Good evening everyone. Calling the Norfolk School Committee meeting to order. Today is Monday, December 15th, 2025. I'll begin this meeting by reading our mission statement. The Norfick 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 provide an education that inspires lifelong learners and cultivates caring and productive citizens of our everchanging world. Can I have a roll call, please? >> Peter Schwald, >> Lauren Divas, >> Grace Lockhead, Madora Champagne, >> Lisa Sheldon,
>> Katie Young. >> Nailed it. >> Off to a good start. >> First item on the agenda tonight is public comment. Looks like we have none. Okay. And we have no correspondence. So
that takes care of item B. Moving on to the chair report. We have some generous gifts to approve tonight. Um the first one is for from the Northfor PTO in the amount of $7,400 and this is for the homework homework
club stipens that just began um and indoor recess non-technology bins. The next item is from the Norfol PTO as well in the amount of $2,210 and those are for HOD fall grant requests. Next one also from the PTO,
$2,380. Freeman Kennedy fall grant requests. And the next one is also from the Norfick PTO for $10,000 for a projector project. >> Yeah. And that is to replace the screen and the projector at the age all of day
in the main um auditorium gym combined multi-purpose room. >> Awesome. Looking for a motion to approve these gifts as stated. >> So moved. >> Second. >> Further discussion. >> Almost $22,000. Huge. Thank you.
>> It's very much to our PTO. >> All right. All those in favor. on pair of professional negotiations update. We met when was that? I don't >> last week on umuesday. >> Wednesday. Wednesday. >> So the four uh no that was yesterday was
the 14th. >> See I don't know either. >> Last week on Wednesday >> the >> I would say it's going well. We've agreed to a lot of the language. Um I think that there are some um >> we refer to as tenative agreement, you
know, kind of agreements in spirit and we're continuing to review and cost out financial um negotiations and we are scheduled to next meet in January shortly after we come back from the winter break. So
moving along at the end. All right. So um couple of things just to share some happenings going on around the district. So last week as probably all of you know we had uh parent conferences at both Hol Day and Freeman Kennedy. Um it's a great
opportunity. We enjoy having parents have the opportunity to come in and visit and see their children's classroom. Um meet with their teachers. Um it uh it's a chance to kind of reflect and share information about children's progress and and celebrate some of the growth that they've made over the fall term. So, um, it was great
to welcome so many of our parents and families into the schools. Um, many also stopped by the PTO's Scholastic Book Fairs in both buildings. It's a a very popular event. Also, last uh, two weeks ago on December 4th, the uh, superintendent Dr. Rich Drole from King
Phillip and I presented at the Norfolk Citizens Academy. That was an opportunity for us to share information about the school budget process, some of the critical needs that our schools are facing. Um, talk about how schools are funded. It was a really actually it was a really nice night. We had probably 20
people from the uh citizens academy group. It was held at the Holy Library. Um, we were able to share some of the uh special projects we funded through grants to the schools and then answer questions um from community members of of that group. So, it was a really nice
night, great chance to engage with uh and some rich discussion around school finance. Um I think Donna was there filming for Norfolk Cable. So, it's available for anybody to view as all the citizens academy meetings have been at HOD this month. HOD continues to uh uh
run their be of the month program which is part of their positive behavior incentive program recognizing students who are modeling positive behaviors in the school. They also had uh we have uh we're part of the unified champion schools program which is run by special
uh it used to be special Olympics but it's really a program that looks at how you can make your schools welcoming and accessible to students with different abilities throughout the school year not just at that one day. Um so students in some of our specialized subsequent programs had the opportunity to partner with peers and to engage in unified
champion schools lessons and activities um that went really well. Again, the goal of the program is to foster climates where students with disabilities feel welcome, are routinely included in and part of all school activities, operations, and functions. So, that uh continues to go well. We
