going to uh get started it is 6:30 p.m so I'm going to call to order the regular meeting of the Nisha Regional School Committee um and this is a bit of a special meeting as you guys can see from the uh multiple agendas that are posted we're going to
do a little bit of agenda gymnastics here uh for the purpose of authorizing a national grid easement for temporary power to the school building committee um and then we will close that meeting in an effort to then give Alita time to
help us get these minutes certified at the next meeting that I will then subsequently open so um that's all technical mumbo jumbo uh the meeting is called to order so I think well I guess we won't pledge allegiance right away so
why don't we just go right to some new business and um I'm going to actually move ask Amy to move on this first item on the agenda and then we can just say what it is but um Kirk wants to introduce it first yeah just real quick this is
just building project stuff but it has to be the authority of the school committee that gives National Grid the authority of easement to put in the temporary power those are the temporary power poles that then goes to the trailers and will power the new building uh throughout the
construction process so um the school committee has to authorize um Enrid to do that work and so you all have to approve the chair to sign the document we close the meeting miss Mastersonson will construct the meetings from these
first meeting so we'll construct the minutes and then at the end of second meeting we'll show you the minutes and then we can approve them that way we can send that in with the approved minutes so that they can begin that process very good all right Amy a motion i move
to authorize Chairwoman Leah Evero to sign the Mass Electric/Verizon New England grant of easement agreement as presented and included in the meeting materials i'll second that is there any discussion scott I just wonder was there any discussion about how broad the
authorization we're providing is is it basically says you can do whatever you want to within the confines of this area that's under question as well as the fact that it's a perpetual agreement there's no sun setting or any conditions under which it ends right so that's all it's a good question
but the best of my knowledge on this one because we are the owners we just have give to give permission for that it is built into the construction activities that that is then taken down once the transfer of the power is made from our current polls to the future polls later
okay so we can presumably resend this authority if we deem necessary sometime in the future okay fair enough any other questions has this been reviewed by council it has been reviewed by council
yes no changes of substance okay any other questions all those in favor any opposed all right everybody so thank you for that um we will I'm going to now move to adjourn
this special meeting i hear Jackie first thanks Jackie all those in favor of adjourning very good that's unanimous thank you everybody uh all right so without further ado everyone we're going to now
uh open up and call to order the regular meeting of the Nisha Regional School Committee and now we may all rise and pledge allegiance to the flag i pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the
republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right everybody the next item on the agenda is public comment and I'm not seeing anyone in the gallery here for
public comment alone not people in the gallery but uh so we're going to keep moving on to the consent agenda and I'll turn to Amy for that motion um I move to approve the consent agenda of April 9th 2025 and I'll second that is there any discussion on the consent
agenda yeah the searchers and interrogations policy um were we updated on how the on the changes to that that are yes we brought that last week okay okay so nothing has changed since last
week this Nothing has changed since last week okay last meeting yes not last week okay last great i just wanted to clarify yeah okay any other questions on the consent agenda all those in favor all right that's unanimous thank
you everyone uh the school committee chairperson update is um there's nothing new to update so we're just going to keep moving on to our student representative report and Ryan is here for us hi Ryan hello so the first part of this has all been run by Dr buoyant
so there's no confidentiality risks or anything like that but we're going to cover a little bit on our um student advisory meeting the other day uh just kind of like general themes from the students so starting off there was kind of a general consensus across the
students that they said we talked about learning styles workload and stress as kind of an overall theme they say that classes that exhibit multiple styles um rather than only specific ones um way of kind of assessing students knowledge is
most effectively so that combining projects with tests and other things like that um we found the workload of classes are more manageable when given further notice about due dates and specific outlines on class material and when
they'll be assigned um the bridge program and student success center had there was a huge appreciation for both of those um there's some feedback that says it's beneficial when teachers who teach the same class to communicate and align
their course material so like my concern my personal experiences with that is my English teacher and other honors English teacher they have they have like scheduled planned meetings so each um honors English class under those two teachers have the same assignments same
grading and on the same timeline um students reported that like the general structure of AP classes um they take with clear rubrics are more helpful so with um AP classes having a very specific outline of what a student
needs to learn and um kind of by when that's the that's what the kind of the structure we found most helpful um overall the tone in the building was very positive towards teachers approaches with extra help and availability after
school and the our group will then look at the engagement survey results in our next meeting just kind of talk about that and then Stu will also be involved in some of this and then we have French exchange coming up
the robotics team qualified for the world tournament and the international festival last second is all there's any questions about that I can answer on my personal behalf of anything like that awesome thanks Ryan go ahead Amy um I had a
question about the council discussion um you said one of your topics was workload um I was curious if part of the discussion was also about you know whether you talked about getting um plenty of notice right for giving assignments did you guys also discuss
like giving time in class to work on assignments and big projects i I just wondered if that was part of the discussion as well if I can interject for just a second Madam Chair um Okay only because just to one of this is the advisory group so one of the norms that
we have in the advisory group is a speak your truth norm so I just wanted to remind Ryan that to be careful not to mention specifics than the meeting and speak very much to generality since that's one of our norms in that meeting the other meeting is student council where we get into the depths of those
things as well and I and I can answer that just like in my personal opinion how I see that is I think that um having a system where you are given a class or a specific amount of time in class to initially start an assignment and then
that kind of translates to um being finished at home even when it's um kind of expected that uh it won't be finished in class time but I think having like a start and kind of a guideline in the very beginning of class would be helpful it tends to be helpful okay thanks
any questions go ahead um it's not a question so much as I just want to say thank you and pass along thanks to the other students that are involved in that for really speaking um your thoughts to those things and being honest about it because that
helps us all improve and helps us be better can you um clarify just very quickly for the community how many what is the student advisory council that's what we call yeah the student advisory council is an advisory council to Dr vuitton and
I and it's for us to understand sort of the operational experience of our students and so it's a place where at the beginning of the year we set down some norms and brought some initial uh had some initial conversations around okay tell me what your experiences are and where some of the challenges exist
and they bring those forward um then you may remember uh Ryan and Ava became board members in their statewide organization and so they've taken those facilitation skills have become the fac facilitators for those meetings and so
we drive down on those kind of questions so that's why when we were meeting specifically about that and we had this rich discussion we said "Okay this is a good discussion to share let's just remember to be careful that because as Ryan was sharing some generalities we
get examples of some specific stories um uh from students about their experiences there." And so Dr boon and I then debrief on those experiences to say okay what next what do we capitalize on what do we need to address those types of things and how many students are on the
student advisor council um total of 18 18 and are those chosen by you Dr they were volunteered and so put it out to the whole school community and anybody can volunteer you don't try to get a cross-section of grades or whatever definitely a cross-section of grades and experiences um backgrounds um and it's
an it's an open group that we'll send out out I envision us doing this um continuing next year and we have a number of seniors so I envision sending um additional uh invitations out to our student body for participation yeah I
asked some of our through Dr um some of our faculty leaders that work with students in in some of their multicultural clubs to advance students forward to ensure that we had representation of groups in the committee because as a school district
that is uh an 85% white school district we wanted to make sure that the committee spanned across um uh people so they self- selected based on um uh race sexual orientation religious uh beliefs
so we we have a nice sort of uh cult cross-section of of respect and cultures um yeah I was just want to echo what Sharon said about
um sharing the feedback in in with us and I guess what I'm I'm trying to articulate here is what did any of the discussion talk about solutions or like the frameworks
that guide like if workload was something that came up within the student advisory committee as an issue um how does that translate into suggesting a solution to a handbook that might Yes that's not the function of
that meeting it it is really a feedback okay i arena it's a feedback arena for Dr boon and myself and so that we can understand operational impact okay and how many people were at the meeting with you Ryan this time around um this
time it 13 or so and then the one before that had like closer to a full 17 or 18 okay great it's great it's outstanding group of kids and they promised to sign the bean with me when we go do the bean sign
