All right. Good evening everybody. Welcome to the June 2nd meeting of the Plymouth uh school committee. For everyone, please join me in the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation
under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, Miss Bryant, would you please read our land acknowledgement? We acknowledge that we are meeting on the unseated ancestrial homeland of
indigenous people whose enduring presence we humbly recognize. We honor the Wanoic people as the original stewards and the Herring Juan Wampno as the surviving tribe indigenous to these lands. In our commitment to lifelong
learning, we acknowledge historical injustices to the native people of this land and vowed to educate ourselves, our community, and our students on the first peoples, and the hardships they endured. We offer this as a small but essential
step towards building a culture of respect, truth, and accountability. Thank you, Miss Bryant. All right, our uh first order of business tonight is we have a horde of um excited students and families outside waiting to get uh recognized for uh getting to display
their artwork uh throughout uh central office here at 11 uh Lincoln Street. So, we will be heading outdoors, take a field trip outside and come back. You want to say a few words? Want want to say something? You want me to say you can go? Okay. Are you ready, Mr. Cable?
Hello everyone. And we got beautiful weather for this. So, thank you for your patience. Um really excited to have so many students here tonight. Um this is an annual tradition. Actually we do it twice a year. Um to display the amazing
artwork that is done throughout this district from from the little ones all the way through the high school. And this is my 17th year here. So this is the 34th time that I've witnessed this. And it just gets better and better. And it's just so amazing to see uh just the
amazing work that our students do led by our uh inspirational staff that really um just do tremendous things with kids each and every day. I just want to take a moment to thank you for supporting the arts. The visual and performing arts is extremely important to the school committee to us as administration. Um
and this is sort of a reflection of that. So we're really happy to be here to to honor your students and recognize them. Uh this will be recorded if Mr. Cable probably already said that. So it's an opportunity if their loved ones that won't see it now, they can see it
later. So in a moment, Mr. Bzano will be calling your name. Our chair of our school committee uh handing you a certificate and we'll shake your hand. Okay. So we'll take it one one at a time. All right. Thank you everybody. All right. So first up we have Cecilia
Lteran. Nope. Applause. Applause. Thank you. Next up, uh Martin Zapati from South Elementary School. And and if I if I butch Oh, and if I butcher anybody's name, please correct
me. William Zapati from South Elementary School. Congratulations, William. Oh, this is going to be a tough one. From a from South Elementary School, Lucas Flandrrianos. Congratulations.
All right. Also, South Elementary, Andrew Jordan. Congratulations. Congratulations, Jordan. All right. Uh, Dylan Margarite. Thanks, buddy. All right. So, South Elementary School, Abigail
Hall. All right. Lillian Nord Doll. [Applause] All right. So with South Elementary, Leah Lefibbra. Congratulations. All right. Uh Arya Thompson also from
South Elementary School. [Applause] All right. Now moving on to Federal Furnace Elementary. McKenzie Wyman. Congratulations. So Federal Furnace, Maya Chin.
All right. Federal Furnace Elementary, Rowan McLaclin. [Applause] All right. Still with Federal Furnace, Khloe Borgatti. Congratulations. All right. Now, moving on to South uh
Nathaniel Morton Elementary School. Alice Arenholes. [Applause] All right. Still with Nathaniel Morton. Reese Hoben.
Reese. All right. Uh Scarlett Babini also from Nathaniel Morton. All right, Izzy calls from Nathaniel Morton. Good job, Izzy. All right, second with Nathaniel Morton. Mason
Marino. Good job, Mason. All right, so with Nathaniel Morton, Ty Hamilton, Ty. All right, next up, AD Cody, also with Nathaniel Morton.
All right. Still with Nathaniel Morton, Cali Delaney. [Applause] All right. Still with Nathaniel Morton. Brantley Gdetti. [Applause]
Certificate. Here you go, bud. There you go. All right. Hey, now we're moving on to Hedge Elementary School. Evan [Applause] Fitzgibbons. All right. And Cold Spring Elementary School, Elizabeth McDonald.
All right. Still with Cole Spring Elementary School, Thomas Cummings IVth. Good job, [Applause] Thomas. All right, moving on to Madame Met Elementary School. Cadence Olri Congratulations. All right. So with
Madonna Elementary, Ella Parsons. [Applause] Oh, you lost. All right. All right. We have Skyla Packard
with Madamett Elementary. that way. Go that way. Go that way. All right. Still with Madame Elementary. Ta Vanipoot. I get that right. Oh, TA. Sorry. TA. TA.
All right. Also with Metam Elementary, Ree Trout. Trout. All right, next up is Declan Mcclelay from Manamett [Applause] Elementary. All right, now we're moving
on to Indian Brook Elementary School. Cameron [Applause] Mcomes. All right, still with Indianbrook, Kora Peronic.
[Applause] All right, next up is Stella Geronda from [Applause] Indianbrook. All right, still with Indian Brook Elementary School, Olivia
Bowman. [Applause] All right. Also with Indianbrook, Jad Bunjahed. I get that right. Congratulations.
All right. Still with at Indian Brook, Mave Lynch. All right. Next up is Kley McGinness, also from Indianbrook. All right. Good job. All right, next up is Tessa Jones.
[Applause] I know this one. All right, still with Indian Brook, we have Milo Goon. [Applause] All right, moving on to West Elementary
School. Mila Richards or Mila Mila. Mila Mila. All right, Beverly Ellenburgger from Westley. [Applause] All right, so with West Elementary
School, Ivy Kuskowski. [Applause] All right, next up, moving on to Plymouth South Middle School, Ally O' Conor. Congratulations, Dolly.
[Applause] All right. So, Plymouth South Middle, Dalia Reynolds. [Applause] [Applause] All right. And also from Puma South, Scarlett O'Neal.
[Applause] All right. And next up, Ava Lane, also from Puma South Middle. Ava, and then Riley Allen. [Applause] All right, second with P South Middle.
Next up, we have Julia Bose or Bose Bossy. Thank you. All right, P South Middle, Kobe Watt. [Applause] All right, so with Puma South Middle,
Matos Malios, you got it. I got it. All right. Thanks. [Applause] Yes. All right. Uh, next up, Nick Starret from Plental. Job, Nick.
All right. Uh, now moving on to PCIS, we have Cheyenne Ducet Baker. [Applause] Congratulations. All right. Still with PCIs, Mackenzie [Applause]
Sanderson. Mackenzie. All right. Next up with PCIS, we have Sarah Borgazani. Good job, Sarah. All right. And next up from Pus PIS as
well, John Lion. Lion. [Applause] All right. Moving on to the high schools. First up from Pmouth North, Shay Donnelly. And also from Plymouth North, Caleb [Applause] Leblanc. All right. And second with
Plymouth North, Aaron Johnson. Congratulations. Sorry. All right. And now moving on to Plymouth South High School. First up is Miley Sylvia. Sorry, Miley. All right. And then back to
Plymouth North, Cadence Loose. Lucy Loose. And then back to Plymouth South High School, Sophia Michael. Congratulations and Plymouth South, Mia [Applause] Monroe. And then from Plymouth South,
Ephmeia Malios. Was I close from Plymouth? South Lane [Music] [Applause] Los and then coming back to Nathaniel Morton Elementary School, Will
[Applause] Hubs. And also from Nathaniel Morton, Sophia Fernandez. And then also from Nathaniel Morton, Mary Jane Fernandez. I think he might be
all right. And moving over to South Elementary School, Nova. [Music] Congratulations, Nova. And from Plymouth North, Sophia Sophia Zupi. I like I like the shirt. Last but not
least. And last but not least from Col Spring Elementary School, Olivia Reed. Congratulations. [Applause] All right, looks like that's it. Well, thank you everybody for coming out. Thankfully, we had beautiful weather today. So, thank you. Congratulations to
all your [Applause] kids. Wonderful night and a wonderful summer. Happy and safe summer with your families. Thank you. I can do both.
Yeah, I've been working. We will go ahead and uh keep moving. Next up would be comments from the community members and we have no one here today, so we will uh keep moving on to our next order of business. Um, first next up we have our high school representative uh updates. So, first up
from Plymouth North High School we have Anna King. Um, good evening everyone. So, this week at Plymouth North we will be celebrating over 300 graduate students on Saturday. We are looking forward to celebrating our senior class and all of their accomplishments.
