##VIDEO ID:dFu649z8pUA## e e e your s e e e e e e Act for e where is joh for don't know Sean here no no uh he's on his way are we good or Sam I have NOA yeah no no no I think we're good Sam are we is U Miss Panini on okay okay I think we can get started you guys ready good evening and welcome to the middleb school committee meeting for today Thursday January 9th uh please join me in the pledge Allegiance so just before we get started please bear with us we're trying some uh remote participation tonight and we're not exactly sure how well that's going to go so uh first order of business is we're going to recognize the oako homeowners association scholarship fund yes so welcome John verbage please um bring anyone with you that we can recognize tonight feel free to join we we'd love to have all your names so we can properly thank the oako homeowner scholarship fund who this fall put on a yard sale as they do every October this year's yard sale grossed over $41,000 and this very generous group every year donates that money to Middleboro seniors residents of Middleboro who are graduating high school and pursuing um further education so with that I'll turn it over to Mr verbage and we'll go from there thank you uh good evening and thank you superintendent Lions and the committee for our invitation tonight I'm John Burbage the elected president the oako homeowner scholarship fund we're a registered nonprofit charity that operates within the uh boundaries of the oako community along with my fellow officers Dave little my vice president uh Kathy shakoy our secretary and Linda laruso our Treasurer uh we're proud to represent the residents of Oak Point all who are members of our nonprofit as there are no dues in case you didn't hear we had quite a year in 2024 our annual fabulous fall yard sale neted $39,000 and we were able to gift the sun to be graduating class of 2025 in Middleboro $72,500 in scholarship and toolships.com 64,000 and 72,500 consecutively we couldn't do this without the generous support of our oako residents of the local businesses of Middleboro residents and you our local government it's a tough act to follow for sure and we have ambitious plans for the year ahead I will ask in a moment for my fellow officers to comment if they'd like but in case they defer let me say that my new vice president is em eminently qualified having literally moved tons of furniture by my side heading into the last yard sale our secretary is a keen organizer who pulled together our postgraduate graduation meet and greet for the first time where we bring the kids that receed the awards to Oak Point where the people who raise the money get a chance to see what their work does uh we didn't have that meet and greet for 3 years so it was fantastic that Kathy was able to bring that back she's also responsible for really mustering and deploying a literal Army of volunteers for the yard sale and I can say that Kathy's very pleased that our beneficiary schools sent at least 20 kids over to help us with the setting that up and dismantling this year um our Treasurer has taken advantage of the CD rates that have been happening during this inflationary cycle and we got an extra $33,000 in interest in this past year she's locked in some great rates for the year that we're we're in right now because some of the money we've raised we won't need for a little while and she's starting to wear out her check signing hand because the class of 24 recipients are starting to pour in their transcripts as we speak I think we've received six transcripts and one tool ship claimed so far so with the class of 2024 this charity that started with a gift of $2,000 to the class of 2000 has now dispersed over $400,000 to Middleboro graduates thank you again we're on to we're on to our drive for the class of 2026 I just want to haven't been a a high school teacher and administrator I just want to say you should be so proud of the kids who showed up to help us they um there were I think around 26 was the number on um the setup day and the takeown day and they were there to work they were a little disappointed we sent them home earlier than they expected because they were there to work so um they were fun they were hardworking and uh just very positive and upbeat and cooperative and you all should be so proud of them and Mr Branan you should be too he did a great job getting the word out we're hoping next year we get even more kids but it was awesome and our community was so impressed with them so it was it was great I want to thank you for [Applause] that sir before you you go you said you've donated over $400,000 since you started we raed close to 500 now because this this award is 72,500 hav't dispersed yet but once once the 24 has claimed their Awards will have dispersed about $415,000 want to say that again $415,000 in scholarships from the oako homeowners association yes sir and $72,000 just this year yes sir thank you doesn't seem like enough it comes out to our yard sale I will say please mark your calendars the yard sale is going to be on October 4th the first Saturday in October we look forward to seeing you there thank you thank you thank you uh so next up is the middleb Little League um they've been doing maintenance on Michael's field yes so I'll invite Mr Benson to assist me with this important recognition through another important Community partner thank you very much um one of the most enjoyable things that I've got to do since uh joining the school committee has been helping grow the relationship between the district and uh one of our best Partners which is Middleboro Little League um for those who don't know uh a handful of the fields that we use uh for Middleboro little league are on our uh Public School lands and um just as a natural thing as the seasons go on the maintenance um kind of becomes a necessity and uh this year working with Middleboro Little League uh and actually going back to the spring last year um they uh offered to step up and help handle some of the maintenance and tonight in attendance is President Rd Voss uh vice president Chris Yule and directors Jay Davis and Jonathan and um director frus um would you like to U provide a little update for us all right for those who don't know me I'm Jonathan frus we've done a little bit of work in the last couple years on the fields specifically at Michaels we had one of the Dugout roofs come off in a storm that was repaired and donated we had paint supplies they were donated by Wilmont Murphy's painting and power washing we also had Leo's Towing and uh that was directed by Dan Nichols and a bunch of the community helping out a lot of volunteers so we're in the process of redoing the Little League fields in addition we'd like to work on the Michaels field in order to do that we need to do some power can get some machines out there get rid of some of the issues right now we've got constant drainage issues we're getting runoff that's eroding the fields it's washing into the driveway it makes it so it's not very safe uh we rake it a lot so we'd like to take care of it and give back to the town uh we continue to work with the school uh this year we're going to be looking to do some over seaing we're going to look to get some more stone dust on the fields and just keep working on those fields improving the quality that's all thank you thank you thank you anything else Chris no I just thank you very much to everybody involved I I know a lot of Manpower went in so thank you to Middle bar Ling thank you thank you all right next up is public comment people are have three minutes each please state your name and your address and if you have a written statement please email it to us so we have it for our records good evening Ashley F and treasure Gonzalez we're representing the mkg PTA tonight we just wanted to make a public um sincere thank you we had an inclusive holiday event in the beginning of December um even miss just chart off actually came and hosted our Hanukkah room so we just wanted to make sure that we publicly thank miss chard off all of the mkg staff the community members that helped the middleb high school interns that came to help us and the mkg parents recently we were spotlighted in the state PTA newsletter for being one of the most inclusive events of the holiday season um we featured dwali Hanukkah K Quanza Christmas am I forgetting any I think that's Chinese New Year so it's been it's been a long month um so we just wanted to publicly thank everyone it took a lot of hands to make this event work um our students went home with drel and Chinese New York coins as well as ornaments and canaras and and New Traditions to share with their families so we just want to thank you thank you anyone else all right discussion items reports from school committee members uh Sue are you here sorry I wasn't up oh I'm sorry one moment so miss CN Bridget CN um hi I just wanted to talk I know that there was a incident occurred at one of the elementary schools that has been a cause for concern and I wanted to preface this by stating this isn't about this is not about whether anyone believes that transgendered children don't deserve to be treated with respect or kindness or inclusivity first and foremost they are children and every child deserves to be treated that way we do not have to share each other's beliefs to teach that this is not simply about a teacher making a mistake mistake in reading a book not aligned with the curriculum this is about a repeated pattern of the teacher intending to act as an influencer to teach her personal ideologies to students without parental knowledge of which cannot be undone we know this is the intent based on her public social media pages in which she shares her intention in the alignment with Nea to Hash teach the truth on a variety of personal beliefs because she made it clear what those ideologies are and in quotes she pledges to Hash teach the TR truth because by not doing so is deception it is does not matter what the differing beliefs are political religious gender sexuality or sports teams these conversations can and do exist in schools and some are covered in curriculum but a good teacher will do so without bringing in their personal bias my son's history teacher did a phenomenal job at this covering a highly polarizing election in a way that sparked curiosity and critical thinking while remaining within the curriculum this led to a great conversation with my and and when he we asked him if he knew his teacher's political alignment he said not a clue this is about knowing exactly what the district's position is on this particular topic because one belief was silenced when a student was dress coded for wearing one opinion While others are free to wear an opposing belief we know that the superintendent stated that and I quote the dividing line for her is when all children do not feel welcome here in middlebar while simultaneously taking action to make people who believe that they're only only two genders were made to not feel welcome and that they must remain silent on this belief we know through court documents and the district attorneys defended this decision by stating that a two-gender t-shirt was vile so we know that the district's position that families or child that holds that belief is considered vile we have been Guided by the superintendent to bring these concerns to school committee but public comment remains an echo chamber requests have items placed on the agenda are routinely shot down by the chair without good cause or or refusing to allow committee members to bring up topics forcing them to place it on the agenda it is time for the district to take this issue head on to model that discourse on controversial topics is not only possible but it's also how we model to children that we can hold different beliefs and still be respectful it's time to establish a book policy with parent input to teach staff the skills on how to appropriately handle these Topics in the classroom without bringing in their personal ideology or or bias or overcorrecting in any One Direction by silencing any other belief a true leader would guide this entire process minutes is up thank you leam m Shadow I'm just going to continue from where Bridget left off so this is a unique situation where we understand very clearly that the teacher's intent is to push her ideologies because she post posted it to our 39,000 followers were any of the following books read like elephants are not Birds she is she God made boys and girls are even Jesus in my agenda this is done so under the guise of diversity equity and inclusion and it's done under the premise of a teacher teaching compassion and empathy through social emotional learning it does so in a biased way and it does not include all sides it does this by repeatedly exposing children to one position while excluding the others when parents are critical of Dei agendas and are Vigilant withal programs this is why this teacher actively raised money through the sales of merchandise that state the proceeds go to her classroom so she solicits cash donations and has an Amazon wish list through her website while this is resourceful and offers our students opportunities um to have incredible books that they may not otherwise have it leaves it to the teacher's discretion to determine what to include and what to exclude and there's no oversight there are policies in place around gifts and contributions that must be officially accepted by the school committee and the policies around gifts and gifts for school use that indicate receipts must be kept at this point it needs to be vetted how these funds are being used and whether These funds donations and solicitations should be coming through the school committee for approval if students have to get approval for candy cane fund raises why not this or was it private privately approved by the chair this leaves us with other two situations that require attention from all other stakeholders how do we determine that the criteria is what the criteria is for the books in the school libraries and the classrooms that are not purchased directly by the school Under the curriculum director and how does the school monitor what is being read by the students or to the students that does not ve into a lane of indoctrination of a teacher's personal ideology I would also like for a disc discussion item to be added to the school committee to discuss their own practices such as routinely denying parents request to the agenda not responding to public comment three minute public comment sharing of private student information with a chair and anything else inherited from previous School committees that may no longer suit the needs of this Committee in the school Community not under the superintendence report it is time that we actively engage in public discourse that will move this District in a direction that best suits this community as a whole rather than the direction that we are being dragged by poor leadership determined to impose an agenda that may not be fit for this community they're our kids they're not your [Applause] kids um my name's Ashley Whitmore I'm on Plymouth Street in middle row um I currently have two sons who attend hbb I want to preface this by saying I did email everybody on the school committee board board and um superintendent requesting that the the item be added and I was told it it didn't need to be because our situation was handled with it has been added but I do feel like I need have something to say um my child came home and informed me that many books were read for the entire month regarding sexual orientation gender identity and transitioning children to his classroom speaking to another parent we found out videos were also shown he recalled one being titled Calvin that highlights a young girl who threw out says she feels like a boy and finally changes her gender because her brain and her heart told her to this type of language can be very confusing for young minds he was uncomfortable asking why this was being discussed I spoke to his teacher who defended her position with it only being one book to show the classroom that everyone should be accepted as they are because she has a very strong group of lgbtq kids in her class however I also reported that had emboldened this group of students to taunt other students waving Pride Flags in their face in the classroom which was disrespectful and distracting um I was shocked that these books were being read to 10-year-olds in a public school setting and without any approval I reached out to other parents and asked if their kids had mentioned similar stories a mother confirmed her son was in the same teacher's class A few years prior and the same exact situation occurred we are here four years later with the exact thing happening and no recourse I immediately emailed the principal the assistant principal and all school committee members in the superintendent that evening at the time I thought I would get a response back quite quickly considering the lawsuit the mbell public school system is already involved in I received a response Monday morning from Mr sandborne he addressed my concerns and quite honest ly agreed with how inappropriate this was he assured me multiple times this topic is not in the C curriculum for our kids and there is no book policy given there is no o oversight or policy she took the opportunity using her influencer status to accept donations to get these books my