Uh, good evening. I'm called to order the November 5th meeting of the Milton School Committee. Um, I would like to make a motion to adjourn from open session to enter executive session for the purpose of conducting strategy session for contract negotiations with non-union personnel, the superintendent
and to return to open session. >> Do I have second? >> Great. All in favor? >> Oh, sorry. Nathan, >> yes. >> Lizzy, >> yes. >> Mark, >> yes. >> Hannah, >> yes. >> Bow, >> yes. >> Okay, great. So we will adjourn to
executive session and then come back to open session at the close of that meeting. Welcome. We are back in open session. I'll stand for you to the flag of the United States of America. and to the republic for which
it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. We allow 15 minutes for public comment. Um, if you are in the audience and you would like to speak,
Let us know if you're here for public comment. >> Should I say that again? All right, take two. Um, every meeting we allow 15 minutes for public comment. Um, if there are is anybody in the audience who is here for public comment, if they could
come forward. If there is anybody online who is here for public comment, if they could raise their hand. All right. I don't see Anyone here? We don't see any hands. No. All right. There's no one here for public comment. So, we will move on to
um the superintendent report. >> Thank you very much. Um um Chair Serio. First of all, I'd like to introduce uh two of our student reps that are working with us for Milton High School. Uh I'd like to bring to the table Angela Trong.
Angela is an excited senior who is serving her first term as a student representative to the school committee. She loves to be involved at Milton High School and is president of the Youth and Government Club, Asian Culture Club, Red Cross Club in the MHS orchestra. And
back for his second meeting, okay, is Spencer Futrell. Spencer is a high school freshman who is happy to serve in the school committee representative for his first year. Spencer plays football at MHS and is planning on trying out with the basketball team. In his free time, Spencer enjoys volunteering, food
drives, and supporting the community. So, welcome Angela and welcome Spencer. >> Hi. Hello. Uh, I'm Spencer Futrell. I'm in ninth grade as many of y'all might know and we are here today to share some things with you. So, fall sports are in
swing at Milton High. Boys soccer won in overtime earlier this week and girls soccer play tomorrow and uh and the football team has their first playoff game on Friday. Also, Milton High Theater are performing
Frozen November 21st to 23rd if y'all want to if y'all interested in going. Also, Thanksgiving break is coming up November 26th and 28th. Also, not last but not least for me, uh, MHS winter concert December 9th.
>> Thank you, Spencer. My name is Angela Trong. I'm um a senior now and I'd like to report back that student government is busy planning for a pep rally. Um one of the most exciting schoolwide events this year. Um we typically have spirit
week leading up to it. For example, pajama day, nationality day or any sorts of those type of days to create excitement throughout the school. And there are many different performances uh happening during pep rally such as
the marching band performing, cheer happening and chorus singing. Um we might also possibly have the step team this year as well. Um, in our separate meetings, we are continuing to find a topic to focus on and we hope to focus
on something relevant um to the school committee as well as the student body. We have a meeting scheduled next week so we should have more uh to share at the next school committee meeting. >> Uh will there be any questions today?
>> Good luck to all of our teams in the playoffs. Yeah, >> thank you. Have an amazing day. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Uh it's hard to follow that, but I will go give my own superintendent update. Uh the um Milton public schools faculty and
staff had a wonderful full day in professional development um which was yesterday, November 4th. Um, I want to thank Hala Koser, our assistant superintendent for curriculum and learning for planning and um, leading the team of principles and uh,
curriculum leaders on this really productive day. Uh, as you might think, the day surrounded our five priorities that we were focusing on this year. Uh both Ker and I started the session uh with all of our elementary staff at the Pierce Middle School where we did a
45minute session on rigor tier one instruction supporting our learners active steps towards supporting students not meeting at grade level um and also our culture and uh rigor topics. Um it
was very very helpful for Kyler and I to get in front of all the staff because if you remember in in August we did not get in front of everybody because we gave that time back to the building principles and the teachers. So it was refreshing to address the entire elementary staff at the Pierce and then we drove up here and addressed the full
Pierce and high school staff up here at the high school. Throughout the day, um, we had, uh, all of our fellow educators present sessions on things like Project Lead the Way, increasing student achievement and student engagement, engagement, executive functioning, UDL,
planning guides, engaging all learners with rigorous tasks, uh, vertical alignment in our 6 through 12 ELA, and tier one instruction support. So, there are two heavy cataloges of courses that every single teacher could have taken. I think we offered up to >> about 45
>> 45 sessions for our staff uh that were led by our principles, our curriculum directors, and our educators across the district. So, um we're getting some really nice feedback about folks feeling uh like they had good choice, uh an agency to choose what they wanted their
professional development in, that they felt really connected to the five priorities that we've been working on since August. Um and that they also had time to do some work amongst themselves in the afternoon. Uh after having some what we called a um a selfare self
self-care and action break uh we had a very great uh hour of ballroom dancing instruction for some of our uh staff who took advantage of it in uh a baking contest as well as a walking club and a variety of things. So a very good day of professional development on the core
subjects of our five priorities and other issues that impact our our educators. a little bit of professional development around personal relationship building and culture and climate at the district level which we think is super important and uh as always Ker and I were trying to model our five priorities
uh throughout that day. If we were asking staff to present sessions and we presented one ourselves so uh good day I many thanks to Ker and her team. I want to give the folks uh of the community a transportation update. Uh we promised folks at the end of September that we
would have a two-phase approach to bringing up to 70 students off the weight list. Uh we did a phase one um uh at midpoint in October uh where we put back about 54 students from the weight
list onto buses to to the schools. We continued to do data counts for the last two weeks at the middle school and we went back to our weight list of about 22 additional students and um just this past Monday we were able to place those
22 students uh on a bus. Uh and that will conclude our fully exhausting the list to zero. So we have placed over 70 students getting everybody who applied on time for a bus pass off the wait list and on a bus. Uh this was done without
adding any resources but uh increasing the capacity uh on every bus and also looking at the routes a little differently and adding some stops within the bus routes that we had. We are sending out communications to those 22 people letting them know that they're off the wait list and what the new stops are. We're also sending a communication
out to all bus student families to let them know that the buses will be filled with more students. Um, and that we want to proactively let folks know that we anticipate ridership to to move to capacity more in the winter months than they are right now in the fall and that
we should be ready to uh be prepared to have students sit three to a seat where needed in order to make the capacity uh match up our need. Uh the number of students we have on each bus does not exceed the legal capacity. So we feel very comfortable in that. But we just wanted to make sure that we're
explosive, but not only the folks that we put on the bus to and took off the weight list, but everybody who's riding as well because they could be impacted later on in the year when some of the seats get get tight. Uh that's a good news story. That problem has been solved. That does not address the students that were on the wait list that
did not put their uh bus pass application in on time. So that will be part of the factoring that we do when we start looking at next year. keeping in mind that anybody who lives a mile and a half from school, actually a mile or farther from school is on a bus for Pierce in the high school. Um, so that's
a good news story. Want to remind folks that there was no school in November 11, which is Veterans Day. And I want to thank our band at the high school in advance for performing at the parade, the Veterans Parade in the ceremony at Town Hall on Tuesday the 11th. Uh, we also have an early dismissal day on
November 19th. A reminder as uh we were let known by our student rep that Frozen will be performed at the high school on November 21, 22, and 23. It's an amazing production, so get your tickets and uh they'll sell out quickly. So, we advise
you to call the high school. And uh as we look forward to November um we look forward to November 27th being uh Thanksgiving, which means there's no school on the 26th uh and no school on the 28th, the two days surrounding Thanksgiving.
And that is my update. >> Great. Thank you. >> Now we do the um MCAST overview. >> So I'd like to bring up uh V who is our data specialist in in the Milton public schools. Uh Ker and I are new to uh uh
the Milton public schools and are so thankful to have the services uh of a data specialist with the qualifications that V presents and uh works with us in every single meeting that we go to. Um when V and I met in August, I asked her
what her goals were for the year and how she could help. And she asked, "Can I just start coming to principles and coordinators meetings and I want to share the data? I want to use the data and I want to make sure that the uh the people who need access to the data have it. So I want to thank her for being not only at every meeting that we have for
our secondary and elementary principal coordinators meetings but our leadership meetings and also meeting with principles at schools uh to go over their data specifically whether it's grade level data uh or uh school-based data. Uh tonight we're presenting basically our initial presentation on
MCCAST. There will be several other student achievement meetings that we will have. There's a lot that we want to share. There's lots of things that we need to explore and there's lots of things that we want to make sure our community knows that we're working on in order to improve our student outcomes as
that is our continuous cycle of improvement we want to exhibit. Um so we would like to if we could put the um uh slides on the screen uh Mark so thank you very much for being the slide person uh tonight.
So, uh, the first slide, um, first of all, we want to, um, note that there are multiple data sources that we always look at, uh, in the Milton public schools. Uh, some of which are part of how we do MCAST, which is an annual look
at what happened in the year prior. Uh but also as uh V points out in this slide and throughout the set of slides in um really articulated in our principal leadership meeting today uh our principles wanted to make sure that we also had other data points that we
used as a formative way of looking at student achievement, our dibbles, our IR um all of which helps the teachers and our administrators pivot um in our common assessments during the school year uh to see if we can increase the student growth of all of our students.
Uh it's important to remember that the standardized assessment which is MCCAST is useful measure for what students have learned uh and they're on track to meet the rigor of their next grade level. Um we do firmly believe that MCCAST really lets us know what we need to work on as
adults. This is an adult informative exercise more so than what students get because we believe that what what students need uh in terms of um shifts in our teaching strategies is the formative data that we use week to week and monthtomonth during the school year.
All of this data is important and all of it helps shape our work towards reducing the amount of students not at grade level and enhancing student achievement across all parts of our student body. and we'll see some of that uh information tonight. So, V, thank you very much for being here. And I think
our format will be that we'll let V go through the whole presentation and um if there's any technical pieces to the uh presentation you'd like to ask, I think V might be the person for the technical pieces and then teaching and learning and data questions would be for Ko and
I. >> Perfect. Well, thank you for having me here tonight. So like uh superintendent said, we're here to give you really a big overview of how our district u did on the MCAST testing really on the
accountability framework in the state. So I'll go a little bit into that. Um but here's our agenda for the day. Just some key takeaway. Then like I said, we're going to cover kind of state accountability determination via the lens of the MCCAST looking at different
student groups performance and then um also touching on absenteeism and then we'll end up by looking at some peer district comparison just to see where we are um against our peers. Next slide.
Okay. So for the 20 the the previous school year 2425 MPS continues to outperform the state average in all subjects across all grade levels within all student groups. Um this is something that continues to be
the trend. Should I just speak louder? Okay, I'll try I'll try speaking a little louder. Okay. So, this continues to be the trend for us in the district here. Um, in terms of our ELA and math scores, in
grades 3 to eight, the scores improve slightly. In grades 10, we did see some decline. And this is across the state. We see the same um in terms of state performance. So, it's it's nothing that
is uh singular to Milton here. Um science however uh significantly improved this year in all our tested grade area and that is one area where um we are actually pulling ahead of the states. Um so we're very proud of that.
Um civics this is the first year that the state has given the the eighth grade civics exam and this is simply how we score. 56 about percent of our students scored meeting or exceeding expectations.
Um and then lastly, our priority student groups. So that is students with disabilities, English learners, low-income students, African-American, black students, Hispanic, and a Latino students are performing significantly
better than their their peers statewide. So that's comparing to the same group statewide. However, they are still lagging behind their counterparts here in Milton. And that is some of um the challenges that we continue to address as a district.