Meet the coaches night for fall sports will be held tomorrow, June 3rd, at 6 pm. Students interested in participating in fall sports at Plymouth North should attend with a parent or guardian. Information and more season logistics will be discussed throughout the
meetings. Congratulations to all of the spring athletic teams for making it into the MIA tournament this season. Congratulations to our unified track and field athletes. Many were able to qualify and compete in the state meet last week at NIT High School. The biology MCCAST will be held this week
for our 9th graders at Plymouth North. The last day that the cafeteria will be offering hot breakfast is Friday, June 13th, and lunch will be and lunch will be Thursday, June 12th. We want to extend a huge thank you to our cafeteria staff for providing our school community
with meals daily every day for the last year. The last day for our late buses is Thursday, June 5th. Late buses will no longer be available after that date, so please plan accordingly. This past Friday, Plymouth North Junior Prom was held at Lake Pearl
and the sorry the theme was tangled and starry night themed with lots of beautiful lanterns as centerpieces. Over 270 Plymouth North students, guests, and staff were in attendance. The prom court was made up of 10 nominated juniors by
staff and students. Congratulations to all the juniors on the court. Um, class adviserss Jen Mcwarter and Amy Goldberg recognized junior class 2026 officers, delegates, and members of the prom committee. Thank you to the several students that have dedicated months and
extra hours of their time to plan an amazing night. A fun time was had by all. This past Friday, we honored our senior class at our class day ceremony. The whole school gathered to celebrate the senior's last day of school. So many seniors were recognized and awarded for different things across their four years
at Plymouth North. Our first PNHS drone team had a great season qualifying for the 2024 to 2025 championship race held in Houston, Texas. They placed 10th overall for the country for head-to-head racing and
ninth overall for team capture the flag. They missed qualifying for the finals by 44 seconds in Capture the Flag. and by 3.67 seconds in head-to-head racing. The team did great overall. Tomorrow, June 3rd, the senior dinner dance will take
place at Indian Pond Country Club. This will be a fun night filled with celebration as it is our senior's last class event before graduation. Thursday, June 5th will be our convocation night for seniors that are being recognized. And Saturday will be our graduation ceremony for our
graduating seniors. Wednesday, June 11th and Thursday, June 12th are the first and full day exams for first and second half of the day. I'm sorry, first and second period of the of those days. Friday, June 13th and Monday, June 16th
are both half days and exam periods only. And Tuesday, June 17th will be the last day of school and a half day as well for any students who need to make up exams. Thank you. Thank you, Anna. And next up from Pum South, we have uh Lily Morse. Hello
everyone. This is a busy time for the seniors and we had a great class day on Friday where we celebrated the entire class. We begin graduation rehearsals tomorrow. Scholarship night is Wednesday and senior dinner dance is Thursday. Graduation being Saturday at 1 p.m. We
also have our elementary walks this week which we are looking forward to. At the end of class day, PSHs awarded senior Liam McGryy and his family with the first ever legacy award. Liam is the final of 12 McGelry children to graduate from PSHS. The oldest, Kyle,
graduated in 2003. A number of the McGillry alum were able to attend when we surprised Liam and his parents. Grade N students will take the biology MCCAST on Wednesday and Thursday, June 4th and 5th. Students should report directly to their testing
rooms upon arrival to South. Final exams for underassmen begin on Wednesday, June 11th, and underclassman award night is June 12th. Congratulations to Zoe WA, who was honored with her family recently. Zoe signed her national letter of intent to
further her track and field career at Assumption University. Congratulations to all the spring Torney teams at South. Boys and girls tennis, baseball, softball, and boys lacrosse. Three events are happening today. Baseball away at Westwood High School,
softball home, and boys lacrosse home. Congratulations to the following members of the boys and girls track teams for their outstanding performances this weekend at Westfield State at the Division 3 state championships. The boys 4 by 800 meter relay team of Noah
Brilliant, CJ Fox, Matt Gregory, and Anthony Lions placed second in the state. The highlights of the meet were in the 400 meter hurdles and Alexa Lazniki winning her first state title and Lilia Davies winning not one but two state titles in the shot put in discus. And lastly, thank you to Mrs.
White and her students from PSMS who honored our seniors who are entering the military with a thoughtful gift and small ceremony at PSHS. Thank you. Definitely a lot going on. Do we have any questions for either representative? All right. Well, we have one of one of I know this is Lily's uh
last meeting. She'll be graduating on uh Saturday. Unfortunately, Quinn had to come to the last meeting, so he's not able to be here um from North, but we wish you both uh very well and thank you for representing your classes so well throughout the year. Thank you. All right. Thank you. All right. Next up, we have two program
updates um for tonight's meeting. First up from uh the Plymouth Early Childhood Center is Miss Denise Tobin. Let's get back up remote. Back up remotes. Good evening everyone. I'm Denise Tolbin, the principal of the Plymouth Early Childhood Center. Thank
you for having me here tonight. So, um, the first slide looks back, um, over the past few years about our growth. We've been talking a lot about the growth of the Plymouth Early Childhood Center and the preschool as a whole. Um so you can see
from 2020 to where we are now and these numbers were um on April 30th. Currently, as of today, we are at 292 students um and 197 active IEPs that we're servicing at the Plymouth Early
Childhood Center right now. Um with that too, I don't know if you can see in the small, we have 7.6 6% of our students are multil- language learners with those numbers. So the way for those of you that don't know the way the preschool works, the integrated preschool
classrooms, um we aren't allowed any more than 15 students in a classroom. Seven of them can be students on IEPs and eight of them are um students from the community who come and support our special ed students. Over the past few years to deal with our growth, um we've
added four new teachers, um this has created 34 additional IEP spots and 40 peer spots. And you could see the total number um of special ed slots that we have available. We have 133 in our integrated classrooms, 27 substantially
separate for a total of 160 special ed spots. And then for our peers, we can um handle 152 peer spots. So um we get our referrals in many different ways. Um they come from early intervention. We get parent referrals,
teacher referrals, the grant and head start which I will um talk a little bit more about um in detail throughout this presentation. Um and then as of 48 we had done 178 specialed evaluations. Um and we've had 131
initial team meetings. So, I want to just kind of recognize my staff at this point that the number of evaluations that they have done this year um is significant and um they've done a really good job trying to maintain get everything in on time so we can meet the
timelines for compliance. Um but it's been very very challenging for them and they're all very stressed out at this point. So, I want to recognize them. And when you break that down, the teachers collectively have done 102 evaluations. Our speech therapists have done 132
evaluations, OT49, PT36, and over at Head Start, um they've done 32 30 evaluations this year over at Head Start. So again, that's significant. Um our team, so we have 13
teachers, 12 of them are located at PEC, and we have one teacher at Manamett this year. again to um deal with our space issues and our growing issues. We were able to open one classroom at Manamett and she has a morning session and an afternoon session over there. We have 24
par professionals um and they range from 18 to 27 hours a week supporting our students and this year we were fortunate enough to create um to increase four of those 18-hour paras to 24hour paras. God
bless you. Thank you. Um that's bless you. Um so um again my hope is over the ne over the course of the next few years that we are able to continue to increase those 18our powers to 24 hours just for the consistency of our
students. Um we for related service providers we have four speech therapists and a speech assistant who we share with PCIs. We have an OT and a KOD. Um we have a PT and a PTA who we share with South Elementary. We have a full-time
RBT and then we have a BCBA two and a half days a week. We share that BCBA with PCIS and Manamett. And then um our grant team, which again I'll talk more in detail about um our grant team is a special ed teacher, an OT, a speech
therapist, and a part-time BCBA supporting the comm community students in the community. And then um this year we're very fortunate um I don't know how I would do it without her. We have a special ed department head full-time. So, last year she was part-time. This
year she's full-time. So, she um she does all the transitions from early intervention now. And her and I share the um all of the IEP meetings. So, we offer a continuum of services at the preschool. We have um some students that just come in for
services. If they don't want to attend the program, they can just come in for um OT or speech services. our integrated preschool model. Um we have two, three, and four sess four day sessions. Um which gives
us a total of 17 sessions that we're able to offer. Um with our substantially separate and our hybrid models, we have three substantially separate classrooms. We had to increase that last year due to the level of need of our students. And then a hybrid model which is integrated
in the morning and then the special ed students stay for the full day. um and they're in a substantially separate program in the afternoon. We have two classrooms um of that model. And then we have our grant and head start. So the focus of the grant and the Head Start is to provide um support out
into the community for our students. And if it weren't for these two things, um we'd have a lot more students in our programs and we wouldn't have space for them. So, um, one of them being this community preschool partnership initiative, um, again, which I will
definitely get into more detail about on the next slide. And then Head Start. So, Head Start, um, is something that we've done for a long time. And one of our special ed teachers goes to Head with and a speech therapist. They go to Head Start two mornings a week. Um, and they do evaluations and they provide direct
services so that students can stay in Head Start for their five full day um, programs, which we don't offer. So, CPPI, CPPI, as I said, is the Community Preschool Partnership Initiative. Over the past two years, um
we have been awarded $494,000 to do this grant. I know it sounds like um a lot of money, but when you break it down, 325,000 of that goes to salary and 87,000 of that goes to fringe benefits and mileage and other
expenses for um our staff just to go and provide those services. Um which doesn't leave us with a whole lot to do a lot of the other things that we'd like to do. Um the idea of the grant is to provide highquality full daycare to preschools.
