Speaker 1: We are gonna call this meeting to order. It is 6 0 1. I think Speaker 2: This is closed Speaker 1: And we will not yet. We'll call, we call in location. We're gonna start with a roll call. Dr. Welch. Present. Mr. Patel Present. Ms. Gorse present. Ms. Collins present. And I am present that is more than us. Quorum. So we can proceed. I'm gonna make a motion to enter into executive session to discuss strategy with respect to litigation. If an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the
litigating position of the public body and the chair. So declares and the chair does declare. Second. Seconded by Ms. Collins. We'll do a roll call. Vote. Dr. Welch. Yes. Mr. Patel? Yes. Ms. Kza? Yes. Ms. Collins? Yes. And I'm a Yes. We are now in executive session. We should return at seven o'clock tonight. So we're good. Alright. Are we in the Zoom? We're good to go? Yes. Great. Welcome back everybody. It is now 7 0 6 and we will get back to open session. So we will start with the Pledge of Allegiance. In a moment of silence, please rise if you are able,
the pledge allegiance Speaker 2: 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. Speaker 1: Thank you. We take that moment of silence to honor our troops serving domestically and abroad announcements. Dr. Sp, do you have any announcements? Speaker 2: Nope. Speaker 1: No. Anybody with announcements? I just have one. Congratulations to the girls tennis team who had their senior day festivities this afternoon.
Great turnout. A little warm for my liking, but it was wonderful. And then they won the match that they were playing, so that was great. All right. Yes, Ms. Collins. Just Speaker 3: To remind people that graduation is before our next meeting. Speaker 1: Graduation is after our, we have another meeting. We have a meeting in six one. Speaker 4: It's June 5th is the graduation. Oh, okay. June one. But Senior Promise before our next meeting, Speaker 1: Senior prom is, and Speaker 4: So it's the flag exchange ceremony. Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 3: Which is this, this Wednesday and yeah. P-T-S-P-T-S. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 1: And it's never too early to get ready for graduation.
Right. Okay. All right. So now we're going to do no more announcements. We're gonna do public speak. Public speak is scheduled for a period of 15 minutes. Each speaker will be permit permitted a maximum of three minutes during which time they can speak about topics within the scope of responsibility to the school committee. All remarks will be addressed through the school committee chair. Public speak is not a time for debate or response to comments by the school committee. Do we have anybody for public speak? Speaker 3: I do. Not. You or Speaker 1: Online. Okay. Seeing none. And I should remind everybody that this meeting is being broadcast
and recorded by Pegasus for future consumption. All right. Student rep. Speaker 3: No updates. Speaker 1: No updates from the students. Shayla, are you on? Is Sheila line? She's on. Ms. Ian, do you have an update? Hello? Hi. Speaker 3: No, no updates from the teachers. Speaker 1: No updates. Okay. And Ms. Gomes is not at a meeting tonight for Meco. So we will move on to the consent agenda. Speaker 3: Proof Consent agenda. Pardon me. Move approval of the consent agenda. Second. Speaker 1: Motion by Ms. Collins. Seconded by Ms. Brunell. We will now, oh, we're all here so we don't have to roll. Call this one. So all in favor? Any opposed?
7 0, 0. All right. We're gonna take the agenda a little bit out of order tonight and we're gonna start with, we're gonna start with the field study update, which is section seven E. And then we'll go right back to the middle school literacy. So for the field study update, Ms. McDonough has joined us tonight. You can sit at the table, you don't have to stand up there if you want. It's up to you. Unless it's like brings back weird memories for you to sit at the table.
Speaker 5: Oh, okay. Okay. Would you like me to just go ahead? Speaker 3: Yeah, you know Julie, wanna go to the next slide? Oh, okay. Speaker 5: So Julie McDonough, I am here tonight as the chair of the Natural and Synthetic Turf Field Study group. And I am going to share with you a process update on where we are right now. This is the same presentation that I gave to town meeting, but it's important for the school committee to hear it as you will be taking some future steps, as I'm sure
you will soon become aware of. So just for the agenda tonight, I'm gonna go through the background a little bit of how we arrived at this point, what the charge of this study group is, our work plan, the progress we've made to date, and the next steps in timeline. And as well as, this is not as relevant for this group, but input and feedback. Yes, the microphone. Okay. Next step. Next slide. So the background for how this study group came to be in the spring of 2024.
Town meeting approved $200,000 for the funding for the design of a synthetic turf field at the current practice field at Natick High School. I would like to add a side note there. That town meeting did approve funding for a field at the practice field, which was what the $200,000 was to be used for at the time. In the spring of 24, I was a member of the school committee. It was going to be designed as a synthetic turf field. Since then, there have been a lot of conversations about the type of field.
But I can say that because just for your background, in the spring of 23, for those of you were who, who were on the committee, we had done a working group related to high school start time. And what came out of that working group that one of the things that we needed to make that happen was a turf field, a a field at the high school alighted synthetic turf field. That's something that the athletic department had been asking for for years. So just to let you know that a little bit of background,
'cause there's been some discussion at our working group meetings, about $200,000. It is up to the school committee about which field you wanna design. The $200,000 was allocated to you in fall of 24. A moratorium on installation of new synthetic turf fields was placed on the town meeting warrant. It was not approved by town meeting and was referred back to the school committee and the select board. In the fall of 2025, an advisory moratorium was placed on the town meeting warrant and that was approved. Following that, there was a lot
of discussion at town meeting for those of you who were there about fields and field space and the need for field space and discussions about the type of fields that the town should install. So the superintendent and the town administrator drafted a memo, which is linked in this presentation, which you could read, but you've probably actually seen it. So the one path was to establish this, what we now call the natural and synthetic Turf Study Group Committee. And the second was to move forward the schematic design of the practice field.
And that that piece is being done by Art Good High and DPW. You've heard from him about what he's found so far. And so now we are working on the charge of the study group, which I'm sure you've read. The memo was to collect, review and report back to the school committee, select board and others, the findings of various research studies that have been done on natural and synthetic turf fields. And then identify the various considerations that a community like Natick should consider when installing types of fields in terms of maintenance demand, short
and long-term costs, health and safety, and other considerations. The members of the study group, as you are aware, I am the chair, which was because I had done a lot of work on the field study group. This was designated in the memo, which is important to know for former school committee member. And Mr. Brand is your rep from school committee Mr. Evans', rep from the select board. And Carlos Ry is our rep from the Board of Health. Our work plan is that we've been undertaking since January is to understand the issues, considerations and challenges. And this is important that are unique to Natick relative
to field construction, usage, space and maintenance. We wanted to compare and contrast the data related to usage, safety, health and environment for both types of fields. We wanted to continue to review the various research studies that are out there. There are a number of, and we just started talking about this at our last meeting, just a, a plethora of studies that have been done on both natural grass and synthetic chart fields. And then understand the options for construction so that everyone understood how these fields can be constructed. Progress To date, the study group has now met nine times
and the meetings are posted open to the public. We have a study page website, which I will say will soon be updated with a Google Drive where we are keeping all of the documents and information that we collect and review and generate from our study group. So far we've met with Art Goodine from Natick DPW, who talked a lot about field assets and maintenance and his expertise. Expertise as a a turf manager and I, I mean turf like synthetic and natural. In Natick, we listened to Parks
and Rec talk about scheduling and their programming that they have in Natick, both what is currently available and what they would like to be able to do. We heard from, in a written report from the Natick Sustainability department about the health and environmental considerations related to fields. We spoke to the assistant director of the Natick High School athletic department who shared with us information about field usage around for both the middle and high school sports and some of the challenges that they face. And we have spoken to a wide variety of youth sports
leaders in Natick baseball, lacrosse field, not field hockey, baseball, lacrosse, football, soccer. I think that's it. So I'm sure I've left off someone. Then recently we spoke to or received comments from the Natick High School athletic trainer so we could better understand safety on the fields. And then we also received some information from and Bond, who is the organization that has been contracted with to do the schematic design for these fields. Talked a little shared information about construction
of fields and how sort of innovations things that other towns consider when they talk about constructing fields and what, what maintenance needs to be in place, that sort of thing. So our next steps are to continue to explore the research studies related to health safety in the environment. We are, we've kind of now done this piece, but there may be other professional organizations that we want to speak with about installing and maintaining turf fields. We also had a conversation at our last meeting about
recycling of turf fields. There's a new facility in Massachusetts that recycles synthetic turf. And then we're gonna better understand what are the options and what do we need to consider when we're, when you would construct a natural or synthetic turf field. And then what do other communities do? What there's other, other communities have done studies and we wanna know a little bit more about how they make their decisions. It's a little bit hard because we are also trying to make this very specific to Natick and what Natick needs are, what available land we have, what the demand on our fields are,
what programming we'd like to be able to do. So that's a little bit trickier, but we're gonna try to look at other towns who may have similar situations. The end product will be a final report that we'll share with this committee, with the select board and with town meeting that will be information and data related to all the areas of exploration that I talked about today. We are not gonna make a recommendation on field type, but because this is meant to just provide information so
that people can make informed decisions and have the whole picture in front of them, thinking about it from all different points of view. And then the final thing is just we'll provide some background on installation and maintenance and usage, some data that we've collected, How to provide input and feedback. Obviously I guess I would recommend that you go through your rep, but you're welcome to reach out to the committee. But we were looking at town meeting, the reason that we really wanted to present to town meeting was to understand what information they would like in the report
that would make sure that they had the information that they needed to make a final decision. So our plan is to be back here in the fall with that final report and at that point we'll be able to discuss the content. And like I said, hopefully within the next week or so we'll have a Google drive up on our page that already exists on the website that'll have interviews of all the folks that we've spoken to and then information that we've collected from a variety of different sources. And I think, I think that's it. I think that's it on process. Speaker 1: Thanks Miss McDonough. Any questions from the committee?
Ms. Brunell, Speaker 6: Thank you for coming back and for this report. Two questions are, the first is when you said town meeting will be making a final decision, what are they deciding upon? Speaker 5: Town meeting will not make, will not make a decision. Town meeting would ultimately, if I said that I misspoke. Okay. Town meeting would make a decision if the construction of the field came before them. But the school committee, because the $200,000 was allocated to the school committee. And I don't know if I should be speaking to this it, I think Speaker 6: This was my second question. Okay. Have we done anything with the $200,000?
And I don't know if Speaker 5: So I would, I would just, I don't, you can explain that part. But the decision to design the field would be up to the school committee, which, so you have to decide which type of field to design is my understanding from. But I can't speak for art and what he told you at the last meeting. Speaker 6: And is it possible that town meeting might be making a decision about the moratorium or is that, Speaker 5: That Speaker 6: Is, since that was referred back the first time it came, Speaker 5: The first time it was referred back and the advisory is in place now. Okay. Speaker 6: Thank you. Speaker 1: Other questions Ms. Goeth?