so good any other questions all right everybody thanks Ryan as always bud um take care of that hand huh that's quite a fast by the way oh man i'll stick around for a little bit okay very good you're always welcome
um okay so our next item on the agenda here is the superintendent's report and so I'll turn it over to Superintendent Town thank you Madam Chair and you may all notice that I I'm wearing my CBS specials today i lost my glasses so if
I'm adjusting forgive me um all right let me grab my We have a great celebration to bring forward to the committee tonight um as you know before I had a chance to attend Wilshshire County Superintendent
Association Scholar Lunch uh lunchon uh last month and Miss Emily Barrett attended with Dr boon and I had a chance to to brief the committee uh this is our opportunity to honor her for that celebration uh but we also brought forward our saludiatoran for this year
Lexi Priilla Pil thank you Lexi and at this point I would like to turn it over to Dr bon to honor our two wonderful seniors thank you so much i'd like for both of you to stand
please um and I might stand as well simply because I'll be covered by the flowers um all right so um thank you so much Madam Chair for having us uh and and thank you school committee members um truly quite a celebration for the high
school and I I love if we could make this a yearly tradition i think that would be really cool um this is I think the first time that we've done this so I love it um okay now I get to make you shine emily Barrett is the Nshoba class of 2025 validictorian congratulations
Emily emily stands out as an exceptional student and leader she's known for her strong character academic excellence and commitment to her community she's self-motivated highly organized values listening and understanding others qualities that make her a natural
collaborator and trusted peer academically Emily has pursued quite a rigorous course load at NRHs multiple honors and AP classes um she has a strong interest towards STEM um and she's excelled in really challenging
courses like AP Chemistry earning top marks um this year Emily is enrolled in five AP classes and is known for her active participation thoughtful insights and ability to overcome academic challenges independently she hopes for a career in biology and research right we
talked about that outside the classroom Emily is involved in a wide range of extracurriculars um she's been on the cross country team she plays in the jazz band served as class 2025 vice president co-founded the rock climbing club and then she also finds time to volunteer with several local organizations
um fundraising for community causes coaching youth sports animal shel um supporting animal shelters she is creative and community-minded um Emily enjoys baking and crocheting in her spare time often sharing her creations with friends and family um Emily you have a special blend of academic drive
empathy and leadership and you are truly a well-rounded and inspiring student so congratulations Emily all right next up and Lexi you're going to have to help me get your name right again um next up is our saludiatoran
Alexis Prabilla yes um is our Nohova class of 2025 saludiatoran congratulations there Lexi lexi is intelligent thoughtful and has a great sense of humor she is as genuine and grounded as they come over the past four years she has distinguished herself as
an exceptional student dedicated athlete and compassionate leader in her community i can attest um you are a joy to watch um on the basketball court i love H just so exciting and Lexi joined us several times um at
uh presenting to our eighth graders um which was wonderful um in the classroom Lexi is a deep thinker with a remarkable ability to look beyond the surface and engage critically with complex ideas her academic work reflects intellectual rigor and a strong sense of justice
especially in her advocacy for those who have been marginalized outside of school Lexi is just as impressive she's a committed member of the girls basketball team and talented she finds time to coach younger athletes in Ashoba's middle school programs she volunteers at Unified Health and Performance a local
training facility that works with clients of all ability levels including individuals with physical and developmental disabilities balancing athletics academics and volunteer work with Grace lexi has become a respected peer and role model she's got drive positivity and sense of purpose and
those set her apart lexi hopes to pursue studies in the biomed field congratulations Lexi and these flowers are too good all
right all right thank you awesome um and thank you again so much um for the honor and privilege of being able to publicly recognize these two fantastic strong young women who are going to make
us proud as they head off into their next chapter thank you so much thank you Dr boy and thank you ladies so wonderful to have you see you on the stage awesome all right so what a great celebration let's move on to other matters in the
superintendent update yeah um just at this point I need to brief the committee um unfortunately our principal of our center school Lenor Zadel has elected to move on to other endeavors at the end at the conclusion of the school year um it just affords me an opportunity to to
thank Principal Zadik uh for the wonderful job she's done she came in crafted meaningful relationships with our staff and students and and so we support her in her decision and uh wish her all the best in that so it does put
us in a place where it's time to do a principal search again um and so I've included the content of the letter I sent to the uh community in the report this week um but Madam Chair I'm specifically pointing as a rep of Stowe
as well that if your delegation uh can make a a decision to see who might be available to join the interview committee when we do uh interviews on May 5th Monday May 5th um so I believe we have a a delegation meeting tomorrow
at at 3:00 so we can certainly discuss then okay if if you can coordinate as a delegation a representative that might be available to participate there that would be much appreciated okay so it is uh late in the season for hiring and
principles so we'll be running uh our uh collecting applications as through April 23rd at which point on May 1st the cabinet team will screen the candidates we deem as being eligible based upon their credentials uh we'll have panel
open interviews on the 5th followed by site visits on the 12th and 13th of May the community forum has proved to be popular on Zoom it's it's well attended on Zoom so we'll continue that practice um and that'll be the evening of the 13th from 6:30 to 8 uh my hope is to
make an announcement by May 23rd that gap there is to allow for conversations reference checks negotiations all those things that happen in between um and so uh before we stop there to turn it over to assistant superintendent friend um
I'll take any questions from the committee if they have any questions online i I'd just like to commend the superintendent and his team for putting this process in place that seeks feedback from so many different
stakeholders in this decision um it helps ensure that we're you're going to hire the right candidate for the job so thank you um thank you Miss Cohen you're actually even spurring me to think about another feedback device that we collected so one of the ways that we design the questions that we ask and to
uh ensure that we're um putting core values forward a form survey was sent to the center community with that letter that's linked in there and I am collecting we are going to send it again to collect that information and um um so we'll be uh collecting out all that
information together we've learned some fabulous ways that you can collectively grab questions and use AI tools to get comprehensive questions that encompass multiple ideas and so we're going to have some fun with that to to make sure that the the questions we're asking our
candidates are thorough and meet um the needs of our school system and and our community so we're looking forward to that um I know uh assistant superintendent friend is up next and she has two items and so I'll turn it over to you
Assistant Superintendent thank you Superintendent Downey the first update is relative to the Student Opportunity Act and uh an update a progress report if you will
um the as the committee may remember um school districts are required by Mass General Law to create three-year student opportunity act plans uh the committee will likely remember that we presented uh our three-year plan last year and so
as is required um by Mass General Law and by Desi uh districts are required to provide annual progress reports and so that's the purpose of this update for you this evening included in the update is the
complete progress report update hyperl for you there that is the update uh the complete update that I submitted to Desi at the end of March and then I also work to create a highlights document for the committee and the community which I I
think is maybe a little bit more palatable to understand the scope of the progress report which is is quite detailed so I'd just like to speak to those highlights that thank you Alita for presenting those the committee will
remember that we have two focus areas that have been outlined in our student opportunity act one is focused around inclusive curriculum adoption specifically centered on our K to5 literacy and the implementation of highquality instructional materials
there which included a comprehensive approach to early literacy and then supporting curriculum implementation as a reminder with our student opportunity act plan we work to select efforts and initiatives that are aligned with our strategic plan and efforts that were
already underway um and so we're working to lift and elevate this as an area that we we have spent quite a bit of energy both in terms of time energy and fiscal support around so that's our first focus area and I've divided up and structured the
update into the benchmarks that have been met relative to this focus area evidence of impact of those benchmarks and then what are our next steps the first being around again that inclusive curriculum adoption the second is around
our work around lifting innovation pathways at our high school so as just as a means of highlighting the benchmarks met for our work around literacy I believe this will be um just a review for the committee as we've been providing the committee with updates
throughout the school year we have implemented our comprehensive ELA and literacy program in K to 5 if you can just scroll up just a little bit Alita just um scroll up the other way so we have implemented our new literacy
curriculum in KF5 we've implemented Wilson foundations in terms of strengthening our foundational program for literacy we have implemented um purchased and instructed our teachers with decodable readers in K to 2 and
we've introduced Heggerty to support FMIC awareness in preK and K we provided professional development which will continue to be ongoing but that has been an effort uh an intentional effort for for us this year as well as well as
continuing to steward our implementation of our multi-tered system of support through our wind locks our line schedules and our PLC model in terms of evidence of impact and I I spoke to this um during our last meeting when we
