good evening everyone calling the February 25th Norfork school committee meeting to order start by reading the mission statement the norfor public schools offers a safe joyful and challenging learning environment that meets the needs of our diverse students through school family and Community Partnerships we CH we provide an
education that inspires lifelong Learners and cultivates caring and productive citizens of our Ever Changing world have a roll call please Peter schal Grace lockhead madora champagne Lisa Sheldon angard Victoria we'll start with public comment
no one has signed up did anyone want to speak tonight no moving on to correspondence and there is none so moving to the chair report we have a gift from another gift from the nor PTO
in the amount of $1,773 and that's for the box program and that's the before school program both my kids did that but it's a huge hit um so I would be looking for a motion to accept this gift so moved
second any further discussion thank you to the PT thanks very much again all those in favor I I I all right so the next exhibit in your packet last time we met Peter had had
spoke and asked a few questions for us to consider and asked that we discuss them in a following meeting um he asked what the district's goals were and what does a good what is good look like for northark from an academic standpoint and he asked questions about setting
aspirational goals around our academic standing within our cohort group like in X years we Aspire for Norfork to be within the top X of our cohort um in our performance reporting can we begin to break out meets exceeds expectations and
can we set goals around these categories can we look at the time spent on average per week on core Ela and math instruction versus other topics can we give more time to math and Ela instructions for example can we adjust seal lessons down from weekly to every two weeks and give extra instructional
time back to math and Ela um the time of day question can we ensure that no classes that have intense Ela or math come at the end of the day can we ensure these core lessons are taught when students minds are at their freshest and most active States so I included uh
these in the packet to discuss with every if it's okay with everyone here I think these topics might be best addressed after we go through the baselines and benchmarks so we have context around it would that work for
people sure okay and then Peter had also submitted some questions around the new health standards and that is not on the agenda for tonight um we'll have more information on that for our March
meeting and we can include those questions at that time I know you were in correspondence with desie so if you want to provide a brief summary of anything you heard sure um I the committee had asked if I would explore with desie what the requirements were in terms of implementing the cph uh the
Comprehensive Health and physical education Frameworks um and I had previously reached out a number of times uh and and received responses that were less clear than what the committee was seeking um so I did have a uh meeting with uh Beth Williams BR uh regarding
the Frameworks and let me just I I believe I shared some a summary of that conversation um thought I had my notes H with me um but basically what she has said is that um the Comprehensive Health
Frameworks are considered a um uh just see if I have it yeah uh what she said was uh state laws General law uh chapter 71 Section 1 and general Law chapter 71 Section 3 require all public schools to teach health education and physical
education but school districts do have discretion to determine how the CHP framework is implemented at the local level including what curriculum and materials they will use um she said that desie is is strongly committed to valuing all students throughout the Commonwealth and centering those who
have been historically marginalized the CHP framework along with all mass curriculum framewor are considered evidence-based best practice guidance documents for school districts since Massachusetts is a local control State individual school districts have discretion to make decisions about how
these standards are implemented um she did indicate that the department of Ed strongly encourages all districts to adopt the and implement the health Frameworks as they are written she also said um if School scho districts are making different decisions around the curriculum that uh committee should be
uh aware and thoughtful about the Mass state laws that prohibit discrimination in schools on the basis of race color sex sexual orientation gender identity religion disability age genetic information active military veteran status marital status familian status pregnancy or pregnancy related condition
homelessness ancestry ethnic background national origin or any other category protected by state and federal law um which is also consistent with the district policy so in making any curriculum decisions or making um choices not to implement we have to be mindful of uh making sure our school
committees have it's incumbent for school committees to make sure that those decisions don't result in disc discrimination against any particular group that was the information that she shared with me and I think um we'll discuss further in at the next meeting
I'm good appreciate you continuing to follow up trying to get the answer sure um and so I will hand it over to you all right uh the first thing in your packet tonight is from our Tony Davis who is our director of the sac program I think
you probably remember earlier in the year we talked about how um we have experienced increasing Demand commensurate with our our growth in enrollment and more families seeking after school and before school care sack has been at capacity for a number of years so whereas six or seven years ago
you could call sign up and get us slot in the sac program um we have been operating on a weight list for a number of years and the weight list isn't moving families that enter the program tend to stay with the program it's an excellent program um but it's not creating space for new families moving in so Tony and I have been looking at
that over the course of the year and really trying to identify ways we could potentially expand the program and offer more spots um as I shared before the biggest limitation for us is the requirements for Staffing and Staffing student ratio for a publicly operated
program a publicly operated program has different guidelines than a private um YMCA or other program might so what Tony has has been observing and looking at the data we have quite a few families in the program currently that pick students
up early they don't need till 6:00 care um they might be coming in from a train or or teaching in another district and they just need a a bridge or care for a certain period of time before they can get here to pick up the kids um she's seeing that quite a few families um have
that pattern of picking up at 4:30 or 5:00 every day and what is she is suggesting is that we consider piloting a program next year an alternate program that would provide care just till 4:30 um we would offer it first to existing families um because if families that are
in the program currently choose to take the shorter hours we'd be opening full slots in the sack program for families that might need more um and so she wants off offer and pilot this uh shorter program that would provide after school care from Sac um from School dismissal
till 4:30 each day and is recommending opening 13 slots at each building which is 26 um we have with changes she made this year eliminated the morning W wait list this will make a big dent in the afternoon wait list um reluctant to to
overpromise because that for 13 students we need a staff person so she would have to hire two additional staff we want to try that if it's successful and we can expand as the year goes on uh would love to do that but we think this will really help bring more families in that have been waiting um for program access for
the school Comm committee policy um she would have to recommend uh you have to approve the rate so Tony is recommending that the shorter program um part time program be 12:50 per afternoon full-time participants currently are charged 21 um
with a sibling discount of 19 so so um I'm looking for a motion from the committee to approve the uh rate for this new program so that Tony can advertise it and begin to work on um Staffing and numbers for next year I
move to approve the rate as proposed by Tony Davis Squires for the new sack pilot program I'll second any further discussion I will say just as a parent when I pick up at 5:30 I my child is
often the last one there so meet the interesting to see and I think it's a great idea so thank you so all those in favor I I I second tonight we have Dr Anna Tupper and Joel
Ley our uh lead preschool teacher here to present um the preschool program options and recommended rates and fees for next year again our preschool Lottery and op soon so they want to know what they are the rates will be for our families hopefully it's opening
tomorrow anyway welcome thank you for having us tonight we appreciate it um before we get started I just want to introduce Jill Levy Jill is in her first year as our lead preschool teacher so if you recall last year Alicia Whitehead has been in the position for many years and now Jill is taking over the
responsibility and she's doing a fantastic job with it so Jill um we have two different documents in the folder today one is a narrative that kind of describes the five types of programming that we offer um our preschool students in northfalk and the
other is just an overview of the programming that also includes um the tuition rates so what I'm going to do is just walk through that narrative um and explain programming uh as many of you know um preschool programming is founded under special education law so we have
the um obligation to identify children by the age of three if we feel like they um have educational disability so our programming is really founded on the needs of our special education students and we offer two types of programming um
we offer programming for uh typically developing students and for students with special needs so that's an integrated um program and then we also offer a non-integrated program for special education students who require more time um and direct instruction with
regard to the goals and objectives on their IEP so in terms of of um the integrated program we offer five classrooms um we have two programs for three-year-olds we have a two-day program on Tuesday Thursday that's a halfday program and we have a 3-day
program on Monday Wednesday Friday we also offer uh three other options for four-year-olds um we have what we call a hybrid program which is a two-day full day program and a 3-day halfday program um and then we have a 4-day a 5-day
halfday program and then we have a 4 and a half day full day program so students come four days full day um and then they come on Friday for half day all students dismiss at Friday at noon time 11:30 this year um
and um and then they um uh we have our IEP meetings on Friday afternoons for students um in terms of special education programming in our 3-day program students stay an additional hour a day um to receive direct instruction
ction um for our um hybrid program students stay in additional um to halfday afternoons um for our 4day halfday program um students stay in additional afternoon um and then for our
full day um we have a a full day sub separate program for students with more moderate or higher needs so really the only change that we're recommending for next year is that we extend all integrated preschool programs by half an hour so instead of
dismissing at 11:30 they're going to dismiss at 12:00 this impacts um tuition rates um by 30 minutes so we typically charge $6.75 an hour we have not proposed a change um for a few years but we kept
that rate the same for next year um and so you can see the tuition rates on this form right here so really that's all is there anything else that you want to add I don't mean to put you on the spot no yeah okay but all the preschool teachers wanted to add the additional half hour we feel that that time is really vital
for the kids so um that comes from the recommendation of the preschool team and Anna just to clarify the tuition rates have been increased to reflect the additional half hour time based on the past uh rate right so before we um yeah they were rated you
know based on the 2 and 1 half hours now they're going to be increased because it's a 3-hour for most you know the half day programs it'll be 3 hours not 2 and 1 half hours yes so it reflects the additional half hour yeah any questions questions any
are these still comparable the the rates with our surrounding town because we haven't increased them in a little bit yeah we're in the middle in terms of of preschool rates um you know when we've looked in the past um we definitely fall um in the middle you know and we're comparable to our regional Partners so
yeah yeah is that something you think you'll look at soon I mean it's such a great program it certainly it is yeah yeah I think yeah I mean we can definitely take a look at it again um I feel like we looked at it last year and looked at the rate the comparison rates
um we did we adjusted two years ago last year opted not to because we were still in the middle um I do think next year would make sense you know every probably every three years it's good to just do a market correction so I definitely think we would want to look at it again tomorrow next year I think given that we're increasing the rate because we're
increasing time um this year I think we want to try to keep it consistent and then next year maybe relook at adjusting there's a slight increase yeah so they need a motion from the committee to approve the tuition rates for the preschool program for um
2526 I move to approve the tuition rates for the preschool program for the 25 26 school year I'll second any further discussion on that no all those in favor I I good thank you have you down with
the preschool if you want it's a really fun place to go I have to get my little plugin all right you thankk you so much all right next we have the budget update so um we the budget subcommittee wanted to uh update the committee of
where we are in the process of preparing a draft budget for the um public hearing uh scheduled for March 12th um as typical the first stage of our process is um Mariam Works to compute and calculate what the cost of rolling
existing staff over from this this year into next year is accommodating the the um collective bargaining cost of living increases as well as steps and Lane changes um uh we work on the expense side uh at all um all department heads
work on their their expense budgets we meet we look through those we make reductions and then we prepare a proposed budget to bring to the subcommittee to review um just as the committee is aware last year we used several sources of one-time funds to
offset growing special education costs we used funding from the district stabilization fund as well as a tuition account for that uh that had I think close to 100,000 for students that had been tuition into the district those funds were one-time funds so we had a
deficit in special education last year that continues because those one-time funds have been exhausted um as a result a level service budget for us um just bringing over the staff and and maintaining the um current you know
