coaches so blue engine if you recall um I've mentioned that previously it has to do with our co- teing um in our inclusive teaching strategies and for the teaching pairs who are working with blue engine directly we're focusing on pairs at the high school um and so these teachers have gone through uh feedback Cycles they're visited regularly
by the blue engine consultant um they plan together they meet with um their um supervisors um and we're really trying to um give them every possible opportunity to become um the model pairs for the district and to work out um any snags they may have along the way so in addition to those pairs and the coaching that they're receiving there's another element um um which is
strategic planning for um administrators and because we're focused at the high school the administrative team has been supported um in developing a draft vision of what they think um inclusive teaching might look like so just kind of like with the common uh components of the lesson plan we're trying to articulate with some clarity what we're aiming for um when we have two teachers in one class setting um um and so
to facilitate the who should be doing what um and what's most effective and how can we reach all students and consider what they're producing in real time data to make instructional decisions in the moment instead of maybe next term um and so that's been going that's been going fairly well um and I think we're ma maximizing that partnership um with blue engine and they've been excellent in doing so um the teachers who have been working regularly with them have been enjoying the work and
find it fruitful as well um in terms of the eye toide sessions um they've been facilitating grades 5 through 12 for three cohorts of students who had been referred for substance use in fractions um and MPS secured funding to support facilitation of after school and weekend sessions of idde which has already begun uh in the collaborative problem problem solving is in its final phase for the coaches
and so through grant funding this training certifies uh MPS staff as CPS coaches so it's a train the trader model so we can build capacity over time so we're deep in that here's um PD that's been offered um with regards to objective
two any questions or discussion regarding objective two Vice chair so I just have one comment that um the co- teers at the high school I have had some feedback about uh from one particular teacher who's found it extremely beneficial um additionally what this particular teacher has been doing is she also teaches in the sub separate and so she's able to take what she's learning is in the co-taught classroom and
then bring it to the sub separate kids um and just pair it down a little bit and and actually bring the curriculum from the gened classroom into the sub separate which has been immensely beneficial to the students so I just wanted to say that it's it's really a great program and I'd like to see more of it especially bringing the sub separate teachers into that so that they can bring it to the kids who are learning a littleit a little bit
slower excellent that's great to hear yes we'd love to um extend this offering um and have those teachers who have been through the full coaching serve as almost trainers or resource at least for their peers as well so that's good to hear thank you Ma here it says the training sessions to certify MPS staff is it just teachers and how many teachers are being certified
no it's not just teachers it's um teachers counselors administrators um the staff as a whole the number of staff that are going through the final training 15 12 to 15 certifi certified to be the trainers of their peers yeah questions move
on to objective three okay objective three enhance Partnerships with students and families to increase connectivity engagement and belonging so I'd like to highlight um the update of the neas collaborative conference visit at the high school um a new um piece for our family engagement specialist Universal mental health screening gains case load monitoring data for
quarter 1 the MHS Road Show for grades seven and eight and upper schools clubs and activities so last time I brought up that NEOS um was visiting the high school for the collaborative conference visit um for which the high school staff did a lot of work um surveying um the staff uh looking for evidence against the standards that neas shares um to
ultimately come up with some areas that they might like to work on over the next couple of years um the point of this visit was Nas comes with their team they spend days um going through evidence visiting classrooms interviewing staff um and ultimately come up with where they think we fall against their standards and they too come up with recommendations for next steps over the next couple couple of years um so then they'll return and then
they'll be looking for the work or gains that have been made in those identified areas so the visiting team um at the point that I created this presentation we only had the preliminary report we got the final report about two hours ago um but they said that uh methan High School met the standard in learning culture professional practices learning support and learning resources
um and so both the collaborative team that joined or visited the high school from Nas and the high school staff themselves matched on um the areas that they wanted to focus on going forward um for the next couple of years so I'll be able to share um more at the next workshop and I'll excerpt from that finalized report um but the sneak peek it has to deal with um develop in a vision of the
graduate from the school Community um and the district as a whole um streamlining the way um curricular expectations and and content is documented um and then there's some smaller aspects about looking at scheduling and things of that nature but on the whole it was um an excellent visit they're very complimentary um and the high school prepared well so kudos to them um just note that our