Um and we provide special ed services out in the community as well as part of this grant. Um they are currently ser this grant is currently servicing 18 students. So again if we were to bring back um all of those 18 students we
would need um two and a half classrooms to do that. Um they do community screenings. They do all the evaluations out in the community. um they provide RTI and then they collaborate with the preschool teachers out in the community um to
build capacity with those teachers and um so that the teachers are able to learn from them and be able to carry over some of those accommodations and modifications that are listed in their IEP. So, we've been busy with a lot of professional development. Um we've been
working on some curriculum development. three teachers um worked in the Southshore area in a consortium building some inquiry based curriculum units. We are working on the pyramid model now to address um social and emotional development and intervention and the
teachers right now and we'll it will carry over into next year are doing a 30-hour training through modules um to learn different strategies throughout the different tiers of the pyramid model. um as a result of some of our learning
walks, we notice that we do have um a little bit of a gap in our literacy. So, we have two teachers right now um piloting Heggerty, which is um a phmic awareness program, and they're going to come back and talk about it and see if that's a direction we want to go. And
when I met with Dr. White, it aligns with what they're doing in kindergarten and um the early grades. So, hopefully that will help. And then another thing um is the transition. So from preschool to kindergarten, that's a really big transition
and we wanted to make that better and it really had to start with our own growth. So last year we started um all of our teachers went and got to see kindergarten, a real kindergarten classroom in action during the school day um just to kind of see what what
happens in a kindergarten because we're kind of stuck in our own little preschool world and um it was important for us to know um what the expectations are so we're making appropriate recommendations for our students. Uh this year our substantially separate teachers got to go and visit the
substantially separate programs across the district as well. So they were able to kind of again understand what the expectations were when we're making those recommendations for kindergarten. We still have a lot more work to do. Um but
we're especially when it comes to transitions with parents um you know we really want to improve that that part of our program. Um and then at the end of every year, which we just finished up on Friday, we have virtual meetings. Um my special ed teachers meet with every
elementary uh special ed staff and they talk about the students and what their um specific needs are so that they're ready for them, which helps again with that smooth transition. So, the manet satellite um the teacher there has done a
phenomenal job um kind of being over there by herself but reaching out to us and us reaching out to her making sure she has all the supports that she needs. Um there's a wait list for Manamett for next year for um community peers and I we do have a wait list for um for Peek
as well. We have a pretty large weight list right now for community peers. um she has some fifth grade helpers that help her at the end of the day and she's really become a welcomed addition or that classroom has become a really welcomed addition as a whole um to man. So we're very fortunate and thankful for
them for accepting our preschool classroom over there. So we've offered um several parent trainings this year. We've done a behavior 101. We've done um a picky eaters, a toilet training, and a supporting self-regulation. all for
parents to come and learn from uh our staff. Oops. And then um as part of the grants, we did a community provider training series. So we invited every single provider from the town, whether they have a home daycare or um a community
daycare. Um Head Start, everyone was invited to come. We did one again on behavior 101 and then um a self-regulation um at the preschool in the preschool classroom and both of those staff members. So Jamie Mcaffer is a teacher at PEC and Darlene Braftoft is
the OT on the grant team. So we're really utilizing the strengths of our own staff to provide a lot of these trainings. Oops. Whoops. So this year our one book, one school was maybe something beautiful and it had
a lot to do with just art and painting and music and um movement and it was just a great night. And with the level of need of our students right now, we have a many students who have augmentative communication devices. And
this year, the speech therapist did a center and they had a lot of augmentative devices out so families and students can all come in and practice using those devices just so they're aware of what their peers are using um in the classroom. So that was a great
addition to our one book, one school. So, it definitely takes a village to run a preschool. Um, and we are fortunate enough right now to be part of the PCIs village and um, they have done so much for us. We were able to be part of the
yellow tulip project this year. Um, nurse Judy picked some of her um, middle school helpers to come and every we took um, chose one student from every classroom to go and plant the bulbs and they looked beautiful when
they blooms this spring. Um, there's a babysitters club that um, one of the nurses runs after school and the preschool pals is what we call them. They come over and they work with the students in the classroom. They helped
us with our PTA movie night, um, doing crafts and things like that. So, we're very fortunate to have them. Every year we have the holiday concert with the band, the chorus, and the orchestra, and that's a wonderful event that we look forward to every year. Mr. Siri does
some science activities. We utilize the planetarium. We've had some allied health interns every year and they work with our PT and OT and they have been a tremendous asset to our to our school. Um and I know you can see over there
with um our custodian in training. So as part of um as part of his part of his um behavior plan is he can earn to go and work with the custodians. and they made an um a bucket for him that doesn't
move. They cut down the broom and the mop and he's one of the the best custodians at PCIS. So, he does a great job and they always say what a great job he does. He's so cute. And then um PCIS puts up with a lot from us. We do parades
through their hallways. So that um the picture there, one of the classrooms, Christine Blanchard's classroom, they were learning about during Thanksgiving, they were learning about the Macy's Day parade and balloons. So they made their own animal balloons and then they did a parade through um
PCIs. And then this year, um I forgot to put it up there, but this year we had an intern from Rising Tide. She was a senior going into early childhood education. So she came for half the year and worked in one of our classrooms as well.
So, our PTA, I think I say every year they're small, but they're mighty. They do so much for us with fundraisers, enrichment, a family movie night, and supporting the teachers. And then, um, some people from the community that helped us so that we could, um, provide t-shirts for everyone for our field day.
Um, they're up there, too. So, I'd like to thank all of them. And then the best part of our school are just the kids. It's why we're here, why we do it. Um, you could see one of the fun activities is uh shaving cream ice skating that occurs every
winter. Um, and it's loved by some and hated by some and um just some various activities and friendships being built. That's it. Awesome. Do we have questions from anybody?
Miss Awood. Hello. Hi. Um, thank you very much for your um, comprehensive uh, uh, presentation. You mentioned something about challenges. Um, you talked about the evaluations
178. In a perfect world, what would you need? In a perfect world, um, I would like an evaluation team so that my staff could focus on servicing students. Um, that would be
amazing. Um, and just one more question just in terms of you were talking about the transition from um, uh, the preschool to the kindergarten. What were the barriers that you noted and and what is it that you're incorporating in order to make
this a little bit more seamless? Um, so I feel like when we sat down and talked about the level of service that a child needs and what to put in their IEPs for special ed services or OT services, um, we really had to kind of go back to what
are the expectations when they enter kindergarten. There are kids coming that don't have any preschool experience and then our students are coming with preschool experience. Um, do they need the level of support that we were recommending? Do they need more or less? Um, and I felt like as a team, we kind
of lost touch of what happens in an elementary school. Okay. So, we just really wanted to make sure that we were making the right recommendations for um for services. Okay. Thank you. Other questions? Uh, I don't have any questions, just a
statement. Uh, I really love that you brought in the augmentative stuff so that the other peers could um experience that because I feel like when it comes to your integration model and how much you do with that, like that's just another level of adding to um to really
have people start to understand and um connect. Yeah, I have some amazing speech therapists and they worked really hard on kind of creating an activity where kids had to use the device to request items. um so that they could do their art project. It was really neat.
That's really cool. Yeah. Thanks. All right. Is there anybody else? All right. Thank you. All right. Thank you for All right. All right. Next up, we have an update on our student uh services
departments. We have uh Sean Halpin and Ben Jennowitz. Well, uh good evening everyone. It's uh good to be here. Good to see you all and um just take a moment to welcome the new committee members and congratulations and glad that you're on board.
Um I just have to say uh confess I guess that I feel bad because I I I dragged Mr. Janu out tonight and uh he informed me that his son hit two home runs at his baseball game and I feel responsible for him missing that. Um but I should miss
more of that. Well, right. Yeah. Yeah. Uh but uh in all honesty, I I really wanted uh Ben to come out tonight with me. Um I've always felt that uh you know, over the years in the student services department, I've got some really talented, smart people uh that do
a bulk of the work, and uh Ben is definitely one of them. So, we have a plan tonight. Um I'm going to speak for about 10 minutes, I think, and and Ben's going to probably do about five. um the presentation that you have it's it seems big but um I've actually cut five or six
slides out of it from last year's um and I may kind of cruise through some of them relatively quickly but the information is there for you to look at and um I'll just get started right now. So um the the student services department these are the different areas uh that that we cover and uh let's just
kind of take take a peek at that now. Um, I generally go through the attendance more in the middle of the presentation, but I'm going to let Ben do that towards the end tonight. um school counseling. Um we we've we've kind of held true to the whole idea of paying attention to the three main
domains of school counseling and um our our standards follow the American school counselor standards, the Massachusetts school counselor standards and as well as uh the desi idea of what school counselors should be doing. Uh the
curriculum that we developed is is a 6 through 12 curriculum and uh it is it is student- centered with activities that are going to help them think about ideas for the future uh a road map to what they want to do when they get older um post-secondary options. All of these
activities lead up to that. We we try to make sure that the counselors get to know their kids, get to know their students, develop relationships with them. um and and believe that that's an integral part of any effective school counseling program. We also try to
involve the parents um and this is just a slide. I know you can't see it, but we have parent programs that uh will address post-secondary planning for the most part, financial aid, uh helping their students plan for their future. the staffing uh in our schools I think
over the years um has been an area that we've focused on um with the increase in needs that we've seen in our community uh for school counseling. So this slide just tells you the positions and the schools uh associated with them. You
know, the next slide is a little more indicative of kind of what what our our our support staff uh is looking at in terms of students. So um I started this slide last year and it tells you the ratio um from student to counselor. It
includes general ed school counselors, school psychologists and adjustment counselors. So this does not include program special ed counselors. Um and I think we're in like a decent place with that. Um, this slide is new and it it goes
over more historically uh what we've seen in student enrollment kind of coinciding with what we've tried to do an increase in in in counseling staff. So, um I do feel good about that. I I think you know you hear other presentations during the school year
from the schools and I I I understand the need for for school counseling support. I also think that we've paid attention to it and we will continue to do that and this this slide you know shows the the numbers behind that. Um we've also paid attention to to the
community resources that are out there. Um and we have had partnerships with uh local comm community resources GZnald High Point these are the numbers behind that. They work with our students. Um it's it is challenging to do that for a
number of different reasons. um you know, the most effective school partnerships are are ones where where you're able to work together um with with with uh different organizations and we've tried to do that. We will continue to work on this the best we can. Uh I'm I'm just stating that there have been some challenges with this and moving
forward we will continue to try to provide the service to the best of our ability. Um yeah, that's really all I wanted to say about that. So, we also have um a group that we work with that we've been working with for years now, Care Solace, and it provides mental health referrals