reviewed our our star early literacy and star reading results results specifically as it relates to this particular implementation we are seeing evidence of impact with our universal screening data um with in indications of improved
literacy achievement across all grade levels as demonstrated by our winter results as I had spoke about we are seeing fewer students being identified in the intervention and urgent intervention cate category specifically um with a 50% reduction in students
falling in that urgent intervention category since the fall of 2023 and then we are seeing some closing of gaps with our identified and targeted subgroups as has identified here for further data as it's related to our
student groups you can uh groups you can refer to the completed progress report there which is hyperl next steps as it relates to this particular focus indicator as the committee is aware we are engaged with a prison one grant which is a multi-year
initiative that the committee is aware of that will continue to support and help us support and strengthen early literacy in our reading program prek through three um and so we'll continue to keep the committee updated on that exciting
work the second indicator is relative to our innovation pathways efforts uh as the committee is aware we have launched and received designation for two pathways both are now fully operational with 41 students currently
enrolled we secured a desic planning grant to develop a third innovation pathway uh in information technology we which we are targeted to launch in fall of 2025 we should be hearing from the department of elementary and secondary
education about that designation in the next two weeks we've worked to revise and develop high school courses to align with dual enrollment and advanced coursework standards specifically revamping and developing a new dual enrollment course
which we anticipate offering next year in the fall of 2025 in terms of evidence of impact with these efforts we are seeing strong student interest and participation in our pathways strong attendance rates for
our students in these pathways and just positive anecdotal feedback from students and families we will be soliciting formal feedback from our students in the pathways through uh a a form and a feedback loop with the support of Bridget Hanigan our
innovation pathways coordinator by the end of this year to help inform what's working and what will be our next steps um next year in terms of next steps as it relates to this focus area we anticipate launching a third innovation
pathway and further expanding advanced course offerings with the plan launch of project lead the way which will be an advanced level course also in the fall 2025 so those are the highlights of the S SOA plan
and as I had indicated the complete progress report is included in the update happy to answer any questions that's a lot so that's very very cool but I wonder if you guys have any questions about this quick comment yeah I think what uh we're
seeing also is this is work that is not new to any of you this is work that assistant superintendent and her team have been presenting on for quite some time now as a requirement for the student opportunity act this is the summary document that we put there this is an outstanding effort by our team to
submit these documents uh it is an exemplar um and so when I have a chance to network with other superintendents they are incredibly impressed by the work of this team and in culminating that work and I think it's reflected in our award of the prison grant frankly because
I think they check these things when they're making assessments on these grants and when they see that they're done so well in other arenas they know we're not making this stuff up we're putting it into play so thank you assistant superintendent I wonder if
um could you clarify for me you said that there are 41 students enrolled in the two pathways that currently exist you're probably doing course selection right now so you're maybe going to be bringing that third pathway online are kids registering for that pathway already
and so one question that I had from a parent do we cap the number on how many people can join each pathway do we have like a set number of seats we do um I don't want to speak in error i
can provide that information at the next meeting it's capped by class um I think it's 20 per class you mean like per graduating class yes per graduating class but we're being really
careful to be as inclusive as possible because the intention of pathways is not to create barriers for students it's really to lift the ceiling for all students so it's it's it's similar to the question of how how many paragraphs do I have to write would you like to
briefly that in the next superintendent report i think that would be great i just want to know a little bit more about that because I know that some parents expressed some concern that they would have to race to get in so So I can provide an update um at the next meeting
but I can tell you um to date no student has been turned away and as you increase the number of pathways there's only more opportunity yeah any other questions i guess I had a quick May I don't remember this can you talk about the dual enrollment course that you mentioned
here i don't remember that may I mention that i just forgot so we have two courses that we anticipate offering for next year one is tech essentials for the modern world and the other is product
development so um both associated with Middle Sex okay and they're both tied to the pathways yes are there other dual enrollment courses that are not tied to the pathway those are the only two we have right now oh okay okay and those are both in one of the pathways or
multiple pathways are those just with the manufacturing and engineering they're in the um business and finance thank you um department but this is part of the intentionality with the curriculum development work thank you for approving um the large grant um in
the consent agenda but where you see the the um request for stipens for curriculum revision work and development that that is where a bulk of this work on curriculum revision is happening is with stipenary work that's last summer
this is when these two courses one being revamped and one being created happened last summer and just to clarify I feel like if you said this last time Laura but these are being taught by Nshoba teachers and not being outsourced which is the
best of all worlds yeah question yeah just a clarification on classes offered through the pass pathway um are they only available to my understanding was that students trying
to pursue these innovative pathway certifications or the the pathway we're taking courses already available at NHOBA that fit the criteria of the pathway so even if you're not in one of these pathways is that the case with
these dual enrollment classes that you don't have to be in the pathway to take them that's correct okay but they would check a box to advance through the path right back again back um again to revisit the vision is not to create barriers for our students it's to
increase access to opportunities for all students okay thank you all right i think that might be all the questions so we'll move uh the agenda now uh to the next item which is what we
still need mathematics oh forgive me so you have another we have one more item is the strategic update on mathematics okay keep it going okay so um the next item is relative to an update for the committee um around our 608 math
curriculum review process we had presented to the committee in December um which we have linked here in the update as a reminder and so just to provide the committee of of where we're at in the work with our 608 curriculum review process as a reminder we're also
in the curriculum review process for 9 through 12 math and 9 through 12 science we started 9 through 12 science last year um with uh the chair and the superintendent's permission we'd like to present an update for 9th through 12
math and science in May mhm um but the for this evening the the update is uh specific to our 608 math curriculum review and where we're at with that so we've outlined the steps that have been taken they they they follow in
similar fashion to the process they that we took for K through five ELA last year that we presented on as well so similar kind of process and we're coming to a close on the process so to recap we have
um we have a committee of our middle school math team with our special educators and our administrators have been involved with the curriculum review process i'd like to commend the work of our curriculum director Candace McGrey for helping to lead that work she's done
an outstand outstanding job with attending to the work um following the pathway that had been led with our ELA work and working specifically with our department head at the high school Mr melbourne to ensure vertical alignment which we know is important for all
content areas and is critically important for math vertical alignment uh and so our district plans to implement some vertical articulation particularly as it relates to algebra 1 curriculum that we're offering in grade
8 and in grade 9 to make sure we have a really strong through line there for students and that work will um continue as we review our curriculum in algebra 2 and in geometry at the high school more to that more to come on that in May when
we present as the committee um is aware and is reminded we have we we received a grant to receive support from TNTP which is high quality professional development provider to help support our curriculum
director and our team in the process and also to work to help support and lift professional development around the instructional pedigogy that's necessary to implement the curriculum that has happened and that is continuing to happen now that grant has also um
provided an allocation up to um to support half of the cost of our curriculum materials as outlined there our team of teachers has implemented two curricula illustrative math and Carnegie and um has provided feedback
the teachers have been have provided feedback on the fe the field testing as well as students and I thought you may be interested in seeing um what those surveys look like that we um ask teachers for feedback and for the students so I included copies of those
surveys there in the report so as we're ending the process um very shortly we will be reaching a consensus decision with our teachers around the selected curricula so I I will be looking forward to presenting the committee with our
update and where we land with that soon we'll also say um because I skipped over it um but we did solicit feedback from near peer districts we went on a site visit and we went we met with our our partners in North Burough South Burough as well to
talk to their assistant superintendent and their teachers um to get feedback um about how it's going with the curriculum in the in districts so that that was very helpful to our process as well great it's a lot of information for me to
summarize very quickly and to encapsulate a lot of work that's been completed yes so not to minimize but we appreciate your concise explanation thanks Laura any questions on the math curriculum review did you give us a time the