Next slide. Um so as I said um we are going to be looking at our data through the lens of the DESIE accountability framework and through this framework our individual schools continue to be rated
highly as compared to other schools in the same grade span. Okay. And the accountability framework takes into account these factor ELA performance, math performance, science performance on the MCAST along with SGP which is the
student growth percentile. And for those who uh are new to the education lingo, SGP basically compares your rate of growth um against other students who have the same scores as you from the
previous year. So, it's it's telling you how far ahead you've gone in comparison to someone who scored the same as you. Okay. Um the accountability framework also takes a look at English learners and their
scores on the access test. Um it considers abs chronic absenteeism. So that's missing 10% or more of school. and then other high school metrics um as applicable to high schools. So,
graduation rate, dropout rate, and advanced coursework completion. Okay. And DESIE takes all of these individual components and aggregate them together into an overall results and and then it
gives us two ratings. Next slide, please. So the two ratings given are progress towards improvement targets and this number this percentage basically gives
you a sense of how much progress has been made towards the school's targets which DESIE examines um based on the school's individual performance. So several years of histories of how the school has performed and then Desi comes
up with these several targets in ELA, math, science, SGP and then they all Desi totals everything up and gives you the overall score of how much progress you've made towards those targets that set for you. Okay. And then the second
rating that's given is the accountability percentile which um compares so desi totals everything all the performance on all the indicators up and then it compares
schools in the same bucket together. So high schools are compare against each other non- high schools compare against each other and then there's a third bucket with mixed grades. So any district that has or any schools rather
that has one um tested non- high school grade and one high school grade is in that mixed bucket. And it gives you um the percentile of how you rank um compared to all these other
schools in that same bucket that you are in. So essentially our elementary and our middle schools are counted in the same bucket. Okay. And how we use these ratings and indicators is really to dig deeper into the data and identify where
our strengths and weaknesses might be and to work on them. Next slide. Um and so this chart gives you basically um the results of the two ratings for
each of our schools in the district. and the accountability percentile that's given to schools only. So it doesn't um Desi doesn't do that for districts. So here I mean clearly we see that um
our schools are on um the higher percentage um accountability percentage and there are really two uh two places where we're looking at and we're exploring the data with the the
principles and the teachers to understand more how we can make improvements. Next slide. Okay. So, in the next set of slides, I'm going to pull up um some historical performance in different tested uh
MCCAST areas. Next slide. So, in this one slide, we're looking at um the history of our ELA MCAST for grades 3 through 8. Um, and 2017 is
actually going back to the first year that the state um turned over to the next generation MCCAST. So, we kind of see the historical progression of how we've done as a district um up until 2025, which is the column on the far
right. And you can see there's an obvious dip um between 2019 and 2022. And we know that that's the impact of the pandemic. Um and after that you see that our scores our ELA scores are moving in the
right direction increasing in trend. [Music] Next slide. Okay. So this slide is looking at our math MCCAST scores grade 3 to 8. And you see that same dip in 2022
and our data is uh the the blue bars are definitely increasing and so we're we're happy about that. Uh we wish that you know the the red bar would would decrease. Um and you can kind of see the
the red bar is more than um the red portions on these columns are more than what they were pre- pandemic. And that's definitely um something that our curriculum directors and teachers um are
very aware of um and are working towards closing that. Next slide. Um so this is looking at our district science scores for grade five and grade eight combined.
And we're looking at a really good news stories in in science. Okay. And in 2025, we're seeing that the percentage of students who are meeting and exceeding expectations
are the highest that we've seen since we've uh switch over to this uh new science and pass. Next slide. Okay, so this is showing the results of our ELA MC pass for grade 10.
Um and we see that this year there is definitely a noticeable dip. Um, and that's reflective of what's happening at the state level as well. there's chatter about, you know, the impact of the law
of the law change on this and we'll we'll keep watching this and this is definitely something that we'll be paying attention to. Next slide. This is math MCCAST for grade 10.
And as you can see, performance has been pretty even um for the last five years. Next slide. And the grade 10 science MCAT. So, similar to the science MCAT scores that
we saw for grade five and grade 8, grade 10 there's a huge bump in 2025 scores as well. Next slide. Okay. So there's a lot of numbers on
this chart um but this is basically trying to show the performance trends in ELA for each grade level and we find that sometime um when we disagregate the data then you can see better where um spots where we need to pay particular
attention to. Okay. So just taking the example of grade three ELA uh you see what the percentage uh of students meeting and exceeding expectation for each years are. And then
in the right on the four rightmost columns you see that that's those numbers the red number the the number in red are indicating a decline and the number in green are indicating
improvement. Okay. And numbers in black are where they're not as much um change. So um that's there and the the two columns um
on the right the rightmost two column are indicating our performance as compared to 2019. So in in grade three ELA compared to 2019
we're 16 percentage points down from where we started. And over that t same time span the state is experiencing a 14 percentage points down from where where it started. Okay.
So if you look at um just all the numbers um down the column for each grade level, you see that grade three and grade six ELA are where we've
experienced uh the the biggest uh decline in our scores over the years. And that's something that we'll be looking at closely. Next slide. So this is uh for the performance trends
for math in each of the grade levels. So the chart is uh presented in the same way and you see some of the highlighted areas where um the district numbers are lower than that of the state.
we have more more room to to get back to where we were in 2019 as compared to where the state was. Next slide. Um, and this is the trend for science.
And on this slide, we see a lot of green. And that is the good news story for really for this MCCAST administration. Next slide. Okay. So in the next couple of slides
we're going to be looking at um the performance of uh various student groups in the district. Um, in every student group, in every content area, Milton's students perform better than the state and in many cases it's a double digit difference. So
that's a significant difference. Okay. um historical differences still exist between the performance of our students group within the district though and so we remain focused on improving the outcomes of these students group
students with disabilities English learners low-income students African-American black and Hispanic Latino students next slide Okay, again a lot of numbers on this chart.
Um, but the it's basically giving you the percentage of students who are meeting and exceeding expectations in each of the the tested content. So in grade 3 to 8 ELA
um the green boxes are where we highlighted um where our student group is performing not only higher than the states um student group but more a double digit
difference basically. So where our our in in grade 3 to 8 ELA our EL our English learners and formal English learners 33% of them are meeting
and exceeding expectations versus only 19% of EL students at the state is meeting or exceeding expectation. Okay. Um and as you can see there are a lot of
green on the chart and we're we're happy that um our students are doing well as compared to their peers at the state level. However, if you look at the all student category
at the bottom, um that is basically the average of how our our students are doing. And you'll see that you know some of the the other student groups are not doing as well as
the all student group which is the average. Next. Okay. So, we're going to talk a little bit about phonic absenteeism. Next slide, please. Um, and the reason that we talk about it is because there
is a strong correlation between attendance and academic performance. And our chronic absenteeism rate in 2025 was actually the ninth lowest in the entire state. So that's telling us that
all students are coming to schools. Our families are supporting our students to come to school. Everyone is invested in being here and invested in the su success of our students. um our chronic absenteeism rates have
been declining since uh the 2122 school year and there's still some differences between the all student group and our uh priority student groups. So, and you'll see this in the chart in the next slide.
So here um the red line there that's the all student groups and then you can see the the different uh the different student groups being represented by the other colors. And the
important thing that we want to share on this graph is that all the lines are trending downward which is what we want to continue seeing. Next slide district. Okay, next slide. Um so just to kind of get a gauge of how
we're doing in comparison to some of our peers, we pull a list of um DESIE comparable districts. So Desi generate this list every year based on similar demographics such as gradespan, total
enrollment and special populations. And we have a bunch of names here which are on our desk comparable list. And we also added in some neighboring districts so that we kind of get some geographic
comparison as well. And you can see uh what the comparison looks like on the next slide. So this is uh giving us uh some key categories for
comparison on the leftmost hand side. So, percentage of students with high need, per pupil expenditure, percentage of chronically absent students along with um the MCAT scores for all
these districts. And a lot of numbers on here, but um I wanted to highlight the per pupil expenditure for expenditure for Milton, which is still the lowest um of any of the groups uh
here on the chart and also our chronic absenteeism rate. Um and in terms of our MCAT scores, you see that we are solidly
in the middle of the pack. Um we're not the highest. uh but we're also not doing badly compared to our other peers who are spending more on student expenditure
than we are as a district. >> So could do you mind if I pause here a moment? This is the last data slide. So first I want to thank you for providing this data and we left it in the same format as last year so we could have somewhat of an apples to apples comparison. We did take some slides out,
but I do want to pause here because I think that um we we always want to make sure that we're comparing ourselves to the state against that generic bar, but this last side really lets us compare ourselves to the Desi comparables and our neighbors, which is a different
standard, and we should hold ourselves to a different standard. So, uh, first of all, it's it's nice to see that we're having more kids come to school, uh, in the in the chronic absentee rate is is down. And as V pointed out, the good news is for all students, it's down to
roughly 4.9. But interestingly, for our demographics that we separate a little bit, they're still higher. So, we really have work to do to make sure that all students are coming back and attending school uh, at a higher rate. So, we're glad that that's better than our comparables. And again, this is not
a state comparable. It's who the state says we should compare ourselves to and then our towns. And we've been using these towns historically. So, we have an applesto apples comparison. Um, when we look at the towns around us, the geographic towns, I think we I went through and checked every box that we
were doing better than across the the matrix of scores. So from that box of geographic neighbors, I think we've solid solidly performed or outperformed those in terms of the majority of those uh data comparisons where we struggle um
is when we start to compare ourselves to the desi communities of needm Sharon and Welssley and uh we we're here to say very clearly that our scores need to improve that our scores have been flat for a period of time that we have
pockets of success the most recent One being a really good POP in science, which was intentional because our science educators and our science director uh did some wonderful work in hiring and using data to inform instruction and to work collaboratively
and really at the elementary, middle school, and high school level. Really looked at curriculum, especially at the elementary level where um our science is um uh not taught every day. and then they really get into everyday science in in middle school. So we're learning in
what we're doing well and want to replicate that. Um but we acknowledge that you know when we go back to looking at the 201718 scores uh we need to get at least back to prepandemic scores and
I think we need to do better than our pre pandemic scores and and one of the reasons when we go into um the slides that we all looked at not only do we need rigor for the 20 to 25% of students who are not meeting benchmark we also
need rigor for the 13% of students who are exceeding who have stayed flat as well. Everybody needs rigor. Everybody needs rigor in order to increase their learning outcomes. And we met yesterday with every single staff member and
emphasize rigor tier one instruction actively pursuing strategies to bring students not at benchmark up to benchmark. uh those five priorities that we're looking at, you can you can see them in each set of number comparisons that we either did well in or we did not
do well in. But the the community should know that sadly the state is not to where it should be and a lot of our comparable districts are probably working as hard as we are to try to lift their scores to prepandemic scores. And to be v's point if you look at that per
pupil expenditure that is an applesto apples number across all those communities if you take our desi comparable communities need sharon welsley which pay or spend 23,000 20 and
27. So we take the average of 23,000 per student of those three communities that's roughly $4,000 more per student. If you multiply that by 4,300 students, that's $12 million, it's 12 million more dollars in those
three communities than there are in Milton to solve these issues, to attack these problems, to make sure our students have what they need. So, money is not everything because there are communities that we do better in that spend more than we do. There are communities up there that spend um
$26,000 per student and I believe that district uh we have outperformed in every category. So it's not all about money but that is a significant factor that there's a gap in funding that prohibits certain things to be done in ways that
we'd like it to be done. Uh and I do believe that we have adequate staffing um right now if we realign it and direct it in a way that's you know full of clear intent and um directed in the right way and guided in the right way
that we can increase these scores. Would more money help? Of course it would. But do we have what we need right now to do better? We do. And we we plan on exercising all of those muscles this year. uh coming back to you with a little deeper analysis, coming back to
you with how we're going with our uh literacy curriculum that you've already seen and identified this year. How we're using uh talking about our principal analysis um and how they're going through their uh own grade bygrade level analysis at
each school. um and we've asked them to do so and they'll be presenting to you in the future meetings and how our principles and coordinator meetings every other week are really trying to tie together the building leadership and also the curriculum leadership in order for us to all row in the same direction
for this common improvement of of our student outcomes. Um and obviously we already talked about how our evaluation goals this year uh that we've already offered for staff to take advantage of are focused on those five priorities. So in the short term um we I think we have
a good framework to move the district this year um and the following year. Um and we also really have to look at this being uh uh an assessment of one data point that I think matters. Uh and also
our principles wanted to make sure that we were saying out loud that they see real they see real incremental formative data changes during the year with their students that they serve. And I think a lot of our elementary principles working with the dibbles in the the I Ready data
to make shifts in their student groupings and how they can shift students from one grade level to the next in terms of their reading and literacy scores. Um I think is important work that's happening every day. So this data um reminds us that our five
priority areas I think are going to be very helpful to focus on and anchor our work to. And we're also anchoring our budgeting um um and our resources to those five as well. Um there's work to
do. There's absolutely work to do. Um but I think that people are working hard and what we did yesterday with our entire staff, we asked them what they needed. So how often does the superintendent, the assistant superintendent ask 500
people, what do you need? especially through the lens of shifting. What do you need for um instructional tools in order to reduce the achievement gap? That was the question. Was that correct? >> We looked at each priority and did a
little dipstick with uh folks of where do they sit? What knowledge do you need? What skills do you need for your tool toolbox? Um and um teachers were terrific in terms of saying I need more. >> I need a little more help. I need more tools for this. I need more
understanding of how to use data. All of the priorities uh we kind of went through with each each of them and um did you know 500 answers it was great um to understand where the needs are and so now we plan >> and we figure out how to attack it. >> And the way that we got that data is that they were voting with their phones.