Speaker 7: So thank you. Very comprehensive report. Really appreciate it. On the recommendations in the report for like installation and maintenance, would that be for either grass or turf or is this specific to turf and we assume that we already have knowledge about grass? Speaker 5: No, it would be for both. For both, yeah. Okay, Speaker 7: Great. Thank you. Speaker 1: And if I could just add yeah to that, just if you've been at any of the meetings, we have been pretty deliberate about wanting to make sure that the final report is incredibly balanced. And so for every item that we put in about one type of field, we're trying to balance it with the same kind
of information with the other types. So if somebody was, I mean not to use the pun, like to to greenfield, right? If we were just looking at this report for the first time, we had no additional context. You could make an educated decision on what was best for Natick with this as a tool. Speaker 7: Thank you Speaker 1: Dr. Sp Speaker 4: Just there are some members that are new to the committee. Back in February we sent a memo to the school committee, which I'm happy to resend, that really ran through the expenditures to date as part of that $200,000. And at that time in as
of February it was $24,850 of the 200,000 had been expended. And we have actually in the memo is a reconciliation and posted invoices and all the work product that has been done so far. So I'm happy to resend that if that's of interest, especially since there's some new people on the committee. Okay. Can we send that tomorrow? Speaker 1: Any other questions? Seeing Yep. Ms. Goza, please. Speaker 7: At town meeting, were there questions from members of town meeting and was there any theme if there were questions Speaker 5: There? There wasn't a theme. I would say there were questions about,
I'm trying to remember exactly what the questions were. There were questions about process, there were questions about how this went together with the now separate work of designing the field. There were some thinking about, this is one I'm remembering specifically to go and visit other types of fields. There were three or four people that spoke, I'm sorry, I can't find my notes from the town meeting. But I would say there was, I would say there wasn't a theme. Okay.
Speaker 7: No, just curious. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. I can, I can go watch the meeting too on Pegasus. Speaker 1: All set. Yeah. Ms. Collins, Speaker 3: I think this is Dr. Sp, but how would this report, or how do you envision this report fitting into the strategic plan, if at all? Speaker 4: There is a section in focus area four. It's still very much being mapped out in terms of action plans. It's all about future use. And so I see it following the, falling into that. We haven't mapped out the action plans yet, but we plan to do that before June 15th. So it would absolutely be in focus area four, which is resources and infrastructure.
Speaker 3: Okay. I guess I wasn't, I wasn't clear in my question. Since the strategic plan is envisioned for June, and this isn't envisioned until the fall, I'm, I'm trying to bridge that Speaker 4: Everyone likes to summer, we've, we've been swimming in those waters for a while, since it's a five year plan. And, and several members of the committee here are on this, it's almost like umbrella buckets of four issues. And so we a hundred percent foresee this falling into one of those buckets. And however we haven't mapped it out what will actually be part of next year's action plan.
So to the extent there are actions that we would need to be part of, we should consider those. And we'll probably needing to look back at fall town meeting to kind of take or springtown meeting to take a look at that. But right now we haven't mapped it out yet, but it has a placeholder. Speaker 3: But the strategic plan, you don't envision it precluding anything that might surface from this? Speaker 4: Not at all. Okay. That's fact. I just wanted to be public about it. Yeah, I mean really we're mapping out in granularity the first year action plans, the rest are, or higher buckets that could take anything as we kind of move forward in the next five years.
It's that open, which I think hopefully is very clear to the committee on the first. Speaker 1: Any other questions? Seeing none. Anyone online? No. All right. Thank you Ms. McDonough. Thank you. We'll see you in the fall. Thank you. Yes, I'll probably see you sooner than that. Alright, so now we will go to the superintendent's report. I heard rumors about item A. Speaker 8: Yes. Speaker 4: So I'll let you say it. Yes. We don't have the Eagle Scout update for today. Is that what you meant? That's what I meant, yes. So we're gonna go right to middle school literacy curriculum.
It's fabulous to have so many educators, coaches, et cetera in the, in the audience. So I'm gonna pass it over to you to give a report and kind of a, a current status of that, of the curriculum model for middle school sharing some great news. I'm not gonna steal any thunder tonight. And then we'll kind of move forward as we did with the elementary and the committee's. Very familiar with that process with an A recommendation to adopt a new curriculum for for the middle school K eight literacy. Thanks. Good to see you Mr. Cook. Speaker 9: Thank you very much. Hello everyone.
Another update on the literacy curriculum adoption and I'm gonna go through a pretty quick overview highlighting some of the things you've heard before. And then introduce the folks that have been really doing amazing work this year to get us to where we are. So obviously the connection to the bridge plan in terms of strengthening tier one academic instruction by adopting high quality instructional materials. That's our HQIM for future reference. And this process began in the fall of 2024. And like I said, a lot of this was outlined in those memos that you received already.
But just to set the, the stage for the folks watching the committee decided to pilot some of these programs and in the spring of last year, using ed reports and curate ratings, screened out their options and the K to four level used Fish tank and CKLA for the pilot process. And as you know, we've adopted CKLA and the five to eight grade band also piloted Fish Tank and HMH and decided early on in this calendar year
that a third pilot would be helpful in the process and went with Expe Expeditionary Learning or el and that turned out to be the one that they have chosen. We had all elementary and middle schools engaged in the process with all grade levels represented K to eight. The teachers were able to implement units and receive coaching support and provide feedback through surveys and facilitated discussions. We went through a very similar process at the five to eight level where the pilot teachers and our coaches were able to share their thoughts on our options, condense
that information into a presentation for educators across five to eight, whether they were involved in the pilot or not. And then we gathered feedback through a final survey and it was an overwhelming majority for both C-K-L-A-K to four and EL five to eight EL came in at a 70 to 30% difference and that 30% was actually split between the other two options. So it was very well received and our pilot teams here tonight to go into a little more detail and tell you why they're excited about these selections. We have Liz Brothers, our instructional coach at Memorial,
along with three pilot teachers, Antoine Hodge, Christine Zeiger, and Kate Fung. And at the middle school we have Eric Freeze, LNL department head along with Caitlyn Begley and Aaron Dotson, our instructional coaches. Jeff McMahon was enabled to zoom in today, so our apologies for that. But I'll turn it over to Liz and her team and then I'll wrap it up when everybody's done. Awesome. Speaker 8: Do you want us to come up here? Yeah, there's a button that might need to sneeze or is it on? Speaker 10: There you go. It's on. All right. Thank you for having us.
I'm Liz Brothers, I'm the literacy coach at Memorial and I'm here with Kate, Christine and Antoine. So before we talk about C-K-C-K-L-A at all, I just wanna thank the pilot teachers across Natick. It has been a huge undertaking, hours of reading and researching and collaborating and extra meetings. They are the true heroes of the pilot. So thank you so much for all you've done and all the teachers middle school as well. So I'll let you share a little bit about second and fourth grade here. Speaker 8: Share start.
Speaker 11: Yeah, so we just wanted to share a little bit about our pilot experience. Christine and I both teach second grade at Brown Elementary School and we have found that overall CKLA really supports all of our students, not just some of our students. There is a huge focus not only in the knowledge section, but the skills section of our curriculum is broken into two kind of chunks. There's a huge emphasis on vocabulary, background knowledge and building all of those skills so that all of our students can access the material at a grade level standard.
We would expect them to. We also really enjoy that reading and writing aren't separate boxes anymore. CKLA acknowledges that reading and writing are intertwined and so they're embedded throughout both parts of our literacy day. The kids don't see them as two separate boxes. There's not a writing time and a reading time. We're doing it all throughout our literacy instruction. And so the kids are really kind of thinking about how it's all connected and they're merging their skills and their thinking and their learning so that they can better utilize what they've learned throughout reading a text into writing
about it or they can write about what they've been reading. So they've been doing a really great job with that. Speaker 7: Yeah, one of the things that I really loved about CKLA, and for those of you that don't know CKLA stands for core knowledge and language arts. So one of the things I really liked about it is that we're, we're finally getting back to that explicit built in foundational skills that have been lacking in the previous curriculum. And one of the things we loved about it is it's got grammar, it has phonemic awareness, it has, it has things like
the, that high vocabulary of phonics and the decodable texts that are included in the lower elementary grades are aligned throughout the entire unit. So if you're working on one discreet phonemic skill in one part, if you'll find it in the decodable text, you'll find it spiraling back to that. It never asks the students to go above and beyond what, what we've already taught them until they're ready for that. And the other thing I really love about this is that it's highly engaging. It, it's not a, it's not a passive curriculum.
It requires students to be actively engaged. Whether it's something during a whole class lesson, independent work, small group work, there's many opportunities for students to access all levels of the, of the program. And that's what we really loved about it. Even the kids really are really enjoying it. So I never hear, oh, we have to do that, which is good. Speaker 11: We've noticed a lot of students coming in and making real world connections like, oh, let's see, we're studying aviation and they went to a museum
and they saw something, they come back and they tell us about it. Or we're writing memory poems and someone comes in the next day with a memory poem that they've written at home. They're really taking it and owning it and enjoying it. And we, we've seen a very high level of engagement with them. Speaker 10: Yeah. And they use the vocabulary, which is great in conversations, they'll come out of classrooms and talk to me and I'm like, oh that is such a beautiful word. I love that CKLA is really bringing it out. So Antoine, Speaker 12: Did you have something to share? Yes. So we're having a similar experience here in fourth grade. Hi, my name's Antoine. I teach fourth grade at lja. So with CKLA, it has a built-in scaffolding
which allows different and language development support that allows teachers to reach all students, not just your struggling students or those students that are meeting benchmarks. It also reaches those students that are your high flyers as well with CKLA. It's a gradual release with Lucy Calkins and the units of study, I felt like it was more of like a grab and go, you do a quick 10 minute lesson and then allow students to explore books on their own. But it wasn't, we weren't having deep conversations 'cause we weren't all reading the same text with CKLA, you're reading the same text and you're able to just have a deeper dive into those, into those books.
We, for engagement, we did a poetry unit, which I was a little nervous at first, teaching poetry in fourth grade just 'cause it can be very abstract. A lot of students in fourth grade developmentally, they're still very like concrete. So having the figurative language and just being able to identify figurative language and also implement that in their own writing, it just speaks for itself. So yeah, CKA we, we really enjoyed it in fourth grade at, Speaker 10: Yeah, and just a few more points. I mean they've all mentioned it but it is just, it's research based and there it's highly rooted in the science of reading.
You see it in kindergarten with the speech to print approach and then all throughout the grades there's heavy emphasis on language comprehension. I love CKLA for many reasons, but I think one of my top reasons is the engagement. Everyone is so excited to be in those lessons. Yeah, it also has an entry point for all learners. Whether it's a kid who is super high needs a challenge or a student with an IEP or you know, as you said, someone who might be a multilingual learner. There is an opportunity for everyone to learn at that table and it is just phenomenal. So we've had a fabulous experience
and the, as you know from the data from Chris, I mean teachers were really excited to vote for it. So I didn't know if anyone had any questions or Speaker 1: Members of the committee. Anyone have any questions or do you wanna wait? Dr. Fugman, Speaker 13: Very random question. How helpful would it be to know if a neighboring district was made the exact same decision to in in order to find colleagues to support you across districts? Speaker 10: Yeah, so we actually went to Sharon and did some pilot visits and we've consulted with elementary schools in Cambridge who have piloted and adopted.
So that has been so valuable seeing it in action. Speaker 13: So at Holliston to your list, they just selected I didn't know that. The same curriculum. Speaker 10: Interesting. And I love to invite school committee members to come, please come to Memorial. You have an open invitation to come to a literacy block and just watch it. It's really cool. I mean like they were saying, I think the, the units are just amazing for what these kids are learning in kindergarten through fourth grade. So, Speaker 7: And Kate and I actually, we co-planned all of the lessons together, whether it was doing the skills section, that's the foundational skills part of it
for second grade and then co-taught. So we combined our classes for the knowledge piece and found that really it, it was really great for us to learn the program and pilot it together. But we also found that the kids themselves loved having that opportunity for like cross engagement with other classrooms. And it wasn't just like, I only know this teacher in this room and these kids. And then the same thing in the next, next room over we, we intentionally paired kids from, from each
of our classrooms together. And so they've had a broader experience of sharing their thinking and and thinking about deeply about these texts and about the curriculum that we're working with. So Speaker 1: Other questions Ms. Collins? Oh sorry. Sorry Kathy. Catherine had her hand up. Speaker 7: It's okay. Speaker 3: I personally would be interested to see the difference in the fourth grade poetry at Lilja from the one twos, which they do. And it's been phenomenal to see them do that.