have committees at both schools that are working on planning and um schoolwide events and activities related to unified champion schools. Our tech integration specialist, Robin Tuseri, has been continuing to work with the first grade students over at Han Day um to explore
engineering and design through the Museum of Science Youth Engineering Solutions Kits that the PTO supported funding for this year. Um and that is going well. You had a presentation from Robin last time, so you have a sense of what those that curriculum looks like. Um they have an upcoming schoolwide
assembly in the next week prior to the December break. That's a winter sing along and they are running their annual hat and mitten drive at the Freeman Kennedy this uh just last week. The students have earned over 10,000 feathers a month for the first three
months of school. So they had a schoolwide celebration. Uh they did a really great job again designing the event to be inclusive so that all students could participate. They had a um sore hot shot basketball assemblies by grade level. Um students had two
minutes to shoot as many baskets as they could and keep track. Any students that didn't want to be part of the um competition or part of the it's really competition against yourself, but who didn't want to could be part of the cheerleading um and build science and and cheer on their colleague uh their
peers and teachers who were part of the the event. So, it was a great event. Um the kids really liked it. At the end, the staff members engaged in a um a knockout basketball game and the kids loved watching that. So, it was a lot of fun for everybody. They have an upcoming
chorus concert for grades 3 to six on December se 22nd and they also are planning a schoolwide sing along before the break. Um FK is engaged in the season of giving which the school committee approved as one of their fundraisers um and are actively collecting gift cards to support
families who might be in need over the winter season. So, that's a quick look at what's happening across the district. Happy to answer any questions people might have. All right, great. Tonight, we have our new director of curriculum, Katie Young, here who is going to provide you with a
presentation and update on students performance on the spring MCAST exams for ELA, math, and science. Science is only taken in grade five. So, um the others are uh across the grades. So, I'll turn it to Katie. >> All right. Um, thank you for having me
today. I'm really excited I get to present this. Um, there's a lot of of really promising data to look at. Um, we're going to look at some overview of of what MCCAST is. We're going to look at uh how Nor compares to both the state
and similar districts. And then we'll go through some of the specific data for Norfor both for all three for English, language arts, mathematics, and science, technology, and engineering. Sorry. So, one thing that's important to remember about MCCAST is that it's a
measure of one or two days of the students um of the students career in school that year. Um and students respond to that kind of pressure in all different ways just as adults do. Um you know, some students
get really nervous, some students do better under pressure. Um and it's it's really just one or two days of their of their their whole grade level. So teachers, we're going to we look at the data for MCCAST. We like to look for
trends to to find out some ways that we need to grow and some things we're really proud of, but we also look at a lot of the other data that we collect on a daily basis. Um some of which are the benchmark assessments for ELA, math, um
SEAL, uh screeners, unit assessments, sub quizzes. Um this year both the HMH into reading and inter literature and um amplify math have a lot of exit tickets uh or I think
amplify calls it show what you know but it's a chance for teachers to at the end of a lesson just do a little check check check-in to make sure uh their students are where they think they are. Um and then if they're not to be able to provide immediate um immediate support the next day or maybe later on that day.
Um, and there's daily work. So, when we're looking at our students growth and their achievement, we're looking at a lot of factors. Um, I just wanted to to kind of preface what we're going to we're going to look at today with that information. Um, MCAST is important. It really does measure a lot of um the
students their demonstration of their abilities. I think that's important that we it does not measure what they can and cannot do. It measures what they're able to demonstrate at that time. Um, so it's a snapshot. We use that data to reflect and to um you know make some changes as
needed but um it is just just a couple days in their lives. Um most of the students in grades three through through six take the MCCAST on their computers. If there are um accommodations in the IEPs or 504s they can take it on paper.