So it was anonymous. So we said here's four categories. What do you need in order to uh get better at tier one instruction? What do you need in order to be more prepared for rigor in the classroom? what do you need? Um, and it was pretty stark that the uh we need
more tools in order to feel confident in addressing the academic gaps that we feel our students have. That's our job. If we ask that question, we need to follow through with unpacking what that means. So, the next survey that goes out is please tell me what you mean by tools.
>> Um, is it instructional um materials? Is it professional development? Is it supervision? is a collaborative support with your peers. Let's unpack that, quantify it, and go out and find how we can budget and make it work for the teachers. Our teachers are at high
levels of willingness to do the work. And I believe that they're at high willingness of skill to do the work, but if they're asking for certain things in order to get that work done in a way that makes impact on students and they're saying it's instructional strategies and instructional tools, then we need to get that farther. So,
yesterday was a really interesting day of feedback, learned a lot. Uh and I'm and it was really helpful to hear directly from them all in one day uh in the mirror of what the elementary folks asked for and what the middle school and high school folks asked for was striking. So now we have new marching
orders. We know uh something different as of yesterday. That's an interesting data point for us that we will now pursue along with the other work around um the literacy work the PD that we're doing and we'll shape the PD from that. Um and we'll set evaluation goals around
that that work. Um and I'm really really excited that our educators are using the ready to go eval uh objectives because now all of this plugs into those things. it's either rigor or it's supporting students who aren't meeting grade mark or it's in increasing culture and
climate in their classrooms. So, I think that we're rowing in the same direction. Um, and the other exercise we actually went through was realigning the definitions of those five priorities. We all talk about it, but we all understand it in the same way.
We all see those terms differently. So, we really wanted to realign that with our leadership team. And then we actually did an interactive exercise with all 500 staff say what do these mean? What do these terms mean to you? What does it look like in your classroom? And did a thumbs up, got more
feedback. Is this definition what you think it should be? Should it be edited? And uh we compared that data to what the leadership team provided to us two weeks earlier. So, we're honing in on what we believe we're doing well, what we
believe to to We had a meeting today to talk about what we can do for all schools this year. We have three quarters of the year left. There's work to be done this year in classrooms with teachers and students. Um they're telling us what they need and we need to
move on. Um, an example of that is our first school that went and provided us a work plan that they want to institute and implement. Uh, this week we brought that plan to the finance subcommittee this morning. Uh, it was a modest amount of money that we're moving over to the
Tucker School in order to support the leadership there in uh, a lot of different ways. Many of the adjustments that were made were nonfinancially based. It was just realigning the current resources that we have. and we're asking all of our principles to look at their buildings in that way and we'll all be reporting back on that
information going forward. So, we are actively pursuing uh rigor. We're actively pursuing high levels of tier one instruction uh and we're actively pursuing what teachers need for us to give them in order for them to fulfill what we're asking to do every day. And I
can tell you very clearly that the willingness to do the work uh and the energy in the room yesterday in both the middle school, high school audience and the the elementary audience was high. Everybody's ready to work and we're very thankful for that approach,
professionalism and um and effort that the staff is giving every day. >> So we if we had this information we went to the war committee and said what do you need? We could have said, "Well, if you want us to be like Denim, we could use another >> 12 million >> $12 million." But, you know, it's not
peaceful, but uh and we did have a good conversation with the Warren Committee. And I think that for the folks that were there, they were asking for this kind of information. How are you connecting the resources that we give you to a priority or vision? And how does it impacting the classroom? And how is it impacting what
you thought would work with kids and teachers? And if it's not working, how do we know what do we want to do differently and how do we want to pivot? Um, so you know, in math, I think we introduced our new math curriculum about four years ago. Might be a nice time to revisit that, take a look at what's
working, what's not for our ELA and literacy curriculum. We are very excited to introduce that to the community in a pilot this spring and then fully in the fall. Uh obviously our science has been working hard to identify uh the areas uh of success that they needed to address
which they did. Um and so uh there's work being done. We want to support that work, facilitate the work for the professionals in Milton. And in our time here, uh we're saying out loud very clearly, what do you want us to help move, facilitate, and lead? But they're
giving us the information that we need so we can support them in that work. Um, and we're we're excited to do it with them. Uh, and I feel very um thankful to be a part of a team that's working so hard, but there's work to do. [Applause]
>> Questions? >> I just um first of all, I thank you so much. This is great, very informative, and thank you for taking the time to put this together. Um, I did have a couple of questions and some comment. Um, John,
I appreciate the onset you just explained that last slide to us. I think I've seen various it over the years in different formats and um, you know, I appreciate you saying like we although
our per pupil is lower than a lot of our neighboring districts or uh, uh, desi comparisons, I do appreciate that we're trying to work with what we have, right? and that sometimes it's not about money and that we can do a lot more with
what we have. And I think that's an important message I think to send out to the community, especially on the tail end of the override that we just had. And you know, I know a lot of times when we see those numbers and we're we're like, "Wow, that's really, you know, their per people spending is so much
higher, like $12 million more." And sometimes it's great, sometimes you don't see the results, but I really appreciate like what can we do better like here and then show that improvement and then continue to get that support. I think that's so important when people do
see change um that it's it's much easier to continue to support something. So, I really appreciate the efforts that you all are putting in to to showing results and being committed to that and the entire staff. Um, I do wanted to like
ask I know we've kind of looked at like ELA and math scores um the last couple years and we've seen it kind of go up down sometimes you know like those changes and I know we've kind of monitor it but have you just just looking at it
over the past couple years like >> can you kind of pinpoint what's or is it you know you mentioned the change in the law for the ELA like you know and some of those so like have you been able to kind of like pinpoint like what could be causing that
>> um for the ELA curriculum? I think that would be hard for me to say. >> No, no, no. Just in terms of the data like you were talking about the reduction in score like >> um >> for grade 10 are you asking? Yeah, I think it was
sorry. Uh yeah, the one on slide 15 like um and same thing with um slide 16 for the math and ELA like you know like what has kind of causing those in certain grades to be lower and then it kind of picks back up and so on and so forth. Is
there anything that's like is it is it the curriculum per se or is it something else? Is it just like kind of, you know, we're just still dealing with, you know, the aftermath of COVID and just trying to catch up kids? Like >> I think it'd be hard to pinpoint. Okay. Uh because, you know, there's just so
many factors that that go into it. And so what we're doing, John and I are uncovering with the leadership team and now with the faculty is um what could be missing. >> Okay. >> How can we address it? We're we're learning what what faculty is asking for. So it's hard to pinpoint. I mean,
we can talk about the pandemic. can talk about grade 10, you know, the law changing. We could there's lots of things we could talk about that's changing for students. Um, just being online is different. I mean, all there's all kinds of things that are in work on what we can control as educators in the six and
a half hours a day we have students. So, um, so that's kind of what we're going to be thinking about. Don't really doesn't really answer the question totally because I can't really tell you. >> But I appreciate that. Thank One of the things that they mind folks of is that our our principles in the curriculum folks are doing item analysis. So
>> when they start looking at the questions that folks that maybe a majority of students didn't get correct or the majority that they did go through every question or they go through every question and start to look at where did our students do well in our little you know in our ELA curriculum where did
where did they historically or you know in the aggregate not do well why not how much time >> kind of you know item analysis I think is super important for the educators to do because that should inform curriculum and pacing guides. So the the example I always give is if we if we didn't do
well on mixed numbers in then we should look back and look at the scope and sequence and find out how long did we actually spend on mixed numbers >> and what was some of that work that we did and maybe we need to dig deeper and maybe give more time for that part of the curriculum to be uh taught examined
and assessed and um so that kind of that kind of down in deeper level of analysis is at the kind of the teacher in uh director and department level. Um but a good news story is that you know we were in a science class in grade six. I think
we talked about this last weekend the week before but >> we had a teacher who had a anchoring chart in their room that that that defined mastery for every single student. >> This is what mastery is and we're not leaving until we're mastering this concept. And at the end of the lesson,
not only were they rotating the room to assess a certain uh they were looking at land and soil and what was deeper, etc. Uh and then they had to do an exit ticket on their Chromebooks and let them know what they felt comfortable that they mastered and why and how come and
that teacher had all that data to inform her next day of instruction. When we talk about using data to inform instruction, there's no better example than that science class in grade six appears where they weren't moving until they mastered. >> They were collectively going to go back and look and find out what they needed
to do individually. Students had individual time to go back and master that task in the class. could go back if it was more of a group task and and they were trying to, you know, in trying very well to make sure that they weren't covering the curriculum, that students
were actually mastering the curriculum and the students were >> selfish. >> And then when they had student time with their teacher, I'm not sure what the term is called in Pierce, they'd go back and they'd get extra help and they'd take that exam again and they'd take that quiz again in order to show mastery. So the these are these are the
types of pockets of good news that we need to model uh scale up to other departments let teachers share that that great practices can be done. um we have to get back to mastering the concepts that are based in standards uh that are
put forward by Desi and make sure that you know I think Kyler asked a question uh the issue the question was something to the effect of the staff um about a task being rigorous but maybe not connected >> engaging right >> yeah can something be engaging but not
rigorous >> and can something be engaging and rigorous but not connected to the standard >> you know like we really have to ask ourselves all of those questions because we can work really hard >> but don't mistake what's the saying don't mistake activity
for productivity >> right we want to make sure that we're we're aiming all of our arrows in the right direction so there's death deeper analysis to do some of that's happening in the classroom and grade level setting and we need to look at our directionality around student growth uh
I think that I was on a call this morning with other superintendents and you know student growth is where we want our focus. We want students to be growing wherever they are. They need to be one step better year every year. Uh and then the the overall MCCAST scores will take care of
themselves if we have individual students growing and their growth percentiles going up. So that's an area of review that we should be doing as well. >> Thank you. And I would also say that now that we have performance matters online for
teachers, a lot of teachers are plugged into that now and they can see better um access at their fingertips the the scoring um range for all of the students that they have in their classroom.
whereas before they're kind of working, you know, without um ready knowledge at hand. And if they want to know if someone's really struggling, then they can go and look at their assessment on this platform and
whatnot. And it takes to find things and put things together. But now that we have the performance matter platform and all the data is right there for teachers and it's so easily accessible, >> they can go on and they can see like what
students in the red on a certain exam on a certain assessments and then they can use that to group their students for the next day or think about intervention groups. Think about what it is thaters need. if if so many of your students are
already meeting the standards in the class, like what else can you do next? >> So that that's some of the little tweaks and changes that we're actively building together system so that everyone has access to it. Um and hopefully that will help to
push along, you know, um improving the tier one instruction just for everybody across the board. >> It's a great tool. >> That's great. on the absenteeism. I think we've done a lot of work as a district to really bring those numbers down. So, thank you
so much for all the efforts and uh yeah. >> Um I'll sure I have a question and a comment. Um I was actually going to ask a question about the absenteeism. Um just looking at the chart on slide 23,
you know, like uh the chronic absenteeism rate is about three times higher for a number of subgroups compared to all students. >> Are we able to look at at student performance
>> by subgroup based on chronic absenteeism? And do we have a theory around I don't know what we're doing as a district to drive down chronic absent >> uh is there a connection between absenteeism and student performance and do we know what that is and do we think
interventions could the first intervention is getting them in school? >> Yeah. >> And for the majority of our students that means it's not just work with the student it's actually the parent. So when a third grader is not coming to school on time or or is chronically
absent, that is not the third grader's fault. That's the that's the parent that they're in school and on time. And so, uh, I think that you may see some families that may call me and say, "I'm really not happy that I was called three times this week to make sure my child
was on time." And I say, "If you want to come in and talk about it, we can come in and talk about that." We we are asking folks to be in school. We are supporting folks to get into school. We've made transfers from one school to another in order to have people access school at a time that works for them.