family engagement specialist um who had been stationed um at the Branch Street Administrative Building and outside the F FRC and was greeting families who were enrolling in the district um and supporting um families that are engage in the elpac um had the idea that it might be better to be out in the schools is more of um uh a public facing um toward the community so that the community could see um her as a resource so
the family engagement specialist will be spending a day um in each of the grammar schools as well as Branch Street um to along with the alaon support families and hopefully um gain some more engagement and participation and meet fam's needs next we have some slides on the universal mental health screening gains um so this First shows anxiety 9
through 12 the high school so there's a lot of colors here um spanning from left to right the bars on the right are the most recent and so in the severe and moderate categories which are the two bunches to the left we would like to see a decrease over time as well with mild um and the no concern we would love to see the bars gaining so that's the case um
for the 9 through 12 anxiety screening next we have um depression 9 through [Music] 12 post-traumatic stress and post-traumatic stress upper school little too F there okay
um and then this is a new piece for us um we have tracked screener scores I know you've seen those bars um before the new piece is that um Mr Crocker has developed the uh case load monitoring um system so now um counselors are tracking which students in their case load are receiving services what types of services they're receiving
um and then are visiting the spreadsheet often um to chart progress monitoring so it gives us a measure uh I think member Keegan that you you had initiated this with one of your requests gives us a measure as to the effectiveness of the um the services that we're providing um so 95% of tier 23 Services resulted in social emotional mental health progress 81% in academic prog
progress 79% in attendance and 83 in behavioral progress um overall 213 referrals have been made to carace and cartwheel to augment the mental health services offered to students and now all counseling staff are contributing to that data set that supports the monitoring so they're participating in gathering um the data that's cited above okay and so
um in the past in terms of advertising what's available at methan high school we've always had a future freshman night um but it was for families that their student would be attending as a grade nine student within the next couple of months um what we wanted to do this year was to be um more Pro I guess proactive in our approach to showing students in grades seven
and eight um what there is to offer at methan high school and so Mr KET took the challenge um eagerly and um helped facilitate this student Le presentation so um every grammar school was visited um students did 95% of the talking um sharing all the opportunities that are available at the high school um for the for the sake of equity and opportunity that was a concern we had
was that not all students may be aware of how to become involved or the classes are programs to opt into until they arrived so we wanted everyone to have that that um leg up and then um there will be on February 6th uh a presentation to families who are wondering um what the high school is all about and that will be followed by tours and the opportunity to attend um the basketball game as well and then I noted there
the upper schools clubs and activities um stem clubs um will be run for upper school students youth participatory action club and the Horizon Club um the academic Bull teams have their first competition on this coming Wednesday couple days um and there's some PD that's um related to objective three
questions discuss just a ask for next time on the list of referrals out I know we've had a lot of talk about the cbhs in our partnership with Ley if we could see what we're utilizing them for and just include that stat on this next time that'd be appreciated sure you still have four minutes and
36 seconds I yield my time member Maxwell um I just have a question about the upper school clubs and activities are these the only clubs and activities that will be offered to them or will we have like other types of clubs they can join like these are these are brand new for this year which is why I'm highlighting them so these are in addition to any I got you yes thank you any other questions or
discussion I think we've covered the plan at this point we'll move on uh in the agenda [Music] to the little rangers preschool school year 2526 rates we need a motion in a second to approve the adjusted rates so mov second member a motion from Member uh shabila second from member daglia
discussion member dolio um I have a couple of things so I just did the math in my head and um when it said monthly charges it says 77490 but if you do the math 21525 and times it by four it comes out to be 861 um that's because all the weeks are not full five day weeks so the
monthly charge is fact I think it's 3.6 um weeks as the monthly week to account for vacations and other days where there's no school but that flat monthly fee is the same okay and second thing when it comes to our employees um how many employees send their kids to low ranges do we have like I don't have and how many of them
are par professionals that send their kids I don't have the exact number I can get that for you yeah uh and the reason why I bring that up is because with the increases and um some if it's pair of professionals especially it when you do five days of 268 uh per pair that's a lot coming out of a pair of brush paycheck and that to me is