So I would like to see the growth in in that just as a personal yeah thing. But it looks like, and correct me if I'm wrong, that this covers, I mean I know it's high HQ whatever it is, Speaker 7: High quality instructional Speaker 3: Material. Yeah I am. But it looks like it's hitting the marks of what we in Natick also. So it gives you the opportunity to do root words and all of those things. And I don't know if spellings back are banned at the moment, but I'm glad that we're integrating reading and writing
because I don't think, I've never thought they could be separated. So I'm excited. Speaker 11: Yeah and there's Speaker 3: A, I may take some of you up on Speaker 7: We are too, Speaker 11: There's a big focus too with this curriculum on quality over quantity. It's not can you write 15 writing pieces in this unit? It's can you make a polished writing piece that meets our standards and follows all of the expectations that we've outlined through our lessons. Speaker 6: It's exciting. Ms. Brune, thank you. I'm sure that you know already that in our last meeting we accepted the recommendation
to adopt CKLA so that yes motion is already passed. And so it's great to hear from you though. And this is a question that would go for I think the elementary and the middle school and probably to you Dr. First to you Dr. Stash. But I sometimes I play the role of the cynic and at some point people raved about Lucy Calkins, right? And so what I am just curious, in five years, what results do we hope to see in Natick so that we avoid a gap in time like we perhaps have
across our entire country. Do you know what I mean? Lucy Calkins was really popular. It, you people sat at meetings like this and said the same things about a curriculum that we now know wasn't great. And so I'm just curious, how do we know, and this is not meant to be a criticism of your choice, it's just like what do we wanna see from our kids? Speaker 4: Yeah, the questions I'll start, but I think our, our pilot educators could probably give a far better answer than I, but what I would say is there's a bit of a pendulum swing that happens sometimes with research and it behooves us to keep on top of it
and to follow research. And we did have a thing called COVID in the middle that might have swung us to a different, I'm not excusing it, I'm just saying I, I think the advent of high quality curricular materials, the advent of mass curate and ed reports, which are very, very recent, they're not like decades old. And so this, there's really a lot more research and involvement in kind of being good consumers of curriculum. I think our educators probably could tell us a lot of these things far before maybe the research could as well just from feet on the ground. So I'd love to hear you expand upon what we hope we see
and we know is true about kids. 'cause it's so much more than their scores which matter, it's much more about how much they love literacy, love learning, love engaging with text and discussion around stories and around content. So I'm, I'm happy to kind of pass it, but I hope we see vibrant learners talking about what they're learning about loving reading and loving writing. That's a really spirit answer if you wanna get technical go ahead. But what is speaking to you in terms of Ms. Bruno's question? Speaker 7: Well, immediately the research came to mind as you were asking that question. So yes, I would echo what Dr.
Sp is saying in terms of, you know, science of reading really did come out of the whole COVID situation where, you know, there was a lot of studies that were saying that kids can't read, kids are not decoding, kids are not, they're, they're memorizing words instead of learning how to decode words. And that's where all the research came, came in with the science of reading. And this strongly follows all the recommendations based on that research in terms of the engagement, you know,
in the second grade knowledge unit, I mean we're learning things like the history of aviation fairytales and folktales, which, you know, we always worry about engagement with the fairytales, especially if it's a Cinderella fairytale or like, you know, don't, we're worried about like whether kids are really gonna get into them. And I have to tell you, all the kids were engaged with the fairytales and because it, because like what Liz was saying, it hits every kid at every entry point. And so there's something for everyone and there's a way to address their needs
specifically through this program. I, I just think that it's just a highly engaging program for these kids based on really in-depth research. Speaker 10: Yeah and I will say all the HQIM we looked at the kids were engaging with grade level text. Like Antoine was saying, it was so great no matter what your background is, you had third grade materials. Whereas before we had book bags that matched your reading level. So you saw that Matthew effect, you saw those kids who were in the lower level books that never got to the higher ones or well the other kids were reading so much.
And that's not the case with this curriculum. All students are doing grade level standardized work. So it is phenomenal to see that it is inclusive and obviously I think the data, although we don't wanna focus only on data, but it will tell the story, we will see the numbers of our special education population and our multilingual learners. Some of those scores that have been unfortunately lower will now have an opportunity to rise. Thank you. I hope. Speaker 11: And I think overall too, just the the application piece, right? The students are not just sitting and listening to us speak to them. They're having a chance across
multiple sections throughout the day to really apply these skills and they apply it both in the skills and the knowledge component for K to two. And those are really well connected. We've made lots of connections across both of the sections of our day. We'll be reading about something in our knowledge unit and a student will raise their hand and see that sounds a lot like what we did earlier in skills. And so they're really thinking about and taking and transferring their knowledge and actually utilizing it for their learning. And Speaker 7: We haven't seen that before. Speaker 1: Other questions before I share my comment? Of course. Sorry,
Speaker 13: I was gonna hold on this question for the middle school team, but both to give you time to think about it but also it might be relevant in elementary school already you were talking about writing, helping students learn writing and it's not about quantity, it's quality. One issue that is important to consider when teaching students writing these days is ai, where does AI fit? Are students using ai? Are you concerned about students using ai? But also what is the beyond just do we make sure students are not using AI to turn in assignments as you're teaching them how to write? Are you, are we thinking about how do you teach students
to write in a world where AI exists? And I know Amplify or CKAA is is mostly online. I was looking at their website, they talk about incorporating AI mostly for teacher tools, but I was just curious if that is something that came up at all so far and it might not have at elementary school, but I'm curious if, Speaker 7: I'd love to hear from Antoine. He hasn't in fourth grade. No, we Speaker 11: We haven't encountered that too. We're still all paper and pencil. Speaker 13: Yeah, so should have waited until the middle school. Well, Speaker 7: But the great you should have but, but the great thing about about the skills that they're teaching in the elementary level
is we're teaching what is a complete sentence. What, you know what we need a subject, you need a predicate. Whereas before you weren't having that. Right. And that links right into AI because if kids are using ai, they need to recognize whether they, AI is creating a piece for them that follows those grammatical rules, right? So they need to recognize that in order to recognize that they need to learn it. Yeah, Speaker 13: Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Speaker 1: So my comment, not a question is how cool it is for to hear you all demonstrate
a massive amount of passion for this curriculum. And I think that that passion probably, I can't, I'm not in the building so I can't say is probably already spreading across all of your peers and ultimately is of huge benefit to our students. And any of anybody who's ever had a job or done any work, it starts with being passionate about what you're doing. And I just love hearing that middle school, middle school teachers have a tough act to follow. So you but the, the excitement that you're all, I don't even know if you're aware of it, like the what
it just, you can feel how excited you all are about this and I think that that's a really good sign for our students. So I'm really excited to hear how this goes. So thank you for being here and Speaker 7: I I would like to thank you for the opportunity. I mean this was, it was nice that this wasn't a top-down decision and that teachers had the opportunity to lend our expertise to the process. Speaker 1: Great. Speaker 4: Most important thing, you guys are gonna roll it out. So thank you for all of your engagement and to the rest of the pilot teachers too. Fabulous. Speaker 8: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Next group. Good luck. Speaker 14: Good evening everyone. I'm Eric Freeze. I'm the LNL Language and Literacy Department head for the middle school. I also teach seventh grade LNL at Wilson. So I was a pilot teacher along with, I'll introduce my colleagues over here. Speaker 15: I'm Caitlyn Begley, I'm the instructional coach at Wilson Speaker 10: And I'm Erin Dotson. I'm the instructional coach at Kennedy Speaker 14: And we wanna start also by thanking our pilot teachers for the tremendous amount of work that they put in. It was truly a labor of love and a big lift and they did wonderful work piling different curricula, learning the ins and outs, going through training
and putting into practice three different pilot units at each grade level. We had pilot teachers across all four grades at both middle schools. Erin and Caitlyn provided invaluable resources and were great resources for our teachers working together kind of hand in hand throughout this whole process. I want to thank Sue and Chris for their support and I want to thank the elementary school teachers as well because we had really close collaboration with the elementary school teachers, literacy coaches over at the elementary school. Were able to get into some classrooms and we actually shared a workshop at Nils when we were both piloting the same curriculum.
So it was great opportunity to be able to work together and to, as the elementary school said, really make that decision a way that was meaningful. So in terms of the middle school perspective in favor of el, one of the big reasons why EL was the overwhelming choice was the standards alignment. We found that according to the teacher survey and according to the process that we went through that EL was definitely the most standard standards aligned for all the different domains. And that there was a real emphasis on going back to teach certain standards multiple times in a way to make sure the kids got it.
So within a unit it was very clearly structured and there was a logical skill progression throughout a module. There are four modules in each year for el, we're used to calling them units, they're modules kind of super units and within those are three smaller units and students begin with a focus on a common text that helps them to investigate a topic. So like CKLA. And one of the things we're excited about is this bridge between two knowledge building curricula. Students begin with this focus on a common text that they read together that helps them get into a topic and investigate it from there.
There are multiple mid-unit and end of unit assessments and one of the things we liked about EL was the fact that those assessments were varied and it was a very active curriculum. So the mid-unit assessment in some cases was a graded discussion, a Socratic seminar in some cases it was a writing assessment but it was very purposefully designed over the course of the module so that those different skills would be hit and then so that those different skills would build on each other. And then there were more traditional unit tests as part of it as well as at the end of the module, a large performance task that is designed for an authentic audience.
So we were excited about that opportunity to also involve the community and to move towards really applying the project-based learning experiences that we've had in Natick and that have been so successful. And to be able to do that on a larger scale. One of the things we also liked was the backwards planning that went into it and the team we worked with from EL was very intentional about looking at our assessments both mid-unit and end of unit and working backwards and figuring out which skills or standards the kids would need to really be proficient in what would be the new understandings and new skills they would need. So getting into the standards alignment
but helping the teachers to see yes, this is what they need to do but this is what we might need to spend a little bit more time on based on where kids are. And we also liked that there was really a deep dive into the topics. So one example, my counterpart Jeff McMahon, our curriculum leader, spoke about his experience in the sixth grade teaching boy who harnessed the Wind, which looked at the design process based on a true story. And that began with a deep dive into the novel research into the design process and then an essay and project in which there was a solution symposium designed
by the students that the students are working on. So that whole process is supported by that really purposeful curriculum design. So just a few of the reasons we're excited about it. Speaker 15: Each lesson, kind of like what Eric was saying, incorporates the four elements of literacy. Is the light on? I was gonna say the light is on but okay. Speaker 1: Do you want just No, you can talk right into it. Just move it into your, Speaker 15: Can you hear me now? Yeah. So each of the lessons incorporates the four elements of literacy, reading, writing, speaking and listening, which allows students to be able to show mastery in a variety of different ways
and also, you know, gain the knowledge in a variety of different ways, whether it's a small writing or a larger writing or it might be watching a video to listen or listen to peers having a discussion. So it really does allow for a lot of different, a variety of ways to get information out and to show, to show information, show what they've learned. There are also higher and lower support systems and scaffolds for each lesson that can be embedded for ML students as well, well as special ed students. So ways that we can support kids in a higher way versus kids
that might just need a little bit of support in addition to extending learning for students that may already know what they're learning, what they have and need that push up, which is something that can be a little bit more difficult. So the fact that we have it there is is very helpful. Yeah. Do you wanna talk more about, I can go into the the the habits of character. Yes. The HA habits of character. So one of the things that Erin and I specifically took a look at was the profile of a NAIC graduate when we were looking at
the three different curricula. So when I think about the question about what do we wanna see our kids look like with this new curricula, we use the profile to really think about this and EL was the one that really matched very well talking about building background knowledge with an anchor text and then students are allowed to or afforded the oppor opportunity to do individual research on the topic that they have self-selected. And then the performance task is for an authentic audience and mimics real world situations, a symposium or a podcast
or a round table discussion. So EL focuses on the fact that students will be citizens of the world and therefore need to be explicitly taught habits of character and explicitly taught how to do some of these skills that we will the world will be expecting them to do sometime at some point in their life presentation skills. So EL harnesses that piece of it as well. And there's a an an SEL component to this curricula as well, which we also really loved. Speaker 10: Yeah, I'll say the SEL part is called the habits
of character and a lot of times during assignments, either within IT or after to ask kids to reflect on their learning opportunities, what they took advantage of, what they need to work on, where they are and like the spectrum of them being a student as a whole, which is a really cool perspective. And a lot of the performance tests that Caitlyn's talking about, they're asking for authentic like third grade audiences and high school audiences or family audiences. So it's really nice because kids actually purposely create their project for that audience and then are asking for questions from people and like get to feel it in the moment.