So, we we're reaching out to make sure that those things are in place, but we're also holding folks accountable. Being in school is the best thing to to do school. You got you have to be here in order to get the work done. So, we don't have a technical I don't have a technical correlation right now, but I
have several anecdotes that we're working actively with right now where we're asking and having meetings with families and when they say this is my struggle, it might be before school care. It might be, you know, needing to transfer to get a different start time because their job changed. Uh we will
make whatever accommodation we can in order to help that situation out. But in the end, you need to bring your child to school and there's an expectation for that because uh being in school helps. No doubt about it. >> Yes. The um comment I have is back to
the funding discussion we were having and I agree that we have to have high expectations for students and the resource envelope that we have. I just I've been doing a little math sitting over here. Um and the the per pupil
difference between our DESI comparables and per student, we have a little over 4,300 students. That's actually $21 million gap. Um which is almost 30% of our annual
operating budget. I guess um you know we have the budget we have for this year, we have the budget we have for several years going forward. I think I would just ask the residents of Milton,
would a 30% increase in your earnings dramatically affect your cost of your your standard of living? The answer is yes. And I think a 30% increase in our students, would that dramatically impact
our standard of learning? The answer is yes. And I I want people in this town to see these expenditures as an invest investments in the future of our town.
Um and not not a cost center where we're trying to drive down expenses. Um, so anyway, I just want to get on my I think I think $21 million is a
um is a significant amount of money and our educators are working under lean circumstances and making the most of it. You know, >> I don't I don't think money is everything, but I think results like this compared to our peers who are
working with 30% more than we are um is um there there's something here to be really proud of too. >> Hi, Doug. I um had a question and you said something. I was looking
performance of student the student groups performance um and the percentage it's on slide 20 um and I think this this story is one that's uh been recurring I think this this gap
the for students with disabilities ELLL low-income African-American black students that the difference between the MCCAST scores with the meeting and exceeding expectations is it's a pretty big there's a big gap and I think as long as I've been in the district and my
kids have been in the district that gap has been there and I guess one of the questions that I have and to your point earlier Carla it's you can't point to one thing right it's I know it's a very it's a difficult um it's a difficult pack it's a
difficult story to unfold like how what's the genesis of that that gap but something was said for are recovering is are recovering it or recovering versus mastery, right? And I think that's one of the things that I would be curious
about and maybe more so with the students with disabilities and and and other groups. I think there's that sense of like assume competence, right? assume that I can and I just want to make sure that that is the way that we are approaching all of
our students with that assumption of competence because that then becomes the difference between I am going to assume you can master something versus I'm just going to cover it because I have to. And I don't mean that as a a slight to teachers or anybody, but you know,
especially for classes if you have kids who in some of those cases are multiple grades >> and then they're being taught curriculum that will supposed that they're going to have to pass the eighth grade or the, you know, MCCAST, but they have multiple grade levels. How are we ensuring
that there is mastery of that content for all of those kids? So I think there's so much to unpack, but I I don't know if we start with that basic premise kids of all of our students and enter it with that idea of assuming competence and that they can master this content
and then look at it from there. I think that that would be important because I there's just it just seems like there's something else and I know that all many districts struggle with this discrepancy, but I just I think we've been trying to figure it out for so
long. So, you know, it likely is a combination of things that you've talked about the curriculum. Is it the I don't know but I wonder are there other ways to approach um I don't know just other ways to approach it and is there I don't know is there a
mindset shift or or or something else to to begin to address that because I I just it's just we we can't have students who are you know almost in some cases a third of a p you know 21% versus 68% in
that meeting or exceeding expectations based on different different groups. So, I don't know. I just think >> it will be great if we have more conversations around that and really try and begin to like truly unpack that and >> how to begin to bridge that gap.
>> So, we actually had that conversation yesterday with 500 of the educators 250 at a time. uh we talked instruction and rigor specific to this as well as it connected to meeting the need you know being uh action steps
towards meeting the needs of students who were not meeting with grade level and it starts with the definition of in front of grade level content >> right >> it starts with grade level content you can't have you can't expect a child to perform on an assessment that is blue
when you've only taught them red >> everybody Everybody needs to be brought up to blue. Everybody needs to be engaged in blue. Everybody needs to be uh quizzed and uh retested and hopefully mastering blue. And so so that's the first part.
There has to be a standard >> standard. The second thing is the rigor part of that is how do you how do you move students? Uh and it's not through coverage, it's through being a warm demander. There were some great we actually
um a menty meter uh menty >> menty meter >> a menty meter that we did. So we have 300 people putting their comments on what does rigger look like in your classroom. >> We had hundreds of comments of how they introduce what does that look like in their room and we're all watching it
populate the screen. So we are we just have that conversation first of all grade level content and then how do we be patient enough and vigilant enough in in in in our efforts to make sure that students take we take the time with
them to master the content and that grade six science lesson is one of the ones that I remember for a long time that was happening >> in in at a super high level in at the Pierce Middle School. So that's the dialogue that we had and there was a lot of other terms that folks used besides
warm demander. there was a real lot of good thinking and descriptions of what that looked like in the room and that's for every child >> right >> and that might mean something different too so when we get to children I think I spoke to this the at yesterday's we were in a co-taught math class at the high
school and there was a young student in that co-taught class who was from a subsparate class that was the most active hand raiser >> and participant in that lesson he was accessing grade level curriculum with the support of a administr uh the
teacher par profofessional and an educator at a high level and so >> it's great >> the those things are happening in pockets that that are really when when accessible to students it's happening but then for that general also the big general population all students need to
be >> engaged with grade level curriculum if we want them to learn X they all need to see X and um and so you know that was part of the definition that we put forward that was the agreement that we had from everybody that that would be how we would describe it. Um, but that's
an important part of it and not giving up on kids. >> They're all coming to school. The majority high high majority of our students come to school ready to learn with breakfast in their stomach or they can get it at school uh and from a house that's you know excited about them being at school. And I think our attendance
shows that they want to come back. They're also happy right? So you have to be happy, feel safe, feel valued. And then when you have that, that's the first stage. That's one the plate and then you serve the meal. And the meal is high engagement, high expectation, grade level curriculum, and and really taking
the time to master. So um and that's you know, teachers do that kala, but we had two 50-minute or 60-minute sessions with the staff yesterday. I was exhausted. >> That's like only teaching two periods. if I had to teach three more periods of
that I would learn how to take a nap at 3. >> Uh but our educators are working hard on that and that's a real part of it >> being a warm demander have an expectation high support high expectations all those things matter >> and we have a lot of headn
high um a high willingness of our staff to be able to buy into that and I think they do it every day. >> Great. >> But the scores need to be improved. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I was going to say and it's complex. Yeah. >> And they want more tools, >> right? >> Correct. >> I'll be very curious to see what you get
as feedback around the tools, like what that means. >> I'm just Yeah. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. >> Um I think um thank you V for always showing
up with such clarity and just thoughtfulness to help us have context. But um identify for us what those highlights are. Um, highlights to celebrate as well as highlights to pay attention to for
um, the work. Um, I feel like I'm used to by now you bringing that level of clarity and command over the data to share with us.
sort of acknowledge that to me the conversation happening here around what we're learning from this data in terms of informing what we are actually doing in real timeation to me is connecting dots in a way that
has not happened since co in Milton public schools at a leadership level um and I just appreciate that because what what we can learn from the data specifically. Um
how we are then using it to plan and development both sort of writ large as well as with individuals at grade level teams etc.
You're curriculum and the way that ties in. You're talking about budget priorities and how to best align the resources we have in real time as well as how to have that conversation
bigger picture with the community. Um, and John, I just want to sort of compliment you for what is so clearly your um
ship and ability to like participate in let alone lead the conversation about it. Um I think it's like you're bringing a level of rigor to that, you know, for the way in which all of
our leaders I think can understand the urgency um but also like the practicality of what's needing to be. Mhm. >> And I feel with all that said, um,
like I sure would love, um, sit here one time, you know, before I'm not on school committee anymore and and see
some of these like moving, shifting. Um, but I feel like that was was never going to happen until what you start what you started doing started happen.
Um, and so I just feel I feel excited about it. Um, and like grateful that for the team that's in place here to push it. Um, and I like the opportunity to like do a both hand, you know, to really
push that while all those green like the color coding in the boxes is important because it is important for us to like do that especially that's that's amazing. That is such
great work. Um, and I I really appreciate that we're not getting that letting that get lost either >> in the be very firm um around what the expectations are for how we're
um changing our practices to be able to expect improvements in for our sub um some of our subgroups that you know deserve they just deserve better. Um, and until they're getting that, they're not going to perform
better. Um, so I I of that. Um, and I just Nathan appreciate your helping us like stay in the context of um, and I feel like this was a big part of the
last year as well. is just like our per people pupil spending is one thing, our performance data is another thing but to triangulate that to understand like the return on investment that we are getting for >> that's important you know because in
that sense it's it is actually a better news story than it might appear. Um and and it's what you're talking about is like realigning what we what we already have
in the meantime, you know, while this is what we have >> and and I just think the practical approach to that um with I just I really appreciate that. Um so thank you very much. >> You're welcome. We we appreciate and we
say it all the time Kyler and I that um this is the teachers in the principal district communities district. Uh we're here to facilitate. So we're really happy to uh be a like our learning walks are amazing that we we're seeing a lot of evidence
everywhere we go. But I I really think that um the staff to stick with it and and ask them what they need and then provide it and follow through and really double down on supporting our educators will will pay dividends. And to uh Anna's
point, uh when we begin to show those good results and begin to show where the resources were to help those results come to bear and increase, >> then we're going back and saying if we if we can get a little bit more, we can do a little bit more. we we need we need a really good bump not just in but in
other areas in order to demonstrate that. So that's the goal and uh and I'm really thankful to be a part of a really great group of people. We had a great time yesterday with people who are all willing to do the work. So uh but it's work and we need to give them what they need and we need to
>> uh expect it and inspect it and work with them and um and but it's a good place. There's a lot of good work happening out there. >> Asking them what they need. just asking. >> It's like that's very important to do >> and I think >> glad that you did that so they can tell you what they need so you can then
>> get them what they need within what's possible. >> Um but they basic those basic steps >> happening >> they've not been discussed like
>> the way you've you're sharing that here and now. So I I think um a very basic but also um sometimes that like getting you know
keeping it simple in order to stay focused and the last thing I just want to the five priorities and I'm even thinking about like how can we keep putting those in front of the community as well. Um I know you presented them
first in early September on the last slide um tonight but I'm not sure if that was shared or not on this it >> it will be shared but people should be seen
I would almost as much as it's clear those are being internalized by the leadership team you know the educators in the building like everybody should know. You watch like school community members, we all know these are our five priorities this
year and like those communities should be socialized to those too. >> Um so that then we're able to track our to those. Um so thank you. >> We'll provide you the updated definitions. That was actually one of
the big exercises we did was re realigning aligning all of our thinking on sure that we had a common definition, common language. Uh, and that was part of what we did over the last two weeks as well. So, we can bring that to the group as well.
