30th meeting of the school committee to order. Uh we do have one member remote this evening. So we will do everything by roll call. So we'll first uh call attendance. I'll start with Tom remotely >> here. >> Laura >> here. >> Carla >> here. >> Sarah
>> here. and Sean is here. Um, okay. We, let me run through our agenda this evening and then we will jump right in. We'll start with public comment for anything that's not on the agenda. We have, I think, two things we're featuring for Focus on Excellence this evening. We have probably the lengthiest consent agenda I've seen in five plus
years, which is a lot of good news. So, that's exciting. Um, we will go to reports. In the new business section, we're going to uh have a presentation on their school improvement plans and vote to accept those. We'll have our Q1 financial update for the for the fiscal
year of 26. Um we'll have a brief discussion about school committee budget priorities for the next budget season. Um an FY26 enrollment update and then uh a reading and potentially vote to adopt policy IKFE uh will round us out. So uh with that we
will start with public comment for anything that is not on the agenda. If anybody in the audience wants to take three minutes of fame, now is your chance. All right. Uh let's move then to our focus on excellence and I will kick it to Dr. Mileski. >> Great. All right. Good evening everyone.
Nice to see you. Uh the first group we would like to welcome tonight is we have several members of our RHS marching band here tonight uh to speak a little bit about sort of how the season's gone thus far and what's ahead. Uh also coming off the heels of a victory last weekend uh hosting 18 marching bands from across
the state in competition. Won first place in their division with a gold medal. Also to put a plug in, this weekend up at Lawrence uh high school will be competing for the NESBA uh state championship as well. So, we'd love to invite up some uh members of the band. I see Mr. Mulligan here as well to come on
up to the microphone and to share uh some some of some work some of your work with the community so everyone can hear some of the great things happening. It's quite dark. >> Hi. Uh we are four representatives of the uh Reading Memorial High School marching band. Uh my name is Brian
Fernandez. I am the president of the bands. >> I'm Avery Black. I'm the drum major. >> Uh I'm Ariana Scott. I am the symphonic band representative and color guard co- captain. and I'm Alexander Spagnolo and I am the captain of the color guard.
>> Um, so this year we've been working on our show Metropolis and as he said we have um we won our uh second to last uh competition last Saturday which was very exciting which we hosted. Uh this Sunday we're going to
be having our finals at uh the Lawrence Memorial Stadium in Lawrence. The band is going on at 1:25 if anyone would like to come. Um, and we w would like to um thank the BPL because they've organized so much for us, including our um our
home show last Saturday, which we've held over 25 years. Um, and then later on this year, we're going to be going to Disney on December 11th to 15th, and we're going to be marching down Main Street USA on Saturday, December 13th at 5:25.
um for Winter Guard, which is starting up soon. Um we're really excited about that. We have um a new competitive season, which we haven't had um last year, so we're really excited to start that off with new staff as well. Um we also have new students who are excited
and our season runs from November to April. >> Also starting up in winter is going to be our our indoor percussion group, uh RNR. We um we combined with North Reading and Reading and we put together essentially
a marching band without the wins. Um we're looking to grab another NESBA championship win. Um this year there was a a noticeable 10point difference between last year's finals and the year before that. So we have been making considerable proc uh progress and uh our
season runs from December December to April. Uh, the symphonic band is getting ready for our winter concert on December 9th. Uh, many groups perform at the concert, including the jazz combo, the stage
band, the jazz band, the marching, and the symphonic band. Uh, our concert starts at 7. Um, yeah. >> Um, our competitive season is over, but we still have plenty of events left this year. We um in November we have our
Habra Hill parade on Sunday 11 the uh November the 23rd. Um we have our our alumni night on the 26th. We have our Thanksgiving Day game uh the day after on the 27th. We have our uh reading tree lighting ceremony on the 30th. And in
December we have um we have our festival of trees where we're going to see performances from the jazz band and the guard. and we have our big winter concert on the 9th and we leave for Disney on the 11th.
Um, thank you all so much um the entirety of the community for all of the support that you give us. >> Couple things I just want to share to follow up. First, uh, having you up here, you know, some people may be watching at home and they just may not hear a lot about what's happening in the band. So, it's nice just to spread the
word of some of the amazing work happening. Um, I want to say thank you for a couple things. First, Mr. Mulligan's in the back of the room. Uh I I cannot think of any many other leaders with his level of humility yet performs at a high level consistently. He's absolutely incredible and he has built what is widely regarded, known as one of
the best programs across the state. So, I just like to thank Joe uh who who probably does not like to receive the recognition is constantly giving it back to the students, but it is incredible truly what Joe has built and sustained over the years. So, I just want to make sure everyone sees Joe, knows Joe and appreciates what he does. Uh and for our
students, uh a couple of thank yous. One, uh people may not know if on, you know, just the level of preparation and time commitment that you put in is second to none. Uh if you drive around campus anytime, the summer, you know, late at night, the band is always
practicing, always performing, uh and always and and holding themselves to a really high bar. So just that level of preparation, uh is incredible. Two, the the tradition and the culture of excellence. This section is f is called focus on excellence. This is a a marching band that had had back-to- back
state champions. Find me any other program that has done that. But just a a program that consistently holds themselves to a really high bar is incredible. Third, the thing maybe I I appreciate most is for those who follow marching band 2 know that everyone contributes and everyone's a part of it.
There's no hiding. Everyone has to be a part of the program, part of the team, and your participation matters and is part of the score. So, not only does is everyone feel like they're a part, but the way that students in the program feel connected to the band, they feel like they're a part of a program, feel like they're part of something bigger than them, feel like they're seen, feel
like they have friendships, feel they're valued is just a testament to the leadership at the top, but also for all of you for fostering that culture of student leaders. So, I would just like to give each of you a huge thank you for what you do for our community. Uh, and we're all really impressed. We're cheering you on and hopeful for a really successful performance on Sunday.
Saturday and Sunday, correct? >> Yes. Or Sunday. >> Sunday. yesterday that day. >> Yeah, I just want to add um Dr. Milichesky talked about, you know, tradition and a culture of excellence. Um my seventh grade daughter and a bunch of her friends from the Kulage band went to the competition last week and came home way more jazzed up about band than
they ever were. So, uh so congratulations not only on your success, but on uh inspiring the next generation of the RMHS band as well. So, thank you. >> Yeah, Sean, and one other thank you. We see a couple of parents here. Just like as you know, the band has a it's hard to probably quantify the amount of parents
who are involved some way helping out behind the scenes. There's a huge thank you to all the parent volunteers to make the program run as well. >> Great. Anyone else? All right. We do uh speaking of traditions, we do have one more tradition. We have to embarrass you a little bit and ask you to join us at the front here and take a photo with us
before we uh let you go this evening. >> Joe, I think you have to come up too. Sorry Jeffrey Smile say [Music] >> Joe. Thanks for coming. there. Um, they have paper tech right
now, so >> yeah, >> we can fit them back in if they come. >> We can also I can give a little >> We do have a second Focus on Excellence who is in rehearsal right now. That's for our Catch Me If You Can production upcoming here at the high school. So, they may sneak in at some point tonight,
which I hope we can pause the meeting and give them the floor when they come in. >> I'm sure we can figure out how to do that. It shouldn't be a problem. All right, let's move uh to the consent agenda. Just one word on the consent agenda before I take a motion. Um, one of our members, Tom Wise, actually made
one of the donations this evening. So, we're going to pull item 19 out of the consent agenda, uh, vote on that, and then we'll we'll vote on 19 separately. So, Carla, if we could take a motion. Um move to approve move to approve the
consent agenda minus item 19. >> Is there a second? >> Second. >> Uh so Tom is going to recuse himself from this one. No, sorry. Tom is going to vote on this one. Uh so let's go to the roll call vote and I will start with Tom.
>> As long as she said minus 19. Yes, >> she did say minus 19. Thank you. Laura, >> yes. >> Carla, >> yes. >> Sarah, >> yes. >> And Sean, yes. All right. And then let's take a motion on number 19 >> and move to approve item 19, the structured literacy playbook book
donation from the consent agenda. >> And is there a second? >> Second. >> Seconded by Sarah and uh Laura, >> yes. >> Carla, >> yes. >> Sarah, >> yes. >> And Sean, yes. That passes four to zero. And I will just say this is a great example of a school committee member literally putting his money where his
mouth is and making a donation to support early literacy. So, thank you, Tom, very much for that. Um, all right. Let's move to reports and uh I'll start with do we have a report from Dr. Hardy this evening? >> Just something quick. >> Let's start with Dr. Hardy. >> Just some good news to share. Hi
everyone. So earlier this month we had the incredible opportunity to welcome David and Meredith Lieben to Kllum Elementary School to see our literacy program ARCore in action. Um if you're not familiar with uh David and Meredith, they are nationally recognized
educational researchers and they were um folks that wrote some of the books that were sort of foundational in um some of like how we look at literacy now. Uh in particular, they've been part of the knowledge matters campaign which as you may remember is an important part of our
artcore program. Uh so in their time at Kllum they visited um lots of different classrooms across grade levels. They had the opportunity to see foundational skills lessons, whole class reading lessons, and even some writing lessons. And in the debrief after, they just were
um expressed how um impressed they were with what they saw in our classrooms. Not just the skill level of our teachers and implementing ARC, but really what they said is they saw joy and engagement and confidence in our students as readers and writers. So, um that was
really exciting. One uh comment that David made that really stood out for us was he said um everyone here is breathing life into ARC and that's really what we want to hear. That's the best compliment we can get. Yes, we want to implement the curriculum well, but we
want to do it in a way um that really um shows collaboration and a commitment to the type of literacy programming that we want for our students. So um the visit was great. Uh it was also um an exciting moment just to sort of show off our kilum staff and students and how proud we are of all of the work that's
happening. >> Any questions? >> All right. Thank you, Dr. Milleski. >> Great. I have two updates. Uh Sean alluded to the uh heavy consent agenda tonight. So, I just wanted to loop back and make a comment on that as well. Uh so, you'll see in the consent agenda there's uh many donation items and many
uh grants as well. And want to make a couple quick comments on those. Uh first we know that around the committee there's been a lot of conversation around tightening budgets. We know as uh following up on the recent FINCOM meeting uh which there's been a push for local leaders to try to pursue any creative sources of funding sort of uh
in any way we can. One thing that we're really encouraged to share is that our district continues to uh explore all possible grant opportunities as a way to support and supplement the great work happening in our district. As an example, in this consent agenda, you'll see over $325,000
of uh state funding that was awarded to us over the last two weeks. That comes to us from uh funding for uh innovation pathways, funding for uh capital needs, uh funding for other educational programming, but just continue uh want the comm community to know that we are
going to, you know, keep exploring every grant opportunity that we can at the state level. Uh and also this is done by the work of many of the leaders in this room, many of our other leaders. We do not have a grant writer. It's just our team internally putting all this together. So, uh, that 300 plus thousand dollars in just in the last couple weeks is a testament to our work to, uh,
creatively supplement the budget any way we can. On that same note, in the consent agenda, you'll see many items that were donations from the community. I think one of the things that makes this community so special is that this is a community that invests in our public schools in so many different ways. looking down that list, just a huge
thank you to all of our community partners who uh you know provide all different types of support, including financial support to our district to build on some of the great programming happening. So, I would just like to thank all the many community partners who support the work in our district. So, uh that's a quick update on the
consent agenda budget items two. Uh we know there's been a lot of conversation both locally and nationally around the expiration of SNAP benefits. Wanted to make a couple of comments in relation to our district. Uh first of all uh this is something that deeply impacts so many of our students and families. Uh our food
service department is uh thinking really creatively about what this means and how we can support our students and families. Uh this does not impact our breakfast or lunch program. Uh but uh we know that that in itself is not sufficient. So our Katherine Franetti is working closely with many of our, you
know, principles, our nursing team, our counselors to think creatively of what we can do to provide make sure families individually have what they need over the next couple of weeks or months. Uh there are some limitations on what we can do with uh cooked foods, but we are obviously trying to do everything we can
with it safely to provide for families. Two, I give Katherine a ton of credit to about working really closely with town leadership over the last couple of weeks to make sure that there's also support outside of the schools for families uh in our own community as well. Therefore, uh we feel right now the Reading Food
Pantry is uh well positioned to support the needs of our community. Uh there is more information coming out from our district and from the town tomorrow that will share uh times where families are able to uh p, you know, come by to pick up food. Also, if anyone in the community wants to help, the Reading
Food Pantry has made it, you know, sort of uh has asked for people to support either by a financial donation to the Reading Food Pantry or gift cards to local u supermarkets uh where people can purchase foods as well. There's just certain uh foods they feel like they
already have enough of. So, donating foods may not be as helpful as, you know, gift cards or also uh you know, also cash donations as well. So, I really appreciate how this community is rallying around our students and our families. If anyone has any questions around direct needs or on ways to
support, please reach out to to me or anyone on our team and we're eager to continue that conversation. >> Go ahead. >> Can I add to that? Um, don't forget about St. Vincent to Paul's >> because they also service anybody who lives in Reading as well. >> Great point.