son's classroom was moved that day at my request I do feel like Mr sborn did what was in his realm of power at the moment but I'm here to ask now what will this just be swept under the rug again this shouldn't be a topic of discussion whether it's in a casual conversation a book being read to the class these sensitive subjects are up to us as parents to discuss with our children when we feel as though the time and place is appropriate if at all right now there are policies in place that parents must opt in for PG-13 movies but a rogue teacher can Implement her personal beliefs into a classroom on the pretense of inclusivity this teacher proudly boasts on public social media Pages hashtagging read band books teach truth politics and religion are not to be discussed in school but this subject seems taboo to speak against it's highly inappropriate and feels like an abuse of power from someone who has our children more than we do during the week I have lost trust in this school system as a whole knowing that we have overlooked such a topic with no remediations as I stand here tonight I'm asking that a subcommittee be formed to work with us parents and stakeholders to create a policy curriculums are designed as a guide for what is essential to teaching and learning teaching kids to be fluent readers mathematicians and writers not discussing all of which I've stated tonight it's disrespectful to us as parents who are our kids primary Educators in life lastly this ideology that's being presented to our children by one educator all is wrong it doesn't belong in our school syst thank you my name is Kimberly French um I'm here as a parent of two daughters who are both alums of the Middleboro school system I'm also the president of a local nonprofit that Partners closely with students right now here in the high school and I'm also the chair of another town committee but I'm here speaking as a parent and concerned citizen tonight um when I had children children one of my top priorities was that they could be whoever they wanted and I would support them to be the best version of their authentic selves even if that didn't line up with who I was and the choices I'd made when my older daughter was in elementary school we bought all their clothes in the boys apartment because that's where we could find the colors comfort and the images of wolves and dogs that they loved on the first day of middle school my daughter came home in tears kids had made fun of them and how they dressed we made some changes but when it came time for high school my daughter just could not imagine continuing with that group so they enrolled in a smaller public agricultural High School which wasn't as good an academic fit but having teachers who were warm and welcoming to my daughter was crucial teachers who set a strong example that bullying was unacceptable and differences were to be celebrated made School bearable for my daughter even when all students weren't fully accepting this journey has not always been easy now 31 and a powerful champion of disability rights my daughter is non-binary and queer and has a long-term time partner who is transgender and Hospital chaplain I'm very proud of both of them and love them very much when I heard about the upset over this book in the classroom I read it and I liked it and I te reached out to my daughter to see what they thought and here's what they said it is crucial to have lgbtq content included in the curriculum it helps queer youth grow up knowing they're accepted by their teachers and students and it helps straight and Sith You Youth develop an understanding of the diversity in the world and not bully them lack of queer representation really damages the self-esteem of queer and trans folks and makes it harder for us to imagine a life for ourselves taking actions like reading stories with lgbtq characters is an important Way teachers can create that welcoming environment and I am proud that Miss beard and so many and other teachers like her are part of the Middleborough school system I couldn't agree more one of our biggest challenges and responsibilities as parents teachers School staff Community leaders and myself as a person of faith is to give our children what they need to be their best authentic selves whoever that is and teach them to respect all the different kinds of people they want will encounter in the world I urge our school leaders leadership to make sure there is room for curriculum materials like this book Calvin that honor and include all students thank [Applause] you hi my name is Katie archabald uh when I heard about the fuss I read the book I thought it was a sweet and compassionate story and I believe that compassion is a good thing and that hysteria is not [Applause] anyone else I wasn't going to say anything but as a who is somebody who is transgender I thought I should say something my name is can we have your name please yes my name is Alexander cook I have recently legally changed my name to such I'm very proud of that having grown up in the middle World public school system I understand and the challenges that LGBT children face and I am glad that there are communities like the STW in this school and other communities and the other schools and I appreciate anything that any teacher can do can help create a more welcoming environment for every student because every student deserves a safe and welcoming learning environment to discover themselves and discover their interests and their passions and who they want to be and nobody should be able to tell them that they can't be somebody thank you hi my name is Tanya nusen I'm the executive director of mass equality a Statewide lgbtq advocacy organization um and I've been asked by the author um to share some words from her I also wanted to share this um image from the book just so that we all know what we're talking about we are talking about a children's picture book showing children joyfully celebrating and playing with a friend that is what this book is about it is about acceptance it is about love against a child who is part of a demographic that is bullied targeted highly prone to homelessness suicide and a variety of other risks this is the this is the that the author of the book one of the authors of the book Vanessa Ford asked me to share today my name is Vanessa Ford and I am the co-author along with my husband of Calvin an award-winning book about a transgender boy and his acceptance from home and school it has come to my attention that Calvin and more importantly the teacher who read Calvin are being targeted and you'll likely hear public comment tomorrow night frankly I am often in touch with school committees around the country and now it has come home I too live in Massachusetts I'm writing today to let you know what it feels like to have something that represents your life your child and your family targeted what's more I was a classroom teacher for 14 years and I cannot imagine the impact this will have on the teacher in question Calvin is the opposite of hatred Calvin is the story of what happens when a child is is affirmed and loved by the community he lives in Calvin thrives and is happy isn't that what we all want for our children unfortunately too many of our nation's transgender and non-binary students are at risk of bullying hatred and in a rapidly Rising percentage suicide why because people like those targeting this teacher and this book do not see them as human and are AC ly working to suppress their existence by removing books as the authors of Calvin and parents to a transgender child one of our goals was to humanize the experience these children go through as they explore who they are in this world and how they want to be seen see Calvin see our child and then ask others to look in the mirror and imagine parts of their identity being called dangerous and being suppressed the politicizing of our children and our teachers at the expense of their safety and wellbeing has to stop our hope is that Calvin is able to find his way to those who need to hear his story and are thankful to all those here who are here to support Calvin the teacher and the freedom for our children to learn about the world around them thank you thank you anyone else for public comment thank you now go to reports from school committee members Sue can we hear you we have her in the call and we have a signal Sue are you muted [Music] sure than um my name is Apollo Korea I live at s Maple Road um I graduated Middleboro High School in 2020 fabulous Year by the way um I was drum major in the marching band a president of the GSA club and I am transgender my time in this in these metaphorical Halls was spent like any other heading to class studying using all the ink in the library printer but along with this I was also going through what every other adolescent goes through I was discovering who I am I can say with utmost certainty that I would not be standing before you today if I did not have the support I had back then transition is a lifelong process it begins with the Curiosity to look inside yourself to ask yourself what do I need to do to live the most authentically in the book Calvin asked himself this very question he engages in what's called a social transition this is when a transperson begins to set the proper accommodations and B boundaries with their peers ensuring that they are at least referred to properly this may not be substantial at first but when looking at current data is imperative to hold these life-saving measures currently I'm a researcher at the Massachusetts Commission on lgbtq youth in our work we found that almost four in 10 transgender students 38.2% reported seriously considering suicide more than three times the rate of non-lgbtq students and that trans gender students are 1.6 times more likely to attempt suicide when compared to other lgbtq youth this risk is heightened by current political climate that is ever so poised against us 2024 alone saw almost 700 proposed anti-trans laws across the country our kids should not have to worry about this within the story when Calvin shares this piece of himself with his friends he has met with the sheer curiosity that is inside each child as they explore this development and quickly establish these new rules continuing on with their next adventure that's really all there is to it so that's what brings us to why why should a book like this and many others often too put into question be available for students to access in the classroom and that reason is empathy by using youth like Kelvin as a prime example students are shown that their feelings about themselves are valid and should be respected and that if students were to encounter such a person they would approach them with kindness and understanding transgender people have always been here and are not going anywhere and we deserve to have a community that uplifts and supports us so please if your child wishes to use a different name dress different or anything I'd encourage you to explore these feelings with them love them cherish them before you sadly and unfortunately have to put the wrong name on their gravestone thank you I think we'll Circle back and get catch Su on the end uh Jess you want to go uh sure um usually I use this time to share congratulation messages or to to highlight wonderful things that I was able to participate in and and see students shining um I'm struggling for words I will say that I don't want to not acknowledge all of the things that the students in this District did in November and December and uh the PTA inclusive holiday gathering was fantastic all of the smiles and the joy that that brought was just wonderful um the the winter shows uh holiday concerts all of those things where everyone came together to celebrate what the students were doing and to include everyone in those activities and um I think that's just what I'm thinking about right now and I'm going to leave it at that so thank you thank you Jess Chris uh I don't really have much else to add I've been um contacted by a number of people in the community and Beyond and it's been similar to what we've heard this evening thank you marsy are we just doing reports from school committee okay um I just want to bring up to the committee that in the past two meetings that were cancelled we do have consent agenda items that are required to be voted on by the committee we as a committee need to start following our policies um because we did not vote to consent for any of those and those were unilaterally just signed off by the chair but we really need to start following our policies because we cannot start picking and choosing What policies we follow on this committee so masi I uh I signed those consent agendas following a past practice that's been in place for at least the last 10 years so past practice isn't our policy though would you like to make a motion right now to allow the chair to sign sign the consent agenda in the event of a canceled meeting I I agree that I think that we can do that but what my issue is is say right now everything on those consent agendas are benign if something came up that was controversial the public has a right to hear it and that's the only issue I have with that it has to be brought before the public all right again I was following past practice well two wrongs don't make a right it's it past practice wasn't the correct way to do it it was wrong we don't it's not in the policy that you have the right to do that would you like to make an agenda to fix I make a a motion to fix that right now fix what allow the chair to sign the consent agenda in the event of a canceled meeting again I would what I would like is I for any some of these things are totally fine if there's things on here that could possibly be any sort of controversy or the public wants input on I don't I can't unilaterally say that going forward everything could be just signed off by you it's not me it's the chair the chair well you're currently the chair all right thank you zek I have a comment before we're not taking comments right now thank you it is a discussion item no it's it's not for your discussion it is a discussion item you tell me Miss Cur I'm in charge of this meeting you told me I'm going to ask Mr discussion items this is a discussion item I'm not saying that now this is a discussion item not for the public practice of it is not for the public please sit down it is a discussion item you said that we should accept m c you're only allowed to speak if you recognize by the Speak by the chair you have not been recognized so not following the policies of please sit down Miss Cur to allow public to come up and discuss items that are discussion please sit down Miss Cur Zeke um I have I have uh nothing to report thank you Ed how we doing great good so firstly for parents looking to enroll their kids into the mech the prek lottery is now open for children in movar who will be aged four by September 1st 2025 the lottery selection is scheduled for February 13th 2025 for the hbb and mkg the American Legion donated hand knitted winter hats for any student who needed one the pta's pie and cookie fundraiser raised $1,979 funding this year's field trips top selling classrooms participated in pieing the principal assistant principal and SRO during lunches the Scholastic Book Fair wrapped up successfully for the mkg two recent events that were highly successful a holiday shop that allowed students to purchase gifts for their families and a holidays around the world evening events that celebrated diverse Traditions a special thanks to the PTA staff and community volunteers for their support for the Nichols Middle School February PTA meeting will be on February 4th 2025 at 6m EST parents and Guardians are encouraged to attend and lastly for MHS the key club's e to heat fundraiser raised over $1,000 to assist families in need within the community Key Club thanks everyone who contributed contributed through donations orders or spreading the word and looks forward to doubling or even tripling this goal next year College Planning night for the class of 2026 the first workshop for juniors and their families took place last night at 6 p.m. here in the MHS Auditorium and is also available for viewing on the midaro educational television YouTube channel some recognition and achievements Jack dhy will represent MHS at the Hugh O'Brien youth leadership conference in June winter athletes were commended for their dedication and team spirit engineering and computer science students LED focus groups for the class of 2029 to support their transitions to high school the programs of studies course offerings for the upcoming Academic Year are available for review in the program of studies students are encouraged to plan their schedules for the next year by Consulting the guide and their cons and their counselors other notable events are the masc unified Bachi tournament with the Special Olympics on Massachusetts with the Special Olympics of Massachusetts on January 25th and clubs like the creative writing Club the yes club and GSA continue to meet weekly and that is all I have thank you Ed yeah no problem all right superintendent report okay thank you Mr chair um we have several it items on the report this evening I'm just going to pull those items up um we're going to have an mcast presentation we have some teachers and several administrators here to talk about um our results from last year's tests um we're going