>> Mark, I have things really appreciate um you appreciate all the work. Appreciate all the discussion. um committee members I like shared out slides which I'm you know again not not presenting myself but I I love love data do
um both my schools and for for Milton uh and I agree with a lot of the things that have kind of been said here I think just a maybe not a some things I I really think are important just to make sure we're
talking about is like consolidated we're like in the 89th percentile like we said we're in the hey we're in the top 10% of all districts in the state like that sounds sounds pretty good um that's true but I think again looking at
kind of where we've been historically where we've been over the last five years I I agree with all the points I think you all have been making just echoing like there's just there's so much improvement we can and should seeing it I think from my standpoint I think a lot of it is like teaching is
hard it is very complex moving kids across all kind of different abilities across multiple grades and the multiple subjects is so challenging and my perspective that really has hindered that in Milton is that we have no coherence uh across kind of
instructional practices to like carry that across schools and across grades and across classrooms and share expertise and name what our instruction I have not heard that at this table from leaders over the last two years. I think that is what I've heard from y'all work
y'all are doing your instructional walks are helping to do that name that for teachers and to collaboration across schools and so like I am certainly hopeful that will that will help and that will be a a piece not the only piece but a piece to kind of
drive us forward uh but yeah it's very disappointing we have been and I think we have to we have to maim that like we we are just not doing Well, especially in certain metrics. I think one metric I wanted to flag well a couple things like the state
is doing poorly. 100% got to say like Milton is not unique to that. I do think to a point you named like we just got to hold ourselves to a higher expectation though than the state obviously like we whatever the state is doing we know we want better for and that's where we look to. So I think
the state is sometimes useful sometimes not so useful because like it looks like hey we're getting better but that's just because the state's getting worse. uh and we're really just staying flat. I think the other one we didn't really talk about is SGP, which is student growth percentile, and that is a metric
for how much are our kids growing compared to kids who perform similarly to them on prior MCCAST. So kids who got a 455 on the prior MCCAST and ELA, we compare
those to other kids who got a 455 across the state and say, okay, where did they end up this year? And if you perform better than those kids, your S perform worse, your SP is lower. If you perform average, you're at a 50. So like SGP is a very helpful benchmark to see kind of
where we're at. RS like of how you are moving kids as a district, how you're growing them. RSGPS are good. They're like, you know, our percentile ranks for SJP are 75th for ELA, 58th for math. Like that is, you
know, I don't think we want to be 58th percentile in the state. I think we expect more of what our kids can do, what our teachers can do, all of that. So like that is that is something that as I look through the data is concerning. I think the other part about
like the coherence piece and noty within leadership to help push through. I think you see that when you look at the grade by grade level kind of breakdown in the change over time like again I I provided this chart slide not
but it it's just up and down like it is kind of dips and and falls. Um, generally as I look at like meeting and exceeding a rigorous benchmark for that is like 70%. You can get 70% of your kids to meet and exceeding within a
grade level like that's good. That's a strong benchmark. Obviously, we want 100%. But like where we are 70 when we look at preandemic Milton like pretty much half of the grades were above 70, you know, some of them were
above 75. Uh, a couple of the grades were just south of 70. We only have one grade, eighth grade in ELA, that like was never ever really close. Now, everybody's below that line. We got like one grade that's kind of close. Uh,
a couple grades are are improving. This past year, we did see growth across a few grades, but we're just we're close to kind of where where we were, and again, it's been very herkyjerky. uh you look at like SGP for ELA across
the grades for that what I think of as like a rigorous benchmark is 60 right that is you are average 60 is you're growing much faster than average kids and so if you can maintain 60% SGP across all grades over multiple years now you're really humming you're really
you're really moving kids at a faster rate comparison districts and once again if you look kind of prior to COVID we had some times where we were doing that where we are now we we're not there and we really haven't gotten there across
almost any any exception of kind of fourth grade. Fourth grade is kind of getting pretty close. They're doing they they had a good jump this year. They're doing had some good positive kind of momentum uh and really pretty good SGPs. They're at 59. Um so like
it's actually a little bit worse. That was honestly something I was surprised by because I know we've talked a lot about ELA here. Our math performance is actually not as good as our ELA performance. Um we are below the 70% mating and exceeding
benchmarks across multiple grade. No, no one only one grade is somewhat close. Again, that's fourth. Everybody else is pretty far down. And again, SGP on fourth grade being the only one to kind of surpass that. They got 63% SGP. So again, fourth grade I think is a is a
highlight. um as I've kind of looked looked through the data. Uh and again then we piece that we just like didn't talk about yet. I think again we talked a bit about in the context of the Tucker which again really appreciate the presentation
John did this morning the work that he and um the principal are doing on trying to address learn you know that they are still we we saw a decline in Tucker's performance last year. Pierce we saw a bit of a jump but still below kind of the other schools and I think when I looked at the data
going back to 2017 which is to the year of incast 2.0 in the nextG testing like this is a re fairly recent phenomenon like Tucker and Pierce were not the bottom of the district. Tucker was outperform
five schools in math and kind of right there in ELA. Pierce was like right there kind of with them. there's still, you know, in some places kind of towards the bottom end, but the gap was not as significant as is. That is a real post pan that is just I think we all agree like
just wildly concerning that we haven't been able to turn that tide around. And I think that's been because of obviously we've had some leadership instability at Tucker. We've had leadership ability at the district to in the way you all are talking about doing to try and like >> give them support and turn that around.
But I just I think my expectation was like this was a historic long-standing kind of issue within the town and if you look it's not really true. They've they've been kind of right there. Um and so this is a more recent phenomenon that I think we need to be moving with
urgently and I appreciate John the work you're doing to move urgently on that. The last point I just want to share is the piece on the selected populations. I know the the presentation was around like, hey, we're doing better than the state average. I I think that's a little
bit the way I I typically look at it, what I like to look at is like, okay, we know how our students overall compared to the state, right? We know their percentile rank. If you take our students with disabilities and compare them
disabilities across the state, what is their percentile rank? And if we are teaching them at a level compared to our peers, compared to everybody else in the state, those two numbers should align, right? If we're 90th for all students, that means our
students with disabilities should be 90th percentile among students with disabilities. And if we're doing better, then that that number should go up. And if we're doing worse, that number would go down. That number goes all the the three selected populations I see. Again, uh students with
disabilities been down by about like 5 to 10%, low-income students by about 10 to 15% to 30%. Um so we are not teaching our black students well. The state as a whole doesn't teach our black students
well. >> I think regardless of what what the dollar amount is like that that matters. I've spoken about it before. It it is what it is for this year. It's going to be what it's going to be for the next couple years. We >> it just is. So, I I don't think it's until like we get closer to a place
where we can get an override and try and tell that story. Our kids just they need to move quickly. Um, and I think there's there's so much opportunity within Milton to do better have said and you've talked about a lot. Um, but I just I want to highlight as I
was looking at at those things like some some of those urgencies. I I do think there are really good highlights. I think science is one you all mentioned before like technically doing better in ELA than in science percentile rankwise, but science has made huge improvements. Um, and that's really impressive. Kyleott, I
think, continues to be a real highlight. It it stays at the top for both almost every single year since the pandemic. Um, so I think that's a highlight and figuring out what Kolyott is doing so well and like how we can pull that structure to Tucker, but also Glover and Cunningham. I think fourth
and seventh grade both fourth have made like improvements the past two years. Seventh grade was our lowest performing grade two years ago and now it is it's not our highest but it has made significant strides upwards as opposed to some of the other struggled. So I
think that's fantastic and stuff we should look at. Um, so I don't mean to be too much of a of a downer here because I I do think like if you just look at it broadly like it's like oh Milton's doing good. Like Milton's Milton's doing quote one of my mentors um somebody I
work with I think very highly of it's like we're not here to be good we're here to be we can be great and I think that's like what we want out of Milton is like we want it to be great for our kids. really appreciate the work, John, that you are doing uh and Carla that you are doing that you all brought and those
coherence and like I would love to continue to have these conversations. I think like so to Lizzie to your point just more we can be performance conversations in front of >> of families and making sure that it is like highlighting and we can be clear
about what resources we are lacking if there are opportunities grant-wise asking the town why if I think you've raised it before like what is the thing like if there's the thing we need I will shout and advocate to the rooftops is I think is my role from school committee to try and get you
that thing but I think a lot of it is like the in having the structures, putting in the time to be in classrooms and see what's going on. Um, so I appreciate the work that you're doing in that. Yeah. And I do want to also say that like what you're doing and what you've
kind of presented doing this year and next year is like setting us up for success you know so that next time we look at this we're hoping to see different results which will I think energize our community as well you know to
biggest thing that we struggle with not you know even us just looking at this data and a lot of the points Mark that you brought up just looking at this data year after year and not seeing a lot of change. Overall, it looks great. Start digging in deep there. You know, I know
many members brought up areas that are concerning and we haven't really seen a lot of movement and so I really am excited about what you are presenting for it because I think I think it would really help like build broader support
for our schools and I you know I think that's something that we're all really passionate about. So, thank you so much. This has been really great. I'm I'm really excited. I so look forward to the next uh yeah and more
conversations like this. I think it's so so important for all of us to kind of push that message out into the community >> and and uh and I think another word for coherence uh Mark is all like systems. >> We we need consistent systems. Uh
initially that was around finances, right? So now we're we're working finance, but we we need to reestablish the systems for uh curriculum and instruction and evaluation and supports and meeting and talking and uh and
they're happening and we're codify them and uh really really make that part of the foundation of what we do and um and support the people who are doing it. And so uh we're we're we're happy to be doing the work.
which actually might make the next thing on the agenda something that this the school committee will be happy with. So um >> thank you. >> Are we ready so much? >> Nice to be >> Yes.
So under my report on number uh letter C um in light of the conversation about the um studies uh my my thinking of trying to figure out a way to uh create vehicles for school committee members to be a
part of the work we do with curriculum of some of the work that we do with curriculum right that gets presented at this table. uh uh my experience of having a curriculum and instruction subcommittee of the school committee to meet when needed uh
to go over whatever work is happening um in the area of curriculum or program of studies which is basically curriculum parallel and in advance to when we make these presentations school committee. So I would I would make it akin to policy
subcommittee where uh the players who are working in the area or whatever the policy is come to the policy subcommittee and say we think we need a policy on this we want to bring it forward to you. You asked how did it originate? What what do we what do we used to do? What are we doing now? Uh
from a curriculum standpoint what that would have looked like last year would be uh we'll go back to Kat D. Rosh's um presentation. You would have been in the room with us. We talked to her about what we were doing, why she was doing it, what she's got, what the timeline is, what's the
impact of her work. Um, and been part of maybe one, two, or three meetings where we did that together as a subcommittee. So table at least half of the school committee was part of the process in the presentation in the work. uh whether it
be literacy or whether it be um the program of studies or whether it be a math curriculum that we might want to think about doing or a discussion about what happened in science that works so well. So when we're changing or revamping or adjusting any curriculum work, we would want to call the
curriculum subcommittee to part of that work um uh at a at a earlier point in time so the feedback and the discussion can be inclusive of the voice at this table that reflects the representative uh group of our community in that
conversation. Um, in that way when things come to the table, they're they have uh community voice through school committee voice. They have a vetting of that work that's done prior to coming to the full table in a way that I think the full committee can can be assured that
there's been voice and input and feedback and discussion uh with this group as part of it. And so we're not getting something that you just have to put salt on and eat it. You're actually helping us cook the meal and you're being part of the process as we do it. So, I would propose that we uh create a
a curriculum subcommittee of the Milton Public School Committee uh in order to preview um and work through issues that are curriculum based that will be coming forward to the school committee for whatever reason over the over time. So,
I I I was trying to channel uh the goal of of giving the school committee more time to preview and be part of before things are fully decided. And I hope that meets the the need that we were kind of wrestling with at our last meeting that we were talking about with
with the uh with these program studies >> to say I I am very much in favor of this idea. I love it. I think it's great. I uh we had a curriculum and instruction um I think it was
advisory committee slashs subcommittee >> a few years ago. Um former member Beverly Ross Denny sort of um originated that as it as a need and helped to set it up.
And um I think that what we lacked at that time was a system to plug into for that work to feel, >> you know, meaningful, connected and
helpful, you know, in the way you just described. >> So I'm all for this. I think this full circle in that sense because when we took the step as a committee two years ago to sort of sunset that
previous version, I think it was because it had not traction or sort of plugged into the system. Um, and so I think at that point it made sense to
just sort of pause it. And I'm really glad we're you're in a pos you're you're you're with the work you're leading now in a position to see the the value of it and I do believe it will be helpful for school committee members um
to have that visibility and opportunity to participate. Um so thank you for for bringing that to us. >> It's a little bit different on why we censored it. I thought Peter was suggesting we get rid of it just to bring the conversations to like that
that was a those are conversations we should be having at the school committee involving everybody. >> I don't think we ever did that. >> We never had them, >> right? >> Yeah. I'm not saying we shouldn't do this. I was just naming that as like that I think was the logic that as I remember it of why we sunset it is like
hey curriculum instruction is the driving force of the school district. Everybody should be involved in those conversations. should be talking about that here. Again, I think if the the the department is um saying that they think this will be a helpful mechanism in
order to streamline communication and >> work forward more quickly than >> what that didn't accomplish the sort of absorbing it into the full school committee didn't accomplish the timeline piece that you've identified, which is the need to work sort of
>> Yeah. ahead of the full school committee's deadlines to approve various things which we didn't see uh you know I I I don't Anyway so I just think that makes >> almost like the that's what a
subcommittee is for ultimately is to kind of um accomplish like the the time the effort the work that needs to get done that's just beyond the scope of what's possible to twice a month full meetings. Um, so
yeah, that's a it's a good point, Mark, that the intent behind the sun setting I don't think was to like close it off or sun or important work of school committee members involvement in teaching and learning
strategy investments and whatnot. But in practical terms, it that is kind of on some level. So I feel like this is a good >> it it to me it's yet another dot being connected to the former the previous
discussion >> um that we were having >> comments >> what would be the pro the timeline well if other I'll stop I'm this is my last comment I'm sorry but like
that this is a good idea what is the vision for like a time frame for this and a process I guess for identifying like who will serve on when you would like to see it.