for students, families, or staff members. Uh we have good usage. It's it's a good service. Um counselors can track the students and uh whether they're being hooked up with these services or not. Uh there's also a free
state mental health resource line now as well. I do think that this this service has been wellreceived by our staff and we'll try our best to continue using Care Solace in the future. Uh we we've done some good professional development with the school councils. I want to thank Ben for some
of the work he's done uh as well around the attend the attendance um working with our school counselors. These are just some of the other topics that we've uh we've worked on this year. Uh shifting gears a little bit to to McKenna Vinto, the homeless education act. I'm not going to read through this
slide. I keep it up there though because it does describe the law and um what we have to kind of follow to make sure that we're giving the students the right services who are homeless in our community. And the same with the foster care uh law. This is the slide that
describes the law. This next slide actually discusses the the differences between the two and really they're trying to remove barriers for students. The striketh through there is the big change that's that's coming up this year. Foster care will be similar now to
McKenna Vinto in that students who um complete a grade in a certain school when they move on will still be considered uh in our district potentially they they can stay in our district where in the past they would have to move on to the next school. Um it's going to it's going to make some
changes for us. We've already kind of dealing with that a little bit. Um, we saw this coming down the pike, but um, DESIE has not changed their regulations around it yet. So, we are we are dealing with that ourselves. I would imagine that we would have some, um, you
know, updates on that hopefully by the start of the school year. If not, it's just something for you all to be aware of. And, uh, the numbers behind the transportation costs, this is what it looks like now, and it goes back a few years. Obviously, it's uh we do spend a fair amount of money on transporting
students who are either McKenna Vinto or uh foster care. Uh the projected numbers for this year probably run around right now uh about 460 or 470 total uh in case you're interested in that. And we've been trying to do a better job of
tracking that. Excuse me. Um what do we have next? Oh, so I'm just going to move right into English learners. And I've I've given you this slide so that you can just see the difference between what we now sometimes you hear like MLL uh multilingual learner or you'll hear
English learner. Um I I I've I use them both. U but the technical difference between the two is that the English learner is the student who has been screened and and really requires a direct ESL type of service whether through an ESL teacher, a classroom teacher or a combination of both. uh
multilingual learners is more of an assetbased approach to to discussing our students who have um you know the ability to speak more than one language which I think is great. This slide shows you the history uh statistically of our number of English learners. You can see the growth uh particularly over the last
you know four or five years steady steady growth. Wow. and uh the the profile of our English learners and digging a little deeper into those numbers uh looking at the the languages that our students speak. Uh obviously Portuguese is still our number one
language, but we've definitely grown in other languages as well uh over the last few years and and you can see some of those. And then I think this slide and the next slide some of the data around the work that we need to do for English learners. um we're tracking growth uh in
in the four domains and uh we know that that's an area that we need to continue to work on. This this slide shows that and this this one does as well. Um you know and it puts us the 2024 access scores a little below the state. Um we have just gotten the 2025 scores and we
will be analyzing them uh in the next couple of weeks. Uh moving into the next piece on this, we we we had the the TFM audit uh recently and I went to a a conference about a week ago. It was the Matsol conference and there was one
presenter who who described that uh her first day on the job as a new English language coordinator at a school district. She was given a report, the TFM report, and the school district had had uh not passed 11 out of the 12 categories. I felt better for a moment
when I heard that. We did we did do a good job on 10 out of the 12 categories. Uh these two in red are the two that we are working on and we were placed on you know corrective action for these. So we've been we've been doing our progress monitoring through the course of this year. Uh quarterly updates that we've
worked with the staff on. Uh these are the two areas really. It's it's it's EL5 and ELA4. Uh the first one is is developing curriculum and ESL curriculum. And the second one has to do with the SEI endorsement of our of our teachers. Uh, and I just included um the last this is
the last quarterly update that we will be working on this month and uh I'll submit by the end of June um some of the things that we we have to do and um we've been working really hard on uh this this ESL curriculum piece as well as um the licensing requirements uh that
our teachers you know need need to have um for this endorsement. Uh, and just by way of summary with with the English learning department, um, we've definitely had an increase in numbers, but we've, I think, addressed it as best we can through staffing. Um, I it's an area that we're
constantly looking at. And the hardest part, I think, of schools that have a small number of English learners and trying to staff that appropriately and and and decide where people are going to going to be. Another challenge now is also um finding qualified, certified ESL
teachers. um and you know that branches out into other departments but certainly for English learning uh it's it's something that we're struggling with but uh we're doing our best to try to find those people um some of the other things that we're doing within the department as you can see on the slide. So, also
the professional development that we've done this year, a lot of work with our ESL teachers in a lot of different areas. Um, and we've we've worked hard uh to to support them and the teachers have worked hard to identify uh the benchmarks that the kids need and I think this is be something that we will
be continually working on um in the next year, two, three as we move down the line. Um shifting gears a bit, this slide just describes our tutoring uh home tutoring for students who who uh you know have
extended absences or out. Most of the students that we have of the 87 are are from the high school level. The next the next group would be the middle school and then uh obviously a smaller portion of the elementary. Most of these students are are are being tutored for
medical or mental health um reasons and a small percentage 9% because of discipline. Homemed plans uh as you know the policy was revised a bit uh prior to the school year. It's actually made it a little bit I suppose easier for parents.
There's there's less uh hoops to jump through. It's very similar to the to the policy that was prior though. And um this year's homeschool plans we have about what 162. That's the breakdown by um elementary, middle, and high. And uh
this slide shows you the historical numbers. And uh the bump was in was around COVID the 225 that you see there. We've been hovering in the 160s now. Uh so you know, prior to that it was it was usually around 100. So we're kind of
bridging the gap now uh with that. So, some folks have stayed and decided to do homeschooling. Uh, I I kept this slide up and I probably will. I I just I'm so happy and proud of what the schools do with the advanced placement numbers. And you can even see the 2024 numbers have
kind of bounced right up again. Um, lots of kids taking advanced courses and generally doing pretty well on on those exams. So, you know, it says a lot about I think the work that's been done like years prior to this to to establish that type of program in our district. and uh
the teachers uh and the administrators really work hard on that. Just a few final things here um that I'd like to touch on. The uh the NAN project is something that uh we're doing in the middle school and and you know we had preventure there for a while. This this
is for the seventh graders and it gives them a little a taste of of of of mental health and and what people who have struggled with that can do and the kind of resources that are out there to help them. Um, also I will bring up quickly
this this the Bright program. We have a small grant that has allowed uh the Bright Transition program to be at two of our schools. If there's an area that I think might be an area of growth for us, I would I would love to see that program at at all four of our secondary schools. Uh we are looking at creative
ways to try to do that. It's always it's a budget issue because it requires personnel, but that's a great program that helps those students who are out for extended periods of time. perhaps they've been in the hospital. Uh we can come in and give them some more dedicated support um beyond just uh you know our our our general school
counseling department. So that's that's something that I would definitely recommend and look into and we're working at that. And I wanted to put some information up on the local scholarships uh because I'm just amazed at the amount of money that our community actually gives to these to the
kids. It's it's amazing. And um this is what it looks like the last few years, you know. So that that's a that's a pretty significant amount of money and and um where I'm just grateful to the community for what they do. Um and the last thing I'd say is I usually like to try to recognize some people and Cindy
Scanland uh is is a guidance secretary at North High School. She's retiring this year. Um she's a registar. She's worked hard. She's she's done a lot of great work over the years. She was the schol scholarship secretary for a while too. And I just wanted to recognize Cindy and congratulate her. I know you know she's finishing up and before you
know it like June will be over. So wanted to thank her for that. Um I think yeah I so that's my presentation. I'm not sure how long it took maybe 10 12 minutes hopefully. I'm going to hand it off to Mr. Janulowitz and let him take it from here. Uh first of all let let me
say thank you for having me. Um and congratulations to the newly elected members. Uh first I want to thank Dr. Halpin who's been a tremendous support to me in this role. Uh prior to being the supervisor of attendance I was one of the assistant principles at Plymouth North High School. Um, so it it's it's
been a transition over, you know, I'm now in my fifth year doing this role, but um, it's nice to work with children and staff at each level because I'm I was sort of formerly trained as a as a high school teacher and then and a high school assistant principal. So, it's nice to get to work with with kids and
families from all over the district. Um, I guess I should start where where our our branding or our messaging started last year. Um, Dr. Campbell was able to secure a grant and we were able to do some work around messaging when it came to
attendance. So, we sat down with the geniuses at at at TV who are a lot better at this kind of thing. I'm pretty good with Canva, but um they're they're professionals. uh they were able to come up with some messaging that we kind of softly rolled out at the end of of last
school year and then really kicked into into high gear um at the beginning of this school year. Um so I want to start with how we make datadriven decisions uh when we look at attendance. We have a
lot of robust tools that we can use here in Plymouth. Um open architects is one of them. This is this is one of the dashboards that you know all the administrators have uh access to and obviously I use this one. This is the one that I I look at almost on a daily basis. Um and we use these tools to
collect and analyze the data so that we can make good decisions about where to target our efforts um where to focus our efforts. Uh for example, this information tells us that we are in line with some national trends. for instance,
uh kindergarten and 9th grade being particularly high areas of of chronic absenteeism. That's a national trend. Um we are, you know, there are other areas that we can look at to sort of say, okay, this is maybe unique to Plymouth. This year we had a little bit of a bump
in fourth grade. So we need to sort of look at maybe targeting some of those areas for other interventions and messaging. Um but we can take this information and use it to to promote district initiatives. Um, we could disagregate this data by subgroups,
whether you know any subgroups that you can think of, whether we're talking about EL students, high needs, um, race, gender, by school, and even do it by excused and unexcused absences. Um, so just to give you an idea, if you're looking at the just the flat attendance
rate, um, which has gone up year-over-year over the last three and four years, um, if you look at that, our attendance rate is some, you know, fluctuates between 92 and 97%. from the beginning to the end of the school year. We had a particularly
difficult um winter health-wise. I know that, you know, I gave a presentation here once and my kids had not been to school that week because they had four different things. You know, they were dealing with pneumonia, flu A, flu B. So, it really was difficult in about a
three-month period from December to early March. And then we saw, as you can see there, it's kind of the reverse bell curve. Uh that's a pretty typical trend for our school years. But this uh you can see there that this year because of those sicknesses um we did have you know
that that attendance rate dipped a little bit further than it normally does. But if you account for um excused absences then our attendance rate is roughly 95 96%. Which is I I I again attribute that to the tremendous work that the folks in the schools do uh to
message and to try to help support our kids. I think our kids by and large feel very supported in schools. Um yeah, and like I said, year-over-year our attendance rate is improving. So to take a look at a few of those initiatives, and this is the people side of things.