>> Great. All right, let's go to uh liaison reports and Tom, I will start with you. >> Sure. We'll start with the uh finance committee uh vote that they just did on their meeting on the 15th. Uh they did vote to do the 3% operating budget
increase u for next year uh which was what we and the town had asked them to do. So that met our expectations. Um one kind of caveat or concern I think is that they also reported out reported out that to maintain our AAA rating we
need to maintain 15% cash reserves. instead of 7% which is the current policy or 10% which we previously thought 15% of our cash reserves were currently you know we will be after this next budget at 14.8%.
So after the 27 if everything holds unless we have bigger turn back we'll be at the point where we're below the 15% and thus be at risk of our AAA rating being downgraded. So that's one um key note of awareness there. Um, in addition, I'm moving on from finance
committee on the select committ select board. Uh, I do have agreement from uh both chairs of the select board that they will be taking up the uh CPAC recognition petition um on their meeting next Tuesday at 4. So, that's my update.
>> Thanks, Tom. Uh Laura, >> um I went to the rec committee meeting on Monday night and um I can report back that the painting of the woodend playground has been completed. They were making some adjustments to accommodate a visually impaired student and that is
done. Um there was also some updates were also some updates on the Birch Meadow phase 2 project and um it I would say there is a strong possibility at this point that the completion of um the playground there
may get delayed until early spring as a result of delays in equipment delivery and possible weather conditions changing now. So, um, not for sure yet, but possibly. >> That's it. >> Thank you, Carla.
>> Um, I will give a quick update on Kllum. And I want to um point out our principal, Lindsay, who is um a rock star. On top of everything else she does, the time commitment for Kellum is
crazy. Um, and it's a lot of juggling and um, we're, you know, she's making decisions that have to be made. So, um, we appreciate you very much. Um, so we had a KSBC meeting on October 14th. On
Monday night, I manned a table at the connected reading um, at the Reading Public Library, which was interesting um, in a good way. Um I I'll just I figured rather than give an update, I'll just highlight some of the meetings we've had over the past couple of weeks.
Um design status meetings with we had a meeting with the MSBA to talk about where we're at with the design. Um and they t always let us know what our next steps are and and things like that. We just make sure we're on the same page with dates and stuff. Um we've had
meetings for the temporary playground for technology and IT um the interior design including the um design in the rise space and we've started discussions on furnitureures and fixtures which is
um so important um access control and door hardware and today we had a tree meeting so we talked about removal and preserving trees which actually was very interesting. You can tell how bored we are, but it is
it's um we we're getting a lot done. Um we they've just the meetings are just they just constantly pop up on your calendar. So, but it's um it's it's going really really well. >> Thank you, Sarah.
>> Um RCTV board met Tuesday. Nothing school related, so I won't drag us out for that. Uh, another shout out in lie of drama club being here uh, two weekends in a row with um, catch me if you can musical performances Friday, Saturday, Sunday, November 7th, 8th, 9th, 14, 15, 16. Really fun. Come check
it out. >> And Tom stole both of my planned reports. So, we are good as far as that goes. All right, let's move to the uh, new business section and we'll go to the school improvement plans. So, Dr. Milleski, Dr. Hardy, I'll hand it to you to kick us off and get us started.
>> Sounds good. Looks like we're locked out. Do you have the timed out, Chris? Can we phone a Can we phone a friend? Yeah, >> we got timed out. >> Um, >> you want me to share?
>> Sure. >> The same one from the >> No, it's a there's a there's a PowerPoint on this on this that'll probably render better. Tom, just bear with us. Two seconds. >> That time out. Thank you. Sorry.
Here we go. All right. Good evening, everyone. Uh not excited tonight to dive into our school improvement plans for 2526. Obviously, we're joined by all of our school leaders, which you'll be hearing from them momentarily. Just a couple of points of framing before we dive into the the content. One, uh this is meant to be a very highlevel overview
of our school improvement plans. Obviously, across eight sites, we could be talking all night about the amazing things happening each school. Tonight is just a very high level overview of one what are some of the commonalities by by level and then two what are some of the things some of the improvement efforts that may be unique in each school
community. If you are eager to learn more about what's happening each specific school there's also the uh each school improvement plan is listed in the packet and there's also on the last slide of the presentation the date time and also in many cases a zoom link for which uh each of our leaders will be presenting within their respective
school communities. I think everyone in the community is probably pretty familiar with the point of ASIP at this point. Um, so, uh, I I think something I want to flag before our leaders dive in is that this is not meant to be an exhaustive list of every initiative happening in their building. Uh, this is
meant to be some of the things that they have identified as the most strategic uh, highest priority items in their school community. By using not seeing something to sip does not mean that that's not something that is, you know, happening in that school. Just to flag as well. Uh also something that we
really appreciate you know is our consistently as a district is our partnership with families. Uh as we know one of the requirements of the work of the school council uh is the school council you know comprised of pr principal parents teachers community members uh obviously their role in
approving uh sips uh which is really important as well. So the work that you're seeing tonight is not only you know not just from one leader but it also reflects the collaboration of many people in each respective school community. So with that, we will dive in. Uh we're going to kick it right off
jumping into our elementary level. >> Probably one of the tables would probably be best. >> Is this all right? >> Yeah, either one. The best view. Which mic? >> Both. >> Are we good? Oh, both. Mike. Okay. So,
my name is Alyssa Gyos. the principal at Barrows Elementary School and I'm going to speak a little bit about um some of the four commonalities that we're all um going to be working on. We meet monthly at our district um district leadership teams and as well as our learning and teaching meetings led by Dr. Hardy. And
so with that, we're able to bring a lot of our data and looking talking about what's happening at all of our schools. Um so as we were writing our school improvement plans and then we kind of laid them out together, we realized there were definitely um some major areas that we're all working on. um in addition to our kind of unique things
that we're doing. So our first one is improving student achievement and academic growth by deepening the use of data teams and assessment analysis to elevate our tier one instruction and working at targeting supports for specific um profiles of students and students. Um we're also starting to work
with Edu Climber to leverage using data to do that work. So, we've already been through a couple of trainings and fiddling around with it and seeing how that we can take all that data that we're pretty familiar with, but pulling it into one place. So, that's been really nice. We just had a training again this week. Um, we're also implementing the comprehensive math
assessment we're referring to as the CAS um in grades two through five. And we're using results to strengthen our math instruction using data um driven instruction practices. We're also working on literacy, of course, that's always one of our top ones. um along with math. Um and so with that, we're
continuing the work with literacy labs um under the direction of um Erin Burchil. This year though, what looks a little bit different is that we have a representative from every grade at every single school coming together to um to uh continue this work. Um, and they really are able to voice that, put into
practices with professional development that they've been working on through Hill and things like that to really make sure that when they go back to each school, um, they're working with their teams to kind of move things forward so we're all really unified there. Um, and then our other one is strengthening
staff understanding to strategies that promote student connection um, and belonging through continual uh, PD practices that we're doing with our inclusion specialists. So, we have more inclusion specialists um supporting all the schools and kind of being the leaders of best practices and how to
kind of um coach our staff to be able to do what's best for all of our students and an inclusion model. So, those are the big ones for all of us. Any questions? Okay. Oh, and then >> go for it. >> I'm next on alphabetical order. Okay.
So, Al from Alice and Barrows. Um so, we've kind of broken it down into some some focus areas. So for us at Barrows for increasing individual student growth percentiles, so looking at our MCCAST scores, looking at our dibbles, and now we'll be looking at the CAS as well, how are we going to make student growth
individually with each student that, you know, we're not just concerned about the score, but that the growth they're making. Um, and one of the things that we're piloting this year for our school is we're doing instructional rounds. Um, we started this work with our instructional leadership team where um,
we train we ended up training all of our staff to do this, but how to go in and do low inference notes of just what do you see, what can you see, what do you hear, what do you count when you go into a classroom. Um, and then we've used our um, instructional leadership team meetings. And then we also did this
full-on with our staff. And then we used our inservice day to go through protocols to take all of what we see um, in a really um, objective way to start to see trends in our school. Really stren a lot of strengths, but also areas
where we want to grow. We're going to continue this cycle throughout the year where we're refining what we're looking at and then from there that will help us develop even more professional development to grow areas to then help our students continue to have academic and uh social emotional success. Um we
also had a for our positive behavior supports we had kind of a reboot. You know things can kind of get a little stagnant. Um so our ILT and our we have assembly leaders now really um put a new kind of burst of energy in. We updated our Barrow's beliefs with our our core
values. Um we're focused more on even more so studentled assemblies and just different areas there that you can see in the bullet. But um but that's where we're really working on there to help support students feel good and embed that with our second step and our social emotional learning um that we're doing.
And lastly, um I worked closely with our uh MECO coordinator um trying to make sure that we were bridging any kind of gap um geograph geographically with our um families that are in Boston. And so we um offered a um two Zoom meetings
kind of like a back to school, but also the the kind of the nuances and unique um maybe challenges or things that we would want our families to know that live in Boston. So, we offered a daytime Zoom and an afternoon Zoom or evening Zoom. Um, and we asked what would be better. We offered both and we went
through all of that and then our intention is to do that again midyear and then at the end. So, we're getting feedback and also being able to make sure that they know and feel a part of our community. So, that's it for Barrows. >> I think I'm next. Is that the alphabet?