>> So I I would leave the makeup of the committee to the folks at the table. I would say the the the opportunities for this to be improductive would be leading up to our conversations about the uh program of studies which could happen in
November, December, January for February review. uh we have a second presentation of our early literacy that's in meet again related to literacy and have the C cats team come and present to that small group and talk about the process
and dig deeper into the discussion about what was working what they did >> so when the president >> a little higher level but at least two or three of the members will have a very deeper understanding of what that means can speak to it >> um and then whatever other curriculum
work we start to move through uh this year. I think uh putting on the agenda for that group this similar to how we do policy. Oh, we have to get this done. We gather the group. This will probably be more like two or three meetings per thing instead
of maybe just one. Uh but we get it together before uh the um Thanksgiving break. Then we would have a couple meetings regarding program studies. What is the high school thinking? What is their goals? what are their shifts
have that you know begin begin that would be the first um curriculum subcommittee agenda item for us to explore together >> no I think this is great >> are interested maybe
either like think because I know it's it's new in discussion if you want to send like maybe send an email and say if you're interested and think if we thought If it was a number that you're thinking at two. >> Yeah. Usually two.
>> Yeah. So if there are people that are interested and want to send and then because it's a subcommittee >> a vote >> vote. So we would have to vote members onto the subcommittee. So we could look at getting if people wanted to express
your interest between now and the next meeting we could put it on the November and vote. Does that sound good? Okay, >> great. Thanks, John. >> You're welcome.
>> Um, the next item on the superintendent, while we're >> not meeting George, we didn't two hours here tonight, this is >> we blew it. um October one uh enrollment numbers to uh
desi like we do each year. Uh the submission on that date was um 4,351. Uh you can see from the document that we put in your file, uh we had a total of 321 kindergarteners at that time, which
is the new number to the district. uh the number that left the district would have been last year's seniors, right? You talk about what the grade is coming in. Then you first thing you do is you pull out the grade that graduated. So we we vacated last year's seniors were 265.
Um so that's a strong number. I mean that's that was a strong number for high school but obviously a lesser number. Um our grade uh enrollment changes weekly and monthly. Uh but right now our official number that we put into the
desi was 4351. This was also the same document that uh we submitted to to the uh Massachusetts school building authority for our official enrollment that then they take and they do theation of our enrollments over the past 5 years to to create their
own enrollment uh figures that we are actually actively discussing with MSBA right now. And um so uh I'm presentation looked like in the past. So I'm just providing the document that we provided to Desi. In
some districts there's a deeper analysis of who's moving at what grades and uh what does that mean for our projections and trending for enrollment going up and going down. uh if there's interest in a similar type of analysis, I can actually do that over the next few weeks and
bring back some sort of a presentation of the analysis of our of our data um of our enrollment data. >> Not knowing what the expectation was, I just provided the document. >> Never I've never gotten this document before. This is
>> okay website when it gets close to the website. >> For context, this was it's a little bit apples oranges because all the other years are the end of year enrollment, but this will be the fifth largest enrollment. Last year was second largest
was SY20. >> The seven largest enrollments for all the last seven years, but this is this is the fifth largest ever. It's interesting that uh people would consider Milton a small town, which we are, but 4,300 students puts us on the
above average enrollment in terms of district size across the state, which just goes to show you how many smaller districts there are. A handful of urban districts that have the 8,000s and the 12,000s, but the majority of folks sit in that 3500 range. So, we're on the
higher side than average uh in Milton. and and I' I'd like to uh I'll be happy if our enrollment continues to increase. One of the things about enrollment for me is that I want every single family to send their child to the middle public
school. And it's our job to not only from a budgetary lens by doing good things so we can get to work, but doing the things that we need to do to connect the dots between our work and student achievement to get every single child to come to school in Milton. and that's our goal. So, uh, keeping an eye on
enrollment, I think, is important for a lot of reasons, but, uh, we always want to see as many students come to our schools as possible. >> Mark, do you have at your fingertips what the enrollment was in 2020? >> Yep. >> So, this is the fifth largest. I'm wondering
>> SY20 was 4431. Last year was 4367. So, we're we're 16 less than we were last year. 4320 and SY 24 So yeah, >> can I ask a question to follow up on
what you just said? Do we do any analysis of students coming back to the district? I know that you like I know that there are the years where students typically leave if they're going to go to private school. Do we have any data on kids that come back or the like
trends? Yeah, >> we we do see a trend. Our high school numbers have continued seeing the students come back in nth grade. Y >> whether they leave in seven or eight and come back in nine or they leave in nine and come back in 9. Y >> uh we do see that trend uh where the
high school's numbers are increasing entry points at 9 and 10. >> That's great. >> Any other questions? All right. That was it for you. >> That was it for me until we get down to the uh discussion around student.
>> Perfect. Okay. Um All right. I will jump into the chair off just briefly. We went into executive session and um that was a discussion about the superintendent's contract. So that's an ongoing discussion and we will
be continuing to talk about that. So that was a good discussion. The second update is um we had a um a conversation a couple of meetings ago about communication and and how we can what are ways in which we can you know better communicate with the community.
Um one of the areas that we had talked about was having a um either a blog or a a section within the newsletters that go out to the community that that is from the um the school committee. So I reached out to
Stephanie O'Keefe because John had volunteered her services to us. And um she and I spoke and and talked about what that might look like. And so what we thought about was having a section in
having a blurb written um that we would submit to Stephanie on the Wednesday following our school committee meeting. And so what that would be is the idea of keeping it really brief and of a um like a what why why ne you know what's next.
So like what did we discuss you know why did we discuss it it was a vote we had something coming up that sort of thing and then what's next so we'll either discuss it further doesn't go anymore we'll we'll have a vote on it in the future that sort of thing. Um the other
thing that we could have in there is since um John and Lizzie and I meet Wednesday mornings that we could also say could also talk about the upcoming agenda items for the next meeting. So your next meeting will be talking about MCCAST data enrollment etc. Um and then
it would also have a link to the meeting and then if there were any documents say that you know say this was um or there was information around MCCAST there would be a link to that as well. Um, we also discussed that a way to keep it simple was almost have like a Google doc
for it. So, it literally is and you can figure out the exact wording if it was like what, why, what's next and then it just keeps it really factual. So, it's not like this, you know, very um, you know, not not like this.
It's really just an update on what we did. And so, um, two things. one, we could see if anybody wants to volunteer to do it. But knowing that we're having a meeting tonight and we talked about it that I could I could tackle it this week with Stephanie
working on that Google doc because it's short, you know, I think it would be fairly easy for everybody to just sort of take a look at and maybe it would be this if we don't hear from you by Friday. we're going to assume nobody has issues with it and then let Stephanie and then if we find that it's something fairly easy to do, we could either
rotate it or if there's somebody who wanted to take it on or we can just see, you know, that could maybe be a little bit more iterative. Um, but sounds and we want to start with that, we could look at doing that based on this meeting, sending it to Stephanie
for next meeting. So she on Wednesday she would take it on the first one would go to the all staff newsletter and then would send it to all of the principles and it would go out into all of the principal newsletters on those varying days because they they go out through through the week through the weekend and
the following Monday. So if everybody's okay with that or if anybody has suggestions on anything different or anything else you want to approve but it could be a good test and then if we think we want to tweak it we can go from there. So, I'll I'll be happy to handle it the first week and then happily pass
it off or continue to do to see how it goes. >> Good. >> All right. >> Can um can Stephanie track or can can be tracked how many people like click into the document and read it? >> They track how many people open each
newsletter. That's why we send things out with the principal and then we send things out from the district separate. Yeah, >> I'm not sure if they can track the clicking of each section of that, but I can ask her. >> Okay. >> Yeah, >> you might be able to track. >> They use like Constant Contact that
gives you that like analytics, but I don't know what >> I don't know how much they break it down. Yeah, >> but she'll make that section look better, too. So, it doesn't look like just a a blow, but I can we can ask people to >> Great. Sounds great. Good. >> Yeah. Thank you.
>> Short and sweet. That's all I have. Um, so finance subcommittee report. >> Oh yeah, sorry. >> We have two of we have that as a vote. We have two things as that's not we're not voting. >> We don't need to vote on the vendor
warrants. So we did confirm with Katie uh that for our policy because we voted to appoint >> you >> sign the vendor warrants. We don't need to vote on them. I do need to read them out. She suggests I like read them. So, I'm still going to do that reading where
I say the vendor warrants and the numbers. No, I will still forward you the vendor warrants. I signed vendor warrant 18 today. I've not forwarded that to y'all. I don't think um but the other ones I think I have. Uh but yeah, anyways, we won't we won't take a a vote anymore, but I'll still call it out. And obviously, if anybody has questions,
concerns that all that still applies, you can go look at any vendor vendor warrant you want as well. We don't need to vote. um uh finance subcommittee. We met uh last week and start with this
week uh and then pull up my notes from last week to try and remember what we talked about because we're meeting we're meeting quite a lot. Uh today we uh talked about two things which John referenced earlier. Uh first was kind of some plans looking to do around some slight reallocation of some financial
resources to address needs over at Tucker. Some um instructional improvements uh or instructional um improvements to instructional um implementation to help give uh more kids what they need over there. And so
really appreciate John sharing that. I don't know if you want to share more now or if that's going to be in the future. So I I I'll I'll do a teaser because we're going to ask principal uh Ho um come to a meeting. Uh the uh Tucker leadership has identified
different shifts in existing resources that they would like to make in order to uh really have that they're doing with staff and students. And um that involves the directors having uh consistent time uh
to do a consistent protocol around uh what we're looking for in classrooms, how we can affect student outcomes. Uh that rearranging the existing resources and human capital I think has gone a long way in creating a consistent
approach to our student achievement work. uh grade level uh students, but especially those not making benchmark. Um there was a request uh for revenue uh to support um our grade level facilitators instead
of for a small stipen that they get to meet every week and be part of a instructional leadership team with the principal and the vice principal and the unit members that support the Tucker. that that money ask is uh going from $600 to $1,000
times 6, which is only $2,400. So, we're not talking a lot of money, but the the small amount of money uh expands the amount of time and flexibility. It includes teacher voice in that instructional.