expense accounts came out to be about 10.7% recognizing that Finance Ro pitchure in the town is not great right now um and a lot of departments have difficult budgets uh ahead of them to try to balance within the uh Revenue
available the subcommittee has been working really hard to identify reductions that we could make while prioritizing maintaining strong instruction in the classroom protecting teaching positions to the best of our ability um and prioritizing academic uh
growth that said um we had in the first round of budget reductions looked at um a couple of things as we are aware we have a space crisis at H all of day we don't have any additional classrooms um
we do need based on current enrollment uh ideally nine second grades next year in order to keep class size under the class size policy limit we have eight currently we don't have another classroom so we are going to be probably recommending the school committee
consider lifting the maximum class size cap um for next year in order for us to um uh accommodate the students that we have uh so that would mean that we would not be adding a teacher as we typically
would um based on the numbers um but again given the space we don't have a space to put that classroom um so we are also recommending we have a retirement up at the Freeman Kennedy School uh we are recommending not refilling that position which will
increased class size in one of the uh either third or fourth grade we're still working through that um it would that would be under the policy limit but it would be higher than it is currently we have uh some changing changing changes within the special
education department so we have some students exiting we have some students in families moving um so we were looking at reducing three paraprofessional positions those are not um bodies that we are pink slipping or or letting people go we have open positions now
that aren't filled and every summer we're very lucky in norfol a lot of our par professional staff are licensed certified teachers um who are as they complete their license looking for teaching positions so there is natural attrition um but we believe we can eliminate three positions um based on
changes in the department and student needs um we made pretty drastic reductions to supply accounts and Technology subscriptions um I think that teachers are working with the PTO to try to fund um some of the supplemental technology programs not core instruction
but supplemental programs um through the teacher Grant process um we have eliminated Capital all capital expenditures in the budget we have a copier that is desperately needing uh needing replacement and we had scheduled $30,000 of laptop
Replacements because those uh the devices are aging past six years um so they're on their kind of last legs uh but we did cut those out of the budget um may try to pursue some Capital funding in the fall through the regular Capital process for for
laptops um we were hoping to see a reduction and out of District tuitions uh so we had budgeted for that and we've also been actively working with the town to try to see if there was a way that we could share HR services our HR director is retiring um and we were looking to see if there was a possibility of
sharing that um that position with the town um since we prepared this budget a few things have changed so um we have not been able to reduce the the out of District tuitions as we had hoped um and the town has uh recently informed us
that they are not in a position where they think that the uh shared HR model will work um at this time so the budget subcommittee met again uh because that added added cost and we had to find further reductions in in order to try to
balance the budget um so one of the things that we are talking about is pursuing offering an early retirement incentive we did that once before back in 2020 um an early retirement incentive would only be possible if we do receive
funding from the state to offset the costs that we've absorbed this year uh the $14 reimbursement if that is authorized again and we have funding uh available at the end of the fiscal year right now I think at the last bu presentation Mariam talked about how
we're running in a budget deficit we expect that that funding will be approved through the state budget process and if that happens then we could potentially end this year with some Surplus it would allow the district to use any available surplus funds at the end of this year um as an incentive
for retirement and what we what we see is savings if we have a teacher that's exiting at the top of the salary schedule we typically hire somebody lower on the salary schedule we budget like a master's 5 there's generally about $30,000 of savings um so we've
talked about trying to to look at that to see if that's a way that we could generate some savings for for next year um I've been talking with the the budget subcommittee about it process-wise if the committee is interested in pursuing that I could continue to work on terms
with the budget subcommittee and then it would be collectively bargained with the Teachers Association once we get through that process the final agreement would come back to the full committee to review and approve so um I don't know if I did want to see if anyone had any concerns about
moving forward with kind of exploring that and negotiating with the teachers again we it wouldn't be approved until we bring the final recommendation uh to the full school committee uh but we think it's worthy of of exploration at this point any concerns on that
uh no concerns I mean I know it it it can be a creative way to um try to find some savings I mean historically it worked it worked out um in the past when we've done it I just think that giving it proper lead time and making sure everyone's clear that
it's contingent on some other sources of funding are yes you know important and we'll put that right into the um I know other districts uh including KP I think are looking at that similarly at this point so um I'm sorry madora did you say the last time it did work out or it did
yeah we did generate a a few um savings um ingred logistically how do you I just don't know how it works if you put it out there how like what if 20 teachers said yes so that is what we
negotiate in terms of The Proposal that we put forward but we would it would be limited to based on available funds so we would only be able to accept um individuals into it as as funds allow okay um so that would be part of the
agreement um so that is one thing we are looking at um we've also looked at um some other creative ways to try to bring those costs down um additionally uh the budget subcommittee you know in looking at the data and and the district
performance um wanted to to try to strategize a way around ways to bring back some academic support that has been lost over the past few years um while keeping the budget within the 4.75 so we have made some additional adjustments um that we'll bring forward and we'll talk about we're still working
through them um with the goal of adding back uh at least a 1.0 math para professional when we get into the Baseline data you'll see our District's made big gains in mathematics um we are uh close to the top of our comparison group but fifth and sixth grade um with
have very complex math concepts introduced at those grade levels and that is where we're finding we have more students that require support services and were able to provide with the existing model so um so we are hoping to be able to add that that academic support back um and still balance that
4.75 um just working through a few other potential areas of reduction um Peter did I leave anything out or I didn't I wanted to ask the um with the retirment incent of the timing of that in association to um the public
hearing and vote well the I'm hoping if the committee is comfortable with us moving forward with negotiating with the Teachers Association ideally um we'd have a final proposal to bring forward um for the committee to consider in March because the more time we can give people to consider their plans and more
notice time they have to um to inform the district if they're interested in participating the better for everybody um so uh if the committee is comfortable I would the next step would be to schedule a budget subcommittee to review the terms of the proposed agreement if we're all on the same page work with the
Union um to try to negotiate something prior to the next school committee meeting if not we may have to schedule a special school committee meeting to consider the retirement incentive um would like to try to if we are moving forward would' like to try to offer it in March and have people um be able to
make final decisions early May once we know really what the end of Year's uh funding is going to look like sound good would this be for all teachers and staff or lead teachers only or Specialists so it would be if we
opened an early retirement incentive it would be available to any member of the collective bargaining agreement any unit member which covers classroom teachers Specialists therapists any member of the bargaining agreement um in the past uh we had requirements like teachers had to
have worked at least 10 years for the district um uh and there's other criteria uh that we would consider again it would be depending on um the available funding allowed we would approve based on um uh on on what we
project to have for savings we'd have timelines once someone would be accepted they would have to sign an irrevocable agreement guaranteeing that they're retiring no later than uh June 30th so there's terms that we would have to negotiate but that's sort of the gist of it it would be open to any unit member
and then but the plan would be to rehire all those positions the only teacher we're not refilling is the retirement is one retirement yes yeah these are all these would be um budgeted positions in the district that we would potentially re realize savings because the people in
those positions are at a higher salary rate than the people would that be hired to replace but they would all be filled they're not positions subject to elimination that makes sense like that I can't recall offand on the two classrooms where we would increment the
size it was by one student in yeah so um yes at first grade if we don't add a teacher the maximum class size policy limit is 21 um based on our current enrollment we will have some classes at 22 again we do have um it could be all
first grade classes at 22 because we do have students that enroll um in the district we have more entry over the summer into kindergarten in first grade than we do typically in other grades as families move in to start their children in the in the district um but yes we would anticipate that it would be um
over because we'd have eight classes that they would be over by one student and it's the same for the other class but it's still the other grade um if we reduce or we don't fill a retirement um there would be one other grade level with higher class sizes but
they would be within the policy limit they the policy limit for three to uh for grades 3 to 6 is 25 they would not be at 25 we'd probably be looking at class sizes of 23 potentially one or two classes of 24 um kindergarten enrollment has opened
kindergarten has enrollment is opened um we are watching that closely uh I think as of yesterday it was at about 1:15 we're projecting about 140 we do typically get we do typically get 10 to 15 students over the summer um it's trending a little bit under where we
expected however we do have quite a few families who delayed entering kindergarten this year I think it was six when I presented to the committee last time that delayed entrance U because they were concerned about the enrollment size based on um students coming in from the shelter they worried
about class size I think we we do think there are some families waiting to see what happens um with that prior to aning my only other question was I think are we missing exhibit 4 or I was in my
packet but I thought you guys were not so if you're missing exhibit for um I will send it around and make sure it gets added to the the packet it was in there but I think Adrien took it out cuz we had another budget meeting but we didn't we didn't revise it
so I will make sure that you have it no worries I do like the idea a lot of adding the math specialist I know it's hard in a budget constraints but when we're talking about increasing class sizes and it is really important I think so I like that you guys look at that um
the the second grade going up to 22 kids do you think any additional support will be needed in those classrooms or do you think one student not ideal but okay I think we're going to have to look at what it looks like I mean if we had significant enrollment over the summer and we were looking at
22 23 I mean 23 in classes then we might need to consider that I think we would probably if it's only one or two classes that are at 22 we might be able to redirect some of the current support to provide more support if needed to those rooms so I think it really depends on what happens um with enrollment in at
that grade level I know for kindergarten the AIDS in the classroom makes such a difference there and I know we can't do that for every classroom but classes that are maybe approaching a certain size yeah I know we're strapped financially to do that but um yeah and I think it's it's a little bit easier at
second grade where kids have some preliminary basic skills in Reading are a little bit more independent than it would be at at at kindergarten um but I think we'd really have to watch again if it's only one or two classes that are one above then I think we could redirect and provide additional support with the resources we have
um but if that picture changes a lot we might have to rethink that okay so we will be prepared with a full budget um to present to you on uh at the public hearing on March 12th so we'll present the budget and then have further discussion at that time and we
will have finalized recommendations for there will we see it before yep we we will send it in advance of the meeting and we could just contact you if we have question or okay y that good any other
questions great all right I'll turn it to Vicki is going to give an update on the elpac and the math program review sure so um I just wanted to give you a quick update on our um what's been happening with elpac just just to kind of give a a brief overview um about two
years ago the assistant superintendent uh RAM planville and myself um we applied for a title 3 um Grant which uh focused on um enhancing programming for English learner um families and their students and one of the areas we kind of
identified that um would benefit all uh of our districts all four districts is um to see if we can start an elpac um group because we all have um uh Rising numbers in how many um L families we have moving into the district so um the
English learner parent advisory Council um is uh we had our our second meeting of this year which is our fifth meeting since last year um we are uh we're rotating where it's located um through all the different towns uh just to kind of make sure that everybody has access
in all the towns that parents can kind of participate so the first one was held in North Fork and this one was held at um rrick Elementary School in rthm um uh currently because we're still trying to kind of figure out how to manage a