to talk about the tiered Focus monitoring process that we underwent last school year and received our final report and findings we're going to talk about literature guidance and communication as well well as our MPS Med delegation procedure which will be put to a vote this evening um we will also preview our first draft of the 2526 academic calendar there will be three different reads of these Cal of these draft calendars before a vote is taken so that the community can get feedback we'll post these draft calendars online and we'll talk more about that when we get there and then um finally a reeds quarterly update the Reeds collaborative um here in Middleboro we are a member and um I provide quarterly updates to the school committee this year and in your packet was the annual report so with that I'm going to turn to our mcast presentation this evening I'd like to welcome Dr uh Terry Martis the director of curriculum and instruction and I know that she has several people with her this evening a little slow take your time welcome Dr marus can you guys hear me yeah good hi everyone thank you for having us this evening um this presentation was intended um to be not just us sitting up here but teachers as well because we um missed two of our sessions we didn't feel um it was appropriate to ask teachers to join us for a third time so it is just us tonight um and by us I mean the curriculum Department um that is myself the humanities director Humanities coordinator um Lori leblan and the stem coordinator Kelly stukenberg we are going to go over our mcast data um and our access data for 2024 um here is our agenda I'm going to try to get through this um pretty smoothly and at the end there'll be an opportunity for the committee to ask questions about the data so tonight what we're going to look at is the overall classification all of this is coming from the Department of Education by the way um we're going to look at the overall classification of our district we're going to look at our progress towards Improvement targets sorry and our accountability percentile so when we talk about the overall classification there's really only two categories districts that need support from the state and districts that don't we fall into the ladder we do not need State support in the progress toward Improvement targets the Criterion referenced Target percentage combines multiple years of data and what they look at um is achievement performance on grade level standards growth growth is comparing to past performance and other students with the same performance High School completion English learner progress Advanced coursework completion which is only at the high school level they also take into consideration chronic absenteeism the last thing we're going to talk about is the accountability percentile this number is an indication of the school's overall performance relative to other schools that that seres similar um grades profiles um and then it's calculated using years of data thank you Vanna I do want to take a moment to celebrate you will notice that in the top left there the top right sorry I have no sense of direction in the top right there's some beautiful balloons flying and that's for a reason um middle boro's annual Criterion reference Target percent in mcast increased from 33% to 69% in one year that is tremendous that is due to the work of our teachers um our coaches our really everybody students did remarkable um that 60 that 36% increase is really unheard of and we all deserve to take a moment to just celebrate that another notable highlight is that hbb was a school of recognition by the Department of Education for the 2324 school year what that means is that hbb made substantial progress toward meeting their accountability targets now the good news here is not just hbb MK and the high school also made substantial progress they just did not fall into that notable category Nicholls also made moderate progress all of these things we should be incredibly proud of as a community I know I am I know I have seen how hard everybody worked the next two slides give the very specific data this will be posted on our website and you can take a peek at it um it's a lot of numbers and it just goes into the specifics of the criteria that I referenced before thank you now to the nitty-gritty of the data um we're going to actually start with access data so Access Data um is something that we are required by law to do and it tests our English learner students our eal students we actually have switch to calling them multilingual Learners because many of them are learning lots of languages not just English which is pretty impressive um these students are assessed annually to measure both their proficiency and progress in learning to speak read write and listen in English the results are from January of 2024 107 students took the test students can test out of the the program by earning a 3.9 in literacy and a 4.2 overall these scores that we're going to look at include all of our MLL students who were part of our program in January 2024 which includes our migrant students and as you can see by this slide most of our students fall into the developing and expanding categories thank you the next topic we're going to cover is mcast alss this is our portfolio style assessment which includes work samples instructional data and videos as well as some other performance tasks students who participate in the mcass alt um sorry students participate the same years that General ed students do so that's grades 3 through 10 in the content are areas of ela math and science students who take the MC alt make up 1% of students with disabilities both in Middleboro and in the state so our numbers consistent in our mcast alt data again students the majority of our students are emerging or progressing that means they're all just right where they should be and making progress now for our general Ed and special ed um mcast data we're going to start with English language arts what we have our stack graphs comparing our district in Orange of course to the state data you can see that in some places grade three grade 8 we are above the state in others we are at or around the state in one area we are a little bit below um meeting and exceeding oh sorry these are the students who are meeting or exceeding the standard I'm so sorry I should have led with that thank you thanks next one so this slide is Ela again and students with disabilities who are meeting or exceeding the standard I want you to take a look at grade three they knocked it out of the park we also know that there's been a lot of changes um in our curriculum lately and we do think this has something to do with that so um more good news to come thank you looking at math students who are meeting and exceeding the standard we did phenomenal in grades three and 10 and grade eight and grade five so we really did well overall in map students with disabilities grade three grade five wonderful um those students really showed some significant progress um we we do know that we have some work to do science and technology so science and technology is only taken in grades 58 and 10 and we are above the state in each of those students with disabilities we're above the state in grade five and then grade eight and 10 we are below thank you I want to focus on our areas of strength because we have many so grade three Ela and grades three and five math outperform the state for the percentage of students meeting or exceeding the standards we had increased achievements at the high school level grade 8 Ela and math outperform the state for the percentage of students meeting or exceeding the standards that is so important because grade eight is the hardest mcast test that we have so for our students to be doing that well it means we're making great gains we outperform the state in all grades that take the science Technology and Engineering test 58 and 10 stte students with disabil abilities outperform the state and student growth percentile in ela at hbb and nickels was 50% or better and student growth percentile in math at hbb and mkg was over 50% we do have some opportunities for growth and we're never going to shy away from this this is our job right this is what we do we try to get better every day we're going to be looking at achievement at the elementary level we're going to be looking at en Ela and math um for students with disabilities in most grade levels we're going to look for supports for students with disabilities to achieve high achievement levels not just achieve we want them to be where our general ed students are we're going to be looking to decrease the number of students in the partially meeting categories through targeted instruction and support we're also going to be looking at student student growth at the high school level so we had originally invited teachers to come and speak to the work that they had been doing but tonight we're going to take on that role we adjusted our curriculum and instruction Based on data 8th grade English brought in empowering writers into the district we're looking into and working with investigating histories we have implemented uly which is um a foundational structured literacy program in grades K through three we are seeing some really fantastic outcomes from the implementation of youly we have created Focus areas to Target with instructional coaching and team collaboration tonight we're going to tell you a little bit about high school math and grade three math which you could see in the data we saw some great movements um we have developed standards based assessments across all disciplines and GR grades We are continuing that work and we have onboarded benchmark assessments at Nicholls middle school and Middleboro High School in the form of star assessment star is something we had in K through 8 uh K through five and we brought it into 6 through 12 so we have some consistent data at the district level all year we don't have to wait for mcass that's a great thing that our funding has allowed us to do now I'm gonna turn it over to Lori who is our humanities coordinator hi I am happy to present work that the teachers kind of put together for us um so looking at the first slide here we recognized that we needed to strengthen our foundational literacy so youly has been in place so the K teachers are seeing that students know the routines and they're using their materials appropriately the students are learning and owning letters and sounds earlier they're able to decode sound out words sooner and they're able to encode code which is WR CVC words earlier same program but in second grade here and this is the second year we've seen improvements in student engagement improved overall the student knowledge of the routines students um their progress on assessments has been incredible student involvement with materials and workboard has increased and they came in strong with skills that now are review skills for eighth grade for curriculum we have been working with in sessing the instruction and the actual curriculum selecting more rigorous texts resulting in higher quality more demanding writing implementing common benchmark assessments increased reading stamina with independent purposeful reading that also includes student choice and increased reading levels through continuous practice and engaging discussions in the classroom and now I am going to hand it over to my counterpart Kelly St you already introduced her thank you so much Lori um again my name is Kelly stukenborg I'm the stem coordinator for the district and I am excited to talk about the work that um first and foremost our first example would be the mkg third grade collaboration for Student Success which was very evident in our mcast data this year this group of General Educators special Educators instructional coaches esps I also want to um mention it's also our students and our families came together to show the gains that we have had in math um on the mcast and in their everyday classroom experience um the team developed common assessments um they also worked tirelessly to look at the data from those assessments and change their instructional strategies with their students right in front of them to address the needs in the now um there was greater instructional consistency through common planning that they had together they increased small group instruction to address various student needs in the now and they what I think is wonderful they did onetoone conferencing with students with very targeted feedback and what that targeted feedback talks about is um you know you did a really great job and worked so hard and we are seeing that you're starting to understand some of these math concepts um they also fostered really strong relationships with students in their families to build that math confidence we cannot do this alone we need our families to help support the work that we do to help our students feel like the mathematicians that they are next um I want to highlight the High School Math teachers um with some instructional coaching that I was actually doing with um some of our math department teachers here at the high school it was wonderful because they proactively reached out to me um which means that I get to be welcomed into their classrooms um I watch them teach and then we come up with um some strategies that could help individual students or groups of students um better understand the mathematical Concepts that at the High School level can be quite complex and Abstract um it also led to Greater instructural consistency because we started to have Department level conversations about the work that we were doing and what was working in some areas and that might work in other classrooms as well this cre increased this a sense of teacher efficacy which is the most important thing that we can do um as leaders in this district is to help our teachers um find a voice in order to see that they um have the skills and the knowhow to help our students find achievement in their content areas and then targeted instructional strategy to address student needs um this is a Herculean task to do especially at the high school level where as we just started with the new schedule to have more time for teachers to have common planning and I thank the high school team for um doing all that work to find that schedule change piece eth grade science data to drive instruction um I'd like to highlight that the three High School um I'm sorry the three eth grade science teachers um have for multiple years been meeting together to talk about their Common Assessment data this is not something that I started when I came here it was already in place and they welcomed me in to be a part of their team as we look at and analyze data um it is proof in their results in our mcast data as well as um the achievement with within their students individual grades in science um they came together and allowed time to analyze the data on their common assessments that they give at the beginning of the year the middle of the year and the end of the year and they identify areas of need where they Implement not only instructional strategies but ways to rete skills and content so that we know that students are understanding um the science that they need to understand we helped do this also with Kesler science which is a curriculum resource that was brought into two years ago which increases writing opportunities because it is so important for our students to understand that writing does not just happen in ela and history it should be happening in science and math as well this led to some explicit vocabulary instruction because um I'm a firm believer as a former biology teacher that sometimes science is a foreign language and then from all of their work they are proactive to revise the scope and sequence and adjust to the areas of Need for their stud students so as I said before we had some great success last year but we're not done there's a lot of work to do and we are going to keep um we're going to keep moving forward and we're going to keep trying to get better every single day some of the work that we are continuing to do and some work that is new this year we started to create um a district data team which is going to feed into building data teams really looking at the data because it doesn't belong to us it belongs to all of us so we all have to have a deep understanding of what that data says and what it doesn't say um we are implementing empowering writers in grades 3 through eight but that's not all we're doing we're carrying that language up to the high school so that when students get to the high school it's not a different world the language is familiar from the program that they've been using from grade three they will have that continuity we have ongoing professional development with investigating history this year we are working through a science curriculum review next year we have our English language arts curriculum review that's going to be a longer one it's actually going to start this year um and continue through English um language arts if we don't get that right it's hard to get anything else right even science so we're g to we're going to work on that um we are looking on increasing and elevating interventions at all levels um from kindergarten up through the high school we have students who need more and we're going to try to figure out how to give it to them um we're training for the