looking to adopt in September we will implement in September we will we will um use the funds from the grant to support the curriculum um materials adoption and then support the remaining purchase with our FY26 budget that has
already been allocated so we will be implementing in the fall and teachers are excited great all right everyone I think that then concludes students update okay very good so um moving on everybody to new
business we have the superintendent has prepared for us his annual school choice presentation which will illuminate enrollment statistics and data so I will turn it back over to Kirk thank you Madam Chair as you know I enjoyed doing
this one as I uh like to dig deep into the numbers of enrollment in our towns and try to get a sense of um uh what we need to do for our students for the future um so just for our new members of the committee school choice is a provision
in Mass General law where uh students have the right to leave their home districts and attend uh other school districts unless those other school districts take a vote to not have school
choice so the default is school choice so you ultimately have to take a vote if you're not willing to participate in order to close school choice if you take no vote at all then you automatically default to an a school choice district
um and so as we looked at this question several years ago there were some you'll get to see where we saw some differentials in revenue for in and out of our school choice students and we made the decision that it would be prudent to re-enter the school choice
arena again miss Park you remember these um but we would do so in a very very measured way so as to not bring uh additional cost thresholds into our district and I'm happy to report at the very beginning that's been effective for us and so that same methodology that I
have presented the committee the last two years is the methodology I'm once again presenting to you tonight um I'll begin uh at the very beginning of the presentation there's a blue link and I just shared this with you this is uh the
table on which um the data is gathered from and it has our current class sizes this is October one historical by grade going all the way back to the 20201 school year what in total
enrollment looked like in all of our towns we get a look at Lancaster K to8 over that same period of time bolton K to8 SCO K to8 and then there's a report called the school attending report which is
essentially the census of your towns this one you will not find um in state data tables it is one we've created by adding up our three towns together so we get a sense of what that looks like in the district for Bolton
Lancaster and Stowe as well and when we look at these um categories you it'll show you um that uh the percentage of of students oh I need to to open those up the percentage
of students in the regional vocational tech collaboratives charters out of district homeschool instate private and out of state private okay so that's just a a quick little primer on uh uh the data but moving into that um our goal
here is to identify and track where students are enrolled so the first thing we're going to take a look at is some of the uh school attending data um analyze and track those trends and compare uh uh
excuse me it says uh this is a bullet I took off last year we included the NASDAQ reports i didn't include those reports this year because I didn't find that they added uh substantial information to the report so forgive me for missing that um
piece so in a school attending report uh we're tracking students who not live in our towns and attend the Nshoba schools but also attend schools that are not in Nhoba this is quite a process it begins January 1st it takes about 2 months as
school districts reach out to each other and follow up on where students are enrolled and provide each other information so that they can collect that that census data um and so when we look at that here are the categories that make up all the
students that reside in our towns these are the categories I just described in state private regional school district charter schools out of district public schools homeschooling vocational collaborative and out of state private so when you look at this you'll see this
is the Nshoba Regional School District and we look at the population of students that live in our towns over the last 10 years and you can see that has declined by 300 students over that time meaning there are 300
less people ages 5 to 17 5 to senior year graduation they may turn 18 that year um residing in our three towns so our population is going down over those 10 years when we look at
Bolton you can see that Bolton has remained relatively steady over that time if we just look straight number over uh we have a decline of about 33 students in that amount of time but you can see they have sort of fluctuated around the same line a little
bit over a little bit less that's also true of Lancaster you can see Lancaster again it's about 34 less but they've continued to hover around uh between that 1100 and 1200 number and when we look at Stow you will
see a significant decrease in the number of school age students in the town of Stow over those same 10 years this is an important piece to understand because it has significant budgetary implications in terms of how the assessments are
calculated based on 5-year rolling averages so to illustrate that I've laid these trend lines against each other to give you a sense of what that's looked like over the last 10 years and where you see there was a
pretty significant gap between Stow and the other two towns over time to where now our three towns very closely approximate each other in terms of census information when we break this down in the region uh in in a pie chart you can
see that 85% of the students that reside in our towns um attend the regional schools uh the school attending report since it's it is only census data does not include any students that come to us through school of choice
um here in Bolton the participation rate is 87.6 Lancaster 82.4 4 and Stow 86.1 when you look at those enrollment rates over time you can see the total
for Regional School District Bolton Lancaster and Stow so if you look over the 10-year period the participation in NRSD enrollment has gone down 2% of the population over that time
bolton uh going down approximately 3% Lancaster going up almost 2% and Bolton or excuse me still coming down at a rate of about 4% over those 10 years so how do we predict future models
off of these needs and so we we build a 5-year historical rolling average model that I use to help me sort of understand what do the enrollment changes look like at each grade so it's based off of this historical enrollment table that is part of the data set that's provided on the
very first page and when you look at one year of change uh FY uh uh 24 to 25 um excuse me you can see these are the total number of students and in my grade
levels I can see are missing here but the way that would look is we can look at this one to cheat the first column is K to one when students go from kindergarten to first grade that cohort increases by nine last year first to second decreased
by four second to third increased by six then next increased by four five 9 um this is the 8 to 9 last year 37 students from FY24 to FY25 we're in 8th grade and left in 9th
grade but we build that off of a 5-year rolling average to protect from uh just a sudden increase in one uh uh year at one particular grade level to get a sense of this i will say these numbers can
be should be taken with sort of a jaundest eye because uh one of the years in there is the return from co year when many folks elected to homeschool during during the the time of hybrid remote learning next year that won't be the
case we'll be fully out of that cycle so but it does give us a general idea for which to look at so these are the numbers that I use when we think of projections and you can see that 8 to nine is an area that we look at the 5-year rolling average being around uh
46 students so here is our current enrollment in the NRSD as of u uh April 1st 2,993 students
so when we look at school choice that just gives you a general information around the census and stuff so before we get into talking about classes and schools and things like that I'll pause to take any questions from the committee about just general enrollment trends
based on census data so first of all thank you very much for putting this together i think this whole report is very helpful and informative so much appreciated do you have any intelligence around why students in our district opt out of the district and
Lancaster in particular seems to have a an exceptionally high rate of opt outs for various reasons do you have any have you had any conversations or any feedback from parents explaining why they would choose to send their kids elsewhere yeah you know we have some
historical information on that you can see in Lancaster that the participation's actually gone up 2% over the last 10 years but they have historically going back 20 years have participated uh between the 78 to 82%
uh mark um there is a value and I think it is tied also in Lancaster back to uh the college uh that was once there in the community there chose to send their their students into private settings interestingly enough the the private
setting participation in Lancaster has dropped dramatically and um while the charter participation has gone up some um another piece that we look at Mr pal is that uh uh in
FY19 was when uh or excuse me maybe it was FY 20 was the year that u the new Minute Man was opened and was a very attractive setting particularly with some of the science um uh sectors that they built into the school with physics
and computer science became very very popular and that's where we saw a significant uptick in students from Stow and Bolton attending Minute Man what I will say is this year our largest cohort in the school system is the eighth grade
we're 259 students and uh we do have our confirmations for Minute Man right now um and we are actually down about uh I I believe uh 11 12 students from last year currently 35 students are enrolled to go
to Minute Man and we have a total of 38 uh that are electing that we know today going from 8th and 9th grade in another setting some of those others are like going to the specialized ski school in Maine and things of that nature sometimes they're very specialized while
they're while they're going other places but what I will say about this data is while you do see a 2 percentage decline in NRSD and Bolton being three sto being four increasing two of Lancaster over 10 years these are very very very steady
participation rates so it is something that a drastic change with the caveat of we have experienced some of that change with the the advent of of uh the new minute
Jackie have we have we ever tracked how many students come back who have left us and how that is factor um specifically by student no what we can
pick up on in the five year excuse me um is that in the 5-year rolling averages that there are times where students from 9th to 10th grade do come back to us we see an uptick there we didn't see it in the last year uh these