We're good at this mic. Well, good evening. I'm I'm excited to give the highlights for Birch Meadow Elementary School on our SIP. And uh the first one that you're going to see is that we are putting an emphasis on early
literacy at Birch Meadow. We've had over the past couple of years really strong student growth outcomes as as students have moved from grade three through grade five. But we really really believe that if we can raise up the starting
point that we're going to see the finish line even higher. So though the growth has been impressive. We're really excited about that. But we want to focus on early literacy. So you're going to see that throughout the school improvement plan. We've also been very very successful at
reducing our chronic absenteeism. Over the past year we were able to bring that down multiple percentage points. That's very very hard to do at elementary school because when you're eight or nine years old, it's not up to you if you get to school. So that's a lot of partnership with families. We've been
successful at that. We think we can keep moving that in the right direction and get even more students to school. Uh we have a really dedicated attendance team that's doing that work. One of the new things that we're doing this year is we're going to sit down at our collaborative planning time with teams
and present them with monthly reports so that grade level teams can partner with us more directly around increasing student attendance and we think we're going to see dividends with that. We also are really excited to be seeing the growth in our embark program. That's
our subst substantially separate program that is at Birch Meadow Elementary School. One of the things that I am really really excited about is that we've been able to work with our paraprofessionals to change and improve their schedules a
little bit so that we have them more available to meet and plan for students every day. They're such a pivotal part about what we do that I want to make sure I give a shout out to just a couple of people in this presentation. So Megan Morris, Julie Spanuzi, Kimberly Kimberly
Manahan, Kayla Dunovan, Adriana Roberts, Elizabeth Littlehale, Susie Kusis, and Jackie Wilson. Those are the pair of professionals in our embark program. Those frontline staff make such a difference to the lives of kids every single day, and we're so excited to have
them more available to meet with us and plan with us. So those are some of the things on Birch Meadows SIP. excited to share them with you. >> Thank you. Good evening all. Good to see you. Great to be here. Um uh just to share a little bit about uh kind of uh
the things that we're working through at Joshua Eaten. Um it's been nice to kind of partner as an elementary team to work on so many of those core um areas together, which is nice. So, um, a lot of what you'll see just kind of, uh, stems off of, um, you know, what you saw
in the commonalities as well. Uh, one thing that we're excited to really work through, uh, and delve deeper into is our writing. Uh, in the past, you know, four years that I've been here, we've focused so much on reading and math, and we've found, um, that writing is sort of our next, uh, area that we're looking to
focus more on. So, we're spending our collaborative planning time uh on Wednesdays working with each grade level to look at our pre and our post assessments uh for ARC um to really just see uh where are our students at, what are what do they need to get to that
next level uh and push them further. So, we're excited to focus on writing not just in our data meetings, but also through our instructional rounds um and our peer walkthroughs that we do with our our staff, similar to what Alyssa shared um at Barrows as well. Um and we
uh we've been excited to to kind of pilot sort of a tiered intervention for math. So um in the past our teachers have really worked through all of those uh interventions within our windblock and we've looked to see like where can our you know larger staff support and
our tutors um to be more strategic with that math particular area as well. So that's instruction at J and just some of the things that we're excited about. Uh secondly, uh we're looking forward to rolling out that social emotional learning block. It's been really nice to
see um you know how J has responded to that and just the excitement that has been built. Um one kind of unique thing we're trying is uh pre and a post assessment. Um our teacher leaders felt like it would be really great to see how
our students kind of rate themselves on these social emotional skills before um and after each unit. So that's something that we're piloting this year um just to help our students know like this is why we're learning. This is why we're incl. We want to feel that growth within ourselves and and help you along that
way. Um and then uh lastly, PBIS, this is always a fun one. Um our uh school, uh school council was really excited about um just thinking through ways that we can differentiate our uh sort of incentives for our fifth graders. We're
always thinking about that fifth grade, like how can we kind of level them up and get them super bought into our our PBIS. So instead of just, you know, shopping at our school store, we're looking forward to um not only making them, you know, leaders of our school store, which I know we have, um some
children that that have been taking the the lead there, um and doing a great job, but thinking about ways that fifth graders can earn more leadership within our school community. So that's some of the work we'll do this year. Um and then lastly, just a fun one, we got some monitors in our school that were just
shouting out kids left and right. So students walk in the hallway and they see, you know, their name and what they did to show our core values. So just another way to teach students like what it is we're looking for to really show um those core values. So excited about
those three areas. Good evening. Um, so for Kellum, we had I was really impressed with the achievement and growth that all our whole community made this year, but we're going to be focusing on making sure we have equitable outcomes for our multilingual learners and our students
on IEPs. Um, one of the ways we're doing that is really thinking about the professional development for our B-grid, so our inclusion services and collaborating with special ed and general ed and finding the time and opportunities to make sure that students
are reaching their IEP goals in the classroom, how we can bridge that gap a little bit more. Um, we're also trying to tie special ed and our ML teacher into data team cycles more frequently um to really bridge those achievement gaps.
The second piece is I sent out a family survey asking how the school year went and what feedback they could give us as a community asking things from um about administration, about communication, about things that they would like to see improved. And the biggest piece of
feedback we received was they want to know more about our students progress as we continue through the school year. So we're actively finding time whether it's during a staff meeting or um in you know formal conversations, informal, finding opportunities to tell parents the great
news, but also ways that we're supporting students whether it's with a tutor group or um in class. We have reading lab two block that I think we often as educators say like they're getting it reading lab 2 but families don't understand what that might look like. So providing more information we
give information in our learning launchpad each week in the newsletter. So we're trying to delve into that a little bit more this year. And then last lastly I had to put the building project on here. Um there's I can't even begin to tell you how many the building is going to be fabulous and I like very
confidently can say that when it opens it's it's going to be spectacular and I really feel like the architects and all of the companies and consultants we're working with are asking for stakeholder opinion. Um and I I do want to thank you for the opportunity of me being involved
because I feel like I've learned a lot and I've got to work with a lot of different people that I might not always. So, I just think we're really moving in the right direction and it's going to be a great community space for everyone to use and to thrive and it makes me excited for future building
projects and not not right now but down the road many years from now >> maybe ones you don't have to lead next time. >> Yeah. >> All right. I think that puts me at the end of the alphabet and I will apologize for my raspy voice. I have caught the cold that is all through wood end. So,
here we are. Um so in addition to all of the commonalities that have already been shared and that colleagues have spoken about so I've kind of bucketed the three important things that I think um Wooden's really going to be focused on this year. So um as everyone knows the committee has created a district-wide curriculum for all five elementary
schools. So to kind of double down and um engage our students in some additional um work and build those competencies, um our school adjustment counselor is leading by monthly. So at least twice a month um additional whole grade SEAL instructions that instruction
that will um buddy up on whatever the lessons that were taught for that month, but also allow kids additional opportunities to um play, which we've spent a lot of time this summer working on. And um he's going to implement some zones of regulations, which is one of the curriculums that our school
adjustment counselors and school psychologists use um to build student capacity to um manage emotions and recognize emotions and build strategies to um navigate some of those big emotions that all people and our littlest people feel pretty often. So um that's really exciting work. Um, in
addition to that, and kind of on the opposite cycle of the social emotional learning that I just talked about, um, we're really focused this year on building out our grade level data analysis and how it is that we use that data to improve our instruction. So, being super intentional, looking at um,
standardsbased um, information. So, we've worked really collaboratively with um Lana Montero, one of our um math coaches, and Aaron Burchil as part of this process as well um to really look at like what are the priority standards and what are we going to do to match um instruction to the
priority standards by creating um like standards trackers and all sorts of data analysis documents to help teachers build their instruction off of what not only our standards but also what students are showing in their um in their performance. So, that's exciting work. Um I know someone else here had
spoken a little bit about instructional rounds um peer observations and just like general walkthroughs. So, we're doing that as a leadership team, but bringing that work into um sort of the smaller either grade level communities and or um people like Aaron Burchil and Lana Monontto are coming in and we're
doing it um sort of more whole um whole school so that teachers can get an opportunity to see each other teach but also um sort of just looking at like how do we provide structured feedback to teachers so that they can then improve their instruction um in meaningful ways to kind of build student capacities. Um
and then the last um thing that's like super exciting um is looking at special education. So this is the first year that Wooden has had a full-time team chair. And not only is it really exciting to have another administrator in the building to thought partner with um around special ed andor just like general leadership type things, but um
it allows us an opportunity to provide sort of more regular coaching to our special education team. And this year Wooden has a fairly new um special education team. So that's exciting work really allowing us to look at our reading instruction and the structured work that our teams are doing ensuring
that um those curriculums are being implemented looking at modifications really looking at progress monitoring for IEPs um and really allowing us to build like strong family engagement too having someone full-time there. So, that's really exciting work. And as I just mentioned, we do have a fairly new
special education team um at Wood End and the district has sort of partnered with us between um program coordinators, our team chair, um Dr. sty Allison Wright um all the BCBAs, all the inclusion specialists to really provide
a cohesive and what I think is so far has been a really comprehensive like mentoring group for that group of young educators um to build their build their skills but also allow us to provide quality um specialized instruction to our students. So some really good work happening at Woodand and I'm excited for
the year. >> I want to pause. Yeah. Yes. Any any uh any questions for the team or >> or Dr. Moses? Any I do have a couple questions. Go for it. >> Um uh Steve the um you had the dibbles
target in your in your SIP. Um do you know off the top of your head what the what the baseline is that we're working from there to get >> 73. It's 73. Okay. Um, and then Nicole, the uh the bimonthly blocks, how are those going to be coordinated with um lunch
groups and mentoring and a lot of those other sort of interventions that we're kind of already doing at Wood End? >> Yeah. So, it's kind of a um an addition or an enhancement from what we were doing in previous years. So, um last year we had piloted our specialist co-eing what we had called like an enrichment or an additional block of
time. So, we use our specialist to kind of create that um that schedule. So it alternates from our grade level data cycle so the classroom teachers go to it. But um it doesn't impact our lunch groups or anything like that. It actually allows him to our hope is that we'll be building student capacity so
that there may be fewer students who need additional social emotional learning because we're doing it um whole group but it doesn't impact lunch groups. We do them at the very end of the day. They're 30 minute blocks and they were already built into a previous schedule because we were um piloting that co-eing um model that our
specialists were doing. So now instead of them teaching four days a four times a month our specialists they're co-eing twice a month um Mr. Lind is teaching the blocks and then our teachers attend that because it also allows them to implement the castle
standards that they're learning and teaching with the um districtwide curriculum. So >> thank you >> Tom has a >> go ahead Tom. Thanks, Sean. Um, Kaylin, I think I heard you talking about um writing at
Josh Weaten in particular. Um, are you are you leveraging any of the writing revolution um materials that uh Dr. Hardy and others were working through last last year? Can you talk a little bit about your experience with that? >> Um, sure. So, writing revolution has
been a a great tool. It's really integrated into like the framework of ARC. Um, and it targets some of those more specific skills that we're seeing students are in need of. Um, so pairing kind of that writing revolution with the art curriculum, you know, kind of
prompts. Um, but really also looking at our intervention block is what we spent our um, all day PD on uh, just a couple of weeks ago kind of saying like where are students kind of needing that extra support and it's been really great to also have the writing revolution in in
that terms as well. Great. Thank you. >> Could I? >> Yeah. Go ahead, Carl, please. >> Steve, I have a question for you with um when you're talking about your um attendance team. Can and and I love that and I love like even walking through the
high school last winter when it was too cold outside and I snuck in and just started walking in the hallways. Um up on the screen the the the um up on the screen it was talking about attendance and I I love that. I love how you mentioned that. Can you talk about like
what your what that team looks like for attendance? >> Sure. Carla, also if you're cold when you're walking the neighborhood, come to my office. It's about 9,000 degrees every day. Okay. So, let me Do you mind if I write
while I while I talk? That'll help me. I just have to I'm a visual person, so if I'm kind of looking at names. So, on our our attendance team, >> I don't need I don't need like names or anything. Just like >> Sure. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, so we have a group of people, right, who get together. They
they have a variety of roles, right? So, myself, my assistant principal, our adjustment counselor, our school psychologist, our nurse, some of the people that might have knowledge about why patterns are evolving with students. So, the first thing we do is we identify
the problems, right, or the patterns. We sit down and we look and we see, is this something that we need to reach out to the family about? and have them in. Most of the time that right away, right, that connection is going to help start to get a kid to school because we can develop a
plan that's specific to a kid and a family that they might be struggling with. Sometimes it's just about morning routines. Sometimes it's about something that's making the kid anxious. Sometimes it's a kid that lives far away and they're missing the bus, right? So, we have to talk through those things and
figure out a plan together. We've been really successful as a group forming partnerships with families and you don't always see the improvement right away, right? Sometimes that takes a little bit of time, but over time we've seen we can really point to like individual kids and
see them start to get to school more. And so that outreach by that team, I think that now the next step that we're doing by connecting the whole grade level into that team because they might see patterns that we're not even seeing, right? More some global trends in their
grade that we don't know that we're not just picking up. So I think we're going to see even a stronger increase with this. But that's kind of the the nuts and bolts of it. Did that answer your question? >> Yeah, that's awesome. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, Tom. Hand up again. >> Go ahead, Tom.