program like this through three different towns um and how do we get enough kind of participation you know and and kind of what would be um how can we best meet the needs of our families in the three different towns it is really LED more heavily by assistant
superintendent so we kind of do the primary planning for it we send out all the information and try to kind of recruit interest so um one of the things that we did notice that there um we we have had um families come um this year that we haven't seen last year so that was encouraging so I'm hoping that Bo is
kind of spreading you know and more fames will be able to participate um basically when you have a full functioning lpac it's it's kind of very similar to the PTO and CPAC um it really helps schools um and districts
kind of uh uh uh have a better pulse on like uh how we can best support our elpac families like what are some issues that they have kind of bridge that communication um between schools and our families so one of the things that I sh shared with you in the packet it's just
our agenda for meeting to just to give you kind of an idea of what the meetings look like um and we have tried like various structures we we have done Blended meetings where we've done virtual and in person and we um this last meeting we had actually a good
number of families that came to both um they came in person and we had some that joined us online um we provide interpreters as needed for our families too um to make sure that everybody's able to engage and um we took a survey last year we had a couple of parents
that kind of helped us determine like what would be an interest of topic for families how can we support them so this um agenda was really driven by that so one of the things that um families requested was um having some tips on how
to integrate into an American society if you newly moved here from another country you know so like Customs are different you know and and kind of like social norms so we had um the ram school psychologist she came and she did a presentation from parents on forming friend friendships and belonging and it
really ensued a a great conversation amongst families and it was one of those meetings that just kind of took a life on its own which is always what you want so like it's not like me standing at the at the front you know what I mean kind of um presenting and there was some really rich discussion that kind of
occurred from that and and um so uh we really appreciate um Mrs Duffy being able to don like uh give us her time and to be able to um kind of uh present that information to the parents it was really helpful the other um group that came to
us which were super excited and I also included their flyer is um our there was some high school students from King philli that started a um uh a group for their Deca um competition and basically on bringing
literacy um financial literacy to um high school students and uh was um there was two students that presented and they really um give uh information around budget and savings and you know um how to open like a checking account and what
does a credit card Interest really mean and it is a fantastic program they did such a great job they actually going to a competition to a state competition pretty soon um to kind of present uh um uh this program that they started and
the way it connected to our families is that um a lot of times when students are first generation um immigrants or they themselves are first generation immigrants like that is something that they're sometimes left to navigate so this is like a really great support for
students to be able to learn like how our financial system kind of works and to set them up because um students were they talked about how they've met students who have a lot of after school jobs you know and kind of like how do you manage the money that's coming in so I was really excited it was the first
time I've heard about it so and they did such an amazing job and it seems like such a great um like area to focus on and like very highly needed and our times I think for everybody but you know um so yeah so we our next meeting is
actually going to be at the end of April we'll be sending out flyers pretty soon um it's going to be held in planville uh this location we're actually going to shift a little bit the Focus From Another feedback that we've had um and uh invite families to bring their children and maybe do like if hopefully
it'll be a nice day we can do like a playground meet and greet because I think that one of the feedbacks that strongly came through our survey and kind of conversations that families are really looking um for opportunities to make connections with each other so so this is kind of where we are with our
elpac any questions just help spreading the are these meetings strictly for English language learning families and children or are um englishspeaking families also joining and is that are they making
connections like across so just CAC just like the CAC like everybody's welcome you know but I think that the focus areas to really support are English learner um families because they have specific topics and needs that you know um but anybody's welcome to come they're
all open open meetings yeah I just didn't know if like general public was aware of it and you know there are a lot of families that want to meet with you know newcomers and it might be a nice venue or place for people to be able to do so we usually advertise in um
Wednesday's words is how we send out and then um uh we do we send like uh like translated Flyers to certain families that more backpack you know I mean to be appro but um usually it's open to everybody but we can um make sure that we put the meeting the agenda in
Wednesday of sports um and maybe stress that it's every you know okay since it's new like kind of that may be a great suggestion for us to kind of emphasize that it's open to everybody yeah I was just I was briefing off the forming friendships and belonging yeah right right that's a great especially for the spring one if if kids are going to be
brought like it might be nice for yeah so um that's a great suggestion next on the agenda is Vicki to talk about the update on the math program review so um I'll let you walk through that yeah so
um so as you know we're in midst of our math uh review we have um I spoke a little bit in the beginning of the year but just to give you a quick recap um we have uh about 11 members on our math committee it's very similar to how we ran the ELA committee we have a
representative from each grade level um we have special ed representation we have administrators and our math Specialists are part of the team and we've been charged to um to assess the effectivess of our existing program to identify strengths and areas for
improvement um to ultimately ensure that our math curriculum provides all students with the like rigorous engaging um learning experience that we want them to have so um we started off the committee we um uh we crafted a vision
of what we kind of think that the optimal math environment and learning would look like like what is our wish for all our children as they go through the Nork Public Schools and move on to um their future endeavors um I included the vision at the end um but basically
norfor public schools are committed to developing all student mathematical understanding by creating Equitable relevant and engaging learning experience students will learn to become lifelong problem solvers who sustain sorry who sustain a growth mindset collaborate and effectively apply and
communicate their thinking in a variety of ways our students will have access to high quality instruction that leverages cultural knowledge and lived experiences challenging and coherent content in a learning environment where each student receives the support they need to succeed in mathematics so that's kind of
like our hope and you know uh vision for for all our kiddos um so where we are uh We've after that we conducted a swad analysis which is like uh assessing our strength weaknesses opportunities and threats um that included us looking and
disaggregating about 5 years worth of data we looked at our district benchmarks or mcast scores um uh just to kind of look for those like we took a deep dive into Trends kind of like what we saw um in terms of how students are performing really um do a strong Gap Gap
analysis um we also surveyed um families um to kind of assess like how um their experiences with the current program is what are some challenges that they've had what are some um uh things that really work well right now that we want to make sure that we uh preserve and we
also assessed our teachers and and uh we kind of asked a lot of questions around like how resources are working for them how much supplementing they have to do like again like identify like what are their challenges and also kind of gathering some feedback in terms of what would they like to see in a strong
mathematical program and I included a summary um for you um of what the survey results are which I believe is I'm sorry I'm trying to scroll through here um the SWAT analysis
summary so as you can see that um uh the staff surve we had we had over 90% response rate so uh teachers appreciate like the structuring digital resources available but feel like the curriculum lacks uh developmental appropriateness
in some areas and does not provide enough challenging and spiraling um there's a strong desire for more Hands-On learning engaging warm-ups differentiated instruction so one of the things that we have um discovered thank
you very much um my notes didn't print for one of the other presentation so I was just a little bit so um so one of the things that we are kind of looking uh that we feel like our current um curriculum lacks is really giving students enough time to kind of live in
the conceptual world and making in in where they are really having an opportunity to understand why mathematics works the way it does you know so instead of rushing to the procedural so this is an area we've had to supplement quite heavily but it would be great to have a program that has that
built in you know and really um the use of Hands-On manipulatives really um teaching students how to demonstrate their thinking you know and really focusing on those deep um problem solving skills because you can teach um
you can teach the kids like the different this is how you do addition subtraction decimals you know but what we really want to achieve is to teach kids how to work through a problem that they do not know an answer to so because you not they're not there's no way that we can expose them to every single scenario they're going to face in their
mathematical Journey so that's what we're looking to really and that takes you know perseverance and you want to teach them like what have toolbox you know um that is Rich with them being able to visually display where problems you know and be able to solve through it so when they hit middle school and high
school they have that practice so that's where we're kind of looking for a program that will systematically K through six will build those skills for students so um the part so after we conducted a SWAT anal is we kind of looked at everybody's feedback um what
are the priorities that parents identified so the parents talked about how homework sometimes was inconsistent you know depending on which grade level um a lot of parents asked for more support in being able to um support their children at home you know so right
now there's programs that have like videos for parents and like just kind of a breakdown of like we're learning about this concept this is how you can uh this is like what this student has learned this is how to kind of help support their home work so um giving taking all the feedback and our data analysis we
created a rubric of our kind of key things that we really want to look for in our program and I included the rubric in your packet too and as you can see that we divided them into um different categories like organization student engagement teacher like is ability of
use um so this way when we are evaluating programs we we can kind of see what are the strengths of the programs we're looking at what are some areas that maybe not represented no program is going to have all threes because unfortunately such a thing doesn't exist but we're really looking
for a program that will best meet our needs and then we can kind of support as we do with everything else you know like the areas that maybe we not as strong you know um so right now we're in a process of evaluating some programs
we're um using the curate as our Baseline which is the Desy curriculum review by teachers they um companies have to submit their um their programs to the state the state has um a panel of teachers and
administrators and Educators from all different walks uh in towns and and um demographics and they um use their own rubric which is not very different from ours to evaluate programs and then they kind of give a rating so we kind of started there just to help us eliminate
programs that maybe don't have a uh strong K through six you know I mean they're really strong at K1 but then they kind of fall apart in 34 for example you know so um we we have identified a couple programs now we're um in the process of meeting with the
representatives using our rubric we we got some samples in so this is very excited we're actually un packing them today so um and we're hoping that at the end of this process to eliminate uh have it narrowed down to two programs and like we did with the ELA um we'll then
um ask the rest of our educators to um try out a few lessons from the program so they'll be given some time to kind of unpack it look at the platform and then at the end of this process we'll send um uh a survey to teachers kind of using the same checklist and see what um
people feel would be the best program for us to adopt at that point we'll uh bring it to the school committee for Ure review but I think last year and we'll do the same thing this year um as well um uh uh we once we get the final two
programs I'll let you know like what it is so if you're interested we'll offer it to parents they can take a look too you know any questions about the math review if you mentioned it I apologize but just rough timeline when where do you see us right that's a great so um
right now um I'm hoping to be able to bring it to the May um school committee for you to vote on so uh we I have it slated that I'm hoping to have the two programs identified by mid-march so teachers can start looking at it and
then it takes about a month for us to kind of go through that process um and then I negotiate with the um vendors and that takes some time so I'm hoping to have like a full package ready for you
in May so you you'll see like the price line and and what is included you know and and kind of like um more information about the program so you're you're goal would be that we would start implementing it for the next fall yes so
we we are I have a professional development committee that is going to start meeting actually um Thursday and one of the U tasks we have is to look at our days and plan out how the implementation process is going to um uh be best uh presented for for our schools
like um and also I'm working with our math Specialist Team um they are the coaches in planning how like we are going to support the teachers in bringing in the new program we have a little bit of a leverage cuz we are only going to be in our second year of our Ela program so we really have to be