again are the five-year rolling averages if we look here you can see that some students have returned ninth n 9th grade to 10th grade um but it's a small amount um I have learned also and this is an experience we learned last year that um for students that left us 9th
grade to 10th grade in high school or 10th grade to 11th grade often times it's for very targeted athletic reasons targeted musical reasons or performance reasons um and elect to do school choice and other environments
kurt can you go back to that um spreadsheet you were just showing with no color this one i guess I will do that one actually yeah um so we have the enrollment
rates but I wonder if there's any value in not now but maybe next year adding like comparisons because if we have Nishoba attending at 85% maybe that's really high compared to
our other DART schools and and that would give us more context in understanding what an 85% attending rate is I actually have done some of that i didn't update that this year but I have some I have
looked at that i'll go digging through the file see if I can find it yeah and I mean just for next year maybe it's a column to say like the average for our Dart schools that the state compares us to the intending rate is 81% you know accounting for socioeconomics
etc the the steadiness of it is good to know I I fully anticipate uh I saw this phenomena when I was an employee in Nic when uh the new NIC high school first opened in 2010 there was was a
surge of students returning back to that high school we just saw that there's a natural attraction that comes with a new building i fully anticipate we're going to see something like that um what I will say is some of the feedback that we received from um this past year this is
the part that looked different to me um and our applications to Minute Man were approximating near 60 only 35 elected to accept that enrollment and some of the feedback that
we gathered has been around some excitement generating at the high school and the innovation pathways and I think that is a direct result of some of the targeted efforts that have been made this fall to really highlight those programs and get kids excited
about Regional High School john um just trying to understand your your numbers here where are students that are participating in school choice and coming in not from one of these three
towns because I I would just assume the in that last one you had up the uh the NRSD column would include those students but it seems to just be the sum of the three towns yeah so um as this
is what you see here the out of district column so here we have the regional school system here's Votech collaborative charter out of district so if it's added district and so this is the state required state reporting
categories in the added district you're going to have your school choice students that live inhouse and go out along with students that attend other districts that we might contract with to deliver specific services i I think I'm
talking about the other way students not from one of these three towns they won't be into here students that what that aren't from our three towns that are attending that won't be in the school attending report okay that because the school attending
report is simply the residents how are the residents participating in the public schools but then the next part of your presentation does take into account all of the children who are in the classrooms now in our school choice and
in so that you can make a good prediction on how many more we should allow that's exactly right so when you see this column here Mr assignment where it says public school that is the aggregate of regional votech collaborative charter
at a district because those are all publicly funded sectors so 94% of the students that reside in our towns participate in public education and we are
capturing 85.34% so 10% of the students in our towns approximately or 8% of the students in our town approximately are attending publicly funded schools but not in the show and that matters because that's part of the funding formula of
the money we get from the state and then we have to pay out if they're going to various other places correct okay thanks this kind of follows up on the point that Leah was just trying to make if you could go back to the slide that um Leah asked you to show
there was no Yeah the enrollment rates in the show to school broken out by town so in Bolton if you look you know if you compare the 87.64% of Bolton eligible Bolton students attending Nishona schools to
the 90.6% in fiscal year 16 like it if you just compared those two numbers our percentage of students in our town going to the decreased by 3% yes by 3% so how
does that affect our just big picture here our assessment to Bolton in terms of there does would that how does that tie into their does their assessment does their would that actually cause an additional cost to the town of Bolton
because those students aren't attending the show should their assessment decrease because that number is going down i wouldn't I wouldn't tie this chart to the assessments at all i would tie uh this graph to the assessments
because that's the five-year rolling average because this is Yeah however this is again this is just an illustration of those attending um so our enrollment averages there's two ways that we are that we fund the
schools one is based upon the October one rates and Mr karen those numbers that we get uh on the cherry sheets for our October one numbers um are based upon the number of students who reside in our towns that attend our schools
which is why it's not always tied to the exact number you see on October October one correct it's the re it's it's the it's Desi's calculation based on our October one submitted SIMS our student count to them based on their the way
they're under formulas to calculate chapter 70 and also tell you what your enrollment numbers are your foundation enrollment the regional agreement specifically calls out foundation enrollment which is a state term so we use the that's why the state number is used
okay so you couldn't look at this chart and draw a conclusion that the assessments should be going down because our percentage of students going is going down or assessments going up because we're paying more for the students who aren't going to rece that kind of thing correct thank you and
that's why Mr mccarron always tries to include that slide in the budget workshop launch to illustrate that very point we'll make sure to include that slide again at our at our workshop because that's a good one to to amplify thank
you any other questions at this point all right so now we'll head into the school choice recommendations okay so school choice presentation this is based upon seats and chairs you know and so when we look at this some important things to note i open the meeting uh
explaining some of these things we need to do this by uh June 1st we can limit the number of students that we accept as well as the grades and locations of where they're assigned if there's more applicants than available seats a lot will be conducted we'll explain that at
the end of the presentation because my last slide is information based upon how the committee ultimately votes but I'll give you a projection of what that would look like um employees can enroll their uh children in school choice but they're
subject to the same lottery provisions as any other um surrounding town member um and then you are obligated to provide that uh student education all the way through high school graduation and we do give preference to siblings who already
attend our schools via school choice so this is an interesting graph in terms of the historical trends um so this information goes back to 2013 2013 was the last year when school choice was
open under uh previous execution of the policy and at that time you can see in the school district in 2013 this was right before the height of our enrollment that really our committee said we had to stop doing this because we didn't have space at our high schools
um 218 of our students resided in towns other than our three towns so and at the same time 74 of our students approximately were going out so uh there's no such thing as a
five a point8 or a point 4 student uh that's all that's a calculation based upon participation mr mo Karen probably has more expertise on that than I do it's when they start it's when they come in or potentially leave their school choice program yeah so um uh we all the
students that attend are whole full body of students so uh you can see when that policy was um uh ended how over time it declined meanwhile uh interestingly enough uh
students that left Nisha to go to school choice experienced a similar decline up through 2019 and then peaked up a little bit after that and has remained basically steady over the last several
years but what you can see is um with that enrollment you can see where you would be getting a surplus back in school choice dollars to where you're then in 2021 having a deficit in school choice
dollars and so we made a decision two years ago my recommendation to the committee was we reintroduce school choice and we do it in a methodical responsible way which I'll describe so that we can begin working back up to that knowing we can turn that valve off
at any time we want if for fiscal reasons we feel that's important at the time here's the tuition difference over that same graph you can see the school district brought in an additional the
differential in revenue was 641,000 in 2013 and then our negative differential was just 3 years ago at 359,000 and you can see since we've instituted that policy we are slowly
climbing back up again this is the total enrollment of school choice students in our district um so we have 39 students participating with us currently and you will see that four of those students are seniors at
Nurova Regional High School um so if we were not to open school choice and everybody returned to us again we would have 35 students next year so to maintain that we would need at least four students to come back into the
district through school choice uh this is just uh a breakdown to help us understand last year's uh decision so the way this is is laid out is we only open school choice in the following locations florence Sawyer Hail Luther
Burbank and Nova Regional High School um and you can see the white column is how many seats the committee voted to open and then ultimately how many seats were filled and so that you can see at the end of this that uh the school district elected
to open 42 school choice seats we only filled 19 of them um and uh we went back into our notes uh if you recall we came back to the committee because there was one we at our high school we had one
grade level where we had to do uh a lottery and uh ultimately came back to ask for admittance into that we granted we still never reached that number anyway because we got declines so um uh in that way uh these students were able
to attend uh Regional School District so that just gives you a sense of sort of the demand of how how people are are accessing school choice so in managing enrollments uh I would continue to advocate we do not