take myself off mute. Sorry. Um I just wanted to acknowledge since I've been the one who's p who's pushed on this quite a bit in the past. Um how I appreciate in all of your cases and even the ones that are coming up how datadriven your analysis is and how in
how that's now integrated into the practice, right? Not only that is it's much more integrated into your actual SIPs as well. we look at the details behind the scenes. You guys buried the lead as you were talking through a lot of this stuff that you're very
aggressively targeting some significant growth and achievement for a lot of our kids and a lot of our most atrisisk kids when you go through the details behind the scenes. So I just want to continue to thank you for that and acknowledge uh the continued improvements in the overall process and preparation and
distribution of this material. So thank you very much. >> You're welcome. Great. Anyone else? All right, you off the hook for this evening. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> We'll uh move to the middle schools.
probably close. >> Okay. I can't see I >> can see this one here. >> I'm like you want to go here? >> No, that's fine. Just fine. >> Hello. >> Thank you for having us. Um so I'll get us started. We're just going to spend
our first slide going over some commonalities. Um like the elementary school principles, Sarah and I work together. We also meet um and have teaching learning meetings um once a month, twice a month. Um so we really
have um made efforts to um align on on the big topics on the key themes. There are obviously distinctive things happening in each of the schools. Um but we identified these as our kind of key um objectives um under the the strategic objectives. So for strategic objective
one, student engagement. This is a focus in both of our buildings and all the departments. Um like what what exactly are we doing to make sure that students are engaged in the learning that they are active participants um they're not just receiving information. And so I think with um technology and information
being so accessible, the whole way that students have to learn um has has really shifted. And so how are we making sure that they are actually activated and engaged and middle school is such a crucial time for maintaining levels of engagement um so that then when they get to high school they understand sort of
what that purpose is. We'll talk more about that in a second. Um how can we improve our systems so that we are all working together um to support students where they're at um in in in various tiers and and uh identify what supports that they would need whether they be targeted or more intensive supports. um
and how can we make sure that we have very supportive responsive learning environments where students feel like they belong, where they feel like they're part of the community um particularly in um pretty diverse uh buildings. Great. So for the second strategic objective, we are quite
aligned and you'll see that in our SIPs as well as what we share when we get to our school level um slides. And it has been a pleasure working with Jill on all of these because it's nice for us to really feel like we have a partnership in these goals. Um, so some of this might sound redundant when we get to our
own sides, but then there are pieces of this that are very much unique. Um, but we always want to hold students to high expectations and to help them achieve to their greatest potential, both achievement and growth. And that looks different for each individual student. So that's paired with the right amount
of support and the right type of support. So that's why you also see their universal design for learning because that is a focus area of both buildings. Um, and really we did that work this summer about generation alpha and we're really trying to figure out what is meeting the needs of all of
these learners look like this day and age. And that is where some of our professional development is also centered around meeting the unique needs of our students. And we're excited to use the new educ data platform and get to know that. I mean, we're definitely in a learning curve on that, but it's going to provide us a wonderful
opportunity to be more data informed in the middle level and to use that also with our SST process to really try to figure out how what sort of supports and interventions students need. So, that's our second strategic objective and I think I have the next slide. Um so
back under strategic objective one at Koolage you know I'll say year after year just the mantra of how sense of belonging goes handinhand in academics and how coolage everyone at coolage believes that wholeheartedly so knowing that working on that in partnership with
academics is key kind of a 50-50 thing because they both lift each other up um so that strong sense of belonging allows students to maximize their potential all and ideally as a result increase attendance which is something Koolage needs to work on because the chronic
absenteeism that we had goal that we had last year we didn't meet I mean I'll say and we are looking to do things you can't keep doing the same things so we're looking what can we do a little bit differently um and we're excited for that work as well but we're looking at some things increasing community
engagement through after school activities and increased service projects especially with our eighth graders really in promoting leadership for them in the community both Koolage community and beyond. Um interest based learning including a passion project that we've created. We have two
different versions of it, but the idea that if students are creating their own learning, they get excited to come to school to do that thing that they're excited about. Um and continued I just want to give a shout out to our unified sports program which we're developing not only the boxy just had their
jamboree this week which was amazing. We have a basketball program that started last spring and we're starting a best buddies program this year as well at the middle school level. So, um, that's really exciting for that belonging as well for all of our students. Um, we know that students need our students
need a lot of support right now with social emotional development, with academic skills, emotional regulation skills, executive functioning skills, um, and just general academic skills and dispositions. And we're really looking at our sixth graders who are in that
COVID bubble in kindergarten and first grade who really have more lagging skills than we've seen in a long time. So, um, we're really trying to develop things to really support them academically as well as with their belonging and to help them build those
skills. And that's happening in advisory. Um, our school adjustment counselors, which we're thrilled to have two in the building this year, are actually pushing into sixth grade classes to try to explicitly teach those skills. And we're trying to create specific plans about what we really need to focus on at each grade level and be
really purposeful um, in all of those areas. So, strategic objective two, um, this is where we're going to have a lot of similarities. So, I'm kind of speaking on the first bullet. We um Koolage we're really focusing on that generation alpha student and working closely with Jack Jackie Pooy who's
doing our foundational PD which we have her scheduled for multiple times during the year with really saying who are these students in front of us they're different than they have been in the past and we can't just keep doing the same things we've been doing and expect the same results and that is also going to include work on neurodeiversity
um and executive functioning which has been ongoing for us and um Then ideally teachers are going to be able to translate that into their own classrooms and departments. Um that hopefully will then result in achievement and growth goals which we're working on. I mean we're proud of our
data from last year but we definitely want to work with our students with disabilities and the data that they have. Um and we know that science also needs a little bump up but we think the work we're doing in our currical meetings with science are going to really help with that. um they are doing
the third year of curriculum review which is the second bullet here um related to kind of our our curriculum work. They are in year three. They're developing curriculum. They are doing um kind of align units across the schools and they're doing performance-based
assessments tied to those units. So that's exciting work in science. We also have curriculum reviews in math and social studies just starting and getting underway. Um it's been great to pair with Dr. Hardy and her team um on planning and executing that and
continued roll out of the Amplify ELA curriculum um which our ELA teachers. It's kind of fun in year two to see that creativity ramp up and um the comfort level with it be there. So that's really great. And Joel, >> this one's a common well they're all kind of commonalities.
>> Yeah, that second one is definitely a commonality. So I'm speaking for both of us. >> Yeah. So I'll just take over and then it'll go to my slide. So we're we're really using the data. Um I think educ educ climber is going to be a fantastic tool for tracking that more longitudinal data and also um compiling different things like the attendance data and the
i ready data and mcast data. Um but we've really spent a lot of time um looking at our spring MCCAST I Ready um and uh MCCAST and I Ready data to form our more targeted interventions for the beginning of the year. Um, since we had
our our benchmark, our initial um I Ready in September, we're also now looking at math and reading as far as creating those groups for quarter 2. We'll then do midyear in January. And so that will help um inform those groupings for um leading into when we'll be doing
the MCCAST. So it's it's really helpful because now teachers have gotten very used to you utilizing the data access you know accessing the data um meeting in teams and in groups in identifying who are the kids who just need a little bit more of that like classroom level
support that they can get during that project time who are the kids who need more targeted support. Um, and so we've really looked at kids within like that 10 point window of of meeting expectations, focused on them at the beginning of the year because it's really not too much to get them kind of into that that bucket. And now we're
starting to look at kids who had um maybe were like 20 points away from that. So um really just getting teachers into those the practice of in their teams in their grade level groups utilizing that data um and then like tracking that data um uh to see that progress. We can go to the next one.