conscientious and make sure that like teachers are able to you know I mean lift both you know and um but I think that uh we have a good plan for that we we work closely with teachers um I meet with them at the end of the school year to really gather feedback so we can kind
of have a collective plan and how we're going to um Implement a math program while continuing to unpack our El program where is this um in the budget is there a placeholder do we feel confident so that's one of the um things that we looked at so we anticipate the math
program coming in around two between 225 and 250 um we had budgeted initially the full cost for the math program and we are now looking at doing something similar to what we did with the ELA splitting the cost most vendors will allow you to budget o and pay the cost
of the program over two years um so now we have budgeted for the half of the payment in the budget with the intent of spreading the cost over two years we don't have another major adoption immediately following um we do have to look at science next but we we need to
give our staff some breathing time as well so and this that is in the budget so half the cost of the math program is in the budget okay yeah and is there consideration to do a capital we could consider that or we can spread
it over the two years um I think we will have to really think about what we're bringing forward to Capital because we also cut out all of the laptop Replacements and the technology um so once we have a sense of what the town has available for Capital funds I think the committee can weigh in on what makes
the most sense to bring forward I like the uh parent support element you're looking at because I try and help my son with math and apparently I do it very differently now and I think I'm just confusing him cuz he's doing it in the boxes and I've never seen the
boxes and so no it's huge and like one of the programs we're looking at today actually had such a great way of they were like literally was like dear parent your child learned this today and they were like this is the visual that they used and this is how we use the visual it was like so well like explained you
know so I think they've come a long way you know what I mean being able to do it and that's like I said one of our priorities so we were even naring down to which ones we wanted to look more closely think that was a big component because we we hear a lot parents saying I try to help and my child says that's not how my teacher does it it's it's a
very common I have the high schooler help the elementary scho har it out learn that way yeah any other questions on the math review okay all right every year for the
school committee um we uh either in January or February we present the district Benchmark and Baseline report um the we started doing that probably it was back in like 2013 because um we do an mcast presentation in December and
that gives you a sense of how our students are are progressing compared to other districts and the state as far as the MC test but we also recognize that MC is only one snapshot of educational quality and so years ago we worked with the committee to try to identify what
are other metrics that you would be looking for to to be able to evaluate how our district is performing as a whole Beyond a single snapshot uh score so there are a lot of different things that we talked about one um things like uh teacher retention um lure experience
qualifications of teachers um discipline rates School climate School culture um uh other metrics of educational performance so our district Baseline reports for ELA and math um so we've been for probably 10 years compiling
this report year um a couple of years ago we presented the equity report and the committee asked how are we going to measure your progress towards some of the goals that you've stated so we have now included in the Baseline report progress in terms of closing achievement gaps uh among subgroup subgroups so we
have a brief presentation and we'll kind of walk through the report itself once we present to the committee will be available on our website um but it is a lengthy report so we're going to just go through some of the highlights in the presentation tonight um so the first thing we always share is a a picture of
the student demographics um so this is our demographic data based and again the report is for the school year 20 uh that just passed so ending in Spring of 2024 um so this is a a picture a snapshot of our student demographic population I think important things to
note are always changes in new trends um as we've talked about before the fastest growing populations in Norfolk are the are English language learners back in 20133 when we first started this we didn't have any students receiving English language uh instruction and
support that has grown rapidly and has been pretty constant for the last three years at about 4.3% of our students um 6.5% of our students speak uh a second language in the home but 4.3 are receiving direct instruction for English language learning the other population
that is growing very quickly is our lowincome um families in 2019 prior to co about 4.7 % of our student body qualified as low income that has grown steadily from 2019 until
202024 uh with 7.7% of our our students being low income class size another metric that uh we've talked about regularly our average class size in norfol currently is 20 we have lower class sizes in grades K to2
consistent with our policy which looks for lower uh class sizes in the younger grades um and larger class sizes in grades 3 to six so you see more 22 23 uh in the upper grades averag is 20 in Norfolk we used to have among all of our
comparison communities we were in the lower end we had smaller class sizes than many other districts that is no longer true we are in the middle to the upper end of class size um so we're higher than most of our comparison communities um but while our class sizes
are consistently above the target policy number um they have remained below the maximum class size policy special education Trends um so students with disabilities comprise 18.1% of our total student body in Norfolk we have a lower percentage than
the state of students with disabilities um and most of our comparison communities uh the majority of students in Norfolk um that are eligible for specialized services are considered low need meaning they received the majority of their services in a full inclusion
setting one of the trends we have seen changing is since 2018 we have seen growth in the percentage of students entering the districts that are considered high need students and that just means they receed the majority of the services in a substantially separate setting and they typically receive
multiple different types of services um we also have seen uh differences in the categories the disability categor students are qualifying for special education under um and we've seen significant growth in the number of students entering or
qualifying for services under the autism disability category um teacher education 100% of our teachers are licensed in the field that they teach 90.6% of our teachers have advanced degrees uh 52.8 have been teaching in
norfol for over 10 years um we have the highest teacher uh or the highest teacher retention rate and the second highest uh I'm sorry we have a high teacher retention rate the second highest of all of our comparison communities with 95.5% of our teachers
returning um from year to year we did see that number when you look in the report we have a slightly lower number for new teachers in their first three years but that is often because um in the first three years the district may choose not to renew a contract or or
bring teachers back or program changes um but when we do Dove deeply into that data we are not losing teachers to other neighboring districts we've only lost one teacher in the last um uh 3 years to another neighboring District student attendance this is
something we're we're proud of so we have a 95.5% student attendance rate again one of the highest of all of our comparison districts um following covid Statewide there has been a significant increase in the number of students missing more than 10 days of school and in the category of
chronic absenteeism so that's a Statewide and a national Trend you've probably seen it uh on the news um we have made progress in lowering that number so um the percentage of students that were following in the category of
chronic AB absenteeism was 12.5 and we've reduced that down to 6.7 over the past 3 years um we've also decreased the number of students missing more than 10 days uh from 40.3 to 29.9 so we've made some significant gates in improving
attendance overall and reducing that chronic absenteeism um we did look at this proportionality and we are still continuing to see an over representation of students and families uh who are low uh lwi income in the chronically absent category so we are working on strategies
to try to increase Outreach um and try to remove some of the barriers to improve the attendance um for that population student discipline um we continue to have very low rates of student suspension um I think as the committee is probably aware the student
discipline law changed in Massachusetts um suspension is uh something that you can only do for for very uh significant charges weapons charges drug charges um but we are required to use alternate forms of discipline uh to keep kids in
school for most other kinds of infractions so rates of the across the state have come down um but we have also been really looking at our our uh office referral data and the number of students that are sent to the office for Behavioral challenges and needs um free
Kennedy implemented a PBIS or a positive behavior intervention and support program called Freeman uh called sores that started in in the fall of 2023 and H all of day has implemented some schoolwide programs school meetings a kindness coin program again to try to
support and recognize positive behavior and build community um we have been tracking discipline referrals at the lower grades K to2 is very rare that a child is sent to the office so we don't have most discipline is minor and it's handled in the classroom but we do track that data for for
Freeman Kennedy and we have seen a dramatic decline um since the implementation of the source program so in the full report if you go to the full report um between December and June of 2022 we had 280 plus office referrals
for disciplinary Behavior the following year after implementing sores in the entire year it went down to I think it's 170 this year between September and March or between September and now we only have had 69 so um a significant
Improvement in in this discipline credit to the school that the teachers and the uh counselors who worked really hard on building and and reinforcing that program um we also had when we presented the equity audit two years ago we had seen that the students with disabilities
and our male students were over represented in discipline data we have closed the Gap slightly for students with disabilities and increase their representation by 88.5% or 8.4% um but we still continue to see an over representation in male students in the disciplinary data and are continuing
to work on addressing that budget comparison our peral spending in 20124 was 17848 we are uh in that year we spent $44,000 below the state average per pupil spend um that is a big jump prior
to that it had been about 2,000 the gap between norfolks spending in the state is is increasing however I would point out in the report when you look at it it used to be just Norfolk and Berkeley that UND spent the state sometimes planville um the number of suburban
districts that are now under spending the state has increased I think that's a direct function of additional Revenue coming into the state being directed towards urban communities so many of the grants we've applied for like the curriculum initiatives we have been denied because we because we don't meet
the CR as an underperforming District or a district with um high levels of low income uh still the Gap is continuing to grow we continue to underspend both planville and North uh planville and rth them by about $2,000 per
pupil think he's going to talk about some of the academic measures so um I wanted just to kind of talk a little bit and give an overview of our Benchmark data but um before I kind of get into the data itself I just wanted to give a little bit of a background so um when we
collect our Benchmark data um I partnered with our it um specialist a couple years ago and we actually build a platform where we Source thousands of lines of data and we've created actually um um an analytics platform where we're
able to analyze the data so we kind of do similar to what mcast kind of does so when we say that I'm comparing mcast and our Benchmark data we're able to do that because we're because me and um rafy were able to partner on that level to be able to build that for our district um
if it it's been I just want to give them a shout out it has been such a labor of love because that is often outsourced to uh by other districts because and but it costs thousands of dollars to have other companies come in and do that for you so I just want to um
just going to give a little bit credit that it's all the graphs you see actually there was a lot of work that went behind it um and every year we are refining it and kind of looking at how we can um pull the data not only by our by student population by demographics you know what I mean and how we've
created platforms for teachers where they can sort data they color code you know what I mean so they can more easily see what students need support so um The District's uh use our benchmark assessments as a data point to monitor student progress um towards relevel standards and identify areas
where additional support is needed we more heavily rely on this information then then for example mcast which does have some really great um information as well but as you know kids taking mcast tests one or two days but our benchmark assessments skids are um assessed multiple times throughout the year so we
can kind of see um how students are responding in more real time to our interventions and supports that we put in place so the first um data point is our um Bas Benchmark which is a fountain
Andel uh Benchmark assessment um the Bas measures students reading Levels by assessing their accuracy fluency and comprehension um it is given oneon-one um it identify students in structural and independent reading levels using their um text gradients was like a
through z one of the things to note about Bas we use it for this comparison because we've been using it for many years and we have a good um comparison within our cohort but it is one of the assessments that um is no longer recommended for use because they found
that um it's pretty subjective you know what I mean and there's better ones out there that we've adopted since then um that measure student progress but I did I do feel like our data is very valid because we can compare our um growth because we've been using for the last
couple years so just a few highlights um as you can see all grades with the exception of grade five show growth and literacy scores over the past four years reflecting steady recovery from 2021 um the postco decline grades 1 through 4 showed strong and consistent results
with between around 20% more students meeting District benchmarks in 2024 than in 2021 um kindergarten was an outlier um they their scores do remain relatively flat across uh the four years um but