open enrollment in K1 and two there's a complex grades and it's the ones you can see from the enrollment charts that experience the most volatility and change based upon if people went to monastery kindergartens or or did early K1 private and came into the school so we would like to make sure that we
protect for that no more than 22 we base this off of a model of no more than 22 students knowing uh that our classite standards are 24 so that gap always leaves a buffer for moveins to come in we have space without having to add um
another educator to a class uh we do not want to have more than 220 students at a grade level uh at Nishoba Regional High School that would tip us into adding faculty in uh in departments and also no
more than 260 students in any of the grade levels 3 to 8 because as we're sort of approximating uh that that losing approximately 40 students from 8th grade to 9th grade that's the buffer that we have there so even if we had school choice seats available
um uh we would if we exceeded in the district 260 at that grade level we wouldn't open that grade level at all um to protect for future years and then for grades three through five who do not open school choice if the enrollment is within floor of the
class floor as well um we also said no more than four students per grade level per school should be considered and uh prioritize lower class sizes across locations to balance the classroom sizes so we would look at if
the classroom sizes say we're 21 in one location 19 in another we would prioritize the the 19 okay so this is just a chart that just sort of explains the notes that I read to
you and let's begin um here we are in uh Nova Regional School District and this is a summary chart of uh in FY25 I showed you earlier there are two
2,993 students attending we're projecting that the the enrollment would be two 2,939 next year based off of the models I showed earlier and it would be if we maximized all the school choice seats
you're about to see recommended that would bring the total enrollment to 2988 i want you to note fourth grade is highlighted because the total number of seats available for uh for fourth grade in all schools is seven and it's not to
exceed 260 per grade level okay so starting at NOA regional high school you will see 9th grade our projected enrollment right now is 221 um which is solid we originally projecting that enrollment to be 208 that's an indicator that more we have
259 in that grade level now um so um that's an indicator that more students are choosing to stay with us into high school we want that trend to continue uh however we do have room to accept four students at each grade level at NOBO
regional high school at Florence Sawyer School you can see how the chart flows here current enrollment is 740 projected is 725 if the recommendation is fully utilized it would be 739
students mary Rollinsson Elementary there would only be uh one grade level uh eligible based on those those measures to allow four students this would be the first uh re-entry for mayor Mary Rollinsson as they currently do not
have any um uh school choice students at Luther Burbank we would have room for four per grade level based upon the fact that in sixth seventh and eighth grade as you guys know from budget discussions we have four sections at each of those grade levels
when I finish talking about the school I'm going to come back to talking about availability of space in the buildings as well uh for center school uh you can see there's 86 students projected at fourth grade so that means there's room for two that would take us to that
threshold hill Middle School we would not admit seventh grade students but we would sixth and eighth and so um the recommendation to the NOA regional school district this is just a summary of what I showed you the next slide is that summary put
into motion considerations when you talk about this next week um I want to come back to um a particular slide i think Florence Sawyer shows this well is all of our schools are built in terms of their
capacity uh on a model of four sections per grade essentially with spaces for related arts as well your gymnasium your art room your music room so on so forth and so uh our schools the rooms are being fully utilized right now but as
you can see if that's the case with Florence Sawyer School in this model we would have uh three sections of kindergarten three sections of second grade i'll remind everyone we are fully expecting four sections of kindergarten
at uh Florence Syria School next year as they're near the cusp of that excuse me so that second grade room then isn't necessarily utilized what often happens in that case during those years principles make some sight based
decisions to relocate maybe some intervention services OT spaces things like that to to utilize those spaces but they are dedicated for the classroom space so that when the first grade rolls up the next year it returns back to being a second grade classroom so if you
look across um across that um we know the high school we're building a new one of those so I think that's uh uh not necessarily pertinent but um Florence Sawyer School will have one room that is not occupied by a grade level uh class
mary Rollinsson uh would have four of their rooms as we currently understand them none at Luther Burbank Center there would be two as currently constructed we continue to monitor the kindergarten section at
center we have received no changes in enrollment at center in the last 6 weeks so that number is looking more consistent for center school hail we're utilizing all those classrooms so it's just a basic place to start as the
question was raised about how we're studying and utilizing our spaces it's it's a place to begin with the committee to just show you that so with that here's the recommendation to the to the committee the motion considerations the last side uh I am not assuming a vote
but I do want to share with you um that this is the announcement that will then be put out to the community that applications will be available uh beginning Friday May 2nd the deadline will be Thursday May 29th at 12:00 p.m there's a public lottery if necessary at
a grade level friday May 30th at 10:00 in this room um any applications received after the lottery deadline will be filled on a first come first aid basis if a seat is available in that slot um and then no applications will be
accepted after June 26th because at that point principles need to plan so that's when we just shut down uh any possible review so madam chair that concludes the presentation so thank you superintendent downing that was very comprehensive as
always just so that the committee and the community are aware the way that this works is that we are required to hold a school choice hearing every year at that hearing we are to hear from the community um on their wishes with regard
to opening um or rather closing school choice or leaving it open so that hearing is set to take place at our next meeting which is online um and I will also say that we will be then on the agenda there will be a vote on whether or not we will adopt the
superintendent's recommendations double meeting night okay yeah open the heating close the hearing and then open this uh of course yeah so any questions on the recommendations right now so I actually have two points I want to talk about first I want to thank you very much for
providing that context around the um capacity situation i think you know and Mary Rollinsson provides a good example you know clearly looks like there's several classrooms that may not be used at this time so you know something to start thinking about about you know what does that mean as far as how we use our
space but that's something again to think about and talk about later date um however you on my second point you talked about fourth grade having capacity constraints yes and specifically said the district based on our 260 student capacity
constraint could only have four admittances to fourth grade but if you look at it by school looks like we have seven might catch up to you here Mr correct so how do you reconcile that uh we reconcile that because at fourth grade the total population is
256 students so in the recommendation we can't exceed 260 so we but you're recommending 263 what we're recommending is that we open those seats but we're only going to accept four applications
okay so that leaves us so that means those slots are available there's essentially seven seats available but we're only letting in four to keep us at the 260 mark and that's in the motion
i'm asking actually is that in the motion because I think I'm double checking my work here at the motion consideration it says that center school fourth grade can take two Mary Rollinsson can take four Luther Burbank can take one which is I think what Scott
was saying so if we open school choice fourth grade seven seats yeah i need to reconcile the recommended motion okay and the intell I mean ultimately that identifies the
cap that each school could take but the motion should say at the fourth grade level the most we can take is four yeah we did this in a previous year so I'll go back to that language and it seems Thank you for that catch Mr p you could put them all at Mary Rollinsson or you
could sprinkle them across the other schools is ultimately what could happen right yeah it's no obvious right way i mean it looks like center's got both center and um Florence sire are already around 86 87 so if you put all four at
they get 87 that be the most equitable way equitable way to do it okay and I mean just to be clear for the community we take kids into the lottery by the numbers but then operationally
you then decide which school they go to yeah we do collect requests from families when they do that and so we we do our best to honor requests but requests are not guaranteed okay Amy I have I have three questions um the first one has to do with the
school choice recommendations for the high school because I think you had that slide up that showed um okay this one works so we're recommending four you're recommending
four seats at the table per grade but our class sizes are well below the cap of 220 um that was in your kind of like guidelines for where to cap things off um is that superseded by the
other bullet that says no more than four students per grade level per school should be considered is that what's capping that yep and where does that guiding principle come it was presented to you in this meeting two years ago yeah and I remember so I I brought a methodology forward and that's and the
committee wanted me to limit that so that's what we came up with at that time yeah and I kind of remember this being brought up last year i was like should we revisit that number um so I guess that's I'm just posing that question because this really feeds
into my second question and about the um tuition gaps or that you had a chart that showed you know $24,000 last year um because we're letting in we're
sending out more students than we're receiving um so I I guess I'm just asking like is that something we should revisit to try to close that gap especially at the high school where we're significantly under the 220 students per grade at the high school well when we had that situation last
year in terms of our applicants that's when we came to the committee to ask if we could enlarge that by two more and I think we could apply that methodology if you look at this table you can see that while we had four seats available for all four grades last year we couldn't