application of the new data at the high school uh we've had a couple of sessions so far that will continue we're going to continue to focus on reviewing State national and District data to close learning gaps and Target instruction and then we're going to continue to analyze our instructional practices to determine their effectiveness more to come any questions actually there's a lot of material Mr chair through you before we get to questions um anytime we've ever talked about mcass over the last 13 years of me being in the district I've consistently delivered the same message which is that no one test ever defines a child their Worth or their achievement and so I have long taken the position first as your PPS director and now as your superintendent I've always wanted to encourage our children to do the very best they can and tonight I think it's important to congratulate our students to see the achievement that they are putting forward on this test on a high stakes test across multiple grade levels is not just something I haven't seen but it is a testament to them their resilience and their capacity so before I turn that over to questions I also want to take a minute to say thank you to our teachers because they are the ones doing this work the administrators and the directors because they are the ones leading our Direction and if it is one thing I ask you to take away tonight a 36 point increase is a very strong indicator that we are headed in the right direction with that that any questions that you have question um quick question on that um with the state doing away with mcast as a graduation requirement is there any anticipation that maybe the next year's data could be skewed with kids maybe deciding hey I'm not going to take this as seriously because it doesn't matter for graduation and is are a way to like work around that to determine like the outliers sure I think um there's always going to be Liars right and I think if we are looking at this particularly at the high school level where this is really going to be not an issue but where it's going to it doesn't matter right it does matter it's not so much for them it's for us to see if we are hitting the mark and I think if we let our students know that that we need to make sure that we're doing right by all of our kids and that's why this test matters not so much to see how you're doing as superintendent lion said it's it's just one test just one day but overall it gives us an indication of whether or not we are doing right by our students and so I think if we work with our teachers to get that message across I think we will be able to do that well can I just answer that as well to in answer to your question at next meeting I want to have a secondary conversation about mcast because I think it's important for us as a group to go through what the vote meant uh first of all how that's going to impact not just accountability and what happens on tests next year but one what's going to happen with the class of 2025 um that's Priority One and then how this impacts how diplomas are conferred so the high school team has already assembled and it involves High School administration District administration curriculum super we've all been involved and we are collecting information across multiple areas every school community and Massachusetts is in the same boat um and we all are going to need a solution um I do not think we're going to end up with 351 different solutions so we are going to put forward a plan for meeting competency determination for this year seniors and then beyond that plan will be presented to the school committee it it's part of what the guidance that the deese has put forward since the vote so we will have a longer and more robust conversation on specifically these changes um but I didn't want to money the waters tonight and frankly the team is meeting again on Monday so we need a little bit more time um before we're prepared with that cohesive plan so for next meeting it'll be on the agenda anyone else have any other questions no question but just a again just to Echo the statement of how wonderful it is to see the the effect of the work that everybody does when they do the curriculum reviews and try to implement um processes just to improve the the whole educational experience so kudos to everyone the students especially um Marcy I Echo your your concerns of how do you take it seriously um I know as a parent I always try to talk to my children to try to take the stress away from the test that this isn't going to impact your grade ignored the high school part for a little while when they were little but it was about making sure that the school was doing everything that they could to make sure everybody was learning um and you know just seeing the the scores that everybody did it's just so encouraging to know the the forward momentum that we have and um thank you for all the work that everybody did to make that happen M do you have anything on this topic am I allowed to talk on this discussion item this topic so can you please clarify which discussion items that I'm allowed to talk to and not allowed to talk to because I'm really confused about the practices of the right now we're talking about mcast do you have anything to say on mcast so I'm allowed to talk on this yes all right I have a question about the access test sure so that was something new I had not heard of I don't know how long it's you know yeah um so these are for our our elll students and these tests they're taking in English to determine their English proficiency essentially yes so this is is this still assessing what the school is doing to get them proficient in English essentially it's not their test so it's it's actually a little bit of both because you were saying that they had to meet some criteria to stop taking the test um no to test out of services so oh to test out of ell Services okay um so how long are they in this educational system because it could maybe it's not middleb but how long before they are administered a test are they in any educational system in this setting like could they start school in January and then have to take a test in February because that's when it's ad yep so there um they don't so I wasn't saying yes to your question I hear you I understand you um so there are some caveats from the state if students um have been in the country for less than a year if like there's all these criteria that we look at okay so it is not one siiz fits all okay so that's what I was a little confused about how quickly they're they're required to be tested sometimes too quickly okay because that was my other thing is the district then accountable for then now your just like with mcast it's really a judgment of how well you were preparing your students right so same with your ell does this now come back like if you're testing students really prematurely and it reflects that you're not getting you know they're not proficient or they're not where they're supposed to be does that then reflect on the district which requires more resources to be given to those students so um what we have from the state is sort certain funding um but it's not tied to their performance we get that regardless okay um and it it fluctuates based on what the state feels like they have to give um so doesn't what if the state doesn't give you enough money to meet the needs where does it come from in the school budget so we have to educate every students um in this District to the best of our ability so yes it would come from our budget right so then more resources are required for like certain students require more resources like there's a per pupil accountability right expenditure but then like special needs students may have more expenditures um but so would um elll students and does this test end up giving you data that and if the school like the state doesn't meet that budget then the school has to bridge that Gap essentially above and beyond normal every other student I would imagine we have not run into that to my knowledge okay yeah just I was just curious because it was a new test I wasn't um I didn't yeah we've been um access testing for years I believe in this District I'm not sure that we've reported out on it but we have been testing yeah I just may not have noticed it in the previous yeah thank you yep all right thank you very much uh next up is tiered focused monitoring yes so that's okay tiered Focus monitoring is ultimately the state's auditing system of special education civil rights and English language Learners or MLL multilanguage Learners so here tonight to talk about that process and how our district performed our director Jennifer Healey director of special education director Kevin avat director of student service and again Dr Marius for curriculum and instruction welcome good evening um thank you for having us can I just click over and she oh sorry thank you okay there we are um so thank you for having us oh thank um we've actually had to revamp this particular presentation maybe three or four times because um when we originally were going to present to you we didn't fully all of the information from the state so I think this timing is actually better in a sense because we're going to be able to give you the full package tonight um what has happened so far with tiered Focus monitoring this year is that we um received a report that gave us all the findings of last year's on-site review which I'll talk about in a moment and once we got those findings we then the district had to present a corrective action plan that we were going to do to represent all of the finding areas and so now we've um received the response to that plan and some progress reporting timelines that we will need to um demonstrate to the department that we are making improvements upon so that we can be fully in compliance with all of our different Criterion so I know you have seen this slide multiple times I'm not going to um talk too much about it but I just want to review where we've been so far with tier Focus monitoring um in the 2220 three school year we started in year one of the cycle so the tier Focus monitoring cycle runs three years and then three years and it's grouped into group a and Group B and in different groups they look at different Criterion we are currently in group a and so in that first year we had to submit a bunch of um documentation all of our procedures um we had to identify certain Student Records that we wanted the state to be able to look at as well as some indicator information in year two which was last year we had the state come on site um they did an extensive record review of all of our filings um as well as walk through our buildings and look at specific areas of the school um specifically this time they looked at some of our timeout spaces for our special education classrooms and then this year year three is all about monitoring so it's receiving that corrective action plan and then following um suit with all of the progress monitoring steps that follow so that's where we are in year three um and then of course next year will be year four and we'll be looking at a whole other group of Criterion but we won't get there yet um and so these are the particular uh areas that special education and civil rights had to look at for this particular um cycle when they look at our compliance on our our findings report um these are the specific areas that we could have findings in we had our Criterion fall into two buckets implemented and partially implemented so um I think one of the huge successes is that we didn't have anything come up as not implemented uh which is great because it means that there are pieces there that we know are secure but there are also other pieces we need to grow um and as you can see I'm happy to report that most of our Criterion fell into the implemented bucket um you do see we've got two special education Criterion which I'll I'll get into more detail that was partially implemented and then two civil rights but a majority of the findings were found to be completely compliant um which is wonderful and I think I want to kind of pause and highlight a little bit here we're going to go into the partially implemented and talk about all of the growth areas that we need to change and I think you know that is greatly important because we're always trying to improve our practice IES but I also want to celebrate the fact that um the files that they were looking at this time around were files that were um either things that were happening during covid or slightly after Co and as you can remember prior to co we really weren't using processes like virtual team meetings um or a lot of the virtual paperwork things that we were doing and so this was all very new to not just middleb to but to many districts and so given that that our timelines were thrown off when we were shut down and our um Team meetings looked very different than we had ever experienced before we still had been found implemented fully implemented for many many of our criteria so I think that's a huge success um the other success here is that in looking at uh these corrective action uh plans are found on the desie website and they are made public for other towns so looking at some of our surrounding towns and our very similar towns to Middleboro um I'm really happy to report that our findings look really good um having only two special ed and two civil rights criteria noted in by comparison uh was really kind of a breath of fresh air for me so I was very pleased and um proud to see that um and then also we have exit interviews that happen after they come on site so a couple days after our representative from the Department of Ed came on site she met with myself um Mr ABAB superintendent Lions to kind of go over some of the things that she saw and some preliminary results and so she did give us feedback on some of the findings that you see here and that we're going to talk about but some of the glow areas so areas she found to be really positive um that she highlighted were our early childhood family outreach program um and what we're doing with our extended arms to our early intervention programs our local daycare areas um and just our Outreach with families for our younger students who are aging into the process that was that was a huge Plus for us um on the opposite end of that Spectrum another huge glow was our transition students ages um our postgrad students so transitioning out of high school our special ed students who might be ages 18 to 22 um and leaving us and going into state agency referral and receiving more supports in that way and so our communication with the state agencies like the Department of Mental Health um the Department of Developmental Services those were also highlighted um and then also our timeout spaces our use or um infrequent use of timeout Spaces by comparison in other districts and just um the size and the way that they looked we we checked a lot of boxes in the criteria that comes along with having a timeout space so those were some really positive things that I wanted to celebrate we also had to provide information for very specific indicator information indicator 11 it um has to do all with initial evaluations through special education indicator 12 is our early childhood and indicator 13 is our secondary transition all of these came back fully compliant you'll see two say with acceptable reasons that's they're they're considered fully compliant the reasons are things that are outside of the control of the district so things like not getting consent forms back um or a child not being available to do an initial evaluation during a specific timeline but the department essentially found that those were things that we weren't able to control um and therefore we were found compliant in those areas um so looking at the special ed indicators uh special ed indicator number eight is all about the IEP team composition and attendance um and I won't read all of that but really if I summarize it for you it comes down to making sure that all of the relevant team members are invited to team meetings and our president team meetings and we know that at times there are things that happen um a general ed teacher might be sick and not able to be at a team meeting or um a related service provider has a conflict and is isn't able to show at a team meeting and so when those things occur we do have to ask for Guardian excusal a a lot of times we do that sort of in the bulk of the meeting and get a verbal excusal um and what the state is saying is that in not all of our files did we have that written excusal there is an excusal form we use or even just um a handwritten excusal but we didn't have any documentation of that in some of the files not all but some um and so that's really the essence of where the compliance issue came from here is that making sure we have all relevant team members and making sure that those team members are not available that we are asking for excusal from the guardian and that that is done in a um in writing and so some of the things that the the district said you know when we submitted our corrective action plan some of the things we're going to do is we're in the process of updating our special education procedure manual um and so just making sure that that section of the manual is very clear for teachers so that they are understanding that we need to have this written um excusal form and making sure that