Um our be present campaign uh started in early earnest at the beginning of this year with some strong messaging. We rolled out um in the K and first grade areas. The reason we did that is because we thought what better way to message
than to start with the folks that are really coming into our district for the first time. Um, and we hope to continue this, you know, every year, but we think we think that starting at that age group um was the appropriate step. So, we did we were able to secure some apparel with
the be present uh logo on it and and and give that to all staff at the K1 grade levels who were interacting with students. We thought that that was important for it to be from the nurses to pair professionals to teachers um so that there was a consistent message
across the district. Um again, some of the other things um that we've done is we've worked to create a consistent 5-day attendance letter. By law, uh schools must reach out to students who have five unexcused absences or more in an effort to try to do some planning
about how to help support them to be more consistently in school. Um that was a tremendous step. eight elementary schools, two middle schools. You know, we were able to get them, um, you know, kind of on the same page and working to have some, you know, some consistency
there. Um, Ed TV developed four videos. Um, I hope you've seen them. I can share those links after this meeting, too. Um, where we really tried to we tried to make it personal. And what we did is we selected different um, age groups, staff
and students to target. So, we made our EdTV was able to make uh four videos this year. One at Federal Furnace with a in a first grade classroom, one at Hedge Elementary where if you if you haven't gotten a chance to see that one, there's a couple really uh uh budding stars over
there who were really great on care. They're fantastic kids. Um the third one, which we released in the winter, was all about supporting students with physical and mental health needs. Um and that featured the adjustment counselor, the nurse, and several students um at
PCIS. And the final one, which was just released a couple weeks ago, uh was focused on Harbor Academy downstairs here, Mr. Demurs and the and the kids who have worked really really hard and maybe didn't have a traditional path towards graduation, but will be walking across that stage in the uh this
weekend. Um and and the reason we did that is we wanted to make some some messaging that both parents and students could connect to about the importance of of being in school every day whether it's your favorite thing in the world to do to come to school or not your
favorite thing to do to come to school every day. U but the edv a huge shout out who to them because they've been integral in the work that we've done. Um we've attended monthly uh truency summit that Dee Wintererson over at Algangquin
has spearheaded. Uh Dee is fantastic. She's another community partner that we rely on and that has um it's culminate she's culminated this year with a um a campaign to get more kids in school where she's been a able to have a community fair and reward the kids who
you know who self-elected to take uh take part in that initiative. And we did see actually the the the chronic absenteeism rates uh particularly at Algangquin uh go down. So it you know it's a kudos to to everybody who was part of that. Lots of community partners
again attended that but the schools were well represented as well. Um let's see finally using talking points the s that's another tool that we've uh integrated into the schools. I I can't say enough how I I'm not a person who
thinks that, you know, one piece of technology is going to change everything, but talking points has really been a tool that has allowed me personally and I think that for the folks that I've been able to sort of convince to to to use it and to train them on, it is a way to communicate with
our EL population that is um efficient and effective. Um, I'm trying really hard to learn uh some some different languages. My son is much better at Duolingo and has a better score than I do, but Talking Points bridges that gap
in a really non-threatening way, and I think it's been really tremendously helpful in the work that I do, and I can't recommend it enough. Um, and that's, you know, I have no no affiliation. I just, uh, I think it's been it's it's it's really really
effective. Um, so yeah. Um, I think moving on, I've already talked too much, so I'll try to speed through this one. Uh, in some cases in in in really chronic significant cases, we have to file what's called a CRA with the local courts, and that's that stands for a child requiring assistance. That changed
from years ago. It was known as a chins. It was a little more punitive um when it was known as that. It really truly is a supportive measure. Even though we're talking about working with probation officers, my work and my time with probation uh in getting to know the system that they have and the supports
that they're able to provide for families and students, it can seem like it's a punitive step, but it really is supportive. They're able to get services in place for families faster and more efficiently than um we might otherwise be able to help with. Um, I will also,
um, you know, uh, give a shout out to the Plymouth Family Resource Center who is also integral in helping families get the services they need quickly. Um, they do a lot of work, you know, prec services with families, but they also do a lot of work with our families and the
community um, to help them with housing um, if if anybody is food insecure. uh they really do a great job and and the con connection is just growing and getting bigger between the schools and the family resource center. So I'd be remiss if I didn't um you know talk
about them a little bit. And of the 17 students who were at one point on a CRA this year, only uh only two of them remain. 15 of them were able to, you know, meet the goals that are set forth in those plans that are created in, you know, in collaboration with juvenile
probation or the Plymouth Family Resource Center or sometimes with the department of child uh children and families. Most cases are dismissed and expuned because the student the students meet their goals and those are they deleted. there's no record that they ever had. It is not a criminal
complaint. It is not um something that follows them along once they once they solve the issue. Um it is it it's gone from the record. So um we've been able to have a lot of effective relationships um there as well. Uh at that point, is
it okay? Can I leave you? I have the last stack of our be present stickers. Take them. I'll leave you guys with a few of these. Thank you. Take some questions. Thank you. and it continues.
So, I just want to say thank thank you to Ben tonight for coming in and and sharing what what he's been doing and I and then that's why I I've wanted him here tonight and and he said he spends a real lot of time on the baseball field so I don't feel as bad as I said I did. But, but I really, you know, the work you do, I appreciate um and and he's
very active in all the schools uh and in the community. So, thank you for sharing your your work. Do we any questions from from anyone tonight? Yeah, I'll I'll I'll just add that as obviously as a you know as a district as a key uh strategic objective for the district very much
appreciate everything you just presented on and it is you know hugely vital to you know to to the district meeting its objective. So I'll hand over for questions. Think Mr. Morgan had the first one. No I just want to say thank you for the very informative and concise report moved along um fast but very
informative. So that's, you know, lessons that some other folks can take as well. Good job. Thank you, Miss Awood. Yes. Um I, uh, I'll piggyback on some of what my colleagues have already mentioned. Um, I just wanted to ask a
question, I guess, just in terms of, um, the the ratios um, as it relates to counseling staff. I noticed um in uh Indian Brook, South L, Federal Furnace, uh Nathaniel Morton, just these higher
numbers and so some of them being in the the low 200s as opposed to the high um 100s. And so the the question is, is there a need more? So, you know, and and it's a good question. Um the answer's a little
complex. I I don't want to get too far off track. I want to answer your question. Um I think those those numbers aren't aren't so bad. Um it would be like the the general way for me to put that th um some of the numbers that you see that are that are lower at the schools are very small. Um and so and
the other thing that you're not really seeing is um I I could I could give you case load numbers of say guidance counselors you know the numbers of students that they have and that number would be higher like I don't know you know at the high school it could be like
240 250 kids but those high schools have other people in in you know the adjustment counselors they have school psychologists um so that's why I presented the numbers the way I did to give you more of an average. I I I'm not as concerned about that. I think like if they start creeping up higher than that,
we have to have a little discussion about things. Um I do I I do think that, you know, the the mental health needs in a lot of ways have increased. I I I totally understand and I get that. I've I've been a proponent um of of us in in the in in the academic
realm doing that work within our lane to help students with their social emotional issues related to school. And that's why I feel like the partnership that we can have in the community is really helpful because and and I also work as a mental health therapist. So like I I write treatment plans and I and
I work with people and it's it's just a different it's there are similarities between what school counselors do and mental health therapists do but they're but they're different. And so um I don't know if and I I'm going off on a tangent which I tend to do sometimes but I'm starting to answer your question because I feel like it is it's a very good
question. And I also think I don't know if I mentioned it during the presentation, but we have special ed programs that with with adjustment councils in those programs and BCBAS and I didn't give a slide on that, but those numbers have increased too. So we've really and we've really tried to meet
that need. I think in this area there's always going to feel like there's you need more. I think that's just the nature of it in some ways and those and and and the struggles and the challenges there are very real for people. So, but to answer your question, right now I don't think we need more. I don't think
more personnel would would would would fix it. I do think the one area that I see that would help would be that like Brighton model if we could get it at the two other secondary schools that don't have it. I think that would because those those people will work with
students who are coming back in uh from from a placement. they also when those when the populations are lower um of students with that need can can work with with the general ed students and help the support staff in other areas and I just think that would alleviate
some of these issues um that we we hear and I and I and I and I hear them too because I I'm I'm talking to principles administrators councils all the time about this and I I I don't want to be a person who's like look we don't need more like that's not the best answer to give people who but I I I try to back it with data and and and solid reasoning
And I hope that answered your question. Yeah, it does. Um, somewhat. Yeah. Um, and then I guess I just wanted to ask a question just regarding um the attendance piece. Sure. So, at first I noticed I was like, "Oh, it looks like there are bumps in the transition years
except for middle school because middle school just seems like it continues to go up." Um, because I was like, "Oh, I could see where that makes sense. It's transition." Um, but then it's nth grade. What is going on there? And what do you perceive is going on there? So 9th grade is is
is one of the more difficult transitions because of I mean kids are going through puberty kid there there's a lot of things that go on but um I think that it's high stakes there's difference between middle school and high school when it comes to let's say credits you
know when you move to high school you must get you must have the grades and attendance to move on to the next grade and that can be very difficult so for instance If a student at uh the high school misses six days where one of their classes falls, like
an A day, if they miss six A days, they're going to lose credit in that course. Now, there's a credit denial process that that that can take place so that students can earn those back in different ways, but I think there's a there's a mixture of things that are happening when they get to nth grade. Um
it's also a predictor nth grade is a predictor of of of graduation, right? this the research says that ninth grade failing two classes in ninth grade can be you know is the greatest predictor of of whether or not somebody doesn't graduate right so I think that there are