even fill them so we can increase it to 20 we can increase it to 10 we can increase to eight doesn't mean we fill them that leads to my third question yeah which is um the how the lottery
information is made available and kind of how the operations of that work like the application being made available is that a paper application that somebody has to fill out and they get it at the point of application um because I think that might be an obstacle to some people
to participate in the lottery if it was an online form i know personally as a parent I have participated in this process in other with other systems and it is as simple as filling out a Google
form to enroll in the lottery miss Masterson personally contacts every family that applies and provides that information to them provides No I'm saying I'm saying to just get your name on that list she's trying to simplify the application process yes
instead of making it so that you have to fill out a form and and deliver it could we look at making that process more accessible i mean we could I don't know what problem I'm trying to solve because it hasn't been illustrated that that's an issue well I think that you it was
illustrated by the fact that we didn't fill those seats is that's what I'm getting at i wonder if that is related and so because at this form at this point it's a printed it's a printed applicate right you have to go online you have to find the application you have to print it you have to fill it out
then you have to find a stamp then you have to you have to hand it to anybody it has to be handed to the right person there's no email that is sent to you documenting that you are that your your application has been received
there is but with a Google I think what Amy's saying is with a Google form wouldn't that make it easier for everyone and then it timestamps it yeah i so it's easy to do i don't think it's going to yield but you're hoping it will yield
because that what we know about people that are come to us from school choice they're eager when you're eager you're going to grab that form and turn it in so we want people who are eager to join us we don't
want to just uh uh just you make it so easy we can hardly tell who came in you know what I mean like we want to to be able to assess those things happy to do that um but I don't think it's going to yield what you're looking for i think what we've learned
over the last couple of years is that it's not there isn't um sort of a a flush of people seeking out school choice there are people who certainly want that we start feeling those calls as early as February um and we point to this meeting so we
have people that are I think watching tonight because they watch this meeting we'll watch the hearing next week to then can I um just kind of pull the committee with a thumbs up thumbs down would you guys favor an electronic application for school choice if yes
give me a thumbs up are you questioning i'm not sure about the wording you provided do I think it's being helpful yes do I think it's necessary no i'm asking I'm asking if you think we should move to an electronic application i just Madam Chair with all respect I think that's an operational decision happy to
do it as a recommendation um well would you recommend that the superintendent move to an electronic application give me a thumbs up if you're if you think it matters it feels like we don't have consensus on that so we're going to leave it to the
superintendent to manage it as he sees fit but Jackie question not related to that okay so um was that all that you wanted yeah and and thank you i'm I'm not trying to take over an operational decision i'm just sharing my personal experience that seemed much easier other
places so yeah no well taken thank you you can submit it by email that's easiest of all well you can print it and then scan it and then email it right and that's that's acceptable yeah you don't have to drive all the way here or go to post office
so I think with that I don't think we need that it's a Google form um I think it's important to put everything on the table though i think it's it's good discussion so thank you guys for engaging in that yeah thank you um different question yeah so just a
point of clarification m does have open spaces but they have multiple sections so those rooms are reallocated so from a space perspective they're in balance yes so there's not
like an overflow of empty rooms at Emory um I did want to just ask and this is an operational question so if you could just I'm curious about what the process is for residents living in the district who
move from one town to another and do they have to go through the school choice process it's actually written in the policy around that in appeal to the superintendent okay it's written in our our policy and I think it's a good question to ask because I've been thinking about that myself and
um I think we should be thinking about those options particularly maybe even prior to the budget season to get an understanding of that and and look at what interdist balance may look like so yes I'm thinking about that there is an
option for families that's based in our uh policy and it's a request directly to the superintendent so and when those scenarios do come up it's very clear that if if approved to do that you have to provide your own transportation and uh that's written in the policy thank
you all right everybody so uh Shandra so two questions I just can't remember in school choice is transportation the same for them or they have to provide it themselves they have to provide their own transportation that um the other one I I thanks to all the data you provided
i think I found the answer but it's about the high school and your school choice recommendations um I know that high school Mr china yeah that uh some schools see
significant attrition over the four years of high school uh and so like an argument could be made to sort of overenroll in the nth grade knowing you'll lose students to have those other grades higher but my quick looking at
this data suggests that we don't lose a ton of students over the four years that's correct and you know to Miss Coleman's point I think it's always a good idea well I shouldn't say always but it would be a good idea to look at those numbers particularly you know
you're taking on uh freshman junior sophomores you know you you you know what that impact is in the immediate years to come however I wouldn't recommend that this season and the reason why is we just went through a significant budget season where we had
to really slice thinly how many sections we have in the school system including a reduction of 3.4 educators at the high school so I wouldn't recommend going above that four today for that reason so that we don't put ourselves in the place where we have to be adding back um and
when you add back at the high school it gets really complex because you're adding back in tenths not full-time FTEES you two10 per course essentially that you have to add back considering
how far below the 220 we currently are at 10 11 12 think there's a lot of risk if we made it five that we wouldn't run into that situation no which is why I think if we apply the methodology here and in our applications we see a demand
about that we would come back to the school committee and that doesn't necessarily even have to be done by June 1st although we probably do it at the the end of May meeting if we saw that or or that June meeting we just have to have our hearing to open by June 1st and
and we would still I think be able to address that then any other questions all right everybody so again the hearing will be at our next meeting and then we will be asked to take a vote so if any community members want to weigh in if committee members want to provide any feedback between now and then please
send it to me and I can funnel it all to Kirk that way so thanks for that Kirk you bet well done uh so let's move the agenda guys to the next item here and that is going to be policy first
readings and I'm going to turn it over to subcommittee chair vessels so she can help us understand what we have here uh well I think Kirk wanted to speak about BDFA first right Kirk you wanted to talk about that yeah do you want to bring up a
BDFA-E or let's do BDFA first just to set the stage for dash um so this is uh the update on school councils if you're schoolbound okay so this is sort of uh putting into
the policy elements of the statute around school councils um that recognizing the law principal serves as as um the council with the co-chair of one of those members as well using consent this is where it
gets they say recommend using Robert's rules of orders um conform to the open meeting law so it's it's actualizing those things in the law into the policy so there's nothing earthshattering around that policy but I would ask us to
go to -ash E dash E is the policy I recommend we table to figure out some things on this um I think it's written this is around specifically school improvement plans we have a structure where you all see these plans and approve them and by statute
there it's really only the high school that has to be approved but we bring them all forward as a best practice um and in doing so um we always do that in the fall this memorializes submission to the
superintendent not the committee but to the superintendent by July 1st i went to the committee to know now that our principles are working with their school councils today on that like at least having targets to that the problem with that and I think you know are obvious in
terms of our timelines when our data collections are done when we're able to you know grab those metrics when the councils are able to sort of look at that information and then sort of come together on some school goal language when their last meeting is in
June it's like May June when they have their May meeting to look at it we haven't collected that information yet so the timeline we got to figure out that timeline it's a there's just something about it that's that's wonky the other part about this recommended policy which is why at this point I
don't think we should should adopt it if you can scroll down um Alita um back up a little more i'm not seeing the section we talked about Amy maybe it is down oh
thank you thank you thank you um let me see yeah my brush is different yeah this this version mine has a little more go back i think this maybe what has like a No
it was the clause that that would talk about it recommended the types of things that should go in the school improvement plan so it was just the the language was a recommendation so it really wasn't it didn't come off as policy language but
I'm not seeing it on this copy amy if you're suggesting that we table this now I mean so anyway that's all I'm essentially saying is the dashy's got a lot of work to do i think we table that for now i think that is our goal we're trying to get our principles to to work
with their councils on how to make that work now so that we can take a look at it next year is what it comes down to um all right guys so that is a recommendation superintendent can I get a thumbs up if everybody's okay with giving us a little bit more thought all