But I really think it builds like a huge community in Natick and it kind of crosses schools and crosses populations and that's a really exciting opportunity. I'm just gonna talk about all of this is really lovely and I think one of the things that kind of stood out about EL the most was as a coach, the professional support that they offer to teachers. 'cause we know if, if you don't have the professional support, none of this really gets implemented. So the one part about EL is Kit M is the platforms that's like the technology platform that you can access the lessons through. What was unique about our training is that it was separated into kiddom platform training
and then the EL pedagogical training which really looks into like the structures so ELs created by teachers for teachers and it just gives their professional perspectives and kind of hands-on experience and they're kind of in it for that pedagogy. They really view teachers as like the instructional experts and this is the lesson that they're reading and then here are all of the ways that they can uniquely implement that. I think the other huge opportunity is that there's several demographically similar districts that have adopted el. There's kind of a consortium, some are early on just like we are in the adoption,
some are a couple years down the line. So kinda like the support you asked about for CKLA, it kind of gives us a wide network to help share problem solving strategies, see how things are landing for kids, see if like that unit or that text, like what other adoptions they've done. And I think that's just a huge support in a large new endeavor that we're going down. So Speaker 14: Another thing I would add is the student engagement. So we actually surveyed on nearly 600 students, took the survey across grades five through eight. And what we found was overall EL was definitely the most
engaging of the three curricula that we had. Some of the things that we saw within our classrooms, both on kind of both ends that we had a number of pilot small group teachers and we had a fifth grade pilot teacher. Their unit was Esperanza Rising, so it was hope and human rights. And she said that my small group class, which has traditionally struggled, was so excited to read that book every day. They couldn't wait to get in, they couldn't wait to discuss it. So a mix of nonfiction and fiction text. So from my own perspective, I teach seventh grade, we have been doing a unit on epidemics or module on epidemics. And so we read the book Patient Zero digging into different
epidemics in service of students, creating a podcast, looking at the qualities that go into a successful one, but also looking at a lot of complex topics around epidemiology, building background knowledge around that and students using the content vocabulary and conversations, bringing up connections from the news and really showing that deeper learning. So that's something that we were really pleased about. And to kinda go back to that question about AI and certainly as an English teacher, it's top of mind and one of the things that we really liked about EL was the emphasis on understanding what something is about. So understanding the gist of a section of a, a paragraph
of a book and understanding and, and expressing that clearly as a way to show that students authentically understood it. And then to have that authentic audience where students are able to understand that their learning is not just output, it's a process that goes into delivering something for an authentic group of people Speaker 15: And kind of talking about the opportunity for individual research. So when they read Patient Zero, I hear, we hear in the hallway, kids are like, have you read about Typhoid Mary yet? And they're very excited about it. But then that launches into this interest.
'cause you know, you think like, oh a middle schooler being interested in doing their own research, they actually really are because of these texts that grab them and it's like the vehicle for which they're learning all of these other reading, writing. Yeah, the speaking and listening is huge. A huge shift for middle school where it's really embedded in all of these lessons, which is Speaker 10: Big. I'll say especially I think it's one of the first times, at least in this middle school I've ever seen that it comes across content areas. So we had like science teachers and social studies teachers actively asking us about the
epidemics while they were learning because they kept talking about it in their classrooms. So it was like seeping over into others, which was really cool and hopefully a nice opportunity to cross over into some content areas. So Speaker 14: Yeah, with the building background knowledge, it's separate from the science and the social studies curriculum and yet it has the real opportunity to compliment it. Thinking about Holocaust unit in grade eight particularly that builds on the work that they've done in grade seven and lots of other similar opportunities. Speaker 10: Do you guys have any questions for Speaker 3: Us? Alright, questions. Questions from the committee. Ms. Collins? So I don't want this to sound too critical
and you're recommending that we adopt el, but it wasn't one where we started. So I don't know whether I wanna ask how did we almost miss it or conversely what was missing from the other two that made us go further? Speaker 16: I can answer that. Okay. It was always on the table as a potential. We always knew that there was the potential that we were going to pilot a third curriculum. We just hadn't specifically determined which curricula we were going to pilot. And when we were thinking about what the third curricula was going to be, we always thought
that EL was a potential. But at the time, EL was, many of our, many of the curriculum that are out there are published by multiple publishers, right? So EL Education is an open source curriculum, so you can get it for free online, but to then have it on a digital platform, you pay the vendor who then publishes it. So we have a relationship with a particular publisher that was the publisher of EL Education. They are no longer supporting EL
and it's now being published by a new Publisher. So we were sort of on the fence of are we going to build a relationship with a new publisher? Let's see what else is out there. Let's try one of these other two that the team knew was a potential and then let's sort of get into it and see what are we going to do. It could be that one of these first two knocks it out of the park and we don't need to. So we got to that point, we were like, hmm, we really like Fish Tank. It's a potential HMH was
maybe not, we're gonna go with the third and we're gonna build this new partnership with El Education's new publisher and go for it. So we were just, we knew EL was always a potential. It was one of our top three. We were just on pause until we knew if we really wanted to pilot it. Speaker 14: Can I build on that? Speaker 16: Build on that. Speaker 14: And I will say there was a lot of excitement from teachers when we were discussing it and when we were kind of in that process of deciding. We didn't wanna over promise in terms of definitely saying there'd be a third. But a lot of teachers were very excited to pilot EL
and very enthusiastic about it. So there was definitely that, that knowledge that that was hopefully going to be that third curriculum. Speaker 3: Right. And my other question is, is this a curriculum that can be, I know, it's, I think it's designed for middle school, but is it something that can be taken into high school student aged students? Yes. Who might still be struggling readers? Speaker 15: So they have a K five band and then a a six eight band. I believe they do have a high school, but I'm, I don't want to say that definitively.
Yeah, you might know more about that than I do, Speaker 10: But I was gonna say they do. I mean they're always evolving. Also. That's also the like EL 2019, EL 2025. But they do have some skills and some resources for high school. I just don't know that it's an explicit Yeah. Right. Speaker 6: Yeah. Speaker 10: Curriculum. Speaker 3: Okay. Thank you Speaker 1: Catherine, then Matt, and then Elise. Speaker 6: Sure. At first I was like kind of disappointed 'cause I was like, oh, I, my, my sixth grader has read so many books this year and I was so happy about that. And then I realized that he was part of the pilot as you shared tonight, we recently at Home spoke. We've watched the boy who harnessed the Wind.
So I think that is also the stuff is coming home. And I have had, as you some of you know, I've had other sixth graders in the district and so he had a unique experience this year in sixth grade. And so that is really affirming of your work. This year, Mr. McMahon was, is his teacher. So I really appreciate, that's great being, having like a front row seat to this pilot having no idea that I had a front row seat Speaker 17: To it. Speaker 6: So I'm just happy about that. And I love what you said about the cross populations making learning real for students.
I know that we've heard it in the strategic plan about this desire for partnership. So that sounds like a really neat opportunity that you're providing potentially. I know that will take some time to get off the ground. And then when you spoke about the habits of learning and the reflection, I have always been impressed by models where students can share their reflection on learning and potentially in ways with their parents. And so I think that I am hopeful that that would start to come home too, because I think some kids see themselves as learners and sub kids don't
because we define learning in a certain way. And I think if you're coaching them in that way, this could be a very important experience for everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Speaker 15: Thanks Speaker 17: Dr. Welch. Thank you. So first of all, thank you to all, to all of you for being here. And thank you for your work on this pilot. I started my career teaching seventh grade ELA and I don't know if I would've been awake at 8 0 5. So I appreciate, I appreciate that you all are here. Just a couple of questions to put some finer points on this. One is that a statement that we often hear from the public,
not necessarily an informed statement, is that kids don't read books anymore, like novels, things of that nature. Could you just respond to that to equip us to respond to that criticism from the public? Speaker 15: So each module, like Eric said, there are four modules and with each, within the module there are three units and there's an anchor text, which is a, a book for each of those modules, whether it is an informational text or you know, a novel, a literature novel. Right. And then within that, when they do their research,
they're able to, there's like an independent reading that they can do, whether it's the independent research or at a different time, teachers can decide to just do like an independent reading session where students are self-selecting books. Any book that they would like from the library with like reading logs and whatnot. So we did talk and hear a lot about, you know, the, the joy of reading. We wanna make sure that kids are, are, you know, the joy of reading is there. And I would say that some students that did not find joy in reading are now finding joy in reading Patient Zero and in reading the
Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. And that is, it's like a hook, right? Yeah. So we do know that a lot of like research shows that a lot of students, male students miss the opportunity to read nonfiction texts. Yeah. Which are highly a high interest for that. You know, it's a sweeping statement, but, but boys technically or more often will find interest in non, in nonfiction texts. Speaker 17: As a former male student I would agree that Speaker 15: Nonfiction and so, and we don't do we, we had not done a lot of that previously with our previous curriculum.