a lot of things happening at the same time um it's it's it's it's a lot different and there's a lot more emphasis placed on the student shoulders the responsibility grows and I think you mentioned the word transitions um as a nth grade assistant principal back in
the day we we started to really build a connection with PCIS and PSMS for any of the students who were coming up to the the the freshman academy at North. I think all those transition all of those those places where we do transitions and you heard it when talking about the
early childhood I think it's really important that we continue that and maybe look into ways that we can alleviate some of the stressors um especially for students who traditionally struggle academically. It's interesting that you you've pointed that out because it actually answers a
question that I had years ago. So, when I remember when I first ran and I just looked at some of the numbers which have greatly improved um uh uh since then, but I remember seeing 10th grade as the year of the highest like dropout like
that's where you saw it and I was like why 10th grade? Um but that makes and and I'll just thanks Benette. I agree. And so the freshman academy model is is kind of why it's there part of it like but ninth grade is still tough because the kids do have that attendance requirement and it it's for the first
time and then you see the 10th grade piece and I I think you start like when do kids turn 16 because then then you start to see the law kick in and that's when the keeping kids in is is harder. uh they they can find ways to to say
that I'm I'm not I'm not s successful in school high school and and I'm going to withdraw. I'm going to drop out. They can and we we we're on that as best we can though. We're trying to keep them in school. I can guarantee. No, it's improved greatly. I I remember the numbers. So, yes, I can and I can speak to some of the initiatives, you know,
like and it could go anywhere from, you know, students who are tardy and those tardies sometimes then turn into absences. So I know in the eighth grade at both middle schools, they've really tried to mimic the high school model for what happens if you are chronically tardy so that they can get ahead of that
coming into that's one of one more of those pieces about transition. Um that I think it's it's a small piece but it's you know attendance is a symptom of of other things going on, right? So when we're looking at chronic absenteeism, it's it's an indicator but I think the more we can do those things to help
students transition and prepare them academically. socially, emotionally, you know, little things that we can do, little initiatives can have a huge impact for a lot of the kids. And I I would echo that I have a lot of students that I work with who have made strides and been able to re-engage in school
through the bright program. So, you know, and then just lastly, in terms of the AP program, there has just I I cannot give it enough praise. I just now knowing students who have
um been impacted by a even a cost savings to their parents because now these students who you know supposedly were in four and fiveyear programs are graduating early and so yeah it's just been such a thanks for saying that and I
I ever since I've been in education I always say like you know we we pay attention to the students who um really succeed and and and exceed and school's important to them. AP, you know, does that. We we we pay attention to the students who struggle um and try to find programs and but I I I I believe in
Plymouth, we try to pay attention to the kids in between, too. And it's just important that we do that because every every student, you know, matters. It's it sounds cliche, but it's just it's it's true. And I I I come back around to like the relationships that we build in the schools, the climate and the culture is all really important. and then
obviously how the kids do in school, the academics, and we have to pay attention to all that, you know, all and I I appreciate, you know, your comments tonight and and being supported by the board because it's just really important work that that we're doing. So, thank you. M Jackson, um Miss Haywood asked
some of the questions that I have, but the one thing that I really want to say too is kind of along the lines of what Mr. Bzano said like the strides that you've made on attendance are by far and away uh like blow out of the water the
national turnaround. You know, like you've just done such a good job paying attention to the initiatives and really honing in on, you know, what is important to students and how to really get them to where they need to be. And so I really want to commend you for all the hard work you've done. Thanks for
saying that. That means a lot. I can and I know I know if it means a lot to me, it probably means even more to him. And um and and sometimes I was blown away because sometimes we feel like we're not we're not getting it, you know. I I I and I don't I just mean that because it's attend it's a it's a hard one. It's just very difficult and and for kids
that struggle to come to school, it's it's hard like and and you have to be very creative to try to um Well, your numbers are like half the national. Well, then well, thanks. I mean, we do pay attention to the numbers, but I don't hear that. We don't hear that that often. So, thank you. We have a great community. We, you know, whether it be
the the healthc care providers or the mental health providers or the community partners, we really have a lot of people, good people trying to do different things to support our families. Thank you. Yeah, by coincidence, five of the seven committee members were on the
strategic planning committee LA two years ago. So, and that, you know, there aren't a bunch of strategic objectives. It was like, you know, four or five. And, you know, felt very strongly that attendance needed to be on that list. So, like I said, it's Thank you. No, the work you're doing is we'll try to come up with, you know, I appreciate Ben is
creative and comes up with different ways to do it and to message it and to so it's it's, you know, it's refreshing. So, thank you so much. Appreciate that. Thank you, Miss Bryant. Yeah, I have more of a statement. um each of the presentations that the
school does, you hear about the individual work and I just really appreciated hearing, you know, all of the support that you're giving our our district. I'm really looking at the work that you're doing as empowering not
only, you know, this individual schools and the staff, but our students, our families, and our community. really thinking of it as a net, right? Like you're you're catching people when you fall. You're using that net to catch
resources and reel it in. So, um, you know, thank you so much for just elevating all of the work across the district versus just that individual picture we usually see. Thank you for saying I'm grateful to be in Plymouth and and and um like I I I still love
what I do and I'm grateful for that. So, thanks. Yeah. Yeah. Mr. Smart adults. Yeah, thank you. Um, is is there anything that surprised you? You said you've been doing this for 5 years. I if you look over that course of time, is there anything that jumped out at you and you said, "Hey, look, you know, for
the next five years, I can learn from that." That's that's a great question. Um, I I think the best way to describe I think a good answer to that is that the programs like Dr. His the programs that
we have, we have a lot of good programs in Plymouth to support a lot of different needs. Um the face-to-face community partnerships that we have, I do a lot of home visits, right? And I think it would go a long
way for everybody in the community, you know, for, you know, to to keep pushing that connection between the home and the school so that folks understand each other, where they're coming from. um I get to see up close sometimes what maybe schools don't get to see up close it can
be heartbreaking but it can also be very inspiring um and I think that when that human connection is there pe you know like like everybody's here for the right reasons in school in public education um I think when when when we can bring
that realization right you know face to face I think the more that we can do that the more I can do that and help um you you know, get families in, but also get us, you know, get us to them. You know, one of the things I I just put it to you
this way through that Algangquin um summit, I'm I'm really hopeful that we can showcase there on, you know, where they're at all the amazing things that we do in the schools so that, you know, one of the major themes that kept coming up was it so that students and families
there believe that the message and the programs that we have is for them as well, you know, and it and that they imagine all the possibilities that we want for all our kids. So, I think it's getting out into that community more. The more I can do that, the better I feel about all the work that we're
doing. Yeah. And I I think that helps you identify anything that's at risk, too, at an early timeline because I think that connection beyond the walls of the school. I mean, you need the parental support, too. Um, but I think that's that's critical and I I applaud
you for it's not the easiest thing, you know, getting involved and seeing things up close, but uh I I think that's great. Thank you. Yeah. Any other questions for me? Um I I only had one one question to my fellow
members covered every everything. Um, it's a question I'd rather not have to ask, but given the way things are been the last three and a half months, have you have we seen any significant impact from, you know, the It's a great question and I and I went fast the numbers. I I Yeah, you you can already
guess what I'm asking because obviously I'm worried about you people that are just scared to come to school or parents, things like that. So, yeah. What is the What are you seeing on YouTube? Very specifically, the the the number of of of withdrawals we've had in that is is is a wash with the number of of of ads we've had. That's the That's
the simple answer to it. We've we we haven't seen the numbers change much at all. Um if anything for for for our numbers like we the access test we're getting our results back. So we're starting to see some kids move out of needing English language services. So I'm seeing some of the numbers like I
know it's at 420. It's probably more like closer to 400 now. Those kids are literally not receiving ESL services anymore because they've met the threshold that they need to get on the access test. But as far as the numbers of students that we've had um in in the com in our schools, it's a it's
absenteeism. Is that Yeah, that's absentism. I'm sorry. I Yeah. Well, your answer was good because that is important. But yeah, I was really concerned about absent the impact on absenteeism because you've made such amazing strides that I worry that it hasn't changed a lot. That's the easiest way to put it. Yeah, I would say that
year over year it remain it's remained constant. So I think it was a faculty council that that subject came up too. And so we kind of looked in, you know, we looked into it. Obviously it's it's a subject that's on a lot of people's minds right now. Um and I was surprised to see, you know, maybe a little surprised to see that it was we were
right in line with previous years in terms of Sorry. Go ahead. No, in terms of just in terms of trends at this time that there was no there was no dip in attendance. No, you're not seeing a hit. Yeah. In your list of the numbers that you see, correct? That's okay. That's promising. Miss Brian, do you have a comment? No, just just
in in regards to you're mentioning where you were from year over year. However, are you looking from uh week over week perspective because of the fact of the the trend is is changing and knowing
that the community is shifting based on you know moving in moving out of Plymouth. Yeah. Especially the recent, you know, possibly the latest month or so. Yeah. I think that we should we monitor it pretty frequently, you know, so, you know, at least a few times a week, you know, I'm I'm pulling that up on a day-to-day basis. There may be
other things that I have to do, but that sort of that I call it the reverse bell curve. You know, some form of that curve exists when you look at each each subgroup. So there's there's going to be some subgroups that where you may not
have 95 or 97% attendance, but the the bell curve the shape is going to be the same, but there may be there may be a two or 3% decrease in terms of the tenants rate or two or 3% increase in the chronic absenteeism rate. I have not
noticed a significant like a significant drop in any subgroup recently, but I can get that information. No, I appre I mean, yeah, I mean, keep an eye keep an eye, but I appreciate that. I mean, you would if there was a massive impact, you'd have it'd be obvious. Yeah. So, um, we've been keeping our eye on it.