right so we're going to kind of pull this one out but uh Amy can walk us through the remainder yeah the others are just um we had um like JH we had talked to Kirk a little bit about what um what was being done in the schools if
this is the what we were following in terms of how we were notifying parents about absences and the number of absences and that kind of stuff and um so we had some discussion around that and he said that's discussion that they've had um among the principles and
stuff to make sure everybody's on the same page with that yeah there was a there was a question Mr pal I believe you may have asked a question about this we did um and it was around is that the practice that we're currently using of within 5 days the answer to that is no
the practice that we're currently using because I have to tell you that's tricky every check you know getting within 5 days every time somebody hits 10 the practice that we're using is that when you hit eight the courtesy calls given out to families that hey you're getting
close to 10 and those are done and the monthly attendance reviews with the building based attendance teams which is usually the principal with their assistant perhaps the school nurse and looking at that so it's not being executed to the letter of that policy is
the short answer um the other ones here are not there was nothing significant we're at the end of our basically at the end of our list um and so there's nothing significant about them we just hadn't gotten to those and
then the policies for removal I put in the um in the table why MASC was suggesting that they be removed cuz a number of them they said were this stuff was already in contract language like in the contract policy language so they
felt it was redundant and so they were taking out some of these policies thanks Amy and thanks to the policy subcommittee are there any questions for the policy subcommittee on anything here so Justin so far as the removals are concerned the corporal punishment one
caught my attention how else is that being addressed um what what number are you the last one jka JK we don't have Yeah I I don't know i didn't have a note on that and it was not I don't have an
answer to that we don't have corporal punishment in state i wouldn't I would hope not but nonetheless you know it's not if it's not in the policy how is it being how is that being communicated to the community and the staff that it's
not allowed allowed i mean that's correct um illegal yeah i I I think it's state level statute and that's how we Oh yeah i mean 100% i I think that's been well established for decades now so it it
wouldn't fair enough need to be addressed i mean when I was in third grade saw it happen that's true i was in California goes there well point well taken but it is yeah physical abuse is not allowed can I just a clarifying
question in all of these policies the red line is what's coming from MASC yes if we have if we have put forward a different recommendation we make note of that we tell you guys that okay so is
that what the blue is in no I don't know some people So we split these up okay and I don't know some people put blue in instead of red it didn't mean anything and then I I'm just asking for clarification that I'm recalling this
correctly i think that the the wish was to stick as closely as possible to the language that is coming from MASC and not rewrite Yes that much if at all correct thank you
Amy the piece that is removing the approval of handbooks and directives why is that being removed is it because it exists somewhere else yes it got um it yeah merged into something else okay
so just discuss comment we have policy JKAA which is about physical restraint and it uh covers corporal punishment that we don't do it so I think it is in our policies somewhere jka not a sub
policy of JKA no dash policy any other questions okay everybody so if something comes to you you can send it to me i
will send it along to Amy but this is it but this is the end well done oh wait no I take it back one hanging out there's actually just one one more hanging out there one amy will have her grand finale yeah maybe one i noticed
one awesome um can I just ask a quick question this is maybe for the superintendent on student absences i know that the 10day window if the student is absent for 10 days straight doesn't Mass General Law require that
you unenhold them yeah this is a conversation to bring in the community we need to review this so I think we should put this on our items for future agendas okay because the and I want to throw it onto the radar here that 10
days is actually not that long and that students can sometimes either be ill for that long or be experiencing some sort of school refusal etc uh something that is keep and it can be even more traumatic for the school to then if a
child is suffering and not able to get to school for 10 days 9 days to then get the school feeling like they're threatening and so I I've seen this in my own personal or in my own practice so I I just wonder about that and and and
with regard to this policy I recognize that it's mass general law right yep yeah um but I want to in the protocols of it all make sure that the district is exercising caution with families who might be
experiencing trauma mr m talk to uh school refusal scenarios as well as um Yeah so there's very school districts are very sensitive to those and I would say when you unenroll or look to unenroll you're
really not getting a response from a family or because typically with a school um refusal we start to enact um a process through student services that could be um looking at the data potentially making a referral to special
education because they'll need a support enacting um some of our guidance or social work to really support the family in that process plus we're working on um a whole school refusal um through our student um nursing services has been
focused on that piece as well the second part is home hospital so if a student has an illness a long-term illness we ask families to fill out the home hospital form and then we support them with whatever needs um through that home
hospital so will often times uh supply tutoring services through a hospitalization or in the home if necessary so those are those cases where you really want to stop and really work with the family i think when you're looking at types of unenrollment you're
not getting a response or it's something that might be outside the scope of of um um that type of support that's needed and I know as a principal um committee we're looking at that yeah this is
actually one of the things we're discussing even tomorrow morning um but in those scenarios that Mr dean talked about the student is recorded as present they're not recorded as as absent if they're receiving instructional services at home
great and yeah just to clarify on that so the it's according to Mass General law that if a student has 10 unexcused absences in a row in a row then they will be
unenrolled that's what you're saying so the school district has the authority to control i I think though this is where some of the confusion you could have some confusion about what is an unexcused absence versus what
is an excused absence um because so does the parent um excusing the absence so the the act of calling the school and saying my child will not be at school today for X
does that excuse the child because there was a contact or is that an unexcused absence now there's a misnomer that because you call and say the absence is excused it's excused there's no such mechanism it's just an absence so in the
event that a student is absent for 10 days um uh the most often scenario that we get for this is when families travel overseas that's the most common reason for that
um and so it's at that point where they we would want to have a conversation with them about that this is why I think it would be an important topic for a future agenda item to bring forward because we can get into that i have put it in the parking lot all right everybody so anything else on
the policy first reading all right so seeing none let's uh move the agenda forward here and move to unfinished business which is to approve the minutes of April 9th 2025
meeting one and I wonder if Amy could fashion a motion i move to approve the meeting minutes of the Minnesota Regional School District School Committee from April 9th 2020 25
meeting one i will check on that sounds good to me do we have to vote to remove the policies yes we do have to do that well that was the first reading that's what it says in the agenda oh remove the policies to remove the
policies so I am going to actually if the without objection from the committee we will wait until the next meeting because we don't ever do some you know we should just wait for that so that I missed that little vote uh word so we'll u put that on the next agenda in the
consider that a part of the second readings um all right so going back to the motion that was on the table um any discussion on the minutes that you guys have in front of you correct Alita that's what
you just passed out so you guys can take a moment to review them before you vote she's got her notary book in the office she brought it any She's good that's That's why we Any uh questions on the minutes all right uh
all those in favor please raise your hand all right that is unity who second uh I think I do you did um all right everybody so thank you for that we do have subcommittee and advisory reports on the agenda right now
and so if anybody has anything that they feel compelled to share from their subcommittee we do have that in our upcoming agenda that um we will be sharing our progress toward our goal for our subcommittees and um we look forward especially to hearing from policy on the
decision-making tool and how that works we will not be meeting before that not next time it will be the time after so we can maybe touch base on that make sure it's okay um all right guys items
for next agenda we have the planning calendar up so that you can look at that looks like we have a pretty big gap between now and April 30th i hope everybody enjoys April vacation if you can last day of school announcement we
will unveil it officially with no I took it off of this week so I didn't jinx us now hopefully we're going to be uh hearing from Dr going in with an NRHS update including a piece and the progress
toward that accreditation um Madam Chair May 14th is the date that I am in Washington DC oh it is so just be so I haven't received the schedule of events
yet i may be appearing remotely so assistant superintendent friend and I will coordinate on the meeting yeah I will okay very good should be not last year
oh interesting so right here if you guys can see that should that say France no as opposed to Montreal we'll clarify okay i think that's right all right so
you can change that at your will yeah they're going to This is next year very good perfect all right everybody anything to add so the parking lot is there for you
to review as well if there's any well we're going to take the the enrollment and space study off we know that Nias update is coming through Dr boon's presentation um everything else can remain um all right everybody all good
i'm going to move to adjourn second very good jackie all those in favor thank you everybody have a great night