they're watching their team memberships and that they're inviting all relevant members um even considering sometimes our older students ages 14 and older if they have outside members in some of those state agencies I mentioned like dmh or DDS um that we're inviting those people to the table as well and that any student age 14 and over is also invited to their own team meeting so making sure we're doing all that um offering professional development for staff to ensure that everybody is compliant on each one of their annual reviews or um reevaluation meetings and so just targeting some of those particular areas in that development um and then an internal monitoring system so how are we ensuring that we are compliant in these areas going forward we have a lot of special ed files so how are we making sure that we are doing our checks and balances and um and watching for that state agency involvement and so the state came back with three different progress um dates for us and so you'll see in January we're going to look at a root cause analysis we're going to update our procedures for tracking and monitoring and um by March we're going to do that training that I I mentioned and then in April the Department's going to come conduct another review of our records and if we are found fully compliant then that's wonderful if we are still having some files Cent are non- compliant then we'll have to dig deeper um and doing some more investigation as to why that might be um the good news is is that our actual procedures themselves were found in compliance so things that we submitted in our self assessment were found to be compliant what happened here was that when they looked at the files it was just that some of those files had not had those those pieces of paper that were important for this finding um special ed 45 indicator 45 is procedures for suspension up to 10 days and after 10 days um so the Department's finding here was that for students who are supended for special education there's a lot of laws and procedures that um go around a special education student when they have any kind of discipline and so one of the findings here was really looking to make sure that we're offering sufficient Services if students are out for a lengthy period of time because they need to be entitled to their fape process so making sure that we're still offering them different ways to access education even if they were out on a suspension um and so again we're updating that procedure manual that is something that we're going to continue to do and this is also a chapter in that procedure manual so specific focus on this chapter um will be something we're looking at we have a district Services plan that has not been updated in some time um and doesn't reflect some of the current things that we can offer to students um especially some of the virtual services that we can offer now which we maybe didn't in the past because they they weren't just common place um and so we're also going to be doing some annual training on manifestation determination which is a very special type of special ed meeting for students when there is um a disciplinary action um so that training will also occur and so again the department of fed gave us three different um timelines for some of this we're going to be looking at um updating those procedures by January 24th by March 7th we'll be doing a um some more training on making sure that staff understand this process and then by April 11th they're going to be again looking at our our files making sure that we are in fact compliant and if we're not then you do a a deeper dive to find out why that is thank you so this is on student discipline so civil rights uh the review of the Student Records indicated that um not all the time were when students were suspended or expelled uh did the district notify the parents are Guardians um their opportunity to receive educational rights as well as receiving written notification um of their opportunity for hearing um regarding the suspension um again as Jen referenced this is something that we've spent a lot of time on over the last several uh years or at least the years that I've been here trying to organize these processes um and with the change in our discipline law a few years ago um there was some gaps in between our paperwork between what was provided by legal and what our current administrators had um so you'll see on the next few slides we've really spent a lot of time um even before we've got this report recognizing that this was an area that we wanted to improve so we had our first uh training with stowman Cham and and Miller our our District's attorneys back in November of 23 and then again in February of 24 uh we've established administrative plc's with all of our vice principles um and administrators who are doing discipline on a daily basis so that we can have consistent check-ins with them to discuss these changes in process because it isn't evolving um pretty regularly with with discipline and how we're able to handle it uh so we've had two trainings at to this point in December 7th of 23 uh and then o October 18th of 24 uh and we have another one scheduled for next week so these topics we've talked about discipline but we're also talking about our bullying investigations um we're handling Title 9 title sixes so it really is an all-encompassing kind of overview of of anything that may interact with with student discipline um and any Accord uh we also set up a a District Administrative folder uh and collaborated with our legal to make sure that we had all of the appropriate letters with the appropriate verbage um and really spelling out what the parents rights were so that administrative folder now all of our district administrators have access to it and are referring to that regularly when they're s out these letters now home so by January 24 we have to submit a root cause analysis um and then by March 7th we're going to be providing them with evidence which includes agendas um attendance sheets training materials Etc on the things that we've covered um pre and what we plan on doing post uh moving forward Mr chairman can you hear me I can't hear louder hello there we go ni all right hi thank you I Kevin uh question about uh the training with new administrators coming into the system um is is there a Bank of training that they do on these topics when they come in yes so just we onboarded uh three new administrators this year that's why I asked a question I figured that was something that came up uh yes so sorry I'm having a tough time navigating where I'm talking yeah so um okay sorry short answerers yes uh we onboarded three new administrators this year uh and when we were doing District PD days at the beginning of the when teachers were getting PD uh that was one of the opportunities that we had to spend some time with new administrators to go over all of this which includes uh Comprehensive Mental Health System discipline Title 9 title six the new bullying um so all of these things that we have we prioritize at the beginning of the year uh during onboarding thank you you're welcome so there was some confusion because I couldn't see until I put my glasses on but now that I have them on um so we are going to talk about civil rights 18 but it's um from the office of language acquisition which is about our ell students but what this um finding said was that we did not consistently offer adequate and appropriate services for our minority linguistic students um so they really wanted us to look at our program placement and structure um and that we didn't have enough staff um at the time which they were right we didn't one of the things that we did do to support principles in their planning was create an intervention flowchart um to clarify the steps interventionists and buildings need to take to inform parents um and families about their students performance as well as track data um that was gathered before during and after the intervention so if you have students who are in our school system you are getting all of the data that we have at our hands now and we were not doing that before so the office for language acquisition monitors our compliance with the requirements for our elll students or our M MLL students um our report was completed May 29th 2024 we had full implementation of 10 out of 12 elements and we had findings of partial implementation on two one I just spoke to which was the program placement and structure and the other one was our teacher licensure requirements all of our teachers who are teaching content areas are required to be SE endorsed um so we are looking at our program placement some of the um things that we are doing right now um and have already put into place we posted on School spring to hire um an elll teacher at the high school level we are currently writing El curriculum that's aligned to weda and state standards our elel teachers are doing that um we're also going to be offer summer programming for our students who need a little extra support in their language acquisition I'm happy to report that they removed this finding um as of two weeks ago um the state agreed that we had done everything we could to hire an El teacher at the high school level um and we are in the process of working to fill that position so good news thank you were you finished director Hy I can be well you don't have to be just yeah we're just wrapping up and basically um our next step here is that for for special ed and civil rights in particular we have our submission date um we're preparing to submit our first progress report and that all things must be effectively resolved um no later than one year of the issuance of the final report um and so we are just going to be working on that this year thank you now I'm done May thank you so if you will allow me to translate for these very humble individuals before we turn it over to to questions uh when you go through this process for tiered Focus monitoring which used to be called coordinated program review and was called something else before that it feels a lot like a root canal because the state comes in and you're stuck in this chair and they go through absolutely everything that you're doing um these three humble individuals um are underplaying their very very strong performance and by they I mean their entire departments so your special education staff your Clinical Services staff your uh English language learner teachers your MLL teach in particular so you have a choice when you go through this process much like you do a root canal you can sit there and accept it and get through it or you can try to channel into something positive I'm very proud to tell you that Middleboro has a history of using this process to say how can we be better we understand we have to do this but we're going to take something out of it and how can we do better and what I will point out in the findings is that even the state was struggling to find areas because if you notice the two areas of citation in special education actually overlapped with civil rights and the two areas in civil rights actually overlapped with um English language Learners so I don't think the state had a whole lot to have concern about that said we use this process to to constantly improve it is always our goal to deliver the best possible and compliant process to our kids and that's a testament to these three people here in particular so with that any questions you have J um to just start I want to thank you for making the the updates to the presentation as you got more information to help make sure that you know you didn't have to come back next month and do it all over again um when they come back in April for the that uh progress update is it like another random selection of charts that they just go through and if they don't find an instance of something then it's good or do you have to keep track of and provide them with a here's a file of a student who may have applied to this condition here see what we did so the first round when we picked student files um we were given criteria so we had to pick you know an array of student files you had to pick it from you know all grade levels um different areas of disability you had to choose students uh some students who may have had disciplinary action some students who may have um required tutoring for that disciplinary there was all this different criteria so I would imagine that they are going to do the same practice is you know I need you to show me an example of this this and this and then we would then be able to provide a few names now we did provide names and the state does have the opportunity to come in and say I want another file so yes we can kind of hypothesize and pull some files that might be nice ones to show but they can really ultimately come in and look get any kind of file that we have um which is good because which is a good thing right keep yep no thank you I appreciate that and I appreciate the the outline of the the progress notes so thank you thank you uh Mr chair I have a question so um first before the question uh want to Echo Carolyn's comments and and um the thoroughness of the report and the gains that that have been made uh you know I think are impressive um the question I had was I think in reading the report and I think that I heard you allude to was uh the comment about um how often we share data around uh achievement scores or gains you know in IEP meetings how much gain gains students have made and and I think I heard you say and so we're doing that now but I thought that that was uh something that we were finding complicated ations of how we were going to be sharing that data with families of students am I incorrect so I I don't think that finding was specific to special education itself that was one of our civil rights findings which also kind of um looped into one of our El findings so I don't know if you want to expand on that but it wasn't specific to special ed okay so uh and this was sharing the data of achievements of achievement scores with families so it really is any time that we have information about students um that is based on an assessment that we have given them that is a benchmark assessment parents have the right to know that information and we were not always sharing that information now we have it um as part of our practice that every time we do a benchmark assessment those results go home to families okay thank you you're welcome anyone else have any other questions all right thank you thank you okay and with that I'll turn to the next item I just need to get out of that slide deck and back into mine okay the next item um of my report tonight involves literature guidance and communication this topic has been placed on the agenda this evening uh for several reasons first and foremost I wanted to let the community know actually Dr Markus already mentioned this that the district is scheduled to conduct a review of the ELA curriculum during the 2526 school year as you may know the district has generally conducted reviews of portions of the curriculum on a cycle for example this year we're reviewing the science curriculum the upcoming focus on Ela is particularly timely as we've recently received queries about specific literacy materials used in classrooms by announcing the ELA review at this time we hope to encourage a broad spectrum of community members to join in our team to otherwise provide input more information about how to get involved will be shared this coming May so we can be prepared to begin the 25 26 school year we do have an established process for curriculum review that includes reviewing our current practices materials and resources reviewing assessments and analyzing data professional development needs budgetary considerations piloting possible programs and feedback from stakeholders I also wish to take a moment to address literacy materials that may be used in individual classrooms the district has generally not provided a list or particular mandates regarding these materials rather teachers enjoy broad discretion in selecting literacy materials to be used in their classrooms this discretion is important so that teachers can use use their expertise in selecting literacy materials that meet the needs of individual students which may in fact vary from year to year that said teachers must select materials that serve the curriculum standards set by deese and regulations that specifically require that curriculum materials encourage respect for human and civil rights of all individuals regardless of race color sex gender identity religion national origin or sexual orientation in addition Vision teachers must be mindful of the district's vision of developing lifelong empathic Learners by creating an environment that is responsive to individuals individual students needs and growth who also think critically and develop a strong sense of self and who persevere through challenges and have respect and appreciation for others perspectives to become purposeful productive and positive citizens that's the mission of the Middleboro Public Schools one step toward meeting this goal is to introduce students to reasoned and dispassionate approaches to the analysis of contemporary social and political issues this may necessarily result in the use of materials that may be recognized as controversial or otherwise sensitive in nature I expect that the ELA curriculum review team will address this issue next year however