Definitely. It is constantly evolving though based on, you know, just Yeah, it's it's early days, but yeah, it's more, you know, just wondering. So, I appreciate that it's not, you're not seeing a significant dip. Um my my my next thing is just a comment that I got a kick out of seeing the massive spike in um tardies in the 12th grade having a
son who I think tried to set a school record for tardies last year as a graduating senior. So I understand where where the uh where the spike comes from. So I did that I did note that spike. That's awesome. Believe me, I have a ninth grader now. So I I I often remind
him that it's not a very good look if the supervisor attendant son is not in school on time every day. Yeah. Let me know how that conversation goes and like you know May of their senior year. All righty. Any no other questions from the committee?
Yeah. I'll echo Mr. Morgan's uh comments presentation. Lots of amazing data in there. So I really appreciate the work you guys are doing. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Good to see you all. Thank you. All right. Uh next up we have one of the uh school committee's core um
responsibilities which is annual evaluation of the superintendent. So I'm going to pull it up and it is a long document. So I'm not going to go through and read it uh word by word by any means. I will uh read some selected uh
um paragraphs just to give uh the public an idea of what's in there. But um overall very uh uh positive. I'll start with the uh the progress towards uh four key goals. There's a professional practice goal, student learning goal, and two district improvement goals. On
the professional practice goal, Dr. Campbell was rated as uh uh meeting you know m making the necessary progress. Student learning goal exceeded. I will say just timely that we just had that um discussion on attendance a that massive
increase in attendance was a big factor in that um exceeds rating. Uh district improvement goal um one which is hold on what is that one? It is family and wait hold
on I lose it. Um I forget I'm off hand but first um improvement goal is exceeds and the second student improvement goal was uh meeting in terms of assessment of overall standard uh meeting of the standards for instructional leader instructional leadership. Dr. Dr.
Campbell is rated exemplary which is the highest rating for the other three um areas management and operations family and community engagement and professional culture. Um Dr. Campbell was rated as proficient just for the public's awareness in this context proficient is uh good exemplary is um
kind of is a pretty high bar. What you want is everyone to be a proficient needs improvement you know we we don't ever want to see. So thankfully there's nothing negative um on Dr. Campbell's evaluation. So I will read uh the first two paragraphs of the summit of value
overall evaluation. Um so Dr. Campbell has had a great year. The family, students and the families, students and Plymouth community at large continue to feel fortunate to have doc should continue to feel fortunate to have Dr. Campbell at the helm of the district and its schools. He has worked hard to ensure every student receives a quality
education and he does an excellent job of keeping the community engaged and supportive of the district's needs and priorities. Um as superintendent, Dr. Dr. Campbell has demonstrated strong leadership and strategic vision in advancing key district priorities throughout the 2024 2025 school year. Across all four goals, there has been
clear proactive engagement with a wide range of stakeholders, a commitment to data informed decision-making, and a focus on transparency, equity, and operational efficiency. The district made exemplary progress in reducing chronic absenteeism through targeted interventions and community partnerships. While communication around
financial matters reflected a comprehensive and multifaceted approach to building public trust. Efforts to restructure transportation systems were methodical and collaborative setting district on a clear path toward future cost savings without compromising service quality. The integration of DEIB
practice practices throughout the schools further illustrates a deep systemic commitment to fostering an inclusive environment that empowers all members of the community. Now we'll drop down to the last program here which is overall Dr. Campbell's work this past year reflects
a high level of dedication, thoughtful planning, and meaningful progress in advancing the district's mission. So thank you Dr. Campbell. And I I'm going to jump down to a couple of the individual um goals. Um scrolling down one sec. All right. So
for instructional leadership, um since that was rated exemplary, I will read the opening paragraph. Uh overall, the district is demonstrating efforts to make instructional changes at all grade levels to improve student outcomes and subsequently measure, compare, contrast,
and modify best practices to meet the needs of the district's student population. It is clear that Dr. Campbell actively communicates and expects ongoing instructional improvements in all areas from the district's administration and staff. And then I'll read the first uh
summary for management and operations. Overall, Dr. Campbell's efforts represent exemplary practice in promoting transparency and fostering public trust. There's ample evidence that Dr. Campbell and his administrators are carrying out a robust a robust and thoughtful qualitative approach to transparency and engagement. Dr.
Campbell is adept at gaining the community support of the district's vision, mission, and future needs. He entiringly communicates with stakeholders at every level, resulting in support and advocacy from the from the residents uh throughout Plymouth. This widespread support is clearly evidenced by the overwhelming support the district receives from the town
meeting members during town meeting activities. Dr. Campbell's gentle approach combined with hard data results in a school system which continues to serve the district students and families with state-of-the-art and best practice driven educational services. And scrolling down to family
and community engagement. I'll read the first paragraph as well. Uh while Dr. Dr. Campbell places a high priority on engaging on engaging families and the community in educ in the educational process and understands the clear connection between family engagement and student success. The this priority is
also demonstrated clearly by Dr. Campbell's administrative team and assessing the annual school improvement plans presented by the district's principles during the school year. The committee noted that maintaining or improving family involvement is consistently a top priority as a committee believes it should
be. And then finally on professional culture, Dr. Campbell has demonstrated a clear commitment to maintaining a positive culture in the district. This commitment begins with the ex with the expectations of his senior administrators and cascades down to all the district's faculty and staff. Dr. Campbell continues
uh Dr. Campbell keeps both the committee and the community appropriately informed of activity in the district and has earned the unwavering support of the committee. Good. Thank you for a great year, Dr. Kemp. Thank you. May I please um first
of all, thank you very much for your for your remarks. Um I great greatly appreciate it. I I absolutely love being in Plymouth. Um this is my community and I feel honored to be here. Um the words you read are really reflective of again
this leadership team, even the gentleman who's missing tonight who's recovering from surgery. Um as well as the several people that came here and the people back at our building. So, um I thank you for that. Um I've just really feel
blessed to be here and um there's always room for improvement and we recognize that and I think we work really well together to try to foster the best environment for all of our families and students and and our staff. Um and um we're committed to that work. So, just
thank you very much. I really appreciate it. No, we appreciate it. Um I did I forgot to mention at beginning the while I read it and compiled it, it does represent the inputs of um all of the members that were on the committee throughout the uh school year. So it
didn't include um input from uh Dr. Sorenson. So obviously Mr. Smartell was not part of it since it happened before um uh the election, but it's definitely a collaborative thing. So I don't know if any other members have any comments or for Dr. Campbell, but go ahead. All
right. Thank you. Next action item. All right. Think next up is Yes. Thank you. Yes. Make a motion to receive recommendation relative to the superintendent's annual performance incentive and take the necessary
actions. Thank you. We have a second. A second. All right. M Jackson seconds. All right. Thank you. It's making me log in again. All right, we have five in favor. Miss Shaw is absent and Mr. Smart Dallas is abstaining obviously since he was not
part of it. It's the right thing to do. Yeah. No, I appreciate that. All right, you're approved. Thank you. I'm up again. All right, now we'll move on. So, as I try to skip All right, a few things. Thank you. Uh, a
few things to report tonight. So, first off, to tomorrow, really excited about this opportunity. Um, we have a joint committee on education at the state house. Um, testimony on our transportation bill. So tomorrow, uh, the joint committee on education will be holding a hearing to solicit, uh,
written and oral testimony on bills pertaining to a whole host of things really, college and career readiness, rural schools, uh, regional districts, and transportation. Um, so I have the pleasure of testifying to support two bills that Representative Badger has
filed. Uh the first is H513, an act required requiring equitable funding for non-regional school districts with high transportation costs and H411, an act eliminating predatory transportation pricing of school districts. Uh really look forward to
that and providing uh followup on the 16th. Uh I want to thank Miss Jackson for her written testimony. Dr. Blazdell will be participating remotely um and Mr. Pinto will also be there to testify as well as uh remotely I believe Mr.