very concerning again across the board um especially with everything else going up it's very hard for me to agree to a 5% increase right now um just because of the fact that especially with PA professionals where that's going to be a chunk out of their paychecks is right now I'm very concerned of agreeing to it remember shilia so I'm
two years removed from preschool but I remember writing the checks every month have we benchmarked our full day resident rate against comparable full day programs from like a A Private Preschool that we have I mean we've got a couple of them in town where do we where do we fall in that comparison so I don't I don't I'm gonna look for this year's but I know
in previous years um we are far below what any private competitors have right now and we do that on purpose to make sure that we can offer this um but there's I I would be hard pressed to find a full-time preschool for less than $800 for 700 a.m. to you know 4:30 right and I mean part part of that was for me to say that yes it was a leading question because I know I I
I we did it and I have plenty of friends who play paid well over, a month for preschool and it was not full day yeah so looking at these rates I mean I know that this is a limited program how many seats do we have in it or how many kids are in it on a ballpark should have the list in front of us I'm so sorry we don't have a list in front of us but 30 less than 30 there's two classrooms 30ish good enough yeah yeah I'm close I mean I think there's about
15 in each and the majority of the kids in those programs are teaching or administrative staff children I just don't want to say that there aren't any program assistants without checking and so we're we're below the the comparable rates and how many of these are oh Ryan already asked a question so I'm going to put that one aside I mean I get what member
baglio was saying about the increases and the deductions but we are we're already giving a big cut here you're not going to get a cheaper preschool and do understand that this goes into the revolving account that sustains the program right these are not preschool students that I that are part of our operating budget at all zero and that was going to be my next question is this a self-funding yes for the most part yes actually all of
it is out coming out of the revolving account so none of these kids are counted like they're not in our Infinite Campus as part of our students that are counted for enrollment for the foundation budget none of it th that group of preschool kids are the preschool kids at Branch Street that we have to educate right now and but for our absolute lack of open space in this District if we had additional is could we scale this program in future years and
add an extra class or two I mean that you know when we talked about Branch Street that this was a little bit of the hope that we could potentially have space to actually have you know paid preschools and open that up to our local students um so sure uh the space is definitely part of right no and I'm fully aware that we are now and understand too right this is actually at the high school for the C te Early Childhood Program so it it is there
for the students as the preschool program and it's phenomenal uh but it's also there for our high school students to then train right so our eec teacher oversees those three spaces right and oversees uh what is happening with the three worlds and also oversees uh a lot the whole program of what the high school students are going and doing their internships and none of these kids have additional Services correct you're right I'm going
to give the rest of my time to Ian thank you there there are 30 kids in the program zero of them uh from program assistant they're all look either staff they're either are teachers administrators I believe there's five Community member kids people who are not staff members um there was another answer another question asked and it's also self sustaining we'll hear
from Member wette then member Keegan then the vice chair remember Willet so just to give some context um this program the rate increases haven't been done for four years corre okay so in terms of the inflationary Globe that's been going on for the last four years of inflation going about 20% I think this is pretty manageable going forward the 5% if we approve it this evening are we going to be able to stabilize that you're not going
to be coming back to us next year with the 5% increase do we feel that confident factor in that I I don't I don't know if either one of us would say we're not going to come back to you because we have to self this is a self-sustaining program so depending on how much we're paying staff and how much materials and supplies cost but this is what we're putting out to parents for next school year that's what we need get approval for it tonight because I would be very concerned if it was just like
5% I will accept that but going forward if it was like 5% in that range for successive years that would be the only thing I would say excuse me as a caveat going forward is if it's marginal one two% increase I that's acceptable for me but if we go in a range of 5% this year then 5% next year and successive years then I would have a problem with that yeah I think part of our problem is we we didn't have a running increase right an incremental increase every year so that is something we potentially would
need to look at to maintain the increases of salaries and everything else so essentially we're trying to like stabilize the program and come to a yes an annual increase if we had to that would be uh less than certainly like a four-year jump that we'd have to do and I don't want to pigeon hole you of saying okay we promis 0% but if we go into successive years of 5% 5% then I'm like I'm very concerned about that Mr shaking his head so he's saying okay that's