even before then I have asked the curriculum Department to issue at least interim guidelines about the importance of Staff communicating with families prior to the teaching of materials that may be viewed as sensitive or controversial I believe this will be important in developing and preserving Partnerships and trust with our families in closing I wish to state that I appreciate parents who bring forward concerns that they may have about curriculum materials in fact in a recent circum Circumstance the building principal was able to address an individual matter immediately the director of curriculum and I were then able to meet with the parent to address broader issues I believe such dialogue is important in our work in serving students I look forward to receiving still further feedback during the curriculum review process for ELA next school year thank you I just want to uh thank you for that and um kind of endorse including the families um and and alerting them I'm a big proponent that the families role in um participation in education doesn't end at the front door in fact I think when the Ames in the the district work together um we can achieve greater things and sometimes very impactful lessons families might want to know ahead of time so they can bring it up with their their students ahead of time they may have you know someone or something or an experience in their life that they could provide greater context so the child could get more from the lesson and at the same time if there are concerns addressing those concerns prior to the lesson I think will be more productive so I I endorse what you just said thank you I have a question um so in terms of books better are selected and read throughout all the grades is there I know that as a parent of of a now eighth grader um we've received communication from the the eighth grade team that they're reading a book called all-American boys which is a very um could be a very polarizing topic a very sensitive topic and I think thought that the teacher and the um curriculum director were very um receptive for the parents and they sent out an email stating how they're going to read this book it's sensitive in nature and you may want to speak to your children um in case they come home with questions regarding this um so do all teachers fall under that like if a teacher wants to introduce something that is sensitive in nature are all of them told that they should send home home communication so thank you for this question and thank you for bringing up that example because that example is the the gold standard ultimately that that is what we're looking to do every time it should always be that before we embark on you know this sort of moment that there is that opportunity for communication and collaboration so yes I do think that's been communicated to teachers and that's where the interim guide guidance from the curriculum Department specifically will come in handy um in order to give teachers those best practices going forward it's such a good example because that process it we had actually as a department talked about that title and um that what your what you experienced on the parent side of things was the product of hey let's work on this together provide that communication upfront and weather those questions as they as they come and I believe it was you know relatively smooth but it's confirming to hear that that was your experience as a parent as well just to further to that how is the director of the curriculum notified of these books that are being read so she always aware of this particular book but then the book in question in fifth grade doesn't seem to be aware that that was being read in the classroom well I don't know I don't want to make Terry walk across the area but well I kind of wondered if you wanted to feeli that thanks Sam that would be great if you if you wouldn't mind so so with the eth grade um I actually brought that book to the teachers and I said what do you think about doing this it teaches two perspectives which is something we've been struggling to really get across to our students it's a very hard thing um and so we talked about it we vetted it we worked together to really come up with a plan that is ultimately how we are going to move forward with anything that is taught whole whole class so if there are books in classrooms which there should be for all students to see themselves in that is one thing but if you are going to read it aloud to the whole class or if you're going to teach it to the whole class families should be aware anyone else have any other comments questions it I I do um it does it what has been described Carolyn and Terry I think really does speak uh very much to the beginning comments that were made uh by parents of of of course we want to be encouraging empathy and um dialogue around these sensitive conversations we need to find ways that we do that in a guided way so that um what we're trying to what the goal is we're actually achieving and what you just described does sound like the gold standard and whatever we can be doing to be sure that all perspectives are being respected uh within the classrooms I think it should be encouraged that much further whether they fall on the whatever conservative liberal it h we we need to be respectful of of the different of the different perspectives um so thank you thank you thank Miss c um I did hear that you were saying or Terry was saying how um you know parents should be notified that was the gold standard and it did not occur in this this situation and so parents weren't notified and it took a repeated pattern for a child to finally come home and say that this happened um and you can't really undo what happened in that child experience and all of those child experiences um um that we're in that classroom so there's no going backwards and you know there are ways to teach empathy to teach respect to teach all of that without actually bringing in any particular group in um at all like so you don't have to teach towards like we need empathy towards this one group or we need um kindness towards this group all children should have respect for each other and value our differences so I don't feel like you know know this is necessarily or should be considered a way that we teach empathy towards a group especially when you leave the other piece of that is left out so if you're saying you know and and and I hold space for people to hold non-traditional beliefs believe it or not I experience discrimination for that exact same reason because I hold non-traditional beliefs that go against the norm of what the majority of this country does I have fought legislatively against bills for 6 years that are going into this state that would keep my children out of an education any education system in Massachusetts because of my beliefs I don't expect other people to hold my be beliefs I don't need them to understand my beliefs I do expect kindness towards my children I do expect them to have access so I hold space for all people um and I think that they should it you should be your authentic self that's great we can teach that we can teach kindness we can teach empathy without teaching towards one topic or one group and where is the kindness or empathy or whatever else taught towards the people who have the another belief maybe they don't believe that they um you can change your gender or families that have a faith-based practice that believes that there are two genders are they having then that dialogue that shares both perspectives or you know really if you're going to do this or you're going to go down that path to allow access to books you have to share that other people have different opinions and different views and they should be respected for their views too but we know in this District that those views have been silenced and that we're expected to be silenced so when you're saying that the book should have been um if it's read it should have been not the parents should have been notified I want to know what is the opt out if the parent does not want their child to participate in the read aloud is there one or you just saying there's a notice is there an expectation that the child should be kept home if they don't want them to participate in this read aloud no well I think that's guidance that will be forthcoming with the curriculum department and more thoroughly discussed with the curriculum review cycle for ELA next year but this is outside curriculum you've already said that these books are outside the curriculum process like these are at the discretion of the teacher these are books that are accessed in the classroom so these books that have are not just read alouds could still remain in the classroom the children have free access to the books and a parent may or may not know whether that classroom has a book that they may not share that belief or are don't believe their child is ready for that knowledge yet those things can shift based on your individual child's needs your experiences their history um for lots of reasons maybe it's different from this child to that child you know within your own family how do parents know that controversial books such as this or Jesus in your gender or godm made boys and girls if you're going to offer these books in the classroom as part of inclusivity are you then going to make a point to offer the other books I I don't know what the other books are but I would encourage if you would allow me to finish I would encourage you to bring your opinions to the curriculum review cycle so that's my answer to this is that this conversation needs to be a two-way conversation in a process that is that is not this right now okay so so you're saying that there's a process in place that's a gold standard that letter should be sent home but the letter is just a notice and there's no mechanism you're saying within the gold standard that the parent can then say no thank you to this book I don't want this book in the classroom I don't want my child so how is that a gold standard already established if you have no mechanism after it no respectfully the way you just stated that is not what I said well what I did say is that if you have feedback on this topic it'd be welcome at the curriculum review process next year that's really my statement but now is January and so you want all of these parents who have come to wait till next year to get to your curriculum review process that's not adequate this needs to be discussed now this is a public forum this is this is a time to discuss it and if you if you are deciding that we're going to be able to do um some discussion then we can create a subcommittee we can have a book policy and we can start having those dialogues with stakeholders that don't wait for your timeline for curriculum review because you already said it's outside the curriculum no once again I don't agree with the several incorrect assertions you've made in your statements um I would never suggest that parents cannot bring their concerns forward what I'm saying is tonight is not the venue for this conversation I've laid out the venue for the conversation to the extent that parents have lingering concerns immediately they should contact me right away um often parents do contact and don't get really great communication responses so that doesn't seem like a process that is useful um because we've tried those processes and those processes don't work we've also communicated with school committee and we've also been told that this is the this is the the venue to bring concerns towards the school committee we bring them forward and it is an echo chamber it dies here it doesn't go forward no more action is taken I don't even understand the practices of school committee because they're changed or they're util determined by the chair so I'm not clear about what the practices are of the school committee and I don't understand the gold standard that you say is already in place because you're only saying that it's a notice and you're not saying anything in regards to H you know what happened in in regards that this was an incorrect action on the teacher's part that the damage that was done cannot be undone the children have been exposed to things that parents aren't weren't ready for their individual child to learn about in that moment by somebody else without their knowledge there is space and time and ways to teach empathy and compassion for everybody and so I really do feel strongly that this needs to be before what you're suggesting which is next year in the curriculum review thank you I will take that under advisement hello I just think having teachers let us know as parents what books are being read I think that's a slippery slope because then they go to the library they take books out the library um I know younger grades don't take the books home I feel like we're going down the road of maybe book list and book Banning and I just I just want to say my piece that at Middleboro I just don't think it's right we should be here for everyone whether the book is for one person or the next not quite sure I just want to really briefly you know Echo her sentiments um we get we fall down a slippery slope when we start to determine what is sensitive material and content whose families are valid whose identities are valid no one's existence should be up for debate or deemed sensitive content at what point does the classroom material coming home become controversial is it when when you're dealing with people of a certain race is it dealing with people of a certain sexuality or gender is it is it going to incompass all books because if it doesn't Encompass all books in a classroom then it's discriminating against somebody by determining that their existence could be controversial so I just want to kind of throw that out there thank you I just want to piggy back on that um there is is a a section in the curriculum for controversial issues that parents do have to be notified before the material is given or shown to the kids they have the ability to view that material and then they can deem if that's appropriate or they want their kids to partake and this is already in the curriculum that not even a book policy just any issue that's controversial um you and I and Dr Terry had the meeting um I feel like we left on a positive note I mean to my understanding we were in total agreeance that we thought that this was inappropriate at a fifth grade level regardless of inclusivity or classroom settings or anything I thought we were on the understanding that this was something that wasn't called for now I feel like it's we're going down the path like you know we may include this so we're going to have you guys come and tell us but I just want to make it clear that when we had the meeting all of us were in in agreeance that the Elementary setting has no policy of sorts to do with any of that criteria and we were going to have a subcommittee made pretty much to to go over this but a year from now that that seems it's too long to be honest with you I mean my fourth grader now will go into fifth grade next year and still nothing will be done about that so I still have the same worries will he have the classrooms that have these books available that I don't approve of or I'm not comfortable with him reading yet I mean unfortunately we've already crossed that bridge with him now because we're in this situation but um I don't feel like the the curriculum a year from now is is going to help the situation now I feel like we need to I know you said in May we're going to meet and or you know parents can be involved in the meeting and we can go over these things but it it's imminent I feel like we we have to come to some sort of agreement or or understanding of this Dr Mark to do so I just want just to say I hold on I think you need just so that we can hear you don't no no no he's coming to you just say I can take it out too two Ms so I I just wan to I just want to say we are here for all of the students of metal and that includes students who may not fit into a box that we have created right so we have to make everybody feel welcome if we have missed the mark which we spoke with you and you felt that we did we have to take that into consideration when I said before that I think we should let parents know when we are going to teach a book I'm not saying everything we do in our classroom we read the most innocuous stuff you guys don't want to know all of that but if you know that something is important or it's going to maybe cause some trouble and we all have to use our professional judgment then it's a conversation I am going to move up the curriculum review I did say that earlier but it may have gotten lost in all the jargon that I was talking about with data um I am going to move it up to may I do think this is something that we have to talk about as a community I don't know where we're going to land I don't have an answer but I do know that if we don't all get together all of us it you're not going to feel represented and you're not going to feel right so how we do that we bring the teachers to the table we bring the parents to the table this is work I have done before it's work that is hard but I think it's it's worthy it's worthy work we have to do it it's for our kids this community is filled with the people who speak out loud it is filled with the people who don't speak at all and we represent all of them so we have to take all of that