Kanty from a town perspective. So we really uh look forward to that collective um opportunity to to really support um and and thank Miss Badger for for her efforts to to move this forward. Uh we mentioned transportation studies.
So, we have received one of our two transportation studies back from Alliance Education Associates, and actually the um the gentleman who helped spearhead that will be coming on the 16th to do a formal presentation to the committee on that. Um we're still
waiting for the final report from the Massachusetts Association from People Transportation, but they'll just I think it will be complimentary to the work that was received um from Alliance Education. Um so we hope to provide a report um on that um for the 16th.
Actually we will be doing that confirmed today. Um MSBA um our enrollment and education profile for hedge school was submitted at the end of last week. It was due this week. So um MSBA staff will review the information that we provided
in that APQ and the enrollment questionnaires um and get back to us if there are any questions. Um but the team will go over that. um and they will be looking at potential projections for us in terms of numbers. Um we'll have a
meeting on August 29th to discuss any projections. Um also what's due on August 29th is our ma maintenance capital planning information um which we will submit online. So look forward to that milestone. Um preschool, we had a
great presentation I think from Miss Tobin this evening. Uh we've had uh speaking of our preschools, we had two site visits um which many of our members were part of. So on May 15th and the 27th, we had an opportunity to tour uh both the current preschool space at PCIS
as well as the proposed space at Self Middle School, excuse me. I think it was a good opportunity to see the current configuration, how the space has been adapted in recent years, particularly um as well as some of the constraints that are um challenges that are posed there.
And it was also a great opportunity, I think, to see firsthand South Middle School and to speak to those concerns. I want to thank Miss Tobin as well as our committee members that took time to to do that um to walk those early evenings and late afternoons. And I also want to
thank our staff, Mary Winski, Heidi King, Jen Ryan, and Christine Blanchard who were part of those tours as well. Christine was on the second day. Um so um taking all that into consideration, we will present um a a refi a refined
presentation and recommendation on the 16th for consideration. Um so I just wanted to to let the committee know that that would be forthcoming as well. And then just a couple logistic thing Oh no, there's more actually a couple logistic things. Academic convocations. Just a reminder again, this Wednesday, if
you're available, South High School uh 7 p.m. has their academic conf uh convocation. North's um Thursday at 6:30 p.m. Both are in the performing arts centers. And then graduation, let's
hope that the weather is good for us. um will start um this Saturday this Saturday starting at North um at 9:30, but we do have a breakfast at 8:30 in the cafeteria. All your names have been submitted um for back parking lot. So,
when you pull up to North High School should you be attending your they will stop you and your name will be on that list and get you in the into the back uh parking for breakfast if you want to come early. Um, we'll head over right afterwards to South High School. We'll
have lunch, a nice lunch in the culinary. Um, and there ceremony begins at one o'clock. And the last thing that I that I want to highlight, which is a great thing that um happened last week and we announced through social media um
very proud to announce that two of our educators received the 2025 Latino Educator Shine Awards. Um, recognized at the state house, Mari Costa and Anne Hasset. Um, this was presented by the Latinos for Education in partnership
with Senator Adam Gomez. Um, and then proudly, um, nominations were proudly made by Representative Badger and Senator Dylan Fernandez. So, for those who don't know Mari, I just think it's worth taking a moment to kind of speak to Mari. Mari is a bilingual family ed
liaison um, for the Plymouth Public Schools, has been working with us for many years. Um she does an amazing work trans not only in trans her her her translation but her communication and connections that she makes uh with families for families in our schools. Um
she's also been instrumental in establishing the district's English learner parent advisory council really building up the voice of our families. So really proud of that. Um Mari has broken down so many barriers and made so many connections and we're just blessed
to have her. Uh and again Miss Hassid for the last 12 years has been an educator for the Plymouth schools currently serving as a title one teacher at Federal Furnace and um her commitment really to targeting reading interventions um to support countless
students has been has been um a tremendous um benefit to us. So, just want to congratulate both of those amazing educators uh for making a difference and for that recognition. And then I do have one more reminder which I forgot. Um Miss Libby Hurley will be
coming, our mediator and communication specialist will be coming to the next meeting around 6:45. So, if you could be here at 6:45, she will be with new group picture. Put it on our website. We'll take individual photos if you like them. Also, put them on our website. Um, so
just wanted to make you aware of that as well. That's all I have this evening. Thank you. Any questions for Dr. Campbell? No. All right. If not, we'll keep moving on. Next up is retirements, Mr. Chroy. Yes. Good evening. I have two retirements to share with you. Uh, first
is one of our nurse educators at Manmat Elementary School, Lan Lannes. U, she'll be retiring at the end of this school year after 10 years uh, serving our district. Uh, and our next retiree is Patty Callahan Ryan. Uh, she was the
assistant director of food services. She's served in other capacities, but that was her most recent. And u 40 years. Wow. I'll say that again. 40 years. How's Pat going to get end of June. She'll be retiring. All right, Miss Jackson.
That's amazing. Uh we would like to thank Miss Nemes and Miss Callahan Ryan for their combined 50 years of service to the district and wish them uh best of luck in their retirement and their future endeavors. I feel like we need to get like
counseling or something for Pat though if he's inv. Wow. All right. Uh all right. So next up uh reports and proposals from committee members. have any uh updates from the committee. Miss Bryant, I would like to
just share um an experience that uh Nathaniel Morton last week. Um, I know we usually hear a lot uh in regards to students missing out because of a COVID experience at some point. And so, um,
the graduating fifth grade missed out on their Patriot show that I guess has been um, integral as part of moving on over there. So, the students petitioned Miss
Chase and Miss Soul to be able to do a fifth grade show, which they did an amazing, amazing job. It included a skit, um, memories that were submitted by the students, read out loud, um, and
then, uh, two students read an excerpt from Oh, the Places You Will Go in both English and Portuguese, which was really, really nice in bringing together the experience
um that they've shared over there. The other students um participated by doing set design, performing extras. They did a skit on crew values that somehow included a zombie, but it was very
entertaining. And so I just wanted to thank the the staff um as well as teachers Sue Martin, grade three, Rebecca Lyle, grade three. uh Courtney
Manian, art teacher, Amber Bates, the music long-term substitute, as well as Allison Etheton, a parent who really initiated the idea and was involved from beginning to end, as well as Robbie Abuy
who's head custodian and helped prepare the stage, set up the library and the balcony for the show. So, just really wanted to shout everybody out for going beyond to really help build a sense of community, school spirit, and tap into
individual talents. Definitely appreciated. So, thank you. Great update, Jackson. Anything? Um, yes. U Miss Brian and I also went to the diversity committee. Um, and
um, and we had a great update from Eagles for Equity and all the great work that they've been doing. Um, and I feel like they're they're off to a really good start there. Um, and as a shout out to my own daughter, she received an
award for babysitting for the entire year for free for one of the other mothers just out of the kindness of her heart. So they prevent pre presented her with an award for babysitting which was really super cute. I didn't know that was gonna happen. You didn't. It was
awesome. Great. Thank you for the update. And then um also joint meeting um uh Dr. Campbell, myself, and Dr. Blaze Dell met with the town to just continue to
uh foster our connections when it comes to budget and some of the other initiatives that we have been working on to be more cohesive and as always I feel like it went it went really well. We talked about a number of you know issues
around the district and around the town that would be combined. So really thankful for them to continue to support that. Good. Thank you for doing that. All right. Anyone over here? All right. All right. Thank you
for that. All right. Uh master planning committee. Any updates from that, Mr. Morgan? Um yes, there was a um community forum at Pis South Middle School on May 22nd. Unfortunately, I couldn't attend. and it could happen to be my wedding anniversary. But um so now everything's
gone to the consultant and um I'm sure we'll be having a meeting sometime in later in June to um to see their draft and so we're getting close where we're going to be preparing our report. So uh more to come. Excellent. Um and then
building committee I know doesn't meet until next Thursday. So we'll roll that to our meeting on the 16th. So back to Mr. trophy for appointments, leaves, of absences and resignations. Yes. Uh so this evening I can share with you that we did receive and accept four resignations. Uh we did approve two
certificate appointments and one classified and then we did have one uh parental leave and one medical leave approved. All right. Thank you for that. All right. Do we have any unfinished business any members would like to discuss? Oh, any new business we want to
bring up for future agendas? See nothing. All right, that takes us to our uh consent agenda. Uh looks like we have a number of uh minutes and then a batch of uh uh equipment disposals. Do we have a
motion? Morgan, I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda. I guess um you know what? I could actually do it afterwards. They're just um just three uh decisions, just spelling issues. Oh, on on the on the uh Yeah, on on the
minutes. Okay. Minutes. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Do we have a second on the uh uh motion, Miss Bryant? Seconds. All right. All right, that passes unanimously. And then Miss Haywood, are there ones that you wanted to make adjustments to?
Yeah. Um just on the 17th 72 um the spelling or 71 I say um the spelling of the secretary of education uh there's just an R missinger um on
92 um there's a Y missing from my name um that's on March 17th and then on the 7th um just on I guess it's on
52 moving down. Um I mentioned [Music] um something about oh asking about the constant movement of the program and the possibility of peek and it just it's a spelling. It's just growing. It's just it doesn't it's just
gi missing an R. That's it. All right. Thank you for that. All right. If nothing else, we are at the end of our agenda. So, I will adjourn us at 8:54