And now we do have a lot of nonfiction texts that students would be digging into. And that op opportunity for their interest based research, again, brings books into their hands that they Speaker 17: Will, I'm hearing you also say choice. Yes. And maybe some opportunity for differentiation too. Correct. In that follow up period. Speaker 15: Correct. Yeah, that's Speaker 10: Good. And I, I'm gonna echo what elementary said too is that like EL has a recommended list of books too, like with Esperanza that go with the theme or with Patient Zero that go with the research. But what I really love is that they're all like grade level content
and it's getting kids to be able to read and feel successful and access that grade level content. So while they might be choosing books that are of their choice, there's a lot of like depth and complexity to those texts and that's a really nice balance and that kids feel successful in being able to access those. Speaker 14: Yeah. Building off of that, I mean the love of literature, the love of Reading, love of Choice is certainly top of mind when we think about, you know, wanting to have a, a culture of readers. Yes. And I know that that's top of mind among our teachers as well. One of the things we liked about EL was the combination
of fiction and nonfiction. So it alternates between, you know, in some years it's, you know, about half and half, you know, in terms of the cortex and others it's, you know, maybe more three quarters fiction versus quarter nonfiction. But either way they're getting both and they can be pushed to, you know, not only be raised up to that level where they're all reading that same grade level text, but also pushed to take on those more challenging texts. And one of the things that we saw with some of the curriculum we looked at was that there were more kind of excerpts that students would be reading where it was like they would read a portion of a text
and they would analyze it, but they wouldn't necessarily get into the bigger picture of it. And so one of the things we liked about EL was that engagement with a book and to be able to really dig into it. Right. Speaker 17: And just one final question if I could, Mr. Chairman, I think I know the answer to this, but just to get it on the record, when I asked the same question about the elementary literacy curriculum, there is a literacy bill pending in the state that is gonna make some requirements on instruction. This is an HQIM, it's highly rated on curate adoption of this is likely not gonna be something from a financial perspective that we would have to revisit in another
couple years if that bill passes. Speaker 7: That is correct. Speaker 17: Great. I go back Ms. Corset, Speaker 7: Thank you. Thank you for this presentation. I have to say I was really excited when you guys started talking because I'm familiar with this curriculum. My daughter, one of my daughters went to AU Middle School and which is an expeditionary learning school. I taught there. Oh, did you? Many years ago. Okay. Yeah. And it was just everything you said and, and what you're saying that this curriculum will provide was exactly what we experienced. You know, the student engagement, engagement,
the agency in their own learning, you know, these, these habits of character, you know, were something that I saw, you know, my daughter and her classmate be able to recite. They would be able to tell you what they had learned and which of those habits of character they were strength in had needed to do more work in. And you know, it was really exciting and you know, esperan are rising. I remember that unit. So it's all really happy memories and I'm really excited for our students. And then just one reflection that I have is that I think that part of this, you know, student engagement
and agency, is there an opportunity there? And I guess the, here's my question is, is there an opportunity to have more family engagement? And I say because you know, at McCall if there's a lot of parent opportunities for parents to come into school and to hear their kids present either a project or even, you know, the, the parent-teacher conferences are not talking to the teacher, it's having your student give you a five minute presentation on their strengths and and weaknesses, you know, or what they're learning and, and so I'm wondering if there will be some opportunity
to have more family engagement through this literacy model. Speaker 14: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think especially in terms of the authentic audiences for the final presentations at the end of the modules. You know, one thing I know that there are different degrees to which certain schools adopt EL or have adopted it. I know that some have adopted it kind of across all different content areas, whereas in others they adopt it strictly as the ELA curriculum. But I think regardless, there's definitely those opportunities and those ways to build in, as Erin Caitlin said, the habits of character and bringing those onto kind
of a community level and have those, those presentations. Speaker 15: Yeah, I mean the performance tasks are authentic. They, they're for an authentic audience and so there will be four of those throughout the year, at each grade level. And I would say at least two of them really do encompass like the community. The podcast is, is wonderful and could be disseminated to the community. But there are other ones that would want community members to come in and listen to their solution symposium in sixth grade and how, you know, different people harness har harnessed the design principles
Speaker 10: And they recommend like even the podcast to like make QR codes. You could put those on like a walk on a trail somewhere and have people like access them through their phone. You know, it's, there's like a lot of opportunities to be creative about how you connect to community too. So they kind of give you a starting point and then it's where we get to run with it from Speaker 14: There with the recognition that it'll be a gradual process getting there. Speaker 1: Yes. Alright. Speaker 15: Wonderful. Very exciting. Thank you. Thank you. Speaker 1: Any other questions? So then I will keep my, yeah, no questions. Okay. I will keep my comment quick
'cause I know you're wondering and yes, I feel the passion from you as well. I know I didn't want you to feel left out. So we appreciate you being here and sharing not only your passion but all this information. It's great for us to hear it. So thank you. Thank Speaker 14: You for your time. Thank you so much. Thank Speaker 10: You so much. Yes. Speaker 1: Mr. Cook, are we getting you back? Briefly? Briefly. Speaker 9: I just wanna reiterate the gratitude for all of you here tonight and sharing your passion as Mr. Brand said and expertise and experience. And please extend that back in your buildings to all of the other pilot teachers and your coaching colleagues.
I mean, just to think it's been a two year process and we're at a really exciting pivot point going from the selection and adoption process into the implementation piece. And that will also be a multi-year process as we unpack our resources and, and get the professional learning that we need. So just to summarize in terms of where we are in strengthening our tier one instructional resources, as you heard, this will really help us meet the needs of each learner and also acknowledge the technical and adaptive work that lies ahead in terms of unpacking all
of the resources, the online platforms, the materials themselves, the pallets of material that will be showing up over the summer. And then the adaptive work and wrapping our head around the science of reading and making that shift in our classrooms from the workshop model to the knowledge based model and, and the pedagogical mindset that that takes. So really amazing stuff that's, that's on the road ahead. We've already started planning the May and June launch trainings for both CKLA and EL and mapping out next year in terms of
that professional learning support and coaching support from both companies. And we had a chance to get Mark Creso from Impact coaching meeting with the folks from CKLA so that we could make sure that our coaching philosophies are aligned and that we're not siloed in our work in terms of the coaching support from CKLA and the work that our instructional coaches do and our vision for coaching in the district. We want to make sure that those support one another and don't just kind of exist on their own. And teachers feel like it's two separate categories.
So lots of moving parts, but I share their excitement and so grateful that everyone who was here tonight was able to share their perspective. It really just paints a, a wonderful picture of the road ahead. Speaker 1: Alright, thank you again. Thank you to everybody. Is there anybody on the committee who has prepared a motion? Dr. Welch? Speaker 17: Mr. Chairman, I move that the school committee accept the superintendent's requests in her report dated May 14th on the formal adoption of the EL education Kiddo Language Arts and literacy program for grades five to eight.
And that such acceptance shall constitute adoption of the curriculum in accordance with policy IGB second Speaker 1: Motion by Dr. Welch, seconded by Ms. Collins. Any debate? Seeing none. All right. Without any debate we will vote and we can just do a show of hands. Roll All in favor? Anybody opposed? Any abstentions? 7 0 0. Thank you everybody. Speaker 8: Thank you. Speaker 1: Thanks for being here. You're welcome to stick around
Speaker 17: Or Speaker 4: Thank you so much. Fabulous. Wait, why? Why Speaker 1: Was that You're invited to stay, but No. Speaker 8: Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Great job. Bye. Speaker 1: I just got awfully quiet in here, Dr. Bash. Speaker 8: Okay, Speaker 4: Moving right along. Let's see, we're gonna move to a very quick update on the strategic plan that Ms. Manso is gonna provide us. Speaker 1: Should we just take a, you can't shut it. I mean you are capable of shutting it, but we can't shut it. Speaker 5: There's a lot of celebration as, as is due
after that presentation and choice. So I won't be as exciting as your, as your teachers. But I'm really excited to just give you an overview of our strategic plan process and next steps wonderfully. There were three members of you sitting here that were part of that committee and so, you know, if there's ever questions asked after this, you're happy to chime in. So I'm just gonna give you a quick rundown. So we have completed the six meetings with our 37 member strategic planning committee, totaling almost 20 hours of group planning.
The committee. We began by understanding the process, building a mission and vision and some core values. We then transitioned into jumping into district data, including the survey completed more than 2300 stakeholders, academic data teaching and learning data, HR and operational data facilities and budget. We had a whole lot of data. And then from that we worked on identifying trends and buckets of information that continued to kind of rise to the top and indicate a big focus and need. We worked a lot as a whole group and then sometimes we broke down and transitioned into smaller subcommittees to help refine
and clarify focus areas and priorities. And then kind of about the midpoint a little bit earlier on, the district leadership team and our T-L-T-L-A consultants would take the work that we did together as a committee, take it back, refine it, bring it back, and show it back to the committee for feedback and fine tuning. And we found that process to be very helpful in tackling a very, very big task. And then on May 12th, on our final meeting, we did complete the shell draft of our strategic plan as a team and the district leadership team
with the support of TLA. We'll work together to just refine it, tighten it up a little bit. And on June 1st the strategic planning committee will come here and we'll present to you our draft for your review and approval and there'll be multiple representatives from the team presenting. So it's not just gonna be the district leadership that you're used to coming here and talking to you, but it's gonna be other members of the team as well. Then if it is approved or if there's any sort of edits, we'll do that. And then we work with the TLA graphic designer to help make,
help, help us make it look really great and accessible to the public and understandable. And we will then communicate it out to the community and have it on our website. And then it's gonna be a huge dri as it already is becoming a huge driving force in our goals, in our improvement plans and our planning moving forward, both at, on the school, individual school and district level. And we're already gonna be planning feedback loops and reporting out our progress towards the plan at every, every year, which we're gonna call like a phase at regular intervals. And we will create that schedule this summer
and fall so that you'll be able to kind of understand that and we're very proud of it. And the work that we did, I did send a survey out to the strategic planning committee, just a, like a wrap up survey. We, we don't have a hundred percent participation in the survey, but currently from what we have right now, 95% of the respondents reported being proud of the results and a hundred percent of the respondents reported that they feel it's the correct direction for Natick to be moving in. So that was super encouraging too. As you know, representation on that committee is everything from students to staff
to district leadership to school committee to caregivers, many people kind of spanning multiple things and you know, the on evidence as a survey and in our informal kind of feedback discussion it was pretty clear that people felt it was a really nice representation of various stakeholders. So that's the update. So you have something to look forward to in a few weeks. Speaker 1: Spoiler alert. Wow. Any questions from the committee or we just wanna wait until everybody sees it. Ms. Collins, Speaker 3: When can we expect, because we've got the superintendent artifacts coming in
as well, when can we expect to get the reading so that we can Speaker 5: Yes. So Speaker 3: Be fully prepared? Speaker 5: You mean like the final product Speaker 3: Or even where you are now in the final product? Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, we, I'm not, we don't have like obviously it's gonna be ready by the first, I mean we already have the shell, what we're, what the feedback that we got at the very end was, you know, trying to make it sure that the educational jargon was in said in such form that the public will really be able to understand it. And that's kind of our next step. But then it will be ready for your
Speaker 4: Review. I mean I anticipate linking it into my evidence portfolio, which will be to the committee on the 26th. Speaker 3: So I should get new ink from my printer colored Speaker 4: It too. I think it's a good conversation because we shouldn't expect an artifact that's like 50 pages of detail. It's a presentation with those big focus areas that should last five years and it's about the process and the stakeholder involvement in it. So I don't, I don't think you'll need that much toner, but maybe a little. Yeah, definitely color.
Speaker 5: Definitely Speaker 3: Color. Okay. Speaker 1: I required that. Every other slide has a giant photo of me. Speaker 5: There are some photos in it right now. Oh wow. Speaker 1: Other questions? We look forward to the full presentation on June 1st. Speaker 4: Great, thank you. Thanks Speaker 1: Jackie. Thanks Jackie. Speaker 4: Excellent. Okay, moving right along. Dr. Ferguson doc, I asked Dr. Ferguson to write a memo you heard from him in March on the code of conduct. It's, I hope you're getting the flavor for the steering committees, the participatory work and collaborative work that our different groups are doing
as we move this very coherent work process, work forward in the district. And this one, which is the code of conduct work. They are landing a very big plane as a big steering committee and I, I couldn't be more proud of the work that both Dr. Ferguson and Tim Cesarini has, has completed so far on behalf of the team. So he's gonna give a bit of a rundown. The reason it's really pertinent to this meeting is that it's one of our goals, it's a very prominent goal one in my goals. And so I adopted the goals really that, that the community had. So it's worth a bit of an update as we kind of conclude
that we come close to concluding the year. So welcome. Speaker 18: Thank you. I'm sure, I'm sure you had an opportunity to look at the, the memo and I think all I'd like to share really briefly is that as you saw in the presentation in March, that is linked to the memo. We shared the sort of the, how the committee was was selected and the work that we've been doing and sort of the processes and procedures that we put in place to get to where we got to by the end of that at the time of the presentation. And this memo really just outlines.
Yeah, thank you. This memo really just outlines the next step, the next phase of the work, which is really a phased in sustainable implementation process. That's going to start right about now. It's already started and we'll continue through the, for the rest of the year. And I've outlined sort of what those phases are and I can talk about them really briefly at this point, the, the draft that the committee was sort of charged with is complete, it's in draft form and we're going through the entire document and reviewing it with a fine tooth comb.