like I said this is just one part it does measure just like uh text comprehension and leveling um and as the as you can see in the full report not in this one um but students with disabilities consistently performed lower than and their peirs on The Benchmark assessment with the smallest
Gap existing in kindergarten in grade one this is something you can see in the full report the aadience literacy screener is a screener that we adopted about 3 years ago um our first year usually is we don't really use the scores because it is a time that we're still getting used
of the platform it was a very different way for us to assess it was the first time we used an assessment that was um uh uh given through an iPad you know so as teachers kind of and and it goes by very quickly because it's timed so we didn't feel like the scores necessarily
were as accurate as we're kind of learning the platform but last year and this year we we've we're really comfortable with the platform now and I feel like it's a strong comparison so that's why we have a 2-year comparison so the Acadian screener measures early literacy and reading
skills to assess student progress in foundational of eating areas so some of the areas the tests is f um phic awareness phonics fluency comprehension and vocabulary um depending on the grade level the older grade levels have a maze which is like a reading passage that
they have to interpret um so as you can see student scores and a Cadian screener showed Improvement across all grades uh between uh the spring of 2023 and spring of 2024 the largest gains we seen in grades 1 through 4 with over 20% more
students um uh falling in the meteor seeds category so one of the great things about this particular assessment and the reason we adopted it is that it not only gives you a baseline screener which gives you great information about it these these literacy skills but it
also has a built-in progress monitoring so teachers are able to take very immediate action and the progress monitoring also measures student growth so um between the fall um winter and spring assessment there's progress
monitoring that is done systematically it's K through six um there's um and teachers as they they're providing the supports or literacy specialist interventions needed we're able to then um see how the students responding to them and then um kind of adjust as
needed so that is a really great feature and I think that it is um it is done very strongly it's part of our uh multi-tier system of support process that we have and I do attribute a lot of our growth to us able to really identify
specifically where students are struggling and really Target the skills and then measure their growth so um uh in the full report um I just want to point out that students with disability earn scores in meeting or exceeding benchmarks across all grade
levels um so they still performing underperforming their their um uh peers with an average difference of 30% um aadan screener did identify more students uh with disabilities of struggling to master grade level
literacy skills than the Bas so they we have we're able to because the screen like I said it's more research based it's more systematic we're able to identify better like where are the students with disability need extra support so um
yeah moving on to our math benchmark assessment so um excuse me let me just get my notes so our math Benchmark assessment is um was actually District created we
found that the go maath program didn't really give us the information um that we were looking for the way the program was set up is that it assessed end ofe skills but it was administered at the beginning of year and the middle of the year so it really didn't help us like we
knew what the students didn't know cuz they haven't been taught you know so we actually the mass specialist and I a couple years ago and I've done this in other districts um we got together and we created our benchmark assessments we use a various uh research-based um questions we pulled we look through the
math program and pulled out questions that we thought were um really met the standards um so um our benchmarks each question is um links to a standard so teachers really know like exactly what are we measuring by this question um The
Benchmark assessment is administered mid year and end of year you have the end of year scores here um as you can see that kindergarten grade 1 remain consistently high with both grades um and again you can see 2019 we just included that score so you can see our pre-co scores and how
we are now um fairing in comparison uh four years later grade one showed solid Improvement 2024 jumping from 86% to 96% which this is the highest level in four years um and grade two uh remained relatively um stable if you look at our
older grades and that's something that Dr lardi um kind of mentioned earlier is that you can start seeing where the gaps are starting to grow so um with grade five um really going from 78% to 50% in
2024 it is um something that we are uh kind of looking into closely we have um really focused our supports for Grace 5 and six we have um our Title One grant that um uh we were um given we H we have a
part-time par professional that um works with our students you know so she's able to really support and focus on the my skills that grades five and six students have to be able to hopefully bring them up to speed a little bit um and and just to say the title on
Grant we weren't given Vicki applied for the for the grant and is filling out the reports and we targeted and directed those funds to adding Mass support beyond the budget um so that was a recent addition I think we finally hired someone in like November it was it's a
hard it's a difficult position to meet because you do need somebody that has some math background information background um um experience in mathematics you know cuz it it is um it's hard to comp ma complex because not you're not really teaching grade level
skills you're trying to backfill so you kind of have to understand um how a student progresses through mathematics and how gaps appear so one of the things I talked about in our math review that we are really looking for um having a strong tier one program because you know
we always say you can't intervene yourself out of a port out of a not a very strong tier one out of a tier one problem right so um so we're really looking at a program that gives students more opportunities like I said to live in that conceptual um area where you can
see a breakdown in grade five is because the standards are really huge and there are so many new ones that are being introduced like if you look at the Frameworks they're like they're like five pages it's like the longest Frameworks that you'll see out of any great level because there's so many like everything that they've learned the
previous 5 years is kind of begins in fifth grade where they have to generalize information now apply it to more complicated um Concepts so if there's any gaps beforehand that's where the student has a breakdown and the same thing happens in middle school when they start getting to pre-algebra and algebra when student has breakdown is because
they didn't have those basic um um rary algebraic skills and understanding you know so they really have to understand how our numeric system works you know and all that stuff to be able to to generalize and apply it so that's kind of our our two Focus areas is when we're talking about filling in and looking for
the new math program is to really help our students kind of fill that Gap so the state measures for um Ela mcast I mean I know we did a full presentation so this is just um kind of a review as you can see that um we
definitely have areas like nobody wants to be a 50% and our Ela mcast definitely an area that we need to focus on um to kind of begin uh to continue um the supports that we have kind of implemented one of the things that um is
encouraging to see is that our aadan scores are going up um we have a new Ela program that we are already starting to see skills being taught that students are um showing Mastery in that were gaps in our previous programming you know so
um I do anticipate that the next couple years we're going to start seeing our Ela scores increase because we have a strong tier one program we have a strong um uh MTS mtss process which includes includes a really strong screener we have um a really good plan and how we
are supporting students um we spend a lot of time looking at the data making sure that we have a very concrete plan for when students do pop on the screener how are we going to um kind of meet meet their needs so um just wanted to mention so one things
I kind of wanted to break down and just take a little bit of your time is um when we look at mcast you kind of see like the big General overview scores but really the um this is kind of like the meat and potatoes of when we're talking about how our students are actually
doing and um these are uh key standards and when we talk about key standards these are standards that the students really need to have um well-rounded Mastery and understanding of to be able to show successes they kind of progress through our schools through through the
grade levels so the key kind of standards for ELA are really reading comprehension vocabulary acquisition written expression which is like just basic your writing skills and language conventions and um when so I just wanted to show that I've looked over the last
couple of years these are two areas that we've actually really increased reading comprehension as you can see 82% of our students are the in the meets and exceeds category um this high level Mastery indicates that students can effectively identify main ideas and
details which help them um tackle more complex uh lit literary and informational text in the upper grades vocabulary acquisition is kind of self-explanatory but 75% of our students are showing Mastery that's a that's a trend up for us um one of the things
that written expression is you'll see that same thing is happening um in grade four as well that is an area that essay writing and that's one of the areas where um we really need to we're focusing our our time and our um curriculum on as well to be able to
really like the organization of ideas so like WR Expressions when they take the other skills and apply it right because that's when you're asked to um write an inference piece you know what I mean or like talk about you know so um kind of brings a lot of different skills together and then um language and
conventions it's um really is another area that as you can see 70% of our grade three and 68% of our grade four students are showing in exceeding and meeting but as we look at the upper grades we do see that area kind of trend down because the skills are getting uh
more challenging so when we're talking about like where we're focusing our um supports and our coaching for our teachers and looking at strong resources like that's how we kind of identify which areas which parts of our curriculum like we're doing really
pretty well you know what I mean students are really mastering for the most part and which areas we need to focus on more and I think also that that drove part of the ELA adoption and program selection we were looking for something we knew a gap in our program was around language and expression and
we're looking for a program that would have strong core instruction in that area so the same analysis for grades five and grade six uh you can see that reading comprehension and vocabulary acquisition again are on a higher end for our students uh the majority of our
students are in the meet and exceeds category and this of course represents all students um and that written expression language convention again is an area that you can kind of see a drop in with um that really great six is when they have to do like the big reports and
and that's where um we're kind of seeing like a a bigger breakdown you know so um the new program that we adopted I've been talking to our grade six teachers has a really strong um uh
uh instruction around this particular skill you know and it's actually quite rigorous and I think we're a little bit taken back by how rigorous the new program is so I think like our students are actually because I think it's such it's like the lessons are more rigorous
the expectations are higher they're doing a little bit worse you know what I mean but we talked about how this is actually what we wanted you know what I mean so like once we start having our kids go through this program and they're building the skills from kindergarten like like you're going to see the
results in great se you know so um and the the great thing about this program um is that it has such a strong spiral so not only within grade levels where the concepts are Revisited I think our previous one had it was more taught and isolation but like the spiral um through
the grade levels like we had um Mr tarzik our assistant principal he said that he went to see a gr three lesson and he just happened to go the grade four lesson and he's like I totally saw like the connection you know what I mean he was like it was so neat you know so um
yep so those I guess I'm I don't mean to stop at the momentum of your presentation I I've had a lot of questions but I just are these mcast scores for the indiv okay I'm trying to
understand mathematically how 55% of grades three through six so in other words 45% didn't meet or exceed but all these numbers here show we well mostly meeting and exceeding so there's a lot of different standards that are measured
in the mcast these are considered the power standards critical standards so there other other categories within there students may have underperformed um but these are the four like critical Benchmark skills they have like this one which like I said this year they didn't release the question so we can't look at
them but like for example and it changes from year to year but and like not saying again like we definitely have areas we need to improve like I'm not trying to excuse but just um they had a uh long essay as one of the things and they had one question and if a student
didn't get that one question right it showed that the that they had like 20% but I feel like who who I don't know I guess it's a philosophy think but I'm like if you're asked one question you have like one chance to answer correctly or not you know what I mean like it
doesn't assess a full skill array of skills in my opinion what what like a long essay would you know so yeah sometimes that can bring bring your score down so there's like a lot of things that go into consideration but the reason I pulled these out again is
that when when CU there's so many standards I me so there's others he there's so many other ones and like not that the other ones are not important like we look at everything but just for kind of to show um if uh for mathematics too I'll go through it too like there's
definitely specific standards that we know that like we really want our students to make sure that they really have strong found like foundational skills because they're going to lead into their success into Middle School in high school you know because those are the ones that build up so everything is good to know but you like not
everything's weighted equally you know yeah I'm trying I'm just trying to connect in my brain because I see the macro metrics say only 55% of our of our tested population met standards but then this