yeah I think I I would never come to you and ask for another 5% increase okay that's just all right it's a lot yeah no and I appreciate that thank you Mr chairman yeah member Maxwell um so I think I was confused the Rangers the little rangers preschool is different than our preschool correct okay um little rangers is here at the high school two classrooms the front of the building has their own playground and part of our eec program okay and
you said that there's about 30 people 30 kids in that there's two two rooms yep 15 students in each room for you said that there's teachers administrators and other kids in that and you said five community members does that mean 25 kids are staff members correct I mean I I would like to just you know Echo what Dan said or maybe even say it louder but these I mean
these rates are in incredible as far as preschool goes I I know people who pay triple this so I um yeah I don't know I I'm just curious is it open to the public do teachers and staff get first the staff staff gets first dips any open seats and then available for the the public and this is open from 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. I don't know the exact hours do you
know Lisa yeah I believe we go till 4:30 yeah 4 it's 4:30 to make sure we cover the staff shifts as well I was just curious oh okay I was also curious I know that we are um and this could be totally wrong but I know that we're looking for like peer model students in our preschools is there any way to kind of maybe open up half of these slots to
I don't I don't know how you do it but like bring these kids in as perer models to our kids so so parents have the option for both uh and they opt for this one this one's also a full day so the peer model program isn't going to be 7 o' to 4:30 yeah we don't have the staff to you know it's a different run prr I just worry that you know as I understand that staff has kids and they need their kids taken care of but is if 25 kids
are staff's kids and only five are going out to community members you know I don't know that's concerning I feel like it should be open to everybody and if I don't know can the teachers kids go to the preschool at the Branch Y oh they can yeah oh okay Vice chair um just doing the math um staff members are paying about
$4.50 an hour for this program and community members are paying about $5 an hour that is the best babysitting rate I've ever seen in this day and age so in my opinion these are low not High um and I I could see them going higher honestly like this is incredible pricing so um even when my kids were little and I
mean my oldest is 21 I wasn't paying five bucks an hour for day for a babysitter or for daycare or for preschool so to me this is amazing so I am fully supportive of this any other discussion remember Donovan just really quickly um I think it's great too almost wants almost makes me want to start a second family just to take advantage
of these rates but um that is on record someone had to say it it's just remarkable to me that we do it and I know that it's a great draw for our it's how we keep some teachers because it really is a great recruitment my question is is there a wait list and maybe when you come back if we can get more information we're all very intrigued but I'm grateful we have it and I can't believe we didn't have any
increases over the last four years so um thank you for everyone who's part of this last I know we have had weight lists and last year we did have a weight list so it's just as parents right they can sign up in February some things change by the time they have to commit and give their first payment sometimes those things change in the weight list uh missua who is the eec teacher uh will monitor all of that when she sends information out yep all those in
favor I I opposed n we have uh the no vote from Member daglio we'll now move on to an update from assistant superintendent gosin regarding the transportation bid just really quick we did go out to bid um we received four bids two of them I would consider complete uh the lowest bid is still about a million dollars higher than um I projected for next year so we are working with the consultant to look at
Alternatives and ways to um tighten the belt on those uh we do have a a meeting with the transportation committee on Friday so we'll have more few after that Transportation committee I did speak to the consultant this afternoon he's going to have he has some ideas that he's going to share with the committee on Friday and uh we'll go from there but I just want to give you the heads up we'll have that on the agenda I think on the 10th yeah yeah am
Doo I just have one question for the the transportation committee um to look at um I was actually talking uh to member Donovan about this um one thing I would like the committee to look at is extending the walking distance or drop off um I know we looked at that in the past to cut down Transportation costs I think this is the year especially with the governor's budget that came out and the impact it's going to do on schools
that we need to look at every corner of cutting um so I would like to request the transportation committee to kind of look at that as well can I clarify what you just said yes you said extend are you asking us to reduce you said extend am I am I how far the walking distance extend the walking I'm sorry okay member Maxwell um when
we take that into consideration I would like to remind you that I live under a mile from our school but we don't have sidewalks so we have to be very cautious of that yes when we presented it in the past it was uh we followed the law and presented that to the school committee I don't know three years ago or so um but there are obviously exceptions to that if there's no Safe Way for the students to get to school we have to bust them on
those streets if I remember that correctly so that added some complication to Methuen because there are several areas that don't have sidewalks safely for the students to get to the school on certain roads so yes that will all be in consideration but thank you for bringing that any other questions if not we'll move move on uh business other business from the committee I'll invite member Donovan