The paper version is almost identical to the digital version. The only difference would be if there's like if there's a drag and drop for example on MASS on the computer it might just be fill in the blanks with like an answer key I mean um
you know like a possible answers above. Um but in general they all took the same assessment. I think you've probably seen uh some of this multiple times over the past many years so we won't spend too much time talking about it but there are four levels of achievement. um not meeting
expectations, partially meeting, meeting expectations, and exceeding expectations. Um often what we when we talk about our students, we group them meeting and exceeding together. So you'll notice that throughout the presentation. Um and we're going to start with just
some really zoomed out data. So, we're going to dig into our Norfolk data um much more um on a much more detailed level after, but I just want to start by showing our comparisons between uh how Norfolk did this past spring and how we
compared to some of our similar districts and the state. So, I'll give you a minute because there's a lot of numbers up there, but you can see that Norol is about in the middle of the pack um in ELA
and we are performing 16% higher than um than the state and these percentages represent the number of students who are meeting or exceeding our expectations. So, while 58% is um is, you know, like I said, the middle middle of the pack, we
always want to strive to do better. For math, uh you can see Nor's a little bit higher on the on this end in math. Uh 66% of our students scored meeting or exceeding expectations. And again, you can look at the data. There's a three towns that are
similar to us that scored above us. and we scored above um most of the rest of the towns that are similar to us. Uh let's see and 25 points percentage points above the state. So this slide right here shows all of
ELA and all the grade levels um all combined into one score. So when we're looking at the entire FK population, 58% of our students scored meeting or exceeding um the expectations, their
average scale score was 505, which is um which is meeting expectations. And the student growth percentile is 50 is 50. Um the student growth percentile is what is one area that I really do think is
important that we look at and it shows how the students are doing compared to the students who took their same test and did similarly last year. So for example, if we have a fifth grader who scored a 505
in fifth grade, when they go to sixth grade, all the students who scored 505 in fifth grade are put into one category. and then their sixth grade scores are ranked. So the the goal is to get in about the middle of that pack. So 40 to 60% student growth shows average
growth. Um obviously the higher the better and that's what you know we'll keep on working towards but 50% is a is a good student growth. It shows that our students are growing at a at a um pretty average rate. Any questions about this one?
You can feel free to ask questions as I go. Please interrupt. Um, in math, 66% of our students scored meeting or exceeding. Um, the average scale score was 508 and our student
growth percentile on average was 54%. So, this is something I was able to look at some of um, Victoria Sana's previous slides. something that she had always done was to show one cohort as they progressed from third grade through sixth grade. So I was able to do that
with the most recent um graduates of FK. And you can see here that um ELA is purple and green or math is green. And the bars are showing the percentage of students who are meeting or exceeding um
expectations. So although there's some ups and downs, it's pretty pretty steady in that that 55 to 65 percentage. >> And Katie, also um when we've looked at this in the past, statewide students
data um tends to do drop in in fifth grade. >> Okay, thank you. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, that's probably a very important point thing. >> Um so now we're going to dig a little bit deeper to just look at some of our ELA data by the grade levels. Um we're going to start with looking at some of
the um types of questions, the scoring rubrics um and then we'll go over the data. So this is one example. This is a third grade. I know you can't read it. It's small, but this is a third grade um essay. So what the students had to do
was read this passage, which you can see, can you see my cursor? Yeah, you can see it was a long passage. It goes on and on. when students take the um ELAC test, the passage is always on the left side so they can refer to it. Um,
and I noticed when I was preparing that there was this little nifty feature where you can hover over a word and it gives you a glossy definition. So, I don't know if that's new. Um, but that's something that I thought is is important that we are this is why we look at the
test so that we can prepare our students to take advantage of things like this. Um, for the essay, the students need to write about three paragraphs in third grade. Fourth through sixth, they're closer to five paragraphs. Um, and there
are there are rubrics that score both the idea development and the standard English um, conventions. I'm not going to go into great detail here, but I believe you all have the digital version of this, too. If you click this down here, and I typed it
out, um you can see uh student examples, you can see uh different examples of each of the scores, um and other questions that were asked. So, it's a great resource, um just to have bookmarked if you're interested. Another type of question that is often
on board that is always on the ELA pass are the selected responses. So, this is a sixth grade selected response. This is the fifth grade selected response. Um, sometimes it's just multiple choice, sometimes there's multiple sections. Another way that you see selected
response is they may say select all the the options that apply to whatever the question is. Um, so selected response is not just multiple choice anymore. Um, lastly, there is a constructed response which is another writing
response but it's shorter. It's about a paragraph and it's scored on a three-point scale. Again, you can use the um the link to look at some other examples or these examples. So, for our ELA, we're going to start in grade six and go down to grade three. We'll do that in
all the subject areas. Um so, this I'm if you're noticing this beautiful little uh lip going straight up. Um it's exciting to see. I do want to caution us that one year of data is
really one year of data. The students change, the test changes. Um nothing is the same from year to year. So what I what I look at when I see this though is that last year was more of an outlier and these are more of where we are. Um
so we've been going up and down a little bit. We have a new ELA curriculum as you all know. Typically within the first year of a curriculum, there's more of a dip. And that's because the students and the teachers are all learning new ways of thinking. They don't always get through the whole curriculum in a year
because they're um as we talked about last time I was here, sometimes they had to stop what they're doing and and fill a gap that didn't need to be addressed before, but based on this new curriculum, they're finding out. Um so oftent times there's a little bit of a dip. The other reason there's a dip
sometimes is um the newer curriculum really focuses on long-term understanding and deeper understanding whereas older curriculum was more skills-based and just wrote practice um in general. And so as we're using the
new curriculum based on new science of of learning, sometimes when you're focused on deeper long-term understanding, it takes a little bit longer to really solidify that. um but it does pay off in dividends in the end.