says we're doing really great and this is like where we're strong and so I wouldn't like I me yeah like 50% is not like I would love to see us all you know what I mean like yeah previous SL third fourth everything was beautiful right
mostly beautiful mostly good here yeah you can kind of see that I also think when you're thinking about that 55% Peter that that metric that's a an average of all four grades we're performing higher in third and fourth and lower in fifth and six so so the the
the domain standards are higher in the third and fourth grade than they are in fifth and six so the fifth and sixth scores are definitely pulling down that that overall and reading comprehension it would have 10 substandards under it so this is an average of all the to 10 sub substandards well I'm just saying 10
is an average you know they have different different ones but there's a whole drop down menu and it'll give you the individual standard these are more like domains they're like the overarching categories you know that you look but if you break it down even further you can kind of see even by standard like which areas we we have
need stronger and correct me if I'm wrong but that's included I I don't pour over my individual students mcast results because I tend to look more at kind of the holistic performance in the school year but the report a parent receives breaks down those individual
standards correct like there's there's a whole bulleted list at the end of each section that says in mathematics your algebraic reasoning you got this many questions in Geometry you crushed it you know so you can you can assess individually each substandard you can
you can yeah and and like and like I said when we look at students especially like if you have a student that comes to our um student support team like you know like we kind of take a look at that and we use our Benchmark data the same way we have broken down by standards so we can say that the student is really
not um getting the questions correct in like um a number sense you know what I mean or or whatever you know so we we do kind of look at the breakdown of the measures cuz you can kind of Target be like okay this what we need to help with you know um so just looking at the at the
math to um again uh this is just an overview as you can see um in math we've actually done um uh a really strong pretty strong recovery from we even surpassed our po uh pre-pandemic um scores so um especially in grade three
um grade five again that's one of the areas that um as you saw in the Benchmark um scores that we have a dip we have a dip in in our mcast scores too um so one of the things that kind of gives us good measures that our benchmark scores are valid when you put
them against um the math mcast you know so like it is relevant measures um but we did we did kind of see a little bit of an uptrend from 2021 as you can see from to 2024 but that's definitely an area that we've been focusing on um the last last couple of years we've been
trying to um Target our our specialist uh in those grade levels really work with teachers to kind of help raise the scores um and help support the students which you can see a little bit of a of um when you look at grade six the scores are higher so you can kind of see that
sometimes students need like two years to be able to really understand and master Concepts and just to highlight that that is consistent with State Trends State Trends dip in grade five too yeah um specific in math yeah in
math I believe Ela as well but 58 was the other one that they had in 10 I believe were the three like kind of big dips that that that the state has had over the last couple years yeah I really appreciated your perspective on the math challenge for the fifth graders because
it's like a point in time where they're like you said conceptualizing everything they've learned right know to to what you mentioned with the ELA across Bass the cadians and mcast fifth was the lowest performing class
what what's happening at fifth grade for students that's kind of hitting them there on the ELA side so again I think that that does mirror the state Trends and again um you know you the the level of rigor of the questions the the higher level critical thinking that they have
to you know comparing and contrasting text um abstracting author's message and intent so they're more complex standards um and I think as a result when we you know if our fifth grade was low and the state was not seeing that dip we'd be more concerned I mean obviously we're
concerned and we want to accelerate growth in that but it does seem to be a a year where a lot of standards and fundamental skills are now shifting from basic practices to more application um and and that's a shift for our kids so
it's kind of a jump on the side as well for it is and like I said fifth grade is kind of the Year where a lot of things um you kind of have to really generalize and then the standards really um become a lot more rigorous you know so for like just give you a minor example in math so
in fourth grade fourth graders are taught mathematics um when they encounter decimals um they talk they're taught as a fraction so they're not even taught them as a place value that we have a place value system of decimals that t you know so they learn about decimals as fractions they get to fifth
grade they're like oh by the way decimals have a place value you have to add and subtract with them so there's like no transition that happens so one of the things where like when we look at our math instruction we kind of try to give um that's what what we're kind of looking for a math program that will
allow us to Pace in these type of really important skills you know what I mean and that was a very minor example but just to give you like the leap that it has like it it just doesn't make sense like you really um need more time to unpack and understand that but you will have but the decimal because fourth grade that's not considered a major your
standard decimals because fifth and sixth grade has spent so much time you might have like you know half a chapter on it that's it in the whole year you know what I mean and then you get to fifth grade and they're like hey you have to do all these operations with it you know so just like like it's it's like very complex that's how so like
when um but that's why like when we see an increase that's why we kind of watch like how does sixth grade do and proportions and um uh reasoning is is really an area that's actually a strength of us so I feel like sometimes it's just like the kids need 2 years you know what I mean they just need more time to unpack and explore this
mathematical concept you know um and I think also Vicki you talked about um and we have lots of educational jargons so I don't know if everybody knows what we mean when we're saying um we're looking for a program that spirals so we had a unit-based program prior so we study
fractions and we learn fractions for this unit and then it ends and now we're going on to geometry and something else and we don't go back to that so kids Master it and then they lose skills before it comes back up again and in the new program they were looking for a program that spiral so there was
built-in review of those Concepts so kids would retain it and be able to launch the following year um so that's something I'm looking at too so we're looking for review and elevation so we want to like to see if you can apply retain the skill taught in isolation if you can apply to a more complex situation you know what I mean and you
remember you know and we talked about those tools is that like what do you do if you come to a problem you don't know like you know most kids are just like you know so um so yeah um so just really quickly I'm almost I appreciate your time so just really um I just wanted to
break down just third and fourth grade so again this is some of the key standards we talked about operations and algebraic thinking numbers and operations in base 10 so that's really like your place value understanding so like the concept that we have a um a
number a base 10 number system like you know that's like actually a pretty New Concept for kids you know um that they have to learn um and we take it we take advantage of that as adults because of course we we know there's a base 10 number system but like you try to introduce them to like the Mind system which is a base 12 system blows their
mind they're like what do you mean but but just the fact that it is like a very specific reason why we have this place by system and how do the numbers interact with each other and and relate to each other so um operation algebraic thinking which um um and a numbers and um an operation
base 10 our students are performing really strongly in across grade levels which is really great because it's going to set them up for Success when they get into the more complicated algebra and pre-algebra and the reason I keep talking about Middle School pre-algebra and algebra and I've seen with my own children it is kind of like a pivotal
time where kids either love math or they hate it for the rest of their life you know what I mean and it so much relies on their foundational understanding of mathematics you know and um so that's why I always harp and talking about like algebraic thinking algebraic skills you know it's because like I want them to
have an easier path as they kind of move on word problem and applications as you can see multi-step work problems that means that there's multiple Parts you know I mean that kids have to kind of solve for that is an area that you'll see trending across the board that we really need to
um um uh focus on and that's again something that we're really looking at it's a it's a generalization application of a lot of different skills um and you can see the same thing in um fifth grade as well so geometry and operational alic
thinking it's really happy that we're trending with these numbers but fractions and decimals and um uh as you can see ratios and proportional thinking areas that we really need to um kind of continue our focus on and and the were
problems before I move on to the town are there any questions about this anything that didn't why is um I mean word problems clearly show throughout all the grades but grade six I mean especially if we
think about the 2-year you know ramp up from Basics to more complex like that 48 feels rough I know it's only two less than 50 but it feels like a lot of times like sixth grade is kind of an interesting grade level um overall they to teach
like the like you know it's just like there's um so much there there's sixth grade is another one that's like a pivotal shift for kids too and um really like problems around volume started being introduced like the ratios problems you know like the problem
solving skills and a lot of times um stamina is a big thing so it's not even that kids might not necessarily understand the concept they don't have the stamina to sit through a problem long enough especially one that they might encounter some struggle with I'm
sure doing having watching your kids do homewor getting up for grades you can relate to that you know but um so like one of the things when we talk about like our mathematical practices like what do we want to build like when we talk about Vision like you have to start pretty young of building kids resilience
and being able to sit through and solve through a difficult problem you know and that applies not only mathematics that's like across the board like read through a difficult passage you know what I mean without kind of giving up or or kind of a lot lot of times kids give up because they're like I don't know where to go with this you know what I mean and
giving them that those skills to be able to say oh I'm going to try this and if I fail it's okay I'm going to try this like that perseverance and resilience so that's where I think a lot of our kiddos kind of struggle with is just basically just being able to sit through and
persevere and try uh a problem especially mcast like it's online they have a piece of paper that they have to do their work problems I can't tell you how many times the teachers and I go around and be like use this piece of paper to solve the problem like we've given them we' even incorporated into a
couple years ago into our curriculum um opportunities for kids to solve problems online and giving them a piece of paper so they can have practice how to organize it because you have to teach those skills right um and so like when you have a problem you have to write it out and they're just like I'm going to do it in my head you know just like
punching the numbers you know so um so there's like a lot of there's a lot of um but like I said if we have um hoping that like the pro the programs we're looking at that start building those skills early on you I mean just start building the stamina for kids more spiral review and practice with those
more complex that's that's a really great question um so the last part I just wanted to preface so we I wanted to bring back the town comparison so like I as Dr L kind of emailed you I I recognized an error that I did when I
did the mcast presentation I'm not exactly sure what happened with the other results the only thing I can think of is I pulled the data to soon and the towns were not accurate and what happened over a vacation is that I was trying to figure out one of our one of the towns in my original report was like 80% and I could not understand how a
district had a 30% increase in one year and I sent out a survey to all the districts and I said what are you guys doing like give me your magic like solution because I want to know and I was like it just doesn't make sense so like I went back and I rep pulled the report and I realized that's where I
found that the numbers were not correct um so I readjusted them and North Brook fell in a very different place which is I guess good news right um so for ELA like again do we you know 55% is not something that is our Target you know
but I do want to share that as you can see over the years we're actually trending right in the middle um of where we are in comparison to our Lake districts I did send out that survey I'm hope um I'm going to look at the results I did ask the other towns it just be good for us to know kind of like what
what programs they're using what supports they have in place so maybe there's something that we can um be able to look into for for our district as well like um but and and what I would say with this too is that many of the other districts adopted new literacy
programs prior to ours so we're in the middle um a big part of that is that the MPS work the other work the Acadian screener the interventions we put in place but we haven't seen the results of of replacing a strong core program we expect to
continue the upward motion yeah so like one of the things that I think we can kind of attribute to our Educators and and all the effort we put in is that without having a really strong core in the new program that the other districts have had CU they did adopt earlier we were still not you know I mean at the at the bottom of the the list and that's
definitely a big shout out to everybody um I also I just wanted to show in terms of pre-pandemic and post-pandemic numbers just to kind of show like the what the differences and um as again you can see for ELA norer
has had um uh a 12% difference in uh drop in scores but we fall about in a middle for that too so we're still clearly working on accelerating learning in in La for math our numbers look um a