We just had a legal review and we are doing an equity review and we'll continue to look at the document and make changes and updates to, to the document as we, as we move along, as we are landing that plane, another one's taken off. And that's the implementation five phased approach that's going to continue through the end of next year. And fortunately, a number of the folks on this committee, actually virtually all of them have signed on to lead the next phase of the work, which is really about fi fine tuning some of our definitions and response protocols
and the documentation expectations that we'll need to sort of have in place as we move through the different levels, the elementary, middle, and high school. Obviously the kind of documentation that we will be collecting and the volume of that is going to be different by levels. We're also working on staff training, student lessons and family communication and supporting the principles around implementation. So I'm just really giving a broad overview of the document you have in front of you. Phase two really will start in the fall and this will be about calibration across the district implementation of the rollouts and assemblies
and SEL lessons and advisories at the middle school and family communication plans. And in our open houses we're hoping to engage some of our families in the work that we've done and defining the new code so they can feel like they understand what the expectations are to the start of the year. And continuing that outreach as we move forward throughout the course of the, the year. And then there's gonna be one of the bigger challenges that we're working on is how do we document these behavioral incidents consistently across the district. There are plans and systems in place that have taken a lot
of time to build and we want to be supportive of the work that's happening in the schools and at the same time be able to develop consistency across the district so that we have the ability to look at trends and be able to make comparisons and compare apples to apple. So that's a big part of the work that the committee is continuing to lift this this year right now and into the fall of next year. And in terms of next steps, phase four and phase five will be mid-year refresh, providing communication plans to families
and updates to our staff. And then continuous improvement we expect there'll be challenges as we go along. There'll be road bumps and we are putting a plan in place to be able to review those systematically engage all our partners, our teachers across the different districts, different schools rather, and maintain a focus on consistency and equity equity, which were the, the issues we wanted to focus on when we embarked on the system in the first place. So that's a general overview. I know there may be questions, but I'm trying not to take too much time this evening. Speaker 1: Thank you Dr. Ferguson. Welcome. Any questions?
Welcome Ms. Collins. Speaker 3: Yeah, I appreciate that. It's hard to get the system in place, but will we see at, you know, probably mid next year, whatever the process for making sure that the equity across buildings is in fact happening And it's not just a, I don't think we're going for a, a fill in the box kind of system where, well we did the paperwork, right? Speaker 18: So I I'm hearing a question in multiple ways. I think in terms of equity, the first thing that we want
to be focused on is ensuring that students have an equitably experience, e experience as it relates to discipline, right? I think from the vocal data that I shared earlier, the students had some experiences of discrepancies within their buildings and so our, our focus really is on student experience and ensuring that we are being equitable in terms of how discipline is meted out. And then in terms of the second part of that, which is how do we ensure that our systems are con are consistent across schools. We recognize there's gonna be some guidance
that's offered now as our principles are working on handbooks and aligning the strategic plan, the vision and mission and values and integrating that into our handbooks. We're providing some guidance in terms of how do we move incrementally toward a system that's aligned. It's not something we want to do in one fell swoop because I know principles already have systems that they've relied on for some time and we want to make sure when we make adjustments to those, to those systems we're doing so in a thoughtful planful way that's allow, gonna allow us to have
the outcome we're hoping for. I hope I answered your question. Thank you. You did. Okay. Speaker 1: Other questions? Wow, seeing none. Oh yeah, Dr. Smith, Speaker 4: Just to add a tiny bit, thank you. This spring part of the institute we're doing is really infusing this into our handbooks. So you're gonna start to see that's another equity move when we start to see that consistency and coherence across handbooks. And I'll remind the committee the goal actually Sta stated that we would create a draft, the draft's done, we aren't publishing it because I don't know about how everyone else's December is going, but we're quite saturated. US families, caregivers, students.
The better time to launch such a thing is in the fall. But the draft is done and we're actually, as we speak, the team is sinking in the work of the STR strategic planning committee on the values, the mission, the vision, all of that articulation. So it's a very dovetailed document and process and I can't, I can't express enough how hard it is to do this collaborative work that infuses voice and to actually build coherence in a system. It takes building the agreement, which is what we have. And then it takes teaching students, teaching families,
teaching teachers, making sure we hear teachers when they do start to roll it out. This has to be authentic and relational. I can't think of better people than art and Tim to be running it truly. And so there's some more time and runway and we're gonna continue that iterative process of learning and listening and adjusting. But overall I am, I am beyond confident that this is gonna create a system where people experiencing it feel that coherence and the respect that sits in a system of agreement that gets really mobilized. So I'm, I'm very eager to see it roll out.
There's not a lot of great exemplars and I think we're going to be one of them. Speaker 2: Great. Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you. Speaker 4: Thanks. Speaker 1: Thank you. Speaker 2: Keep the party rolling. Speaker 4: Okay, one more piece from us and that's the, we give you every spring the kindergarten projected enrollment for FY 27 and Ms. B's going to do that. Speaker 16: Yep. So as I did last spring, I came to you in May and then I came to you again in June to give you what our current registration numbers were. So currently we have 326
students registered for kindergarten. That number is slightly lower than where we were at this time last year. At this time last year we had 350 kindergartners registered. This number is also lower than what we had anticipated based on the census. So some families have opted not to send their children to kindergarten this year. But we also have some families who have not responded to our letters and some families who have let us know that they intend
to register for kindergarten and have not followed through on the process, despite phone calls, emails, Mrs. Burg has reached out to them. We have not heard response. So we do it, expect the vet number will rise. And then we also anticipate that those numbers will increase over the summer. We typically have some move-ins, some last minute registrations over the summer. So we'll continue to watch that number and I will come back to you. I typically come back to you at the last meeting just
before the summer and let you know what that number is. If we have any concerns related to staffing. Bless you, we'll come back to you again. But we have had, because of class size decreases at some of our buildings because of movements onto that middle school, we have had some decreases and most of that have, has actually worked out due to attrition.
So staff retiring or whatnot. So we haven't had to let anyone go, they've left on their own. So it's actually worked out quite well. But we, we do have some wiggle room there if we were to need to add a classroom. So we should be fine if, if that came up. If not, we anticipate that we would be able to have some cost savings. Speaker 3: She looks at Speaker 1: All set. Alright, questions Ms. Brunell, Speaker 6: The graph that's on the screen right now is the current
school year, is that right? That's correct. So in June, would we see a graph like this for the projections for next year or would that be too premature because of summer move-ins? Speaker 16: That would be too premature because of summer move-ins. Speaker 6: Okay, thank you Speaker 1: Ms. Goeth, Speaker 7: I just have a question. Do you, do we have any sense about whether or not there are more people planning to file homeschool plans for kindergarten? And I'm only asking 'cause I've sort of informally heard people talking, looking for people to form like educational pods with for kindergarten
and I'm just curious if that's playing out in people actually homeschooling. Speaker 16: I haven't heard that. And because kindergarten isn't actually mandated, families don't often file homeschool plans for kindergarten. Okay. They wait until first grade. Okay. Speaker 7: Okay. Interesting. Thank you. Speaker 1: Other questions? Alright, thank you Ms B. Oh, now it's my turn. Okay, moving on. So the, the next item is the 26 27 school committee meeting schedule, which you can see that's the, the planned schedule
for all of our meetings all the way through the next school year, which is hard to believe that's what we're talking about now. Any comments or questions Ms. Collins? Speaker 3: Have we given any thought to, we usually have at least one, if not two summer Speaker 1: Retreats retreat Speaker 3: Style, but if we wait too long, everybody's planned where they're going. Speaker 1: We, we definitely have one, and I emailed the committee about this at the end of August. That will be a joint retreat with the school, with the select board. Select board, board board. We have, I would say I've given thought to, but we have not planned, so I should do
that soon on a couple of summer retreat meetings. Those don't typically show up on this particular Speaker 3: No, but I just wanna make sure that it's Yeah. On people's thoughts of, Speaker 1: Yes, good point. Yeah. Did you have your hand up? I did Speaker 3: The, Catherine Speaker 1: Did first. Okay. Speaker 6: I think we should consider adding August 31st onto this calendar. And I think that we should also look holistically at this calendar. I know we meet every other week, but there's no rule that we have to do that. And so I would love to see if there were, I don't, we've never really looked at it holistically.
Is there any time of the year where we could go down to one meeting a month? We've just cut and pasted every year. So to me it would make sense. Is there any time if we're gonna be here for four hours maybe we'd be, we'd rather be here once for four hours than for twice, for two and a half hours. Speaker 1: Okay. Well let's get all the comments and then we can, because there is an action item to vote on this so we can talk about action. Speaker 7: So this is, this is related and apologies Mr. Chair, that I didn't share this in advance, but I was wondering if I, I was looking back at old calendars and we used to have retreats built in.
So we had like the every, you know, every two week schedule or twice on the schedule. But not all of those were business meetings. Some of them were retreat meetings. So I'm wondering if, if in that idea of looking at the calendar holistically, if we could look at how many business meetings we really need to cover the business items and then perhaps we could have a couple of retreats that are kind of naturally in there to do some of this other work that we kind of struggle to have meeting time to do. So just, just a thought and I meant to start in advance and I forgot, so apologies. That's Speaker 1: Okay. All right. So pleasure of the committee.
So we have an action item to approve this. If I'm hearing people, we can approve this. We can always take, I'll just pick a random date December 7th. Right. Which can still be a meeting date and we can change it to a retreat. It would still be a public meet retreats for anybody listening are still public meetings. They're just not televised and so they're a little less formal. Yeah, please. Speaker 7: Yeah. And sorry, I, I guess I didn't finish my thought either before, but also I know that when we plan this out, we're also asking the administration to plan out data
and presentations that they're gonna give to us. So if we were to consider making some of these retreats, I'm imagining they wouldn't involve necessarily a data presentation or a discussion of a topic where the administration might need to present. But it might be more, you know, work that's coming from the committee on our goals or something. Right. So in terms of selecting those, a couple of those days now, it might help with the planning of the administrative work as well. Speaker 1: Yeah. And and I think before we would entertain shifting any of the dates that are proposed, we would probably want
to give the administration time to look at their calendar to see which really important presentations are going to be coming up in the fall before we take something away. So We don't have to, I don't, do we have to vote on this tonight? We don't have to. So maybe it makes sense if it's all right with you to maybe start and, and people can disagree. Start with are there any times here where you are already looking forward to a really exciting presentation that you wanna give?
And if there are windows where like we don't have anything planned for February 8th right? Or that time of year, maybe that gives us a few options to say we'd like to work in a couple of retreat style working meetings if we can. And it might mean that we can, we might get back and find out that we can't do that and that, and we can choose to add meetings, right? But what do you think? We're Speaker 4: Happy to take it back. I couldn't answer that now, but we're happy to take it back and then advise. Speaker 1: So let's do that based on that question, if that's all right with everybody, why don't we at least get
some feedback from the administration and then we can always take it up either in June 1st or June 15th. Do you have a question? Speaker 3: I just wanted to note again that I think we should be adding August 31st Speaker 1: To the, and so we can I I don't have any problem with that. I think we can do that too. Speaker 17: My understanding is that August 31st is on the calendar already as a joint meeting with the select board. Speaker 1: Is that it's, it's not posted, but it's just Speaker 17: Not listed as a Speaker 1: It's not listed. I, Speaker 17: I understand. Thank you. Speaker 1: That's a retreat meeting as well. But it's meeting, it's a doozy. It's a fun one. Okay. So unless anybody
objects, we won't vote on that tonight. Speaker 3: I, Mr. Chairman. Speaker 1: Yes, please. Speaker 3: I'm not aware of any requirement that we do vote on it. We don't. I mean I think it's very democratic. Yeah. I'm just, if if we can't get to it, I'm don't know that we are violating anything is my point Speaker 1: Noted. And it might end up just being a symbolic kind of thing and that's okay too. All right. So I wanted to, we re added the FY 28 school calendar topic that we discussed at our previous meeting. I should have it, it didn't cross my mind at the meeting, but then it did afterwards.