I'll just keep on objective two since I'm already started there. Um, so Sarah talked about the curriculum reviews. I think the cool thing about some of these objectives is that teachers and having goal goals meetings where they're setting their goals for evaluation over the past few weeks. Um, being able to
frame this work at a district level and then a building level and then for teachers to be focusing on this is what I'm doing in my practice. So this is my focus at my department level. Student engagement is an area where a lot of departments are focusing on. what does that look like for English? What does
that look like for math? Um, and teachers are collaborating and talking about that those things and saying, "This is what I'm going to do. I'm invested in some AIPD. I'm really interested in learning more about generation alpha and then this course that I'm taking, this book that I'm reading, this is going to actually
impact my practice, and then this is how I'm going to measure it in terms of my student learning goal that I'm creating." And so they're really seeing how all of those things are are integrated and and working together as opposed to being separate things. Um we're spending a lot of time really trying to strengthen our tier one
instruction um at uh at Parker. Um and so some UDL training. This is going to tie into my other strategic objective. um we we're teachers have incorporated UDL as part of professional practice goals that also um is something that you can capture in um trying to measure
student engagement. Um and so we're really focusing on what are we what are we doing for all learners? I think because Parker has the highest percentage of ML students currently in the district. Um it's you know we have se subs separate programs in in in at
Parker like we really need to find ways to make sure that all students are engaged. we have so such diverse learning needs. Um so those tier one practices have to be really really strong. Going to the strategic objective one um we are in year three of participation in Desi's uh SEB academy
which is the social emotional behavioral academy. We started this under Michelle Rubino in uh as a sense of belonging cohort. When I came in um to the role I had already convened a group of teachers as part of a behavior committee to look at what was happening with some of the student behaviors in the building. And
so there was a PBIS cohort happening and the SCB was like, hey, we'll put you in that one, too. So we're initially in in sense of belonging and then we're able to jump in last year in PBIS and they've integrated those together. All of this works together under MTSS in terms of the tier one, tier 2, tier three for all
u more targeted and more intensive. So we're talking about that not only academically looking at that data, but also behaviorally. What do we need to do to make sure that students are meeting the behavior expectations? Um, so one of the things we've been working on is um refining our our kind of rubric for
behavior expectations. These are our schoolwide expectations. This is what they look like in the classroom. This is what they look like in the cafeteria. Something new that we did in the cafeteria this year was um introduce just like the scaffolds for kids at each table as far as this is how we know your table is ready to essentially get
dismissed to either go outside or go to class. Um and so we started the year with giving this laminated sheet like my table is clean, my floor is swept, my trash is thrown away and over and trained teachers um how to use that with
students as well. Once the table was set, kids would get a laminated card. It had the table number. It was it's neon green and then they would be able to like hold their card up that their table was ready. So it was a system that was really um influenced by PBIS. uh this is
what the expectation is that we you need to meet and it's really I think helped with create um predictability and order within the cafeteria particularly for our sixth graders who are coming in we have 200 of them so there's so many in that space and they have a lot of energy and they're really excited to socialize and they really want to move so it
creates at least the structures in the cafeteria um and something else that we're really focused on in terms of that student engagement bucket is making sure that students um have student centered experiences so looking at the my cap being able to use that grant funding to
develop new classes um to uh help pay teachers to to develop a new advisory curriculum that's also applying the um recommended scope and sequence at the middle school level just to provide more exposure to some of the opportunities at RMHS or at tech schools or and so
kids understand like this is why this matters now because here are the things that you could be doing um in this next stage. a few questions. Um, so one is um, uh, well, let me make one obseration. I was sort of hoping there'd be a strategic objective here about
eliminating 67 from the vocabulary, but um, but >> I think it's in the dictionary now. I think you lost that battle. I think you just made it in. >> Yeah, it was Marian Webster's like word of the year or something, right, >> Sean? Wait till your daughter comes home tomorrow and see if Koolage eliminates it through our Halloween plans. >> We have a plan down the goal. All right,
I will I'll send you a bouquet or something if you if you manage to succeed. >> We're working on it. >> Yeah. Um I I wanted to echo the comment that Tom made. I you know, it's not necessarily reflected on the slides, but in the SIPs themselves, the the amount of like the richness of usage of data
and the sort of very, you know, analytically driven goals that are in there are really encouraging. you know, we've talked, it's probably one of the things in the district improvement plan that we've, you know, maybe given feedback on is we're we're we're seeing the foundation around data get built. You know, I would say this is the first time we're going through this process
that we sort of or at least I'm sort of feeling it culturally like this is how we're, you know, running the district and and, you know, uh driving our our schools forward. And so, um, and Joel, you mentioned like teachers being more comfortable accessing and using data in their day-to-day practice as well. So, um, really encouraging to see that sort of culturally kind of find its way in,
uh, into the SIPs here. Um, and then, uh, I lost the other question. Maybe it'll come back to me. So, anyone else? Laura, >> I just want to say I'm really excited for both schools, um, and especially with this age group that there's a strong focus emerging or continuing on
the student centered learning experiences. I from my own experience teaching higher level kids, I know that those kinds of personal connections with with material and with projects can really be transformative. Um, so I was wondering if you could just say a little
bit more about this passion project idea and um, a little bit more about the MYAP maybe and and just sort of how you're trying to optimize really allowing the students some flexibility in their learning so that they can accomplish the learning goals but in ways that are sort
of individually meaningful. >> Yeah. Um, so we have two eighth grade teams and right now one of our teams is working on the passion project in the fall and the other one will do the spring. And so they have to pick something they're interested in. There's it's being facilitated by two teachers. And of course those two teachers don't know all the answers to all the
interests, but their goal is to help scaffold. Well, how do you research something? A lot of these thing the projects that the kids are choosing um involve community engagement in some way or needing to advocate for something or ask for help. So they're actually getting direct instruction on how to
write an email to somebody or how to schedule a meeting with somebody often within our building but sometimes out of our building. How do you advocate for something? How do you like a lot of what they do are trying to do is they could one one group I'll use as an example
wants to run a craft fair. Great. But they so they had to write me an email to talk about how to how to organize that in the coolage space. We had to we we had a sit down meeting. they had to come up with their proposal. Um, and that's only like the early stages of their their development. So then now they have
to go keep working on it. It's kind of like that little improvement cycle but in like very small steps where they're learning almost all just the skills of how to not just learn about something that they are interested in but then how to take it to reality and realizing how complicated those things can be but
they're excited about it because then the ownership is there. Um, so facilitation of great teachers who are really enthusiastic about it too and are like, "Yes, go take risks. Yes, try that out. Yes, let me show you how to, you know, let's talk about how to write an email and and those kind of structures."
So, it's fun. I can talk about the pathways a little bit. Um, so, uh, eighth grade as well. Um, we we were looking at ways to try to make more offerings available. Um and so we we changed things with the schedule
and our offerings last year um to introduce these pathways exploratory classes. And so in sixth and seventh grade there was team time. So we now have called it project block or PB as the kids will call it. Everyone calls it now PB. Um which operates similarly in
sixth and seventh grade still. Although um in sixth grade kids will do a world language exploratory to give them that exposure one quarter. Um it's it's a kind of an optional thing, but it's an opportunity. Um some kids need more of that targeted support in math and reading during that time. So we have a
lot of flexibility with how we're using that block. Um 8th grade, it's a similar thing. So kids might be in like um ELA or uh math um for a quarter with their teacher or potentially that interventionist. They get assigned the project block to their gened teacher and
then decide the group decides based on the data where kids will who they'll work with. um but they also even if they're in that have this opportunity to do these pathways exploratory courses. So we started last year with four. The idea was everyone would rotate through one a different quarter. As it turned
out when we were then having kids do some of these interventions, they may only get to do like two or three of them. So the way we did the course signups this year was I just um had students rising eighth graders fill out a Google form and rank them. So like top choice down to five. We added um
exploring art as a fifth pathway because there was a concern that previously when we had the electives, we had had some art electives. We moved some stuff down to sixth grade, so there wasn't as much being offered in eighth grade. And so as a way to keep that as an option for kids who wanted to just take that art, um we
added a quarter pathways exploratory. And so there now are five options that kids can take. They can only take up to four of them, one a quarter. Um, but I go through and uh Beth Simpson and I are the two that do all the scheduling and we go through and we look at what the
kids ranked. So started off with putting kids in their first or second option and then I'm actually finalizing for quarter two which starts next week um their options for the second quarter and pulling kids and putting them in some um intervention groupings or putting them in their their second choice. So it's a
way to give kids more exposure to really the innovation pathways that they have at the high school. So, we have clean energy, engineering, um, civic action and public health, and then the new exploring art. And so, the idea that when Katie Buckley comes and she's like throwing t-shirts into the audience, they have some familiarity with like
really the really cool things that are happening at the high school. So, >> awesome. Well, I just wanted to give plauditups for incorporating that perspective into directly into the curriculum because I think that's important. >> Tom, go ahead. >> Thank you. This might be more for Dr.
Hardy or Dr. Milky, but in looking through the detailed data uh and refreshing it again on the MCAST pages as well as the goals. Um the goals still lead to a gap that we've seen is to create Parker and Coalition. Um, so is
there anything we can do to support Parker Moore? Uh, you know, over the next Sorry, Sarah, Colle's in relatively good shape, but what can we do to support Parker Moore to help close the gaps more aggressively? Uh, or have we determined
that there that this is this is where we're going to be, right? I'm hoping it's not the latter. Um and you know so you know since you did the presentation you know about almost a month ago now has there been any analysis to see if there's anything else we can do any
budget adjustments any resource surges? Anything else we can do after school stuff? I know we just got the grant but what else can we do to help Parker more? >> I can jump in first and I'll lead with a data point that I think I've shared uh during the MCAST presentation too. So uh
in front of me I have the uh Parker scores from dating back to say 2021. This is the percent proficiency in ELA. 59% in 21, 58% in 22, 53% in 23, 61% in 24, and 65% in 25. So that that shows me
that the the needle is point is trending in a more positive direction. And I'll let Jill share in a minute maybe what are some of those things that are happening in ELA that we think are maybe encouraging and starting to move the needle there and maybe what are some of the spots where we can push more because I think Jill we're starting to see some
things. So I think that I just want to make sure that's a a context there. In math go back to 2021 it was 42% proficiency 2022 52%. Back down to 43 in 23 then up to 64% in 24 and then 59% in
25. So that 59% has the highest except for last year that it's been since 2019. So I I don't think the narrative of every and I'm not saying this what you're saying Tom, but I'm saying the narrative of there's not some things that are trending positive at Parker. I think that that's important to note and I agree we want that to be able to match
sort of what the trends of performance that we're seeing at Coolage. So, uh, I think giving that context of like, you know, Jill, I don't know if you can start by sharing what do you think from like a building perspective of some of the pieces that are maybe working or leading to this and maybe some spots where we can continue to push and then
we can pile on from the district level maybe some additional supports, resources that we see as well. I >> mean, I think definitely the curriculum department deserves a lot of credit for the the the growth. Um there was a lot of investment with the math coaches
coming in and really leading PD with the math department two years ago and actually spending time in classrooms teaching lessons for students modeling uh sorry teaching lessons for teachers and modeling sort of some of the instructional strategies that they could be using. Um I think the opportunity for
teachers to collaborate with each other not just at their grade level but across the department um is super important. And so I think the more that we build in those opportunities for ELA similarly um being able to have Erin in the schools we had Hill for literacy coaching last
year which was a significant amount of time um and I think the teachers really benefited from that in increased opportunity for collaboration to be able to say this is what I'm struggling with where where are you seeing struggles but also to have people come into their classrooms and observe the the
curriculum and be able to give them in the moment um feedback as far as how they could adjust and and change that. So I know for me one of the biggest challenges I have is being able to get into classrooms and give that feedback. So the ways if we can find ways for it
doesn't have to be me necessarily but to have that those regular cycles of feedback for teachers and those opportunities for them to really collaborate um beyond I think just that department meet early release department meeting time. I just don't think it's enough. Um, I think it's it's hard these
are hard things to figure out. Um, but I think if you make that initial investment as we've seen with things like looking at data to create intervention groups, it's a practice that becomes then embedded in in the day-to-day routines. Um, so I think that that is definitely things that we could
focus on. I have two thoughts from a district perspective too. Uh, also just to give a shout out to Koolage too. So, Coolage was 72% proficient in ELA this year and then 75% in math which is near the the the top sort of you look at middle schools across the state too. So, there's some also really good practices
happening at Koolage that are shared amongst teams and it's great that we have the strong relationship between Sarah and Jill constantly sharing practices between the schools as well. So, I just want to say we think there's some really encouraging things happening in district. To me the one of the biggest answers for us has been our now
having educ because looking at this one summited data point of 65% of kids are proficient ELA is not enough to dig you know dig deeper in the root cause of what's happening where where are the challenges by grade level by by classroom by certain demographic groups
what are the supports that students are getting by those grade levels what does uh our interventions and support look like this will allow us to track students to track sort of grade level performance, to track uh interventions that we're using for students and whether or not they're moving the
needle. So, I think finally having this tool will allow our district team to better continue to sort of see where we are, intervene more quickly, support more quickly, and think about where providing resources. I don't think the answer is just say add an additional math interventionist. I think the answer
is let's continue to look at the data that is uh we have more consistently we have that uh looks at it across different you know different variables to be able to decide what is it that we need and I think that's something we haven't had in the past so honestly our strategy has been throw more and I just
don't think throw more is uh as targeted or as supportive as we can be so that's my quick thought >> I'll just add one thing and Tom I don't think this is exactly what you're looking for but just to you know speak honestly to how we're sort of approaching this. One of the things we've talked about repeatedly and and you know at the school committee when we
with the math pathways conversation, we've talked a lot about what math instruction looks like and we've known for a while that our seventh and eighth grade curriculum um that was put in place just wasn't really being leveraged. And we believe that that is one of the the problems that we're seeing in some of the differences
between the schools because we don't have alignment across the buildings um as far as what our the materials our teachers are using and even perhaps some of the instructional practices that they're employing with our students. And so launching the curriculum review, we've already had multiple meetings. The middle school principles were generous
enough to give us their math teachers to release them during a school day so that we could start. Whenever we run a curriculum review, a really big part, especially at the beginning, is professional development for our teachers. So, getting on the same page as to what really high quality
instructional materials look like. Um, tomorrow, I know when they're having their meeting, they're going to start looking at the curate rubric, really delving into what it is that we want to have in front of our students. Also, Py for the teachers around instructional practices. And so some of that work, even though it's happening for both
schools, I do believe is going to be part of what we see um where we start to see the the gap closing. As Tom mentioned, those ELA scores, we start to see that Parker's continuing to have that upward success because now all of our middle school teachers are using the same curriculum. When they come
together, they're able to have those conversations about student work. Um and then it's just easier for everyone who's supporting because we're all on the same page and we know what teachers are working with. So, that's just one example. We, you know, we're investing a significant amount of time this year in
professional development and support for ELA curriculum and math. Um, the supports really are happening across both schools, but I believe they're the things that we need to move the needle at Parker as well. >> Yeah. I mean, I just real quick, I appreciate all the answers. I And Tom,
you know, your answer is at the top of the middle school number. I'm looking the next layer down, right? Um, and in particular the eighth grade as right before they go into high school, right? There are pretty significant differences in achievement between 8th grade at Park
Barker and eighth grade at Coolage or at least what's projected to this number. So, it's hard for me to tell if this is last year's eighth grade and we're going to go up from that or if it's last year's seventh grade projected into eighth grade and going up from that. It says cohort, so I'm assuming it's the latter and not the former, right? So,
it's their performance as seventh graders and what we're hoping for as eighth graders. Um, but I think that that cohort in particular uh at Parker has pretty pretty dra drastic differences and I would hate to see that we're limiting their outcomes when they get to high school because we didn't
invest now. Somewhat like we have this problem with the upcoming sixth graders, right? Where we have the upcoming fifth graders that were the co co year kids that we have to invest in as well. I think so. That's where my ask is is, you know, yes, educ is going to help. Yes,
getting math properly taught in line with curriculum will help, especially at certain school, right? But I think is there anything else as we look at the smaller test you're doing that with engine climber um where we make sure that we're maybe we need math coaches need to be spending a little bit more
maybe it's 6040 of their time at Parker versus Cooch, right? It could be something that simple. Maybe it's that's overly simple, right? But I just, you know, if you think about it, we don't want to we don't want to block that class off from longer term success um as we look at where they are.