lot better than my first report so um as you can see we're actually uh fourth from the top um just a little bit and we're only like 3% and behind conquered and submar and 6% behind Southborough and again this is most of these
districts I know have adopted um a new core program probably like a year or two ago so this is really just um we're able to kind of keep up with all this um curriculum adjustments that we're able to make and and the efforts of our our Specialists and our teachers and um but
um I think it's pretty promising that I think that even with a new core that we would be able to achieve even higher higher percentage and doing the same thing we actually have not had a big drop before the pandemic um as comparison to now we're only a 2% drop um as you can
see in comparison with the other towns so the recovery is happening faster in math for us than it is for La one other positive on on on both the laa and Well on both of these results is that a lot a lot of the towns below us
spend more per pup than we do absolutely we're doing a little a little bit more efficiently with our dollars in terms of the student absolutely and I think um as Vicki said I think a lot of the results that we're seeing especially in math there's been a tremendous amount of work
done with the math Specialists um Vicki has uh had a goal around really looking at math act fluency which is holding kids back because they're spending too much time on the computation and then they're losing that higher order thinking um so a lot of things have been put in place to to maximize the impact
of the resources we do have so I agree with that so just in summary um I feel we still continue to offer a strong educational program for all of our students we have high qualif highly qualified experienced teachers student attendance is high uh with a uh with
below average uh rates of student discipline again while we spend less uh money to educate students in almost all comparisons our student achievement remains competitive um we have Sol we made Solid progress towards academic recovery um our students at perform the
state in many compar uh most comparison communities in math and then our Ela scores continue to improve and we anticipate with the adoption of the new literacy program um we predict continued growth on future tests so that's the there's a lot more content in the report um we're trying to
keep it that was lengthy but that's kind of the highlights that we wanted to address and as we talked about with the budget targeting additional math support for those upper grades Fifth and six is aligned with our our budget and our district goals um continuing because we
are seeing growth in a cadians we do predict that the we're going to see the impact of that new program adoption so any questions happy to take or for I sounds like the the kids in the lower grades it sounds like they're
really set up for success with the new Ela program with the implementation of the new math program um it sounds like we have a great path forward for them I I am still worried about the the kids in grades 3 through 5 um like you said the
the gaps and they will widen as we continue to build on things I know you talked about spiraling but what can we do for those kids who fourth graders who maybe haven't mastered the skills they should have learned in second grade
like how do you good question address that so I'm going to let you talk a little bit about in more depth about what mtss looks like um but we are seeing at this point our third grade scores are are pretty much above pre-co levels in the LA and math so are our
those kids you know they were the least impacted because it's been a few years um fourth as well are are pretty close to where we were is really fifth and sixth um but in terms of gaps a couple of things have been happening anytime you implement a new program there's always gaps that happen because kids
haven't had the preceding years um I think one of the things that Vicki does a lot of work with with our math uh specialist uh one of who's in the audience tonight um is looking at that data and looking at all right I know you did launch units and developed units to to address some
of the skills that they may not have coming in or that they're expected to have that we know our gaps we use preassessment early um Benchmark data to say all right some of these kids have these um have missing skills in certain standards so when they administer the
benchmarks when we're talking about mtss what that really means is that teachers are getting together to look at all of that student data and it is by standard so you might look at a whole grade level or a group of students and say all right these five or six kids really don't have the the foundation they need in
fractions or decimals and then you design interventions we're going to plan these for additional lessons and this content for these kids to Target those skills and when Vicki was talking about progress monitoring through the electronic platform we then check in are they now doing better on those skills if not we design additional interventions
and then we remeasure so that's kind of how we're tracking um kids performance and and so there's grade level things that we know our gaps that you've been working with the specialist to develop you know additional lessons to supplement and then we have individual
student data that we use to design targeted interventions for those kids is that do you want to add to that or um yeah and I think like one of the things that um makes it a little bit challenging like for mathematics for example so when once we identify that a
student has certain gaps you know so our current program doesn't necessarily give enough differentiation resources so our math Specialists have actually build entire um uh resource Pages for teachers be like all right if a kid struggling with this here are some resources here's
some games you can play but one of the difficult things of that is that it's yet another place the teachers have to go find and look for resources and we know like a teacher's day is just you know maxed out and even though the supports are there it's much better when a program has a built-in you know what I
mean so like it's like one spot everything is is culminated you know so that's why I think that again we will see that growth once we have that stronger core um but we do an a um a really huge data analysis at the
beginning of the year uh the uh the math specialist and I meet we pull all of our student data from the beginning of your screener we take the end of year results from from the previous year and mcast scores and we basically do like a student ranking system you know where we kind of say all right like who are our
our most needy students so if a student is in fourth grade which we really don't have that many students and are missing second grade skills that student right away goes and works with a math specialist and what math Specialists offer is um they have years of
experience with mathematics they go to math professional development they you have like a really um uh uh high level understanding of like what when a fourth grader is missing second grade skills it's not just like pulling a worksheet like you have to really build in and what does that look like and how do you
accelerate them you know I mean so they're not falling further behind while they're learning skills from two years ago you know so that's what these positions kind of bring the expertise in you know um so those students always see a math specialist you know we don't have any students that I would say that are
really that far behind that don't have support built in we also work uh really closely with the teacher so like if they going to see a mass specialist we give them resources like this is what they can work on during their win time you know what I mean and like this is what they should be practicing and stuff so
we clarify what wi time is when time is that what I need Block it's sorry so it's it's like um Freeman Kennedy has it is is basically a dedicated half an hour that um Lisa has built into the teacher schedule where a student gets support and what they need you know so it could
be Ela it could be math uh it could be like sometimes they get pulled by Specialists or or provid or um sometimes if a student is accelerated they can practice they working a project you know so that's kind of like what it's used for are the specialist positions it's
worst the legs on these tables are terrible sorry um both in ela and math with the scores slowly improving and the upper grades still down with the budget constraints are we Ade adequately staffed specialist wise do you think
well that's where we're trying to add additional MTH support for the Upp grades you know to support the fifth and sixth um we students that require literacy support are are able to access that and and again our preliminary data looking at the Acadian screener this year we're seeing that upward Trend so
having having a program that addresses areas that were previously gaps particularly in written language language conventions some of the phonics pieces um we are seeing those those gains grow but they do have access to literacy literacy coaches and literacy supports they do and and our teachers
like I said because we build in such a strong progress monitoring now like where teachers can really like and we've dedicated time um to for teachers to have be able to work with students in the classroom too you know so we kind of look at like how if a student is just a
little bit below certain skill levels a teacher will meet with them they will work with them in small group or sometimes pull them individually to um build up that skill and it's like repetitive there's we have established um there's like a whole chart a flowchart that teachers use that we've created a couple years ago where like a
student's struggling with this particular skill this is how many times you should be meeting with the student for this is a duration this is how you're going to keep track you know what I mean if a student is not making progress they go um then they go to the student support um uh meeting uh that we have where it's a collection of of our
administrators of our Specialists other Educators and we say all right like what's happening why is this kiddo not making progress and then we the team kind of looks at all the data that's been that's being pulled that's been gathered and they say all right the student might need more intense intervention and then a specialist at
that point if they haven't been seen the student already will pick them up into a group and then that's where they might do a little bit more intense you know supports with skills that maybe have to go back a little bit further but most of our students respond really well to classroom intervention are able to um go
back to core um instruction um without needing support and the system is so fluid so like if you needed uh support in like one area and you kind of showed growth and you kind of chugging along everything's going great but then you might have another area that has popped
up you just go into the group you know so students enter and exits um all the time one question I had and I'm thinking about the fifth and sixth graders again and you know to your point about stamina and kind of the age that they're at and
some of the struggles they have with like sleep and energy what about you know time of day one is time of day you know I know like in in my fifth graders class they're doing an hour and 15 minutes as
their very last session of the day I it can't be easy for kids at that age to be doing like one of the most intense topics you know at the end end of the end of their day they're hungry they're you know whatever but the other is more
time they probably need more time on these topics as well as potentially you know breaking breaking up thep time throughout the day so there's the you know there's the brain rest and then activity around it and
then returning to it later again yeah I don't know I mean we have one of the higher um we give like I think I've I shared the um our breakdown with you before off the top of my head but we have um definitely in a higher end and how much we allocate for Ali and
Mathematics and sometimes um we're very also thoughtful of when we schedule um because it's a such a complex process that our principles have to go through you have to fit fit in lunch and Reese's and specials and you know and it's you we're very large schools you know so
like trying to balance everything but um our Ela blocks are not um it's not all intense learning you know what I mean so so like in the beginning you might have a direct lesson that's being delivered that's where afterwards you might do small group kids get movement so you get
to rotate through our centers that's why we we do a lot of central work in um Elementary and then if it's towards the end of the day sometimes teachers will do like that's where you free read time you know I mean that's when a teacher might pull a student to work with them at specific skills so it's not like the intensity level is not all equal you
know um we also try to keep our blocks um more intact because sometimes breaking up like if you have a um a a focus lesson uh and then you want to be able to follow up with practice if that's broken up that is very disjointed
our upper grades sometimes have lunch later too you know what I mean so like that's how like there's a lot of different considerations that are put in we try not to put math and Ela back to back that's usually spread um um spread out to and another consideration we have when we when we we kind of schedule is
that we try to give teachers Partners so they'll have another especially with a new Adoption so they'll have another classroom that they can U partner up with which allows for teachers sometimes to um teach Concepts together or share students if they need for support um also for our specialist to be able to
support and Coach classrooms and also support students we can't have math all in the morning you can't have like 40 classrooms like we have like two people you know so and our special Educators too like their service M so there's a lot of considerations that go into but I do feel pretty confident that the way
like like I said I've worked in many districts and we've tried so many different schedules even here we have revamped our schedules and we're probably going to we look at our Ela block again cuz feedback is you know a new program but um I'm pretty uh I feel pretty um um comfortable with the way
our our programming is like right now set up I think kids are able to access yes and and it's like it's spr it's um you're okay with some of the classes having it at the end of the day the math some of them unfortunately sometimes the classes have to because we
have we have math Specialists and if everybody has math at the same time we can't get that support into the classrooms um same with Ela and also with our special educators you know we have special Educators that work with students in multiple grade levels so if they're all having Ela at the same time
they can't pull but what we we do find first of all if um later in the day if it's after recess and they've had a movement break kids come back in more energized so we try to be thoughtful about that um younger kids they stamina Fades throughout the day so we try to
put um uh the the core content earlier in the day and do specials later in the afternoon so um we try to do the best that we can 10 with with making sure that kids have cognitive movement breaks and um that the chunks of time are also uninterrupted because as Vicki said if