We didn't actually get a weigh in or feedback from the union or from the district on this, on the, on how it affects the schools. Right. We had, which is totally fine. This was a, the whole point of sort of doing this process early was to get feedback from lots of different stakeholders. So in the spirit of making sure that everybody has an option op opportunity to sort of weigh in, I thought it would be good for us to hear MS billion. Are you still with us? Yes. Would you like to say anything on the calendar now?
Speaker 19: Yes, please. I would love to. Okay. So we sent a poll to staff members to figure out how they were feeling and there was an overwhelming desire for, I believe it was option. Oh gosh, now I don't remember whichever one. The later start is, Speaker 3: Which Speaker 1: I, that was B if I Speaker 19: Remember correct. Okay. So there was an overwhelming desire for option B and some of those reasons were for consistency with past practice of starting the week before Labor Day. Some concerns that were brought up were the heat in school
buildings during August. It can be very hot in the buildings that are not air conditioned, which can make learning very difficult, especially at the beginning of the school year. Staff noted misalignment creates logistical and childcare issues for families such as summer camps don't operate that early in June and it can be difficult for staff members to find childcare. And starting so early in August. Some specific high school concerns that were brought up were sports tryouts overlapping with the start of school and scheduling conflicts
with AP testing, MCAS, prom, music, concerts, finals, and graduation if the year ends too early. And just to note on one of the calendars, if you go down to the bottom, I believe it's option B, if you go down to the dates at the bottom, they don't match the, what the calendar shows above. So if you scroll down, I believe that it says, yeah it has, it has the same bottom from option A of August 24th, 20, 23rd, 24th, 25th.
Does that make sense? Yeah. Speaker 1: Is that MS billing? Is that what, or your, I can't see you so yes. Okay, great. Okay. Speaker 19: Thank Speaker 1: You. Thank you for sharing that. Ms. Aloni. Speaker 16: Yes. I actually heard from principal Blocker about the calendar and she shared with me that because of the way graduation falls, it would put graduation on June 2nd with an end date for everyone else of June 7th, which creates a challenge for finals for grades nine to 11. She said that finals would need to begin
before graduation, which would provide very little time in the past. They would have a little bit of time between graduation and when finals begin, allowing them the ability to send the seniors off with full attention and then be able to focus on preparing the other grades for exams, having the end date be six seven does not provide that because finals would have to be happening while they're preparing for graduation. In addition, because MCAS science, MCAS
for the high school is a mandated date, it's not a window like it is at the elementary and middle school. They're mandated dates and based on how it has happened in the past several years, it likely would fall on June 5th and sixth or seventh. It would directly overlap with finals and potentially the last day of school would become very problematic. Speaker 17: Okay. Speaker 1: So this is what I was thinking and again, we can discuss and we get comments, questions from the committee.
I was thinking, you know, we did this to to recap right to we we, this is a non-binding discussion that we had. We don't actually have to set this yet. We were having a discussion. So that's the process we're going through and that's, so I think this is healthy. My thoughts were that we would not vote to make a change to the draft tonight To, 'cause we can sit on it for a, you know, a hot second here and then make sure that if we are gonna vote again and we are gonna change and we're gonna have to vote again in the fall anyway to actually make it binding. But if we are gonna make a change, we're not making a change tonight.
And then we get feedback from parents and then we want to talk about making a change again and like, so like to just make sure we collect all the feedback that we want before we actually vote again. So does anybody have any comments, questions, concerns about the new information that we have tonight? No. Great. So is anybody opposed to us waiting to debate again whether or not we should stick with what we had as non-binding, make a change to what's non-binding? Any thoughts? No. Great point Speaker 17: Of order Speaker 1: You please. If
Speaker 17: We have voted, does a vote have to be taken to undo a previous decision and then to vote again? Speaker 1: I think this a a, a fair question. I think in this case the answer is no. We would because it was not binding. So like there was eventually gonna be another vote anyway. Speaker 17: Thank you. You go back. I, Speaker 1: Ms. Collins. Speaker 3: Yeah please. I'm hesitant to vote on anything non-binding or otherwise until the moms see the schedule because the reaction was swift on both sides.
I mean, some people love the earlier dates, some people didn't. But I think if we're going to do this hoping to get feedback, we should provide them an opportunity for feedback. That's all. Speaker 1: Okay. Ms. Brunell, did you have a comment Speaker 6: Just about process? The vote would be to reconsider and since all seven of us voted positively, that's would be a motion to reconsider Speaker 1: Dr. Sson. Speaker 13: I wanna build on what Ms. Collins said. I'm wondering if there's ways, what are the strategies that we can use to get people aware of the discussion that is happening at school committee? 'cause I feel, I feel like what happened earlier this year
is we went through our process just as we oftentimes do. There was an introduction of the calendars, it was discussion, we came back two weeks later, we wanted it. But as it turns out, and this one will be shocking. Not everyone sits around to watch school committee meetings. I, I know I, I don't know what else there is to do, but, but I'm wondering if you wanna be more proactive about getting input. I think last time we did probably informally. I don't, anyway, so just thinking including maybe Instagram. Speaker 1: Yep. Point to me. Alright. Okay.
And that might end up being a good segue into the next topic, but we won't get there yet. Yeah. Ms. Goeth. Speaker 7: Yeah, no, I think that that's a, a good thing to acknowledge that we have to actively solicit feedback, but I also just wanna reorient ourselves that we're doing this two years in advance. Right. So that people would have notice of whatever the decision was. Because my recollection was the thing that people were most upset about is that there wasn't enough lead time to respond. Right. Not that they already planned. Yeah. Not that they necessarily wanted a voice in what the decision was, but that they needed more time to plan. Yeah, that's a good point. So I, I just hope
that we will be able to make a decision that meets the needs, you know, of our schools to best educate our kids. So that's, that's what I'm most interested in hearing, you know, which, which of these options is really gonna meet the needs of, of our, of our teachers and administrators and our students. Speaker 1: Ms. Collins. Speaker 3: Yeah. There, I think the predominant reaction was, well I didn't know, but there was a fair amount that reflected what Ms said of I don't have childcare if we get out too early.
I don't have childcare if my kid can't go to camp 'cause we start too early. You know, I, my kid needs to go to camp, all those things. So I think that Dr. Mann's idea of being proactive, however we choose to do it, is better than expecting everyone watches us. I know. I can't figure out what they're doing with their Monday nights television's not good. Speaker 1: All right. So our plan, if I'm understanding is the, the plan all along was in the fall of this year to vote on this as a, this calendar as a binding decision.
I think we are sticking with that plan, but between now and then, perhaps we can come up with some outreach to make sure that people know that they have the opportunity to provide feedback if they would like some people take us up on that. Some people will not. That's okay. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 1: Someone's online with a question. Vickers. Alright. Can you, Ms. Vickers, do you have a comment? And we can, we can hang on two seconds. Speaker 20: Okay. It's just two seconds. I just wanna say I love the idea of more outreach for that and to remember
that people actually have been reading newsletters lately. So if it went out in Dr. SP's newsletter and in and in the high school newsletters and maybe a quick outreach to the PTOs. And I do think that there are some great opportunities for you guys to say, Hey, we're gonna post this, would you share it? And, and maybe that works. Thanks. Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. Billy, do you have another comment or question? Speaker 19: I I just wanna clarify that I'm understanding correctly that the option A, that you had selected is just going
to stay as the non-binding calendar for now and then in the fall you'll vote again for the actual calendar. Speaker 1: Yes. And option A is the, is the non-binding vote that we took at our previous meeting. The process, the process we're following is that in the fall we would've always voted for a binding cal or or bound calendar. Correct. There we are open. I mean it is possible that sometime between now and then we take a vote to also to to switch the
non-binding calendar to an option B or option C or option F or whatever. So that might happen. I don't know, but Speaker 19: Thank you. I just wanna make sure I'm sharing information correctly with the staff. Speaker 1: Thank thinking there was, there was no circumstance to be clear, there was no circumstance in which the calendar would be set in stone until the fall. Speaker 19: Correct. Thank you Speaker 1: Ms. Brune, Speaker 6: I have a question about the feedback that we're getting from the union Are, I wonder if they, and not to put you on the spot now, but the question comes through the chair, is the recommendation that you're giving na is
that an official recommendation coming from the union? Is, is that something that you could write, the union could give to us in writing to the school committee? Speaker 19: Sure, we'd be happy to do that. Speaker 1: Great, thank you. We're gonna move on. School committee goals, updates for the current year. Is anybody prepared? I'm looking at you Dr. Welch, since you are the one. No. Anyone prepared to discuss their goals? If not, we can push it. Again, I understand that everybody's got a lot of things going on, but I would like to as goal two, the community engagement thing.
I think we have a new target of the school calendar as a source of engagement. So why don't we push that one if we're not prepared. But let's get prepared so we can talk about those goals. 'cause we are after this meeting, we have two more in the school year, believe it or not. It'd be nice to be able to cover our, our school goals. All right, the last thing in in the chair's report is to appoint the education cooperative representative that has been me for the previous six years and continues to be me at the moment. Should someone make a motion to nominate
or slash appoint me to continue to be the representative? And I'll sit here and wait. Speaker 3: Move to appoint Mr. Brand as the tech cooperative representative. I think they need it officially. Speaker 1: They do need it officially. Yeah. Second. All right. Motion by Ms. Collins. Seconded by Mr. Patel. Any discussion or debate? I'm open to it. Nope. No. Alright. Voting all in favor? Show of hands. All opposed 7 0 0 policy budget subcommittee and policy subcommittee updates. Do we have any updates from the policy subcommittee?
Ms. Collins, you wanna start with policy? I do. Is that, what was that? No, I don't. Just kidding. Budget is alphabetically. I wanted, I want to start with the budget subcommittee Speaker 6: As the year comes to an end. This is the special time of year where we look at FY 26, FY 26, FY 27 and FY 28 all at the same time. So I just wanna note the tremendous amount of work that's being done on all three budgets simultaneously by a very small department. In our last meeting we met and we spoke about FY 26 and the good budgeting that's been done.
And so the very little amount of budget transfers we anticipate that would be need. If they would be needed at all. They would come to us by the end of the year. But there's been, we are Dr. Bash and Mr. Gillis reported to the budget committee that FY 26 is coming to a really nice close after the careful budgeting that was done last year. FY 27. We spoke about the impact of Title one reductions at the federal level and how that does impact natick but by a smaller amount than people might imagine.
So that it is something that we are, have been able to budget for and be prepared for. There is also talk of a ballot initiative that may impact state revenue, which may impact the FY 27 budget. That is, none of that is clear right now. And so if that needs to be an issue that we will deal with in August, September, we that will come back to the committee. And then finally for FY 28, we've already started speaking because of the great, again, the great budgeting
that's happening with this administration. There is a request being made about not only our committee, but also to consider the town's budget numbers and actuals for future of past years so that we can understand what is happening for the future. Part of good budgeting are good projections and so we are committed to that. Our next meeting is in August and we will take up the rain hopefully there with only the FY 27 and FY 28 budget at the Speaker 3: Time only. Speaker 6: Do any other committee members wanna say something?