Um the other revenue um need was we have a 6 team chair. uh Tucker uh would like to increase that to 0.8 eight, which means instead of working four on that fourth day, they would be
acting more of a special education uh consultant, advisory and um uh coach in terms of going into classrooms looking at that class students that she actually serves and uh understands fully because she writes the
IEP plans, she works directly with all the service providers and also becomes part of this team of um instruction instructional team leaders with the Tucker. So the goal is to establish uh an instructional leadership team with the existing resources adding some
people to be able to attend through uh increasing the stipen uh and to create a team of people that are looking at weekly what's going on in classrooms, what the supports needed are of the teachers, how we're looking at certain students in a way that we can support them further using data to inform
instruction and actually creating a protocol that they'll use when they meet weekly to go through every single the child and and and work with staff. So, uh the uh principal did an amazing job of creating a very reasonable package of shifts that have no cost to the district
and some that have very little. This is in total $14,000 uh of a $72 million budget uh which we feel was uh very worthy of uh supporting advocating for and funding um and this work facilitators that we'll work out
with the Milton Educators Association uh will create an MOA that they're entertaining uh could be a pilot for what we would want to do for all across all schools. So, we're going to use this as a pilot and if it works at Tucker this uh fall, winter and spring, then we are negotiating this year and we can put
it on the table as a potential tool that all the schools can take advantage of uh when we learn how it works and what what works about it and what may not work about it. So, uh really really excited to support the active work of this year. We met with principles today. We had three quarters of the year left. There's
a lot of learning to do. There's a lot of work to do. There's a lot of outcomes to shift in an upward direction. And uh we've also asked five other principles to start to give us that information about what are they working on, what have they in their last two years of
targeted instructional work. Um what are they working on this year? And is there anything similar that we can do in their schools? Uh in order to make that, you know, uh get get any initiative that they're doing right now over the hump a little bit. the flexibility of having
the grade level facilitators as an example just unlocks the door more time more teacher voice into this work which is a big deal. So something small can go a long way. So we'll be doing that with the other five schools as well and uh again we're we're getting into
classrooms every week at the district level and the superintendent level and we're asking people what they need and we want to deliver on that so we can support them in making impact this year. So, uh, Chucker was the first to go through the process, and I appreciate everybody's support at today's financial
subcommittee meeting, and I'm doing a learning walk there tomorrow. So, we'll be presenting good news when we get there in the building at 10:00 a.m. >> Um, so we had that discussion uh for about the first half. Second half we talked through um capital requests uh
both um some facility capital requests through Tom McCarthy um talked through that uh and then also the technology capital requests come back to that in a sec because we're going to the technology ones but that was our meeting
today uh meeting last week was um spent most of the time reviewing slides that we put together for the warrant committee again thanks assistant superintendent kind of creating that agenda, putting together slides. We talked through it, made made some slight tweaks to it,
talked through the presentation. Um, got very little into kind of the revol revolving accounts policy. Told y'all we're trying to work on that's on the agenda for our next meeting. Um, but yeah, mostly mostly talk through that presentation. We did
have the presentation to the warrant committee this past Monday. Appreciate John and Katie being there. A lot of late ones this week. Um and uh felt like that presentation went well. Really appreciate the Warren Committee's uh engagement uh participation in that. It
was, as you all know, mostly just like a a 101 uh about the budget. Obviously, no information on our projected SY FY27 budget, but just how does the budget process work at the schools and answer kind of general questions of how the schools operate for the warrant committee to kind of get them all up to
speed. Um, and then overall the timeline that we've shared previously with y'all and so that was really really positive. Um, so that's that covers kind of what we've discussed the last two meetings. But anything I miss? >> Okay. Um, I'm gonna the warrants if
that's all right first just to get those out of the way. Um, so I did sign a couple warrants here on our behalf. Uh, I signed warrants 17 $257,65.50
and warrant 18 in the amount of $22,831.65. So again, no need to vote on that. did did sign both those and I'll for the 18 momentarily. Uh any questions on any of the warrants or any of that update before we jump to
the technology capital requests? Okay, so the technology capital requests I can actually pull it up. Uh here it is. Uh so here's the technology capital requests that were submitted to us that we talked about briefly. Um it's not too
complicated. You can see kind of what was listed as um being asked for. The 391 is the same amount that we asked and got funded in the current year. uh for enduser devices. Um what I appreciate about this is that he included the um
list of capital requests from last year that they submitted. Green was what was funded. Uh red was what was not funded. So you see kind of the smartboard replacements of the high school, the network hardware for Pierce and uh Kyleott Cunningham were not funded. And
then so when you go up to SY 26 and look at what we are asking for funding for, it is those three things that were not funded last year. Those are deferred uh capital costs from the technology side >> um that um we are looking to fund.
>> Any other >> Yeah. So I met with uh Bob Patterson, our technology director. He also provided a narrative uh as well. And it was a strategic um decision to include uh and we will every year what was
funded the previous year and what wasn't because what we want to make sure we're aware of that we go into our capital meetings with our eyes wide open that when something fails and we have to maybe in that awful case where we have to go and ask for money from the warrant committee to fix a server or do
something and they can say well you know did you plan for this and we can say yes we've always we've been trying to you get this work done over the last few years. And so we always want to make sure that we have that codified somewhere and it's visible that we're really looking at. So in the following
year, we'll have FY26, FY27, and we'll have our FY28 request um that goes out through the 5-year period as well, just to keep everything on the table for everybody to see and have visibility into. So I appreciate Bob's um uh work
on this. And also uh there have been several grants that Bob has achieved over the last few years that have provided supplemental income to some of these uh purchases and things that we've been able to do in the schools. So I appreciate his advocacy and taking the time to to draft those grants uh in
order to get some of the funds for technology in the district as well. >> Can I ask a clarifying question? the last year's request and this year's request, it implies that
the for for the things that were not funded last year, but the number of items and the cost of those items are the same as 12 months ago. >> Is that true? >> There's probably an escalation of a certain percentage. >> Okay. >> That's not built in.
>> Should it be before we vote on we could have emasculated these prices by a certain percentage point. Uh if that would be helpful to the to the committee for sure. >> I mean I'd defer to other people. It just seems like these things are things
that would increase in cost. >> Yeah, I think it's a a decent point. I'm just not sure what what that number is. Because again, as we talked about, there are other funding sources that that do help with network infrastructure that come from grants like a federal funding grant for schools for network
infrastructure that is used to help offset um costs for things like this. Exactly. Things like this. So, it could be that he's in this although again it's the same same cost as last year. Um I don't know how
quickly Bob needs this voted on and approved when the next capital meeting is and so if this is something that on it and if it needs to be adjusted it comes back defer a bit to >> I guess you two. >> I think generally he keeps things
generic enough that if the sum of money is there uh that he he can in order to get the best deal to bring as many devices over. Uh the switches is something that's very specific. I would worry about that to be a specific number for sure. Um so I can
ask Bob to turn around and escalate it back to the at the next meeting or you can vote the number. Uh either one of those alternatives can go either way. >> Lizzie, do you know when y'all are >> um >> meeting?
next Thursday the 13th at 7:30 in the morning. Um, but I don't anticipate that we'll be beginning to review. Um, certainly
not. I don't believe so. I mean and and the voting to approve the actual um requests takes a little bit in the future. So I think there would be um I think it could go
either way. You know, we could vote to approve this. It's it's titled draft, right? um like an approval of the kind of concept as presented and then
before it would be formally presented to capital those updates could be um I think I do have just a question regarding the phone system which um
I appreciate the information he has included. I mean to me that's a That's a very good anecdotal example of the leanness or frugality we're working with here that we're needing to buy a
used part off eBay to keep our phone system operational. But I I am also noting that, you know, it's not um proposed to be replaced for a couple more years.
that can always change. And so he that's what he's doing, John. That's what you're saying is we're putting things out. They're on our radar. So if they need to get pushed up, they can be pushed up. But >> um I'm just
whether if we aren't including it for 27, you know. Okay. But um it's just sort of something want to look at that sooner, but maybe
that's not actually, you know, I don't think that's necessary to get an answer on for this >> preliminary app. You just that jumped out at me. >> Um, Liz, you could ask a question from a capital committee standpoint. at the
meetings that you hold as a capital committee, would Bob and I go and answer those questions documented as part of the process? Has that been part of the process? Because we can do that and give, you know, give a, you know, the narrative is helpful,
>> but to to have the opportunity for capital committee members to ask questions. Typically there um sort of there's like different departments come one by one >> and present their request
give some information about it >> like kind of clarifying questions from the members. >> Um and those meetings you know stretch out over a number of weeks since it's all the town departments that need to come before the
committee. So yes, but that would probably for the schools that would I mean that would be both the consolidated facilities one and the technology one. >> Do you all vote on dollar amounts or do
you approve individual do you vote on individual things? >> Yes, individual line item requests. Um and that it it happens that um certain requests are not funded
for a given department, you know, and >> um that need to be brought back. But you know there are also uh certain departments in town that really have gone like years um with very
deferred capital requests that are not able to be prioritized. So I think it is looking at overall like what hasn't been funded and trying to bring those pieces in. um
at the same time that for itself to put its request forward. But yeah, the committee has not met yet at all. So I think uh next week is just the the beginning of the pro.
>> And just as an FYI, um Nick and Nick Milano and Amy Dexter at town hall did ask for a draft just to get a ballpark. So we did provide them these documents in the draft. Great. just so they could have the scope. >> Makes sense. >> So that is in their hands at this time.
>> I'd suggest given it's a it's a draft and given Bob's put this together, we assume Bob, you know, knows what the numbers mean and that this is needs. I'd be comfortable moving forward with the vote. So I will make a motion to approve the FY27
uh capital requests presented by the technology department. >> Second. Any further discussion? All in favor? >> I believe that is the end of the finance update. >> Thank you.
Um so um at our last meeting we um talked about um John was going to give an update on the um student assignment discussion. So he was um more in detail
um for us. >> So Mark, if you could take that document on the screen, that would be super helpful. Um one of the the discussion that we had at the policy subcommittee committee meeting was when we're
assigning students to uh the Milton public schools um who are new to us, how do we do that? uh and you're going to see a document that provides inside and how does that correspond in uh connect to the unique
assignment that we have in Milton for the assignment of kindergarten and then for grade one assignment and then discussion uh last year about timing that up for folks who are not kindergarten students
currently in the system but feel like they want to be involved So that was the genesis of this discussion. The policy itself after reviewing it we did not see any changes needed in the policy. What we thought was most helpful
was um with how we would operationalize that policy and we made some changes in the the timing of that that operational document. So going to ask folks to look at the screen um and
the folks at home could know what I was talking about. But what we're starting with is on the on the left hand side you have the month of the year and this would be any given year. This is not specific to this year but uh we do certain things and every March,
April and May. The second column is our current Milton public school families and students and how these decisions about placement impact them. and then timing that up with how we do Milton public school families and students in Milton public schools not
just in relation to grade one but in general how do we do that assignment in a very predictable clear and um transparent way. So, as you look at uh January of every year, and this will happen this year, we'll have one pre kindergarten night where we talk about
what pre kindergarten looks like and that is open to our current families and obviously our new families to Milton public schools. In March, I'm sorry, we in January, we have a prek night and an a K information night. So, those are two
separate nights and our staff get up and discuss what does prek look like? If you're interested in prek and your child's coming to Milton public schools as a three or four year old, this is what it looks like. This is how it works. And we do the same for kindergarten. In March, and I'm going to pause, all of
our new families that come to us for kindergarten will be at that. We'll give them all the information to prepare them for the for the packets they have to fill out, what they need to provide for medical records, uh, and and we'll start the orientation for that. So, that's the first big night for them. In March, we
have our grade one information night that is also open not only to current Milton public school families, but is open to non- Milton public school families. That's where we discuss the unique transition from kindergarten to grade 1 due to our programs uh that we
offer at the elementary level, the French immersion in our in our pathway classes that we take in science uh on the English side of our curriculum at the elementary level. In April uh of any school year, the
first round of students in our current kindergartens of that year will be placed like we do for all students in every grade. We begin the planning process for the next year uh in middle school and in high school and in elementary school and in first grade and
talk about how many classes of uh will we have how many what what's the student will be what school will they go to what grade will they go to what where they'll be placed so all grade one students will be assigned to their first grade class by May 1st again that is similar to how we have to
organize our approach for advancing everybody's grade from one grade to the to the next K 8 to 12. So that's done at the elementary schools, the middle school, and the high school. It's really important to our kindergarten parents cuz this is all about the program
choices they make that we have to to uh determine through how many students sign up for French and how many students sign up for the English science pathway in May. Uh and on the right hand side of that, our Milton public school families that are new to us will start to fill
out in April the registration documents needed to become a Milton public school student for the following year. Our non or new families to Milton will do that in April and in May while we are assigning all of our current students to their next grade
classes. So in May, the assignment will be be determined and communicated by May 1st of each year for our school kindergarteners who go to Milton and they'll know their first grade program in their first grade building at that time.
On the other side of the of the ledger, our new students will continue to enroll in the second round of assignment for all students to all grades inclusive of grade 1, will be made at the end of June. And there's two things that I want to
make sure that people understand that we're doing here. We're creating a very clear pathway for when folks apply to go to Milton Public Schools, put their packet in, when they will be communicated with with what their school assignment is. If you're a non Milton public school parent, you will know by
June 30th if you get your documents in in June in April, May, and June. You'll know by June 30 before the summer starts what your child's school assignment is. If you are a non Milton public school family who move in during the month of July, we batch all those up and we let
everybody know what their school assignment is. We don't do those family by family. We let them build up so we can ensure that we assign families to new schools in new grades and new classrooms to keep our grade our class size balanced. I think I spent some time
in this in June where we you can look at your student you can look at the enrollment chopper elementary and notice that the class sizes across grades and schools are fairly well balanced. We start with what school district they live in and then what's the best class size and we go from there. Where this
connects with the grade one is that our grade one assignment for Milton public school existing families and for new families to Milton public schools for grade 1 will be the same time will be June 30th. In previous years there was a
time where Milton public school current kindergarteners were assigned but we didn't assign non Milton public school families until the third round. So, we're basically extending that deadline and making that a similar deadline for non-public school families who are
coming to us for grade one. Uh, and our existing public school families will be going into grade one. The continued blocks that you see in the right hand side for July and August just described that we will be transparently collecting more information, collecting packets.