>> Those are all fair points. Thank you. >> Anything else? >> Okay. I did remember my other question. Um I don't remember who made the comment, but there was a discussion about the the sixth graders and the skills gap that they have coming in, you know, being interrupted by COVID as kindergarteners.
um the fifth grade, the incoming sixth graders for next year were, you know, >> kindergarten >> in preschool and then were kindergarters when we came back in in the fall of 2020. Um so can you talk a little bit about what are some of the specific sort of skills deficiencies that you're seeing in the current sixth graders? And
I'm curious whether there's anything we're doing with the elementary schools to specifically address some of those things that are most sort of problematic when they when they arrive in middle school. Um, I think our work with Jackie Pulooi started with behavior and talking about it things that are tied with executive
functioning and the lack of attention span for this new generation. And I think that you can't just expect them to sit and attend and do school as we are used to. So, we're noticing, you know, we're seeing that in the classroom. Let's say kids are always
moving and you think they you explain something once and by the next moment they have forgotten. And so I feel like that kind of reinforcement of and I feel like we're just almost like having to retrain the adults on taking
things a little bit more slowly. Um being a lot more explicit with directions, written, verbal, visual. um not pro and I we want to hold kids to high expectations so I don't want to say that but almost like having to slow down
with teaching the skills of even what we would normally see as a sixth grader coming in would would know how to organize a little bit follow directions a little bit and I think there's just a lot of not not knowing how to do that yet so almost treating them like a fifth grader
or a fourth grader has kind of been the recommendation like you have to think of that differently and that takes some getting used to for the teachers and the staff in general. Um, and academically, you know, there there's quite a range. I mean, we are using the fifth grade data and setting
sixth grade targets and, you know, they're not they're lower than we've set in the past, but we're just trying to meet them where they're at, but also be say we really want to see this growth. Um, and I think we do have some nice academic systems in place. Um,
but we're really looking at coolage like we can't just keep doing the same things over that we've always done before this for this cohort. Kind of to Tom's point, this is not going to help them with that growth that we want them to have. So, we're really looking using our leadership team using some
data that we're more like behavioral data. What are we seeing in kids? What skills and dispositions are missing? and how what are schoolwide versus what do we really feel like we want to target and explicitly teach at each grade level. So, I mean, I'm sure the
elementary teachers can relate to what you know to that. Like, I think they're they're great kids. You know, I don't want to say that in by any way, shape, means, we love them. It's just how when we want to move academics along really fast, you can't do that without trying to help them with those day-to-day
skills. I don't know if that's what you're saying. Yeah, I think that's it's it's um it's the exe the the lacking executive functioning skills or organization time management um >> uh they they need like a lot of positive
reinforcement like a lot like a lot and I think this there's not they we need to work on increasing their stamina for attention to task. I think that's very clear that that's something that it's not what it not what it maybe
historically has been for kids >> and they're new to grades which they always have been but it's almost like it >> they're unfased but you know we're about to end the first term so we'll see what happens after first term but you know like oh I got a five out of 10 okay good you know sounds you know and it's kind
of like that urgency around their own academic success is something that's you know I feel like we have to develop that Thank you. >> Yeah. >> Anyone else? >> All right. I think you are also off the hook. >> Thank you.
>> Thank you. >> This last one should be our quickest. Uh just say Jess is not able to join us tonight. As the committee knows, Jess County almost never misses a day of school. Unfortunately, she's dealing with a pretty significant family health issue. She's keeping her family and our thought. She's been out for the week and we'll be back in next week, too. So uh
but I did want to bring up what was her summary slide here and just bring attention for to the community on what is the right-hand column the measurements of success. So I think the high school has done a nice job articulating what they see as some of their uh quantifiable goals listing reducing chronic absenteeism and
increasing passing rate for nine grade nine through better uses of an MTSS model increasing building off the work last year with Barbara Breast increasing the percentage of students who have the opportunity to engage in listening sessions from 15 to 25% as a way to utilize student voice to improve school
you know kind of school conditions culture uh opportunity. Three, continue to build on what was the highest passing rate in school history, moving that up to 80 from 83% to 5% on AP exams. Getting DESIE approval for a sixth innovation career pathway. And you see
some of the other metrics in there around increasing uh number of participants in our innovation career pathways and dual enrollment courses. Uh and then also some of the pieces that maybe are not as quantifiable but also just as important for the high school. uh determining sort of an action plan
and leverage points uh for improving uh student uh we'd say academic achievement a standardized testing uh data particularly under SATs which we know is a focus area. So um we thought that takes a little bit more of a closer work through our our data team to determine what are some of the challenges there
what are some of our areas for improvement uh continuing to update scope and sequence aligning with dur D uh district curriculum guides and last but not least approval of the three-year NEAS report. Uh Jess wanted me to emphasize too that this is she is constantly presenting to school committee, updating school committee on
a lot of these different things throughout the year, but she's happy to come back in early December and present on any of these in more detail as well. >> Great. Any uh discussion or questions? >> Right. Go ahead. >> Which brings us last slide. So uh just a
huge thank you to our leaders today too. So I think everyone in this community uh at this point knows this is a group of extremely student focused leaders. leaders who have a very high bar for what excellence looks like. Uh and for uh leaders who are prioritizing school improvement when their jobs are
constantly flooded by the day-to-day challenge uh and issues and things that just uh take up their time. Uh I would just say we have an awesome group of principles, group of leaders. Thank you for all your leadership. Thank you for all your work uh tonight. I'm really encouraged and excited just to see uh how you've articulated the goals for
your school. some lofty goals, but I think ones that are uh would be really impactful for our school communities. Uh what's next? So, our SIPS will be posted following school committee. Hopefully, approval will be posted on each school's uh website. Uh we will also then start the process of monitoring implementation. As you can see, there's
some pretty quantifiable metrics. We feel like many times now we've talked about having the tool to be able to uh better assess how we're doing towards those goals uh throughout the year, hopefully reporting back to school committee. And then if you want more information on what's happening any of our school communities, uh check out the dates, times, and the packet zoom link
uh to be able to join what's happening a deeper uh overview of each step. >> Great. Any questions before we take a motion? >> Okay, let's do it. >> Move to approve school improvement plans for all eight schools.
>> Is there a second? Seconded by Sarah. Uh we'll take a roll call vote. I'll start with Tom. Yes, >> Laura. >> Yes, >> Carla. >> Yes, >> Sarah. >> Yes, >> and Sean. Yes. All right. Thanks everyone. Appreciate it. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> Um, okay. Let's move to the Q1 financial
update. Uh, I know Phil is on the line. Dr. Milchesky, Phil, I don't know who wants to who wants to start here. >> Is it up? I can't see. >> I will pull it up momentarily. >> Tom, are you good on charge there, Chris? >> Yeah, I'm good, Chris. I'm We're good on
charge. >> Oh, there it is. Okay, good. >> All right, just just hopefully we be fairly quick. Q1 and that's the Q4 one. Why is That's the wrong one.
Sorry about that. Let me see if I can pull that up. Phil, you you can start. I'll pull it up here. >> Okay. >> 148. >> Yeah. Thanks. >> All right. Well, for you again, it's the first quarter, so there's nothing much exciting to talk about. Um, the first
slide is for the general fund. Um, general fund is tracking fine at this point. Um, once you get it up there, you can see it. There's just a couple of things I wanted to point out. um special education. You'll see the incumbrances are
um reflecting for the most part the district tuitions that have been numbered for the entire year. There we go. That's the right one. >> Ah, sorry. >> There we go. Okay. So, again, there's
nothing really exciting going on. Uh we are at this point again for special education. You can see that the number is 4 million. That's a lot of our um for the out of district tuitions as well as our annual contracts and things like that. Uh general education, you know, teachers
uh don't start getting paid until September, so it's really only one month worth of salary in there and that will be reflected every month from now till the end of the uh fiscal year. Um, the other thing that popped up when through when I was looking at this was the
facilities looked a little high in terms of overall usage, but it's incumbrances uh this year compared to last year are higher than they were. So, they've already encumbered a lot more than they had last year at this point. Um, overall um the budget should be fine. The general fund should be fine. Um, you'll
notice on here there are no um I don't want to say guesses or swag uh in terms of what we expect to be a year end at this point. Um I'm not expecting a whole lot of material fund. We get to year end right, but we'll have a better sense of that once we get through uh Q2
and we've got all the salaries straightened out with all the new hires and all that and then we'll give a much better update in terms of that. So um any questions on the general funding? If not, we go to the next one.