into consideration when I said that I think we should let parents know ahead of time we should should these are your kids I read a book years ago in my fifth grade class that alluded to a suicide I had a child in that class who lost a sibling to Suicide that was a huge mistake on my part I never made it again because I knew it really really hurt so we have to be careful we have to take everybody's feelings we don't know what's going on so I think being transparent being open having these conversations with everybody at the table and I think Banning books I just want to be clear is absolutely something I will never condone so I just want to make sure that everybody knows that um there's a book for everybody out there and everybody needs to know that um I know for me growing up as a little kid in the berkshares who was this nerdy brain I just wanted to read every book there was and if my parents had said to me oh no what are they giving you I would have been like what do you mean I need to read everything um I think we just need to more open um and more accepting and and I think we just need to take this down a little bit and we need to talk about it um we're going to bring it um to the table in May and sooner than that it it's almost impossible we have so much working and the teachers are so overwhelmed um and we can't do this work without the teachers okay and I mean there is room for everybody to read whatever book they want P public library setting even the school library y maybe not a read out loud to the classroom set so I think that's something we have to work on as a community good hi um going to be reading for Sarah Eaton um whose oldest son had the same experience with the same teacher although this happened four years ago um in fourth grade and her son came home from school and I'm going to read as her told us his teacher read him a book that the book was called when aen became a brother he said that they were all pointing at him and giggling because the child in the book has the same name as my son he said everyone in the room was very uncomfortable as the teacher also noted this in the email she sent after reading the book um to fourth grade students um and I'm going to read the email that she um sent to um Sarah eaten this was class of 2020 to 2020 um and on March 5th of 2021 um good afternoon today we read a book called when Aiden became a brother about a boy who never felt like the girl everyone thought he was from birth the story is wonderfully written and touches on many great concepts of understanding others celebrating and accepting each other for who we are and not making assumptions about others many students had questions comments connections and thoughts that they shared in our discussion as we read through this story and it provided a wonderful opportunity to have a conversation about transgender kids in a safe space excuse me um there was definitely some uncomfortableness in the room as we discussed as this is a topic that seemed to be new to many students and not something that they have been have had personal experiences or connections with our conversation was around the same messages as the book sent it is important to accept and support others in the ways they want and need that acceptance and support not how we want them to be our conversation did not go into any physical discussions of male/female anatom I'm just letting you know about this book and conversation today because your child may come home with questions or want to further discuss any thoughts they have um she continues to say a few weeks prior I received a permission slip for my son to partake in watching a movie that an elephant died in yet a permission slip was not sent home for this book to be read the next morning she called the school spoke to the principal at the time Mr Thompson I explained the book that was read he said he was unaware of this specific teacher was reading these books these kind of books in her class and said this will be taken care of yet we're here four years later and these books are still being read without parents consent or knowledge um if this needs to be a part of the curriculum maybe there's an appropriate age but it certainly is not elementary school children and parents should certainly be able to opt out of being taught these things if they wanted um I also want to point out that when Aiden became a brother um by Kyle lcof has been banned in several school districts including Florida um it is considered frequently challenged book due to its deception of transgender child and family Dynamics surrounding gender identity has been listed among the most ban Children books pi books in recent years um I also just want to point on the teacher's public social um media um that she does hash read band books hash te band history so I definitely think that permission should be required from parents I want to um thank Terry for saying for sharing that analogy regarding reading a book regarding suicide because this isn't specific to lgbtq rights this is there are a lot of issues that we don't understand what our Stu students are going through whether it's suicide whether it's you know dealing with a health issue with the family member um there are a lot of issues that we don't understand in our children's experiences in their lives in their families or what their family fam's values or beliefs or any of those things are so it takes a very um you know it takes a huge leap for a teacher to make a decision in place of a parent to determine that they're going to do this um because they think based on their ideology that it's a good plan um it it usurps the parents rights this I do take issue with saying we're not going to ban books because nobody suggested Banning a book I I am not so I was concerned that this was going to be an issue where we were going to be Mal aligned in which there are families that are saying we need to ban books we don't need to ban books there are developmentally appropriate topics that we should be talking about we need to talk about what's developmentally appropriate what's grade level appropriate how can we teach empathy and inclusion and all of those things without veering down a path of an ideology and how can you represent if we're going to talk in this this space about lgbtq how are these children represented at characters in a book that are the plot line is not how to transition because that's where we need to put books in in which lgbtq kids are represented as characters in the book but the book plot or theme is not teaching about that whole um ideology space so I think that there is room for that maybe this author of Calvin can write another book that represents these children and who they are and how they have friendships without the plot or the discussion being because every family is going to have a different timeline when it's appropriate for their child their experiences at home are going to like you said you didn't know that that child had that experience so you know it and at the high school level that becomes really challenging and to over restrict teachers becomes really hard right so you're dependent as a parent to be riant on a teacher's discretion my daughter had an experience in high school in which the the they were going to read a book and it actually had a theme of cancer in it and the teacher was actually mindful because she knew that a child in that class had just recently lost her mother to cancer so the theme does not necessarily have to be sensitive or controversial but having awareness of what your students needs are is super important and they can't know all of those experiences so we do need to be aware where topics could be triggering for a child whether there's nobody in that space or not maybe you need to send home a notice we're going to read this book about cancer is anybody concerned that this is not an appropriate book for their child given your own family experience or your own child um I think that is really important and this didn't happen and there's a pattern that has occurred and if this teacher did it before she did it again and she's probably going to do it again she very much on her public social media has made it knowledgeable that her intent is to do that that is a concerning space and I have not heard yet what the vetting process is for teachers soliciting money to purchase items for the for their classroom have you had that come through the school committee for approval that is the policy but it doesn't seem it seems like that policy was was skirted as well and so we have some things that are in place that nobody in the school or District school committee or Administration is taking accountability for in this meeting in this space to let us know yes these books or the monies or funds should have come through this process and that process was usurped and if that process is usurped what is the consequence for violating the policy of soliciting money for use in the classroom because if our kids need to come here and get approval for candy cane fundraisers to maybe make a hundred bucks why isn't um whatever it is $50 $500 $1,000 we don't know we don't know what the merchandise um sales proceeds are we don't know what Amazon books are you know that's a lot that could be could be nominal or it could be a ton so I don't feel like we are adequately being given answers as parents and I don't think we will get that so unless you're telling me that if I send you the email and you're going to respond and communicate thoroughly all of my questions then I'll happily send you an email but I still think that may is too late and a book policy with a subcommittee for school committee to have those conversations those dialogues should start sooner May is too late so again I've read the book I have a hard time that the discussion I have a hard time believing that we're discussing the same book that I read and I just want to EXC me Miss yes Katie AR not discuss the book to be honest with you we're talking about the general guidelines that we use to determine whatever topic may be or may not be controversial oh okay well they were talking about children coming home traumatized that particular book I'd rather not go down that noral okay um okay [Music] um well I just Amazon says the grade level is preschool to three so I believe it so oh the point I wanted to make is I do believe in age appropriate books and Amazon thinks it's preschool to grade three I have follow-up question um after that email was read I have some concerns um so the teacher knew that children were feeling uncomfortable with a book being read to the class sent an email home to parents after the fact and now seems to be continuing to read books of the same topic possibly making more children uncomfortable I'm just wondering what at this point right now because you can't undo what's already been done what at this point is being done to prevent that from happening so parents are notified ahead of time well to the extent that you're asking about Personnel matters I'm I'm I'm not going to discuss that nor is it appropriate for me to discuss Personnel matters we've talked about that this is more policy it's more policy as if if they're a sensitive nature in books just like the All-American boy is an email going home saying hey we're going to read this um there is there is a school commit policy on teaching controversial materials and it does not call for communication to be clear well I just think that there needs to be a better policy in place because if she noted the teacher herself noted that children in the classroom were uncomfortable to the point she had to send an email home there should be emails going home saying hey we're going to go over the sensitive subject you know if you're child doesn't want to read it you know there will be an additional activity or you know in case you want to talk children come home like I have four children in this district and I'll tell you my 10th grader comes home and tells me everything I know everything going on but then I have an eighth grader that it's like pulling teeth to get information out and I'm sure other parents have the same experiences where you'll have children that come home and won't tell their parents things that are going on and parents don't know what's happening so I feel like if they're sensitive subjects that parents want to and their their child heard something in school and now wants to talk about it but doesn't say anything to their parent like I just feel like there's a huge issue here because at the end of the day parents have a right to know that these sensitive subjects are being taught and read in schools and they have a right to speak to their children about it right that's why I've recommended the curriculum Department to issue interim guidance that's what will be forthcoming anyone else have any other comments or questions I just kind of wanted to like step back and look at this like as a whole picture and say that in a supportive environment such as school it's okay to feel a degree of discomfort when looking at new information right the fear of the unknown is a real thing and with that isn't broken down until you are like subjected to it right um but for me in my schooling a lot of the content in my English classes revolved around the Holocaust and I was certainly uncomfortable during those lessons but now as an adult I can look back and see the value in that discomfort knowing like hey this is bad we should work together towards the future to stop these things from happening again so I believe like I am glad that there is a system where parents can go to express these feelings and work together with teachers in order to do what's best for their student of course but for the student body as a whole these things need to stay in place so that they can feel that discomfort in a controlled environment and really learn combat that fear of the unknown thank you no one has anything else moving on okay um and actually I'll take some assistance from director hey the next item involves um a procedure that you have in your packet involving um the medication delegation procedure for the Middleboro Public Schools so to just talk a little bit about what medication delegation is um it is ultimately a a license that allows School nurses to train other staff on the administration of certain prescriptions for an example an inhaler epinephrine ADHD medic any type of medication well not any type of medication but certain medication while on field trips or School sponsored events um the district was granted this license on November 18th of 2024 aligning with the onboarding of our new nurse coordinator um Rebecca Deon who couldn't be here tonight I was hoping to bring her I'll bring her later this year so you can um formally meet our new nurse coordinator um per the Department of Public Health the a condition of this lure is bringing this to the school committee which is why you have this procedure in front of you um the school nurse medication delegation procedure has been developed um in in a concert with guidelines including a description of Staff training um and requirement for parent permission before any medication goes on a field trip with a child staff training is underway in all schools um and the training procedure is being updated to streamline and kind of uniform make our process more uniform um so with that I wasn't going to recap the entire procedure unless you felt that was important but to the extent that you have any questions director hey oversees um health services and is here to answer any questions you might have on this process any comments questions no no all right thank you the next item then involves the first read of um the academic calendar for the 2526 school year um remember that this is a first of three read needs so tonight there's really I mean to the extent that you have feedback or anything you want to see anything can be adjusted but these calendars are very uh minimalist deliberately so that there could have this conversation could occur next meeting I'll bring another draft and we'll talk again about how everybody feels about that and solicits feedback from the public and then in that third meeting is when we'll vote there are a couple of pieces you always have to consider when you're setting this calendar one is the number of professional development days another are voting days um because both the Middleboro high school and the Nicholls Middle School are voting sites and the the precinct for the high school is quite a bit larger than the Nickels Precinct um the district has historically chosen to close school on those on voting days um it is something that you can decide differently in any given year um and that's you know part of this presentation and then also contractual obligations for bargaining units which day there are certain days um that are already under agreement um certain things so this is not the most beautiful way to represent this but I thought it was important to have a visual up on the screen so that you could take a look um what this first draft shows you is your starting days remember the green days that that green color are your professional full professional development days those blue boxes are your early release um professional development days which you can see are all on Fridays in this version it's um September o October February March and may the last day of school is always an early release um this calendar has