Those who have pulled packets will be placed in their schools by July 31st and the next round by August 15. And then anything after August 15th is done week by week because we're starting to open school. So if I'm a new family moving to the town of Milton to go to the public
schools, I can go to the prek night and the in the K information night. I'll go to the grade one night. I'm thinking about being a family for starting in September of the of the next year. Here is the timeline of how you can do that. Whether that's a kindergarten enrollment, preschool 1 2 3 4 5. This is
the this is the scope and sequence for that. And the only thing that we're doing different is after hearing feedback from community members about wanting to be included earlier in the grade one assignment, we pulled down the round two and we made at the same time that we would introduce non motors for
parents in order to access uh the grade one choice of either French and English. And hopefully this resolves some of the challenges that we've heard from families about having to do I take my kindergartener out on June 1st from their private kindergarten just to be a
considered a Milton student to be assigned in the second round. We don't want to make our families who live in Milton who are taxpayers jump through hoops to be able to access the program in that second round time. However, we're not doing it in the first round
because it's May and we have to we have to place our own students not only in grade one but across all of our grades and update our system and get it ready for the next school year. So, this to me is is a an adaptation of what we're already doing in favor of our students
who are new to the the system for grade one that that will be involved in the second round of uh assignment for grade one. And it also clarifies very clearly if I'm new to the district, no matter what grade my child is, when I apply and have my packet approved, I'll know
exactly what my school will be assigned. And this will be an annual document. That's why there's no years on it. It's only month. This will be a rolling uh operational uh protocol for us to follow. >> Thank you. Just want to say I appreciate your work
on creating clarity on this and this being something that can be easily shared and the logic I think makes makes sense of again grade one is just one of 13 grades 14 grades that we have here. And so for all of those grades you move your current students up a level and
then you take new students and figure out where how to plug those in. Um so accommodation to try and bring that um bringing those new families to first grade a little earlier in the process than they've been in the past to as you've said avoid those perverse
incentives and hard hard decisions that families some families I think it's a well reasoned process and I appreciate you sharing Um yeah, facilities. Um, we have the
27 capital requests uh document in our folder um that Tom had put together. Um, we did we did talk about this very briefly at our um advisory committee, but we did not go
into like a lot of detail and kind of whittle down what we can cuz it is a pretty number. um um us for the next year. Um so I don't know John if you were or had
any conversations with Tom since our last meeting to kind of update. >> Sure. >> Okay. >> So Tom presented at the finance committee today. Okay. >> Um I was there for half of that discussion. I did have to leave the meeting for another meeting. So I would defer to uh Amanda and uh Nathan and
Mark. Uh I believe uh Tom's methodology was to make sure that he represented every uh thing that was needed similar to how we approached technology to make sure that people were aware of the needs >> uh and not to not put something down. So
uh because you don't want to ask for too much knowing that the $3.1 million is a lot for one year. Um uh Tom also talked about his strategy around making some of the requests uh not specifically
building based but district based or school u you know elementary based. So those funds because capital funds have to be spent on exactly the thing that was uh voted. By having it be more generic it would allow him to have more flexibility if a water heater went which
it just did at the Cunningham or if the elevator went which it just did it to Tucker. that when those dollars are more universally labeled uh that they could be expended a little bit more flexibly from a capital perspective. Um and I'm sure he'll be explaining that when he meets with the capital committee
>> uh and his rationale for that. >> Um >> and I'm not sure exactly what else was talked about after I left, but that was the general strategy from my understanding. And Tom is actually a member of the capital um committee. So
that's helpful because he's going to be at the table inherent automatically during the discussion of prioritizing um you know among too
>> both for the schools and the town side. So I I I like support the idea of putting it all out there. Totally support that. >> No, I think that makes that, you know, after you explaining it, I think that
makes sense. >> Yeah, he did call out. I mean, we're asking about certain, you know, fair to say top of one that is on the top of his list would be the um lighting replacement
um at Brooksfield. I mean that I can't say that that was higher than anything else, but that was definitely the amount of money that they're, you know, one from an energy efficiency standpoint, the other from just a keeping it working standpoint. It's just sort of keep putting money towards it
where that's something uh um just has a huge impact for both the people using the field as well as um budget-wise from the standpoint of the energy efficiency. But yeah, he I think you know, we just looked at things
together, but there was no other discussion about really prior prioritizing things differently. >> Yeah, I'll say I I expressed I think to your hesitation of like, oh, we're going to submit a I think again to the point that's been
made, I agree with Tom's logic after he shared it of put it all out there and then if they don't fund it, at least we're clear that this was a need. So if something fails, we've been clear that we were concerned it would fail. Um uh similar to kind of what the conversations with the the technologies
of like just sharing what the past requests have been and being kind of clear on that. So that was persuasive to me. I the only other thing I'd say is it not necessarily a funding in the current year exactly, but there you can see multiple things here related to Brooks
Field, the track, the turf replacement, the bleachers, uh and the lights. And so there's there's a lot of needs over at that um Brooks Field it appears. And so one conversation we did have was potentially adjusting or adjusting this
um to maybe push out the bleachers and add add some type of fee for um or funding for consultants to look at that more holistically kind of given all the needs and make sure given that's a larger project similar to what we did with Cunningham like bring somebody in to look and give good cost estimates
associated with what what it would take >> to bring those all those spaces up to par. um have that be a bit more of a robust um backing behind whatever the request is. So I would feel confident in that.
>> No, that's great. >> And I do also want to stress that field does get used by a lot of town sports too, not just the high school. So >> um a lot of our kids use it from you know kindergarten on uh words. So it is
I mean obviously making sure that we have good playable fields is huge. Um so it does get a lot of views. Um so yeah and but I I like your point about bringing in someone to kind of >> Yeah. >> just look at it. >> That was Katie's idea.
>> Yeah. >> So are do we vote on it today? It's I know there's a motion in there to approve not vote. It's a vote. It is a vote. >> That is sorry.
>> So I will make a motion to approve the FY27 capital requests presented by the facilities department. Second. >> All in favor? Great. Grace. um negotiation subcommittee report.
>> Yeah, great. So, um the negotiation subcommittee um met yesterday with Milton Educators Association unit a um representatives negotiation bargaining
team. Um, and the purpose of that meeting was to our negotiations for the new three-year contract. We um did introductions across the two
teams and we established the we sort of worked together to agree upon ground rules that will guide the process throughout this year of negotiations. Um it was a really great meeting. I
think everything positive start and um we're definitely excited to move it forward. Now, um sort of what to expect in general terms is that we did in addition to and establishing ground rules, we were also able to kind of look
at calendars and um map out when meetings will be taking place for negotiations um we'll be exchanging um between the teams uh in December into the early part of
January. Um and so then actual negotiation sessions in January and and g carry on from there. So uh was very positive start to the process and
um yeah we'll keep everybody informed as it anything you'd want to add. I I I that was a very productive first meeting, not only with ground rules, but also with dates. So, uh that was a very positive. >> Yeah, >> for sure.
>> Great. >> We'll be spending a lot of quality time together over the months to come. >> They're all good folks. >> Looking forward to it. >> Thanks, Lizzie. um MF >> um so the MF's first meeting was on
October 21st couple weeks ago and the first meeting is basically like introducing each other to get to know each other cuz I'm to that group right now representing this group right here. Um so MF stand for
Mutant Foundation for Educator for Education >> education. >> Yeah. Um so um Wendy knew was the this group um they the meeting was mainly discussing about the monster dash because it was right before the monster
dash and it was a great success. I saw Mark and Nathan and Lizz's families there as well. So there's a lot of people come out and support this event um including a lot of the educators in the district. Um so
um I I think great and successful event and we hope that in the future um more family can um come out and support this and I was told that they have more than almost 500
artworks sent in for the the for the t-shirt design. >> Yeah. >> And um the winner was a fifth grader at Tucker. >> Yeah. So it was great. They they are in need of they're looking
for volunteers who would like to join the group especially people who have experience um being a treasurer. So just want to put a for people who are listening or watching if you are
interested um please feel free to join the next meeting which is on November 19th and they usually start meeting at 7:30 uh at the school library. Um, unfortunately I have a school committee meeting that day, that night
at the same time. So I will not be able to go, but I will update you guys with any other important stuff. That's my report. Thank you. Um, budget coordination committee.
>> Can we take that one? >> Yeah. >> Um, well, the monster dash was great. It was first 5K. We did it in 45 minutes. Um so her fastest, my slowest. Uh, policies.
Uh, there's going to be a couple of work groups that will try to tackle three principal policies that we're looking at for what will kind of guide long-term. Um there's a there's a policy related to
debt management, policy related to financial reserves, and one related to capital reserves. >> I think so. >> Yeah. >> Um groups that are going to focus on this. And Mark, correct me if I'm getting any anything wrong here. Um, and then we
spent some time, the chair of the warrant committee had some analysis the what those policies should entail or some portion of them. I actually had to leave sort of partway through his
presentation. Um, so I'm not sure I'm not sure that we got very far into that. But so that that's where the work of this of this group is going is to sort of finalize those policies which will guide you know multi-year planning.
>> Just just flag that those are select board those would become select board policies. So they're not policies under the purview of us. It's most the select board town administrator drafted them and >> they ultimately the approved needs by the select board but they're getting our
that group's input as they're developing them >> and as a starting point I mean they you know that Nick did a great job drafting those initial it's not blank page and kind of wondering where to go like it's a >> a quick quick question as this um budget
coordination committee sort of continues. Um I understand starting and thinking through those policies, but is there also the plan that this committee will be functioning
like the joint finance committee meetings used to happen between select board and school committee in which like information is being shared around the budget themselves as they're coming together or is that
separate and if that's not I can that could be a parking lot question. I guess I'm just interested as we round this bend toward you know towards like what role will this committee be playing in the budget process.
I think the goal right now focus on the policies in hopes that those policies are are established so that there is they can inform what then the select board and town administrator is doing in the FY27 budget connected to those new policies.
So that's that. But then from there, I mean, some of the information sharing at the meeting, but um Nathan was where the town administrator gave the same presentation he gave to us at finance subcommittee, but gave it to the whole group on expected revenue and expenses
for the town for next year. Um that's obviously the first part and then when we start getting into budget okay >> requests yeah I definitely foresee a future meeting in which we share kind of draft budget once once we have that and start sharing that I think John has
developed a good strong relationship with the town administrator even outside of that. So I think there will be ongoing communication but in terms of us and the select board especially and us being able to like say what we need directly to the select board uh and by can come and say like there's other
constraints in the town and why we need this um that is a part of the charge of the committee and I think there'll be more opportunity to do that when we kind of hit that budget season either December once they have >> we have again draft budgets and our
focus is we as we've said before we want to make sure it comes through this group first and y'all get a look at it first, but then once we feel good about the direction of that budget, definitely want to bring it get their feedback as we do with the warrant committee that we talked about with the warrant committee. >> Okay.
Anything else? >> All right. Um, next is approving minutes from the um October 22nd meeting and if everybody had a chance to look at them. Okay. And so I'm going to make a motion
to approve the minutes of the October 25 Milton School Committee meeting. >> A second. >> Second. >> Mark. Okay. All in favor. >> I'm going to abstain because I missed a good part of the first. Great.
And then the last thing, sorry, is just looking um uh the draft agenda items for next week. So we have a report out from the MAS um for one day of that. Uh we also have
the 202425 annual report will be given to this uh school committee and then um subcommittee reports. So will we be facilities and and um policy. >> Policy will meet. >> Okay. And finance will was he and you
said capital. >> Mhm. >> Okay. >> I'd like to add that I'd like to welcome the um the Tucker playground committee to uh present to the group. Uh if that's okay. >> Uh they've been doing a great job of uh reaching out to different folks and I
think we would would love to give them some visibility. That's their work. Um, >> will they be coming to facilities before then? Because it's the day before if they wanted to. >> Yeah, actually that's a great idea. Okay. >> They don't um I don't really know if
facilities um >> I'm not sure they're at the stage of needing to come to facilities now that I think of Banana because Okay, this is just their fundraising getting the word out of what they like what they like to do and what they're hoping to raise money for to give them some facetime with the community. I think they'll
probably uh facilities committee when they when they have the money raised and they're ready to bring plans to the facilities. Okay. Maybe we just have them come and just give them the opportunity to talk. >> And I didn't know if we wanted to have principal come and talk about our
planning board. >> Yeah, I think that'd be good. >> So, okay, perfect. >> And we have curriculum subcommittee >> uh in the curriculum vote. Yeah. >> Oh, yeah. Curriculum subcommittee vote. Anything else? That's it. Then I'll take a motion to
adjurnn. So move. >> All in favor? >> Thank you.