Uh, so this is the update on grants. I did want to point out that our entitlement grant, title one, title 2, title three, title 4, the EA8A grants. Um, those are all those are actually all fiscal year 25 grants, even though they get spent in fiscal year 26. So all that
funding is there. All that money is available for us to uh utilize here draw down. So there's no concerns in terms of any of the funding for the uh the federal um tunnel grants. Um in terms of anything else um department of public
health, that's our public health grant. So we have that again for this year. Um talking about genocide education grant about that far better than I could. >> That would be me actually. Um yeah, we were really fortunate to
receive um a grant that is supporting work at our high school and with that we are looking at the spots in our high school social studies curriculum where genocide is included. If you may remember there is a law in Massachusetts um that genocide is uh to be part of the
curriculum. And so this grant is to support that um law. And so what we're doing is taking our scope and sequence, looking at where genocide is taught and any opportunities where it's kind of a missed portion um to the scope and sequence. And then we have a team of
teachers that's looking at how we teach genocide, the type of vocabulary we use, what we talk about the causes of genocide. And that way we're ensuring that every time students learn about genocide, that they're going to hear common vocabulary. Um and that way they um sort of build their knowledge over
the four years that they're here. It also is providing significant funding for PD for teachers. Um so it's underway. We the grant unfortunately um was released very late. It was like as school was starting. Um we were expecting to hear about it in the
spring. So some of the grant activities that we had put forth were supposed to happen over the summer and now you know that's not possible. So we are a little bit behind where we wanted to be but um we have a group of teachers underway and working on this. So, um, more to come. >> Is Dr. Is that is that required to be
spent in FY26 or >> It is. We have to spend it by June 30th. >> Okay. >> Any other questions on the grants? >> Uh, we have one one in the audience here. Phil, if you could just bear with us a second. >> Hi, Jeffrey Corm Ridge Road. I was just
a little curious. Um I started to look at um like the first row there that from METCO um and I I wonder if maybe some of the headings under FY25 the four subheadings the first one is beginning
FY26 then FY26 YTD YTD >> No, the headings refer to the year of the grant. The subheadings refer to the year that we're in. >> Ah, okay. Thank you. Okay. Uh, Phil, I think you're all set to keep
keep moving, >> right? Um, revolving account. Um, we go through here. You know, in the memo, we did mention the fact that summer program was a little odd. And again, that's because a lot of the revenue for the summer programs comes in in the spring. So, since for the most part, we're on a
cash basis of accounting, that got included in the numbers that were reported back in Q4. So that's why every year that looks a little odd. Um the one that I did want to spend just a little bit of time on is on the uh school lunch program is a couple things going on
there. Again, because we're on a cash basis of accounting, we are always lagging in terms of when we get the reimbursements from the federal government and the state for the school lunch program. So for example, if you look through Q1 for school lunch, all the money that was spent in September is
being reported, but the revenue of 20 the reimbursement that we're getting, I think it's $267,000 is not in that quarter. So that accounts for a big chunk of the 298,000 deficit for the quarter that we're
seeing there. Also, the beginning balance was a little low because we are still waiting for the state to finalize and pass the fiscal year uh 25 supplemental budget to close off the school year 25 because in that budget includes the funding to pay for the
June's the state's June portion of the school lunch program which to us is about uh 96 or 86,000 forget which number it was but it's a significant amount of money that we're still waiting on. The last I heard the Senate was still um
mcking around with it. So um I'm hoping that that gets that soon so then that money will come in. And then finally in Q1 um in terms of the numbers that you're seeing, we spent $96,000 on capital expenditures to put in new ovens
in the schools. And so that also um ties into the $298,000 deficit that you're seeing. Um you'll also when we get to Q2, we spent um um in 2000 to buy a new uh ban for the school edge program that
originally had been on the town's capital plan, but because of the balance that we had in the school program, we took that off of the town capital plan and we are utilizing some of the uh funds we have available in the school lunch program for that. Um in terms of you know we spent a lot of time talking
about the school improvement programs um trying to make some improvements in some of our financial reporting and things as well. One of the things that we are doing starting this year is on the school lunch program. We actually have three programs now going on. We have the regular school lunch program which covers lunch and breakfast. We also have
a summer program that uh we really started to ramp up this past summer and I believe that was discussed when um Katie did her presentation a month or so ago. And then finally, we also have a small u catering business that food services is doing. So we've established
some new uh funds within do this so that we can report the those um results separately because they need to be tracked separately. So going forward, we'll be starting to break that out. It will also allow us to better manage the three programs in terms of how well they're doing. Um that way we can see on
the school edge program, you know, whether we are properly staffed and things like that. So it's uh helpful for that. And I'm going to try to and I am going to make changes going forward. At least for this program, it gets reported not on a cash basis, but on an approval basis, so that the
revenue is showing up in the right quarter. So I don't have to sit here and explain a deficit every quarter from now until next July. So that's one of the changes we're doing there. And we're doing some other tweaks within the accounting just trying to make things a little more user friendly.
Again, trying to make things user friendly and do this is always a challenge. So, so Phil, we we do have the latitude to report revolving accounts on an acrruels basis. >> Do we? No. But I can do it on an Excel spreadsheet to get it to you folks.
>> I see what you're saying. Okay. >> You know, technically >> for the purposes of the state, it'll still be on a cash. Yeah. >> Bases of a kind is either a modified cash basis or a modified acral basis. Um, it's a it's a from my perspective as
a CPA, it's a mush. So it makes it especially if you talk about the general fund the cash basis or the modified cash basis is pretty straightforward because that money is has to be utilized within that fiscal year. You talk about revolving accounts
it's really like running a business. So we've got to be able to show because it's an ongoing business what accounting period that we're talking about. So I'm going to be doing some creative stuff offline for news to be able to show especially food service what it looks
like on a corrected approval basis so that the revenue is showing in the proper period. >> Okay. >> Any other questions on the revolving? >> Keep rolling. Um get the reserve.
Nothing much going on here. Um we I know we've got some um significant gifts that were accepted earlier this evening, but since um they we hadn't gotten them yet in Q1, they're not on here. They will be reflected in the Q2 report. And so we'll
see those when we talk about Q2 in late January. >> Is it hang question in the crowd on that one? >> The crowd of one. >> Jeffrey Corm again. Uh I was just um you know looking at the numbers here and wondered if you had any comment on the
significant magnitude of difference um of u difference between the different schools the barrels at 3,000 versus kilum at 44,000 or parker at 10,000 versus schoolage at 75,000 and you know are these thing are the does the lack of
donation balances impeding any of these schools from being able to do something that some of the other schools are or is there anything that these uh the schools with the large donation should have been doing with this money rather than you know letting it sit and accumulate a little bit of interest.
>> Those are questions I think that are more properly should be directed towards and or answered by either the principal or someone else who has better knowledge of what they're using those funds for. I mean, I don't have the institutional knowledge of how long they've been here.
And I let me refra that. I haven't yet finished going through and getting the institutional knowledge in all these accounts. We've been focused for the most part of last year on quality accounts. So, I unfortunately can't give you a an intelligent answer to those questions. So, hopefully someone else
can. If not, give me another three months and I'll I'll be able to answer those questions for you. >> Right. Thank you, Dr. >> Jeffrey. One comment I'll make is I do think it's all of the above. There's a couple of schools on here that I know are really worried about these accounts being so low and that, you know, kind of uh impacting their ability for to be
able to support certain programming. I do know that. And I also know there is other schools on here that are looking for creative things that they could be doing that maybe they're not doing right now. So, I think honestly it's on a school by school basis. Um I think there's some more work for us to be doing to make things a little more
consistent on this. I think I I think you're on to something. Thank you. I did want to point out just the special education reserve fund of 1557 represents one month's interest. All they have been posted so far, but it's not putting this together was the July
interest. Um, student activity counts. Um, I think we've talked about these quite a bit in the past. Um uh where are we here? You know, the high school tends to pull in some money here at the beginning. Uh Parker pulled in a lot of money um for
Oh, I had it in front of me and I forgot what it was for some program that they're doing. So that is always and I look back last year and the year before that's always coming through early in the year in terms of what's going on um in over at the uh excuse me my malt is
now drying out on me over at Parker. Other than that, not much else going on in terms of the connectivity gaps. It's still early in the year. >> Is it is this where something like nature's classroom would be reflected?
>> I'm sorry, what? Phil, I'm thinking this is something where uh this is where something like nature's classroom, which are, you know, large scale trips that families pay for um would be reflected. That may be what that early >> I mean I mean the student activity
account is supposed to be where we we run the money through for activities that are for the benefit of the students. So yes, if they're going on a field trip, they raise the money for it, they bring their money in, then we pay for the field trips. Um, and so that's what these are reflecting. How they're able to build up balances. That's
another question. That's a good question that I need to go back in and um, get a better sense of the history. So again, I can answer it more intelligently. So I'm going to add that to my three-month promise. >> Yeah. Well, I mean, in the case of Nature's Classroom, they start
collecting the money over the summer and the trip takes takes place in the fall, right? So >> So your interest? Yes. >> So you'd have, you know, a quarter or two delta um, while that money sits in there. So that you know I think that's probably the biggest contributor in Kulage and Parker. >> Correct. >> That is
>> Dr. Kor. >> Yeah. And similar question about the differences in schools but also I think in this one like the high school balance that started at 140,000 for the beginning of the year. I mean to some extent I I feel like the student activities are things that you know should benefit the students that are and
it it that are currently in you know that are in the school at the time and it should sort of tend towards zero by the end of the year or for the beginning of the year except for you know a few of those field trips that start collecting beforehand. So, you know, I I guess you
said you're you you'll look into, you know, how those balances got accumulated, but you know, should those have been spent on the students that already graduated? Um, or are there, you know, are there a lot of clubs, for example, at the high school that have accumulated some amount of money for this club or that club and and that just
the number of clubs that have a little bit of money in them multiplied out by just the number of clubs gets you that large number. >> Again, I'll dig into that. One of the difficulties with the student activity accounts is that the detail doesn't reside in units. It resides in
QuickBooks. Next one. So these this is just list of these scholarships that are held in trust by the town and the revenue is just the interest revenue um being posted to each of the accounts. That's it. >> Phil, in some of these cases on the
scholarships, are there also um ongoing, you know, ongoing funding from like the original donors in some of these cases as well? >> I would say that's probably the case in some of the newer ones that got added like the David Savio one.
>> Um the older ones I again I'm going to I'm going to punt to the superintendent and see if he has better than I do. >> I guess my question is not is that what I see in the numbers. I'm I guess my question is I'm just validating in the
case where you know donors are continuing to make contributions to these funds. This is where we would see it is in that revenue in that revenue. >> If there are additional donations, you will see here under the revenue column. >> Right. Okay. >> Sorry, I misunderstood.
>> No, I probably wasn't super clear. Um Okay. Any uh further questions for Phil? So, overall, we're in good shape through Q1. >> Great. >> Thank you very much. I think we're all set. >> Thank you.