you have math and you have a half hour and then you have a break and you come back to it there's a period of time that you lose in reorienting kids to what you were working on and catching up so um not perfect but we do the best that we can to maximize uh core content lessons
at times that make sense based on kids' developmental age and leverage the staff that we have teachers have a lot of voice into scheduling making like our Specialists and our special Educators so it's really like we try to honor everybody's um experience and expertise and needs you know CU they they work
with the AG groups for many many years and so like when we when we do schedules it's always like a team effort you know yeah just thinking outside the box a little no and and I I definitely absolutely yeah I I think they need more
time with math and Ela but that's an opinion of one it's hard to balance because I think the ELA block is what 120 minutes and then math is 90 yeah so and then you have social studies and Science and other core content so um in science we
want to give time to those great engineering units you know because that is a also mathematics it's like real world example of mathematics in ela you know what I mean it's just like that's where the kids get to really shine and those problem solving skills like that's where they're able to um showcase that
and practice them so like sated time over so like 120 Minutes it's a large block of the day and then 90 for for math is another large block so we've tried to as we said try to keep those blocks um connected so that we're not
losing time and we're leveraging um yeah I hear that we Tred to balance it you know they talk about balancing and like Readiness and this music and art and like those are all key you know as well and um could would a couple more hours help us
of course we could definitely good use you know it's just yeah we did add 10 minutes to the school Daya last negotiations but uh it hasn't rolled out exactly as we hope one of the ideas I had run by you gr I don't know if you
have thoughts on this is when I was looking through the norol rec brochure I know one of the Math teachers offers like a fun yep math-based program and I was wondering if there's any thought in doing more of that like I know 12 fourth graders who would whose parents would
love a find the punctuation error class like once a week you know and off maybe doing a little bit more academically based offerings either partnering with teachers who are interested in running these groups are partnering with the wreck just as like a once a week after school you could do that you could do
like 20 powerful vocabulary words that show up in good essays or just like little targeted we've done yeah book clubs are a common after school things so uh re has been a great partner with us uh in
the past I definitely think um you know there may be opportunities we often do that in the summer like fun math Camp fun math Camp um but we can certainly talk with them they've been responsive to to areas of you know um supporting us
with areas that we're interested in even if teachers were interested in hosting like a group like they could be like a I don't know like a quest where you have to solve math problems with where it's just working on those skills that would be useful to there's a coding after
school programs they do coding right with mat Mark and they've done coding they've done been very popular too they've engine yeah like St yeah so we can definitely like at additional all right so the Baseline report we will have available on our website um um following this meeting but
we wanted to present it to you first um next we are I think everybody's getting questions about the school calendar so in your pcket you have a proposed school calendar we have shared it with the norol Teachers Association for feedback um it looks very similar to
the this current school year uh I think the major changes are we want to shift uh one of our full professional development days to the start of the year before students start in order to be able to provide additional programming and professional development to support the implementation of the new
math program um so we are suggesting moving uh uh one of the full professional days up um earlier in the calendar and um uh what else is different on that uh so that would give us two days for PD
prior to school opening in August um and then we've really over the past few years been trying to work collaboratively with rthm planville and KP to have some shared PD days and and that allows us to share cost for some mandated programming and also um secure
stronger and better presenters to come in because we're C sharing um so we have talked about uh having some of these uh PD days as shared days um in the calendar last day of school would be June 15th snow dates June 16th through
the 23rd so um pretty similar to this year conferences around the same time again the the difference being in August you see two um PD days with student Starts Day being on Wednesday the 27th um so that's moving the day that we
typically have uh in January um up to before school opens I have to say we're very excited about the shared PD days the towns are um yeah that we were able to do a PD a shared PD day in this past November where with rthm planville KP and
teachers offered workshops and people just could go and sign up for whatever Workshop was of Interest so we had like probably over 60 workshops that were able to offer awesome and we had like great resp and people are asking for more of that type of you know so it's nice that we have
that so just looking for a motion to approve the calendar once it's approved we will send it out to all of our families and put it on the website uh I move to approve the proposed 2025 2026 school
calendar second any further discussion can I just ask is kindergarten is everything open the same day or will that happen no so the first day of school for um students would be oh I let me check with Adrian she should
add it kindergarten would start with the parent visit the first day half the class the next day and half to class the following week so it'll be the same staggered start same as usual but the day would still be the 27th that would but it's a visit right right yeah and
then they get um uh in the kindergarten information packet they'll get it's morning afternoon and then half and half yeah with a craft oh I have three of them hanging on my fridge all those in favor I I um uh just two more items we're
winding down so quarterly bullying report per policy um in the last quarter there was one report of potential bullying at the H all of day school and at this time it's currently under investigation uh and then there was one report of potential bullying at the Freeman Kennedy School which was
investigated um consistent with our protocol and our policies and it would did not meet the criteria for bullying um so obviously appropriate disciplinary measures were taken um we continue to provide comprehensive instruction in anti-bullying uh through open circle in Second Step um and we are seeing those
numbers start to Trend down um they spiked postco so any questions on that okay and then last uh an update on the base State shelter um I sent out a family communication last week um current ly uh
we have 52 students enrolled from the shelter uh we're seeing a little bit of a shift there's more students coming in uh in the last group uh to the lower grades um than there were at the upper grades um we do have seven students scheduled to be moving out in the next
week so those numbers will go down and we have fewer new students coming in this week we have three um that we expect to start uh on Monday um we're meeting regularly with the state uh to follow the plans for the Bas date at this time they are still reporting that
it will be closing in June um they don't expect it to be uh extended beyond that um one of the issues we continue to work on is funding um so we had initially $104 a day per student from the shelter that was authorized in a supplementary
budget and the supplementary budget timeline is different than the regular state budget so it expired in December and it is now being discussed to renew in extend to next year it is in um the confence committee trying to resolve differences um but we are waiting for that information to
come have we take any questions people have all right um I think that's it on my list for the um baselines and benchmarks I went through and it looks like a lot of Peter's questions were addressed just
the new aspirational goals is that something we're going to address at a future we can we can um just uh yeah in response to that um we do have some goals that we've already uh have in place so in my professional goals that I
presented to the committee um uh their two-year goals uh last September I have a goal around Ela Improvement um and that goal was to improve uh achievement in the area of ela as measured by a 4% increase in the number of students scoring in the meet and exceeds category
um by Spring 2020 26 as well as a 4% increase in the Acadian acadians reading composite scores um which would put us you know move us up towards the top quarter um that goal was recognizing that when in the first year of an
implementation of new program teachers are still learning the program so um it's going to take a couple of years to start to see that uh accelerate I also have a good Gap narrow angle um looking to increase performance of students with disabilities by a higher percentage um 5 to 6% so that we start to close that
goal um Vicki has a a a goal around mathematics and that was to imp improve fact math fact fluency because our data shows that's what's holding a lot of our kids back in those higher level skills um by 10% and you've been working on that um and then we have a goal around
supporting the implementation of the ELA program and and adopting a new math program so those are the existing goals in terms of um accelerating covid recovery and and achievement but I definitely think if the committee wants to talk about additional goals um we're
already I think three percentage points away from you know we're in the top quartile of uh our districts for Math and we expect that to go up with the the if we achieve the goal of that fluency so happy to do that um it might be a good idea for the school committee to set aside a full meeting to talk about
about goals if we want to do things further but just wanted to share the goals that we currently have in place and we do have um strong goals in terms of accelerating that Improvement um and you'll be able to measure those by next year's Benchmark report
so any other questions I think we have some I think we can possibly talk through this in the future yep yeah I think I think those are wonderful goals that you outlined I think
um I think looking at these reports they're there's still they're they're good and there's like you know kind of Standalone metrics metrics right tying it together and kind of seeing where where we Norfolk are headed and where do we want to be y you know across it maybe
comp from a composite perspective of mcast plus your benchmark y metrics um and I think the school committee can set goals like District goals these are just my personal professional goals but we can we can talk about District go I think that's a good conversation yeah
we'll put that on a future okay agenda um moving on to committee and leaz on reports anything from policy um we're meeting this stay tuned yeah meeting after this meeting um budget you just we just updated unless you have any
more dude we're good I think the public hearing March March 12th or it's the Wednesday I I don't the 11th sorry I'll be there building committee uh yes so the building committee has met once since
the um unsuccessful uh election um not all the members were able to attend but um we did meet and kind of debrief um and discuss what the next steps for that committee might look like um and also what recommendations it
might have um in the go forward because obviously while the project that was proposed was not approved by the town the situation as we discussed at the front end of this meeting continues to exist and will continue to get worse uh
in the coming years so I think that um the committee was of the consensus that a great Next Step would be for the school committee um in conjunction with the select board to talk about uh another application to msba um which if
that was successful would significantly change the kind of tenor of the project from a from a cost standpoint um it would extend the time frame um because you have to sort of go back to the beginning a little bit if you are
invited to participate with msba but it is certainly a worthwhile Endeavor to undertake I think those applications are due in April April um and then a determination is made by msba typically by a the August September time frame um
so in the meantime um I think there would be to an extent a certain kind of L inactivity until we get some feedback um from the school committee and the select board about whether or not an msba application is going to be submitted um and you know what possible
next steps might be um and I mean am I leaving anything El I'm only reporting because Grace couldn't attend the committee also discussed that it might be valuable at this point to expand the committee and bring more uh Community Voices to the table are
continuing planning efforts so you would need to vote on msba appliation at the next meeting well that is 100% the decision of the school committee and the select board so the the school we would need to bring it to the March meeting for the committee to
vote so msba there's no commitment just to because you apply you're not committed to the project but in order to apply the school committee and the select board have to vote to approve the district and applying for that um so we would be wouldd have to do it in March
in order to meet the April timeline and the select board would also have to do it in their March meeting um KP no major updates um we did do the retirement incentive that you talked about there we voted that but nothing major
there um liaison I'll just do the PTO really quick Heritage night was a huge success 30 families shared something about their culture there were over 300 attendees uh we have adult and student trivia events coming up this month and an hod movie night the growing together
fundraiser with the CPAC will be on April 5th and will be a Casino Royale theme and the funds will go towards a sensory walk um and then they've also contributed to a uh a number of curriculum enhancements including the kindergarten puppet show first grade sound Workshop third art Quest third
force and magnetism and the fourth art Quest and they just approved funding for um a math technology program so a lot of great work from the PTO any other lays on updates no I think the wck just dropped their updated
brochure just a shout out for summer programming sign up for for camp and then we to new items the minutes from our last meeting were put it in your packet if you had a chance to review uh I'd be
looking for a motion to accept the minutes as written so moved second any further discussion all those in favor I I all right and then next meeting is will be the public budget hearing yep on March
11th followed by school committee exactly okay now I'm there anything else from anyone right just looking for a motion to adjourn I move to adjourn second any further discussion all those
in favor