to begin discussion regarding a more effective review of school data through school committee reporting yeah thank you and I I'll be as brief as possible so we we discussed last week um informally our last time we met about why we're getting what we're getting in our packets and how it could be changed and improved so I spent some time thinking about how we could be more purposeful and meaningful in um collecting
our D um asking for the data looking at it and how it can streamline into our most important responsibility the budget as a school committee so I have a couple ideas I'm not quite sure how this would work out but I'm hoping um it might be it's it's worth a discussion I would be proposing that some of the information that we get in every packet including the resid numbers and the um suspensions I would
think would be more meaningful to us if we got them on a trimester basis so we could look at the data across the board and see any Trends and see any needs that we need to address and how it could relate to budgetary needs I'm questioning if at some I'm so sorry I'm so sorry to do this but this topic actually isn't on the hosted agenda so um we may have
to host it for the February 10th the discussion what she just brought up to discuss on the on the February 10th meeting it was okay on the sheet that mayor Bard has to discuss it um but I just looked at the PO I don't think it's on the agenda posted I just don't want us to get into a discussion that we shouldn't be having yeah so I think for the purpose of the other business section I think just the update from Member dunov 100% was appropriate I just didn't want us to start getting
into a discussion because that is certainly makes it clear about what we're going to put on the agenda for February 10th okay so I can throw out my suggestions and we can maybe have a discussion so I I think it would be more meaningful for us to take a look at what is going on in a bigger chunk and that could make our meetings a little less lengthy um oh this is all important data some we
we could say maybe let go of like the cell phone information we know we that we used that data for a significant purposeful reason did implementing that new program lead to a reduction in cell phone related Behavior disciplinary issues definitively yes maybe we can put that away now and move on to something else um so that's what I'm proposing and then that long list of
openings and um vacancies in our staffing very important I think we could probably get just the general numbers and rather than look at the vacancies by each district I'm really interested in a classroom vacancy how are we covering those classrooms that's not clear to us and I know we've had a couple of surprises but if you have a classroom teacher who you know who left to whatever reason how are we providing instruction and supervision I would love to
be able to see who's covering that class is it a BBE um what does that mean to us in a budget sense do we need to hire hire more BBE so um there's that as well and finally um Mr golin provides us with a general budget report each month there's seven items starting with professional sta salaries ending with Transportation I think it would be really meaningful if and this will
create more work and something I don't really want to do given what's going on now I think I already figured it out you did okay but it would be awesome to see where we are in spending now compared to this time last year and then have an understanding of why um what got me thinking about this when when Miss boac showed us that what we spent 64 $4,000 in a month's period over than
what we had spent before and I think having this information would provide us with with the data we need to really take a good hard look of what our needs are um I know next week next time we meet we are going to get a presentation on the efficacy of those eight positions we new positions we approved last budget um the rist and the bright which we asked for well we had
concerns about discipline issues Behavior mental health issues and these were specific to those concerns that will help us decide is this something we really need um in addition I would love to see enrollment numbers for our early childhood because we've created I don't know how many new classrooms since I got here right like stuff we have no control over that impacts our budget um so I hope you can um think about this and we can talk
about it some more but the whole goal is to have purposeful meaningful data to drive our budget decisions thank you well I could present good news and then the chair can tell me which way to to go so the that agenda was posted appropriately with the topic it was the copy and the packet that you received that didn't have it that means that the agenda was posted with the item on it uh so if you
want to have the discussion tonight I guess it would be up to the chair to tell I think that is appropriate because it was posted appropriately the packet uh unfortunately just we didn't copy that that final agenda that I signed as long as it's properly posted publicly we're safe yep have at it guess yeah any uh comments questions discussion members Shia I'm
in let's do it I think anything we can do to be more practical and purposeful and what we're doing is great and not being here till 10 o'clock going round and round in circles is even better so you've got my vote let's let's make it happen nice chair I also am in full support it makes more sense to have data that reflects the budget and how it's impacting us and I think having that
data public would be super helpful to the people at large to know where we're spending our money why we're spending it and how it's different from year to year um so I think it's fantastic let's do it anyone else I'll Echo that I couldn't agree more uh so uh lastly uh for other business does anyone else first of all have anything to share member Willette I