So um ELA has the domains of the essay, the language, reading, writing. There's also a listening and speaking but that's not assessed by MCCAST. Um within each domain there are clusters. So what I showed here were
just the clusters and within each cluster are the standards. So, the clusters do contain more than one standard, but without, you know, looking through every last little bit of detail, um, I thought this would give us a little bit of an idea. And what stands
out to me when I look at this is our, um, difference from the state. So, uh, while we're, you know, we're always working on improving, uh, and we do have some areas that we want to focus on, we are compared to the state doing, um, our
students are performing really well. So this next slide is something that's new I believe to this kind of presentation but I really wanted to talk about you know I said each test every year changes the students change the test questions change so it's really
hard to look at one number of one test and say this is where we are at this time it's a a lot um it's a lot it makes a lot more sense to look at how we're trending and So what I did was put together um the last three years. So what you see on the right is last year,
how we performed on MCCAST or last spring. Um on the left is the last three years looking at just the the domain. And then to get a little more specific over here we have the clusters of
standards and how we how our students did on average um over the last three years. The averages that I was showing earlier were percent of students who meet or exceed expectations. This changes to the average percent correct out of the possible points. Um so you
can see integration of knowledge and ideas 80% real strength. Um and as we've I know you've spoken with with with the district about in the past writing has been a weakness um or an area of growth that we are really working on. So, I'll
talk a little bit more about what we're doing for writing at the end. Um, but you can see that this is an area that we do have some work to do. Fifth grade, um, as Dr. Al already said, fifth grade's a hard testing year. Um,
and in general, this it shows. Um, so 47% of our students were meeting or exceeding the standard. uh the average skills score was still meeting. It's 501 and this average student growth percentile is 42.5.
To look at the clusters again, um you can see that we are well above the state in many of the standards. When it comes to our writing standards, that's where we we are going. We're focusing a lot this year. I can slow down but I feel like you guys
have you have this right. I don't want to go through every every bit but please again ask questions. Um over the course of the last 3 years we are um our students have received about 72% of the possible points for reading, 64% for
language and 43% for writing. So writing again is something that we're focused on very much this year. Fourth grade, this is going to look very similar to fifth grade. 54% of our students met or exceeded
expectations. The average scale score was 502 and their student growth percentile is 48.3. Um again if we're looking at um at the clusters of standards one of the areas of um of strength
there we found it were the key ideas and details in reading. So reading in general has been our strength in across all uh grade levels and again writing is an area that we're going to work on. um conventions of standard English which is also part of the the a big part of our
writing is a new focus for our teachers and students in Northbook. Um there there was always some grammar but our new program focuses a lot more on grammar and so students are building
from K to first to second to third. um and they are going to gradually get stronger and stronger in those conventions of standard English. >> And just to to piggy back on that, so when we were looking for a new ELA program, we knew this was an area of weakness and we were looking for a
program that had a strong written language and writing component. So um that is part of why HMH was selected. >> And there's a lot to remember in grammar. It's grammar is not just something you're going to learn in one year. So, when we're looking at students who at this point had uh probably about
eight months of grammar as opposed to that intense grammar instruction over the course of many years, um we're hoping that we'll continue to see growth from here on out.