Speaker 3: No, I think you covered it. Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you for the update. Kathy. Speaker 3: The policy subcommittee met this afternoon because I can't get enough of Dr. Bash and Ms. Baloni. And there was one policy, it's JKAA dealing with the physical restraint of students and timeouts that has to be approved by this committee before August 19th I think it is to be in place for the fall semester. So the, it's a completely rewritten policy so you won't see red lines in there.
This is coming outta Desi and we attached it to a this meeting's agenda as soon as we recommended, voted to recommend that this committee take it up. Now whether we consider this a first draft, a first read, or we consider next time to be the first read, it has to be done by before we stop on June 15th. Speaker 1: So my preference would be to put it on the June one as its own item as opposed to a subcommittee update. And then on June 15 pending a hiccup vote
Speaker 3: That, that's fine. I just want everyone to be aware that we can't push. Got it. It passed the time we meet before the end of the year or we can, but then we'll have to come back and do something so that it will be in place for August 19th. We also talked about the policy manual updates. Ms. Baloni might wanna explain the very thorough process that they've been doing, or I can do it whichever you want. So right now the policy manual is A PDF for each letter that we have in our policy manual, which makes it a little cumbersome
to find necessarily what you're looking for. So they have gone through the process of separating out every policy into its own document and those will be uploaded in the near future with all the other ember constraints on their, on their time. But it will be done. So it's much easier to find things when you're looking for them. Speaker 1: Searchability. Speaker 3: Searchability, that's the term. Thank you. Speaker 1: Great. Speaker 3: Do Speaker 1: Also, sorry, when do we think that's happening?
Speaker 16: Probably right after school gets out. It's completed. We're just finalizing and checking all of the policies that we approved this year to make sure that those are the right ones that are in there. But everything else has been converted and we're creating a table of content. So it will be updated to the website very shortly. It's just getting through the, the curriculum piece that we were trying to get done. So it should be done shortly. Speaker 1: That's great news. Speaker 3: We also talked about the intersection of the strategic plan and the pol
and the policies as we start to plan for what comes next and the policy review procedure that we're we're undertaking, we're going to start, there's one that from the budget subcommittee that was sent to this budget subcommittee, we voted there to send it back to the policy committee saying, yes, we agree with this. And that is budget transfers. I think it's DBJ if that. Yep. So that one will be taken up soon.
And the sections I and J, which are the more student facing sections of the policy manual, we're gonna start there and then go back to a Speaker 1: Great, Speaker 3: So that's the plan. Speaker 1: Good plan. All right. That Speaker 13: Was also a comment that this is the best subcommittee, that policy subcommittee there ever was. Yeah, agree to disagree. That was in my Speaker 1: Notes. Agree to disagree on that. That's not where I see in my notes, but that's fine. Great. All right. Speaker 3: And there are a couple of others that are coming from DESI and Mask that we will take up early. I think it's JFBB and JLCD,
but they don't have the same August deadline that, that the JKAA. 'cause, you know, if you couldn't get that sound in enough in that. Speaker 1: All right. Good updates. One more agenda item. Speaker 4: I can, I can, Mr. Gillis is going to give this piece, but as the committee will recall on May 4th, at our last meeting, we presented several options for a scope of work, which we're asking the committee to make a decision on before we conclude for this school year. And the committee asked us to come together with some cost estimates and Mr.
Gillis has gone about that and we've actually checked in with Mr. Erickson, the town administrator. So this memo that you've received, which we did post today, so he'll probably kind of go into, in, into it in some detail, is something that we checked in with the town administration about before presenting it to the committee. Go ahead. Thank you. Speaker 9: Sure. So I, I put together a memo for folks and kind of outlined it in a question and answer format. First question is, what's the estimated cost to add additional pre-K classrooms to the new memorial site? If we, if we get four from MSBA
and we add six, if we were to make, make them all fit on one site, that would cost about $8.1 million. That's a higher estimate. If it's a lower estimate, if the classrooms are just a little bit smaller and we're able to shave space off in other places and we could do five there within, within limits of the square footage of the total building, then we would add five more classrooms and that would cost us almost $6.8 million or 6,795,000. That $900 is an estimate for the 2028 like bid price. You know, the latest information I have is
2025 construction bids. So had to estimate up and then round it off to keep it simple. Next one is a popular question. Not sure it's really the school committee's prerogative since the school committee gave it back to the town, but I'm confident your opinion will be asked what would it cost to renovate and do something with the Johnson school. So the TBA architects did a facilities study for the Natick public schools back in 2020 and the answers to those questions were there on page 12 for accessibility, would beat about three to 5 million
and then to fully replace the school would've been about 35 million. If you use a 5% annual average increase, you'd have the, the cost there as well. And the square footage cost that, that actually kinda lines up with, you know, what we, what what I, what I had estimated for prices based on a 2025 bid. So I didn't go estimating what would, what would be done at at Johnson. Anybody that's ever been through there, there's plenty of different levels. It's an older building, it is not an easy square
footage estimate. So I would, I would defer to the architects than, than my estimate there. And that's why I, that's why I did that. Next one is what if we had the lease space and we needed to find a landlord for six pre-K classrooms and what's that gonna cost? So the, you know, basically took a low estimate and a high estimate, used a little artificial intelligence to help me get some, some market value, but it's, it's really just a, an estimated probably would land somewhere in there for, for year one. And then, you know, landlords want a multi-year lease,
especially if they're gonna make renovations and investment in the space for you to stay there. So if we're not moving into Natick public schools own property and we, we don't, for some reason we can't stay at the, the East school, then, you know, we'd have to look at renting and, and there would be a cost to that each year. Last but not least, the question that came up was if we had to add modulars to the high school, if we didn't move the pre-K program out there, we figured we could probably fit two modulars on the site. I think most people have driven around Nat Kai
and know that there are not many options to add classrooms without getting into the road. So in order to do that recent bid, our neighbors down south of North Attleboro where they added some classrooms, there was, was just over 750,000 last year. So estimating that up for similar modulars, that would not, that would look like modulars sticking out on the, on the high school would, would be roughly $2 million for two classrooms. And I'm not sure anybody would really be happy with that solution, but, but that'd be the answer.
If you wanted to make it look like it belonged there, you could pay a contractor to, to take the modulars, then brick it in and blend it in so it, it looks that way, but that would be a significantly higher price. So those are basically the answers to the main questions that kind of come up with what are we gonna do with the pre-K program as we consider options for new memorial. And I guess if there are other questions, if I didn't cover anything, happy to take those now, but I might have to go do a little more research to bring you an answer. Speaker 1: Thank you for providing all that information and,
and answers all the que a lot of the questions and we can continue the conversation. Does anybody have any comments or questions tonight Mr. Patel, Speaker 21: With regards to Johnson with full school replacement, how many rooms would that be? Speaker 9: However many classrooms are in there now? I don't, I don't recall off the top of my head. I'd have to look at the report again Speaker 21: Because I'm just curious if that would solve both e-school and high school problem or not or but if that has the potential to solve it, Speaker 9: Yeah, that building's big enough that we could have 10 classrooms. Yes, Speaker 21: Thank you Speaker 1: Ms. Corset.
Speaker 7: Apologies. I don't remember. What is our tuition that we take in every year for the preschool currently, like for the students who are community students Speaker 9: Round number it's pretty close to 700,000 High sixes we might break seven. I I don't, don't remember off the top of my head. Okay. Speaker 7: But that, that cost is pretty much covers like the expenses of running the preschool, correct? The teachers, the facilities, it wouldn't, Speaker 9: Yeah, we, we can't charge more than than half the cost of what, what it cost to run that program.
So we don't have any facilities cost really factored in. It's pretty much the educational cost for the students. Speaker 7: Okay. No, that's helpful, thank you. Speaker 1: Any other comments or questions? This is, like we said last time, this is a conversation that will continue. Yeah, please. Speaker 6: How will we continue this conversation? Like what, what happens next? Speaker 1: That is a good question. So, well Speaker 6: Is it about the educational plan? That's what comes back to us Speaker 4: When we present it on May 4th. We kind of explain the work that goes into detailing out an educational program that we hope to submit to the MSBA by, well really
through this committee and then to the MSBA in next October. And so we'd like to work on this this summer and we'd like to work on one, not four. And so even if you, we get some really good synthesis of the committee's thinking, I think we could collaboratively get to a decision, but I think it's really important that in order for us to get the work done backwards planning to that due date in October, we really need guidance from the committee Speaker 6: Given. So given that if, if you'd like to work on one, I am trying to figure out
how we are gonna decide as a committee because one of, one of the ways that we could go would need a re we would need to request from the select board Johnson. Is that right? Because they, they now currently have jurisdiction over Johnson. They they Speaker 9: Have control of the property. Yeah, the school committee returned it to the town. Speaker 6: So were we to move in that direction of wanting to pursue a preschool building from an educational perspective, if we thought that that was the best option,
then our committee would need to vote on a motion that would request the select board, give the jurisdiction of Johnson back to us. And you would like that to happen before the summer? Speaker 4: We said June 16th because that's the last meeting. Yep. I think that there will be very busy through the end of June. So I mean there's some leeway there, but before that work is really going to be in earnest over the summertime. So it doesn't have to be June 15th but early summer. Speaker 6: Okay, thank you Ms. Speaker 1: Goeth. Speaker 7: So the estimate,
and this is just clarification on some of the numbers that you provided, Mr. Gillis, which was really helpful. So this idea of Johnson and renovating, that's just for renovating the inside of the building, right? But it doesn't take into account any of the costs of running that building ongoing costs, Speaker 9: You know, it does not take into account operational costs, no operational, but the, the full replacement of the school would be interior and exterior. The access, accessibility and systems upgrade. Would, would, you'd still have an old building but then it would be aada a compliant?
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, it would still look the same, be the same footprint, but it would be new wiring things. Speaker 9: Most, it's mostly the ramps and all thes the stairs or lifts. I don't want to, I don't wanna go too far ahead of what the architect, but there's only so many options they have to yeah. To make it aada a compliant. Yeah. Speaker 7: Okay. May I have a comment? Yeah, please. So I mean, I think, I think it's, it's on us as a committee to provide a really solid recommendation back to the administration so that, so that they can work on
a single plan. And I guess I, I don't want to, I, I want that to be focused on like just the memorial school building since that's kind of within our scope now knowing that we had these other issues to solve, which is the overcrowding of the high school and you know, how are we gonna deal with preschool? Is there an opportunity to expand that building or not to incorporate preschool? So from my perspective, I would like those to be the three sort of intertwining options. I don't feel comfortable extending that
to, you know, thinking about another building that requires that. I just think we should focus on one building and the three problems, you know, rebuilding Memorial, what to do about the preschool and how to, if possible to alleviate crowding at the high school. If, if that comes later in the process, you know, if we make a decision that then requires a reconsideration of the preschool, I think we could talk about it then. I just feel like it makes it overly complicated and might conflate the work that we're doing with MSBA for Memorial with another building
that's already under sort of a, a process of, of having the town decide what they're gonna do with that property. And I just wouldn't wanna have any scope creep or any perception of scope creep. Just my thought. Speaker 1: Dr. Welch, Speaker 17: With respect to Ms. Goa's point it on the memorial project, there is a committee that's engaged and there is also funding that is coming from the state to help cover the cost of that project. I have a keen interest in what happens personally in,
into the Johnson property, but I believe if we were, if this committee were gonna consider that they would be multiple steps there, not just requesting the control of the building being returned to the committee, but this committee would also have to request money from town meeting to cover the cost of the renovations. So I I I think we just need to be aware of all the steps before we proceed. I yield back. Speaker 1: All right. Other questions, comments, thoughts? If not, there's one more motion to be had. Motion to adjourn. Second Motion by Dr. Fruman.
Seconded by Ms. Collins. All in favor? Any opposed? No. Goodnight everybody. 7 0 0.