mean obviously I'll defer to you but the governor's budget it was a absolutely ugly and brutal display of having total ignorance of what's Happening than the local districts um it's very disconcerning what the especially when her budget as a whole was 7.4% increase as a whole and the budget that was uh going to be presented by us reflecting the Chapter 70 module increase and
I'll defer to you on it but I need to make a statement for the record uh very sombering number that was uh advertised by the governor I don't know there's a massive disconnect I've been saying it for the last two years um and obviously we our Gateway Community we have a limitation of taxes that we can approve our Reliance is upon the state government and I don't know how
you can reconcile the student Opportunity Act and saying full funding where you give the Chapter 70 number that was presented to us with all the needs that have been postco and also an influx with majority minority District the elll the uh profoundly disabled Community um all those factors and again we we're talking about the budget and and prioritizing the budget and I give
kudos to the the prior school committee is that this the student to teacher ratio for the regular Ed went down to a low Mark of 20 students so that's reflective of utilizing your your budget and having 20 kids to a classroom and that would improve the test scores across the board when we looked at last year's budget I think we had to increase class sizes by
25% I can't even imagine what the class sizes are going to be and I looked at the prior policies and they said optimal I'm being sarcastic about it optimal was 25 to 28 kids to me optimal is never 25 to 28 kids so that is something that you're talking about infrastructure improvements and the te and community colleges and and Free Ride for
certain activities across the state and the millionaires tax I'm not seeing the dividends into our schools because if you look at just the the basis element of we had 20 kids to a classroom and it was working and we're making gains in scores and now we're moving to 25% increase in the prior uh budget that we approved that impacts us and going forward uh another 25% increase maybe up to 25
to 28 kids per classroom how does that provide uh education to our kids um so I'm very concerned about that I just wanted to say that for a record thank you any other business can I U mayor may I go back just quickly just so I have a task I'm a task person so uh it seems that the committee is in favor of uh sort of re defining their reporting out and the data that we're using in our monthly meetings is that what I'm hearing yes
um so I think uh for me a task member Donovan it seems that you have some of the ideas so maybe our staff could meet with you and talk about some of those levels of specificity so that we can bring them back to the committee is everybody in favor of that okay I just want to make sure what our next we kind of ended that I just want to make sure what our next step is that we'll uh there's I think different parties uh member Donovan that would be involved in some of the ideas that you
have so that would be helpful for us to go through over the coming weeks okay great thank you so much lastly I just want to mention briefly that today uh Health Inspectors from the city of Methuen uh stopped by the timy for a reinspection of the school I was able to join them for that uh following the deep clean a couple of weeks back as well as the installation of additional rodent control measures uh we've seen at that school uh initially
late fall last year um was the and I'm just going to use Frank language it was the worst of the schools in terms of the uh cleanliness and rodent issues and I want to acknowledge uh the fact that uh they have made great strides and significant improvements there um I want to give a shout out to Doug and the custodial staff as well as Mr reev and
his team uh they are clearly on top of things and of course there's still uh more work to do there's always uh areas uh for improvement but I think uh if we look at where the timy was late November early December throughout the month of December uh we now have I think a blueprint for corrective action when these issues arise uh hopefully they don't arise again again in the future but if they do you know this is
I think a tremendous blueprint uh for us and also demonstrates uh ways to make I think sustainable progress going forward and once we get the report uh we'll make that available uh publicly but I just want to give a shout out to the folks of the timony uh for the work that's being done there from a facility standpoint uh so with no uh further business to discuss we need a motion in a second to adjourn the workshop business session of the methan school committee for January
27 2025 and enter into executive session so move second motion from Member shabila second is from Member daglio discussion so uh I going to briefly uh share this for the record pursuant to Massachusetts general laws chapter 38 section 21 A3 to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation if an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the bargaining or litigation position of the public body and
the chair so declares I'll make that declaration now this is regarding Unit A Unit C nurses and custodians we will not reconvene into open session at the conclusion of the executive session I'll ask the clerk to call the role member daglio yes member Donovan yes member Keegan yes member Maxwell yes member shab IA yes member wette yes
mayor borgon yes so uh the Open session of our meeting is now adjourned and we'll enter into executive session the time is 7:51 p.m. good night Muran
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