us starting the first day of school I believe is yellow Tuesday after it's Tuesday September 2nd um and the endday lists um the sorry this is very small even for my eyes wday 17th Wednesday June 17th um okay so I know that's not the easiest we're going to post all three drafts online so that people can look um draft two I believe now has a start for Thursday September 4th but recall that that's K through 12 or I'm sorry 1 through 12 we have a staggered start for both kindergarten and then a subsequent start for prek um so that start would be September 4th finishing without um any inclement weather days on the 22nd that's June 22nd same number of professional development days but this time I believe the dates have shifted so we played around with that too when you do those full day professional development days are at your discretion in years past we've targeted November 1st the day after Halloween um we've also targeted uh a day in March to break up the length of the of the month we've also purposefully put them earlier in the year feeling that frontloading that time is most beneficial to Educators so that they have that much more time in the year to implement what they see um so that is draft number two and then draft number three has school starting before Labor Day August 27th a Wednesday with a release in June on the 15th um and again this doesn't have a March full day professional development day so so take a look if there's anything you want me to represent that's not here or if if there's anything you want to see specifically if you let me know or reach out to to my assistant an we can we can make it look however you want to look um but we figured three is a good place to start in terms of options anybody have any comments questions I have a question it's actually probably easier for Mr branagan to answer um I don't want to put you on the spot but that last draft of the calendar yes um with everything starting the last week in August has the um the space between uh graduation and the last day of school for everyone else is a week and a half day um so just wondering in terms of the impact on high school teachers I know there's a lot that happens kind of the that that would be the the week prior to the week leading up to graduation is when all grades have to be in and then there's that crazy week of all the senior activities um going into after graduation one week to get everybody else's grades in and things like that is that cutting it a little tight for everybody to get it done or does it not really impact that process that out so last year the space between graduation and that last day of school was really tight and there was really not a they didn't seem to be any sort of an issue with trying to kind of navigate those and for the most part your senior teachers are your senior teachers and they may have a compliment about classman but it's like their the senior class needs to be isolated as we're getting them done well business is usual for everyone else the time of thank you I just wanted to keep that in mind so just for the just because he wasn't miked just for those at home it it doesn't sound like um principal bran has too much concern about that deadline or that difference in time between when seniors end and the end of this and the end of the school year last year it was a little longer than that one week um but he he doesn't seem concerned um regardless of what school committee would decide but uh thank you I think inquiries like that are important to make um the only other opinion that I had in looking at them is two of the options end school as a half day on a Monday one is the half day on a Monday after a three-day weekend uh with juneth in there those always kind of strike me as um difficult ways to end your school year I agree especially when you don't know if you're going to have a winter where there's no inclement weather days or four inclement weather days or however many so I do think at best you know I think the school Comm has to do what you think is best understanding that you never variables like that are very unpredictable I certainly think a June holiday is a relevant analysis to consider that when you have a holiday that late in June and the children and the students are already quite tired there's certainly something to be said that that you know something for the school committee to consider if you think of something after tonight's meeting that you want to make sure is on this calendar just send an email text call what whatever is comfortable just so that I make sure we're making adjustments in between those meetings and Carolyn can you just clarify where these will be posted so that if families want to review um feel free to send feedback to the school committee members so that we can bring it to uh the next discussion I don't see Shan so I will have this is subject to Sean not feeling like this is a bad decision but um I want to put it on the homepage or have you be directed right from the homepage so I just want people to go to the homepage and then we'll direct you to where you can find those calendars I don't want people to have to dig for them so if you just go to our our website that's that's all I'll ask and then we'll take it from there either through a oneclick or it'll be right there so it'll be right there on the the main yes um middle. K12 yeah the landing page page okay thank you no comments on the draft even though I love draft three um when you do put the final draft out is there any way that you can just indicate what a PD day is many new parents including our K families are like is this a school day is it not a school day so we're just says PD they don't know thank you for that tip yes you mean actually Define what professional development is for a new parent that may not be familiar yes thank you for that tip Ashley I will make sure that we put that in the key on the calendar okay with that I'm going to move on to the next item which is is the um reads it's actually the annual update and it's in your packet um respectfully this is a 26 page report that I'm not going to go through every piece of um there are certainly highlights which involve review you can you should look to this report for a review of their distinct programming Reeds Academy there's a separate campus at West Bridgewater and then their dhh defen heart of hearing programs as well they go through all of their Clinical Services I think sometimes people forget that that reads is a school but it's also a a clinical service provider um for a myriad host of evaluations so you can read about that they include information on their budget and where they wound up for the year um and then as you recall from last year the updated collaborative agreement that has now brought on two new members in the Whitman Hansen Regional School District and the Brockton Public Schools that's kind of the very reader digest version of that report to the extent that you have any um additional questions please send them my way I am the vice president of the board uh for the reads collaborative so I'm very well versed in what's going on in the collaborative I just given the hour and the glassy eyes I was going to go through that relatively quickly more robust you know information can be provided for sure and that completes my report for the evening just a quick statement on the REITs um I did scan I don't think I write in all detail um but it it is a very impressive program that Reeds offers um there were a lot of services noted that I wasn't aware of um so just thank you for giving um me the opportunity to the the update gave me more education on what reads collaborative offers than I think I've realized before so I appreciate um having that report to review sure it's actually part of the obligation to be a board member to bring it back for exactly that reason I think there is often a misunderstanding of what these collaboratives do they're a very integral part of public education so yep you can read more about that and then forthcoming I'll be coming back to next quarter with the new strategic plan they have a new executive director Indina MOS who's wonderful and actually once upon a time a Middleboro Public Schools school psychologist for us uh but she has a new uh strategy and that's also something that I think you would um be interested to learn thank you okay now that completes my report for this evening all right uh Ed go home s thank you for St sorry I didn't catch that earlier I asked him I did I checked I would entertain a motion to uh approve the consent agenda as presented so moved second any comments questions can we just read out the names of the fundraisers real quick just or the donations just to acknowledge um yeah I'll just read them all uh we have a field trip to John C Nichols Middle School is going on Patriots Place uh fundraises for Middle Bor High class of 2027 is having a basketball game between uh fire and police departments on in March class of 2027 is having to stuff a truck for Savers on April 5th the student council Polar Plunge February 14th uh The Flower Day event on February 14th and the winter ball on February 8th um John T Nichols Middle School is having a PTA is having a fundraiser a wrestling match with top rope promotions that is not to be missed on March 21st uh we're going to approve the meeting minutes of October 10th uh there is a grant a donation from the Cape Cod 5 educational minig grants to Dave Dale Quimby from middlebar high or for middlebar high uh donations to the special education department in memory of Jackie Kavanaugh donations from hanaids to all five midar Public Schools donation from Ohio pile to Middleboro high school and a donation from Life Touch to the mech we have an approval of two warrant as well thank you entertain a motion to approve we already did that we did that yeah did we vote too nope nope all in favor I opposed passes unanimously we have a couple action items entertain a motion to um approve the middleb public can can you I'm going to stop there okay all right I didn't say a motion to approve the medication delegation procedure so moved second Motion in second any comments or questions all in favor I I opposed passes unanimously um I have a out of state field trip at the Henry B Berkland elementary school is going to Roger Williams Park Museum of Natural History grade five April 30th and May 1st uh for and May 1st and then grade two is going to go on May 8th motion to approve so moved second a motion and second any comments questions all in favor I I opposed oh yeah Sue's still here hi Sue um sorry can't get rid of me that easily you're coming from above you coming out of the speakers soon maybe next time we have a monitor up here as well um I would entertain a motion to uh approve an overnight field trip for Middleboro High School Massachusetts Association of student councils conference March 5th through the 7th in hyenas so moved second have a motion a second any comments questions all in favor I I opposed passes unanimously uh this next item student transportation services contract an additional year I'm going to recuse myself from that so I'm going to actually get up and leave I hope you guys enjoy the rest of the evening while we are transitioning I'll just call director Peron um over to the table to talk a little bit about this item but I'll wait I'll wait for you I'll wait for you to go first take your time you can walk slowly I'm going to have to give Mike his warrants back tomorrow I can give come on now all right all right have a good night everyone the very the very just can't vote on the agenda you ready and clear okay good evening um so the district is now completed three years of the transportation contract and you have the uh ability to uh take advantage of two one-year um individual uh one-year contracts in uh the fourth and fifth year so the language and we shared this with you um all bids must be submitted on a three-year contractual basis with an option for an additional two one-year uh contract terms at the sole discretion of Middleboro Public Schools so the three years are ending on June 30th and so you um we're recommending that we continue with the current contract and we need to um are need to vote to continue that um the cost of year four is 2,522 45 it's a increase of 57,58 and it's a 2.3% increase over the current year so with that I didn't know if you wanted to ask any questions you know our recommendation would be to continue this option for one year it's not a we're not asking nor does the mechanism allow I don't think it even allows you to select two years at a time but the question ultimately turns for you on whether or not you want to um end this contract which you are free to do for June 30th which would then necessitate a bid process and a set up for a new potentially a new company or this company come come uh the next school year or or continue this option for a year and you know director Peron and I talked kind of at length about the fact that five star and we have worked together with festar to work out Kinks for sure there are unique qualities about Middleboro that make the transportation challenging we do feel like another year would give you another Year's worth of data to to kind of make your decision um particularly given the fact that if you're going to choose the alternative that necess Ates quite a bit of steps to follow immediately between now and June and then a setup for potentially a whole new company for the fall um we do think five star has done a good job we think they've been um responsive to our concerns and made improvements to communication um when we've raised them but that said this is your vote and and your your decision to make Qui question Chris I know you're on like Transportation subcommittee any issue current issues that you're aware of that there has flag um most of kind of the discussion was at the the beginning kind of the launch and the communication around it um I personally would like to continue right now uh and I'm going to vote Yes uh I think starting from scratch and kind of going through that learning curve again um it doesn't seem beneficial to us yeah and I really appreciated the the the information that came back after you had the discussion and um there was steps that were planned to be taken to make the next start of the school year smoother um so I'd like to give everybody a chance to implement those plans that were um developed from the discussions and and uh see if that can make next year a little little better um so I don't know exactly how appropriate this is for for me to be stating this but I know that there have been um bus drivers that have come forward to me um who have been very unhappy with the way that five-star has been running um uh their business um and of course there's nothing that I can particularly do um except for to vote for no on this there's a lot of evidence that I would love to to share but I just I just can't because it's it's just not appropriate for me to do so um and if it sways your vote at all um I don't take those things very uh I don't take I don't I take them very seriously I don't take them lightly um which is why I I'll I'll have to be voting no on this I know you said you don't feel it's appropriate any idea of bus drivers wanting to leave in mass that would cause an issue or the ones that have stepped forward um I believe are very committed to um to Middle borrow itself but not to five star um I would for I would I'm not going to speak to to what they would do but my assumption is based on the management that they might not stay but Jess raises a very good point so does Chris um it would it would be prudent I think to um perhaps see what they can do with this extra year um but I can't in good conscience vote Yes so I I'll have to end up voting no on this sorry it's difficult to way uh non information that you don't know of especially if it's uh you know the issues with management of a a separate company um you know that's not something that is in the purview of the the school committee or the district at all really we don't really have any say in the operating structure I do appreciate that um that if drivers have concerns with how the company is running that that is their right to to bring up and you know I I hope that they can find the right Avenues to to get those addressed um unfortunately it's not through this committee so the best that I can vote based on is the knowledge that we have and how responsive they have been to to our concerns and that will be based on that will be what I base my vote on any further discussion so in that case oh sue you got anything Sue no all right no all right um so with that I'll entertain a motion um to approve the student transportation service contract for an additional year so moved second all those in favor say I I I nay uh it passes uh three to one well soe did you get to vote four four to one I'm not sure you can hear me can you hear me yes oh okay uh I actually had a question before we voted that we didn't hear H there is no other option in front of us is there the the alternative would would be to let this go out to bid okay understood thank you uh yeah I I'm GNA have to go along with Chris and and Mike so I will vote Yes I don't know enough about it to vote no uh so it passes four to one very uh I will is there anything else that's it so then I will entertain a motion to adjourn so moved second thank you very much have a nice night