>> Thank you. >> Okay. Uh we've got um a couple more items here. Uh so, budget priorities discussion. Um probably, you know, I don't know, famous last words to say. I expect this to be a quick one. Uh but you know we're I think everybody knows sort of the situation we're in going
into FY27 in terms of the budget and um you know Tom alluded to having to uh you know sort of petition FINCOM to be relatively generous with use of free cash to support a 3% budget which essentially allows us to maintain level services. Um, so, so as we sit here today, I don't think we anticipate a lot
of room for for net new in next year's budget, but I did want to at least open up the floor for the the committee to highlight any any priorities. Um, just you want to get on the table for consideration. Um, you know, should things change somehow, uh, should we find opportunities, you know, during the
year to to invest in things that maybe we don't anticipate being able to invest in as we sit here today. Um, or even just to be on our radar for, you know, future planning cycles as well. Um, if there's anything in particular that folks want to raise, we'll spend a couple minutes here. Um, but again, anticipating level services, so probably
not a not a lengthy conversation, Tom. >> I thought it was going to be me >> because you came off mute. Every everybody else has kept themselves, you know, physically on mute over here. So, >> um I just want to acknowledge I think a
few things here, right? Um one is district leadership wise, there's been a lot of creativity being done to try to make that budget work overall. Um even with what we've asked the come for, I think Dr. Mnt mentioned it's about an $800,000
gap or hole that we're working to fill. Um and the creative ways in which that's happening. Um you know, two, I think as we look through this Um we have to I my perspective is we have to prioritize the classrooms as much as
possible. Um and so that might mean we have to be a little bit more creative uh with some other things on the outside or think about how we charge for other things on the outside or something else like that. But the core mission is education in the classroom. So if you think about it from that perspective,
it's where you start and then everything else. So, if it's not decor, then it's something to to talk about. Um, I would also I think Dr. and I talked a little bit about like let's make sure we're right aligning and right sizing things where we have um you know potential
challenges or whatever else uh that's necessary there. Um, easier said than done and I don't I'm not speaking to a specific area per se. Um, you know, but sometimes we're going to have to be a little bit creative about what we do and how we do it. And I think we didn't really mention it too much, but with
the, you know, there's a little bit of a concern about, you know, the lack of a meco carryover and the lack of the metco program growth um not from a people perspective, but the finances coming out of the state in that. And so we have to think about what how can we be really we
want to keep the population and we want to keep them moving forward. But how can we do are we doing it the most effective way? Hopefully we are, right? But everything should be looked at. Um the same thing with adjustment counselors and other things like that that we've had at various different levels. We know that our population needs those. So,
but are we are we as effective and efficient as we can, right? Um easier said than done. None of these are going to be easy conversations. Um so everything I'm saying is is sort of a risky statement to the degree. Um you know, in 27 hopefully we'll be fine. I think it's going to be a much harder conversation at 28 unless we have some
other things going on around the town. Um, you know, and I I think the financial way in which we've been managing overall sets us up relatively well. Um, but I just want to acknowledge that there might have to be some creativity even in the 27 budget. Uh,
even more so than it's already been done as the team looks at this and looks at staffing and where things are. So, I don't know if that answers the question, Sean, or not, but >> wasn't really a question, more just an open forum, but agree with everything you just said.
Anything else? All right, that's officially the shortest budget priorities discussion we've ever had. So, um, great. Uh, maybe at least since the 2017 2018 time frame. I don't recall those budget discussions, but they were probably fairly similar, I would
imagine. Um, all right. Let's uh let's move to the October 1st enrollment update. Um, Dr. Milleski, Dr. Hardy, I don't know who's taking. >> Great. I'll take this. So, in your packet, you should see a copy of the enrollment report or the numbers in the enrollment report that was submitted to
Desi on based off October 1st enrollment. I just want to flag three pieces of data that I think are interesting and then open up to any questions or thoughts from the committee and the community. Uh, one being we are up 20 students from overall enrollment from last year. Uh, two, we are uh about
60 students you see down here off of our projection of where we thought we were going to be at this point. Uh, the reason being 50 of 57 of those students in that projection are in the RA are in rise and kindergarten. The reason being, as you know, we have 120 students uh projected for RISE. Uh, we only
currently had 99. and we know that number is going to continue to rise based off of uh age eligibility metriculation during the year. Two, we also during the spring talked about how we uh in the spring kindergarten projections had captured students who we knew were uh going to be uh waiting a
year to enroll in kindergarten. Students who we found out there who weren't included in the census. Uh those two were those two groups were 27 total students. So therefore, we kind of boosted up our uh census number, which is 313 plus the 27 gave us a projection of 340, which we knew was high. We did
come in lower. We're at 304. So just wanted to say that our our projections weren't far off sort of uh when you look at the entirety of the uh the rest of K, you know, uh K to 12. Uh three, it's like the number that I always that I want to dive deeper into and I'll share this publicly and I'll do some more work
on this is this number 8 to 9th grade transition. So the way we projected 9th grade was we just rolled up the number from 8th grade. Now I'm interested you know to say sort of what's happening. Historically we've had somewhere in the range of a 12 13% attrition rate from uh
from 8th to 9th grade. Uh we're interested to figure out sort of when we dive deeper into these numbers is that sort of still where we are and also what are maybe some of the trends that are you know leading to attrition or actually you know encouraging our kids to stay in district. But I think that's a trend that you'll be hearing more from
us uh on in the future because I think we want to better understand sort of what's been happening historically and how are we doing are we making any progress there as well. Uh and on that it's just it's not a clean comparison to look at 8th to 9th because as you know there's some kids coming in and out through school choice. So we have to go student by student and figure out what
does the actual attrition rate look like besides just the 8th to 9th grade population change. That open up to questions or thoughts. Tom, I see you off mute. Dr. >> M, >> I think the same analysis should be done for fifth to six. >> Yeah,
>> right. It's the same reason likely it's the private school exists. Um, but the understanding of the wise and the how's and what else can we do to to foster keeping them here? Um, >> same same ex almost the same exact analysis.
>> Agreed. Thank you, Tom. >> Right. Anything else on this? >> Okay. Um, so we'll move to our last item which is uh policy IKFE. Tom, I'll take a run at sort of setting all the context for this and you can fill in any gaps.
Um, the uh you all may recall I think our last meeting in late September I think we had in the packet uh a policy that had been drafted by maybe Dr. Mr. Hardy and M and Principal Kalan um which was a revision to the competency determination which was necessitated
essentially by um uh by the MCCAST ballot initiative um and so we determined you know as a as a group to run this through the policy subcommittee policy subcommittee has now reviewed made edits um and has a a a proposed
version for us to take for a first reading this evening there's a sort of corlary policy which is the IKF which is graduation requirements which we'll also need to review, revise, adopt. Um, but it it sort of refers to competency determinations. So, I think the order of
operations here, the idea was let's work this one through first and then we'll and then we'll adjust the graduation requirements policy or adopt the new graduation requirements policy which refers to this one as well. Um, so Tom, Dr. Millesky, did I kind of is that the
right sort of grounding? >> Absolutely. Um, okay. is I would add a few things there that the the basic policy is from the basic MASC foundation. It was published in August and Dr. Hardy and uh principal Calaman um you know it amended it and adjusted
it to meet our particular um needs. Um you know we then you know do went through some review and the policies of committee last Friday morning. Um you know the red lines and the highlights are from that conversation. Um so we took the version that Dr. party had sent
over uh and and adjusted it from there. Um so some of it is just the standard stuff I do with Grammarly but a lot of it is the discussion points we had. Uh so you know quickly we talked a lot we talked a little bit about mastery and
what does mastery mean um in particular. Um some of the notes you came through in the packet but it's up here a little bit more. uh I particularly had a problem with 60% has mastery uh but in a conversation with doc with Dr. Conan and Dr. Hardy Dr. kind of um you know
essentially I learned which I didn't know that needs improvement meets the qualification of some of these things at the uh at the MCAST level um and this you know it would be administratively burdensome to change this number as it stands right now we can talk about it at
some point in time in the future but as it stands we did not change it from the 60% number it is a little bit of a stretch right now that that even we we might get away with four um principal Caroline shared that the uh the standard that they were shared with did not have
those orders in them. Um so it was more of a a complete set of things. But our our edits included not our edits but the overall administrative edits included the words for um you know we talked a little bit about the past fail basis
conversation. Uh and that is mostly there um for any transfer credit related cases. We do not have any past fail cases really within our cases for the core core subjects that are that fit within this policy. >> Um Dr. Hardy, keep me honest. If there's might be one exception in case a student
is really, you know, maybe >> medically challenged or something like that from the semester or something else along the line where we can make an assessment that they they fundamentally pass material. Um so there's a few other carveouts that might go in there. Um
this was also in our review. Um we wanted to make sure that um in the math related section that the algebra one related stuff and in one case this year the geometry one related stuff that is taken at middle school uh would qualify
for the competency determination. So we added that particular uh clause into the into the sub as we went through it. Uh we also had to compare and align um the the uh additional considerations against essentially a desi rubric. Uh we did
have a little bit of some competing demands apparently from what Desi wrote in the rubric and what they're saying in some of the principal forums. So we might come back to the drawing board on this but for now we're aligning what their rubric is and in particular it's the se additional section on use of mcast and limited circumstances.
um that section is part of the rubric but is something we're hearing some conflicting demands um as it stands uh across the administrative forms and Dr. Hardy again jumped that and keep down if I'm misating anything. >> You got it right. >> Um so it's there for now. Uh finally uh
we removed uh the student handbook because we didn't want circular references. U student handbook should always policy not policy and student handbook. Um so we removed that and cleaned up a few of the other references appropriately and we did vote two um and
I on on Friday morning to pass as as quick questions. >> Thanks Tom. All right procedurally let's um >> do reading. >> We have to start well we have to do the reading. Oh yeah you know start. Yeah go ahead. So Carla will start by uh reading
the policy and hopefully somebody will let her off the hook. Um, compet competency determination. >> I move to wave the reading. Is there a second? >> Sarah will second. Uh, we'll take a roll call. Tom, >> yes. >> Laura, >> yes. >> Carla, >> yes.
>> Sarah, and Sean, yes. Okay. Um, why don't we go to the motion and then we'll we'll have any further discuss. >> Just a clarifying question very quickly. Um so as this is written um it is possible for a student to demonstrate
mastery as long as they pass the final for the course even if they do not have a passing grade for the course as a whole. >> Correct. >> Okay. >> That is correct.
>> Interesting. Okay. >> But we can come back to that after we Yeah. Yeah. We can come back to that after we let's so let's let's take the motion and then we'll let's discussion >> move to adopt policy IKFE competency determination. >> So let's let's actually could I amend
that to move to accept the first reading >> um of policy IKFE >> seconded amendment. >> Okay. Um so Tom's seconding the amendment. So, let's
>> actually >> just take take it as a friendly. >> Yeah. Would you can you take it as a friendly amendment? We're accepting the first reading. Okay, great. All right. Uh let's not vote yet. We have a second from Tom as amended. Uh so, we're good. Um All right. So, discussion. So, Laura, you brought up that point about um the
ores there. Tom, I have a question. you know how you thought about this in at the bottom of that first page where we uh there's a strike through for some and we changed it to limited and then you gave a couple of the examples you know transfer or you know student with a medical situation um you know I I don't
think some and limited I I get that limited sort of implies it's an exception you know versus maybe something that is semi-ine um but in the absence of any guidelines here I'm not sure it functionally has any I wonder if we would consider, you know,
maybe in advance of a second reading, would we want to provide some of the some of the examples and they wouldn't necessarily have to be exhausted, but some of the examples so that again, you know, people who are not sitting here at the table today sort of understand what was intended with this policy. Um, some of the examples of situations that would
sort of, you know, qualify for uh for this clause. I suppose we could um like the two examples we just outlined could be added for sure. Uh I think we always have run that challenge when you run examples that you start to have some people think it's restrictive to that um or you know
a given in all situations right um the case of like a medical like okay well I was out for a week so you're going to have to give me a pass fail rate well you know how do you how do you bind that in either direction right appropriately so u we could certainly add something or
try to add something for the second reading um it will have not been voted on so we have to just take it as a as body or we can even try to works with it now and then agree to that for the second reading if that's something you want to do. Sean, >> yeah, I I mean I think your point's a good one. You know,
the what I was thinking was something like um we could say examples may include and then give a couple of those, you know, those types of examples. U and I think we'd want to say, and maybe this is covered elsewhere in the thing in the uh policy here, but who has the who has
the authority to make that determination? um you know whether whether that sort of exception is going to be granted um I think we'd want to capture that here as well >> or whether it requires a formal request of some kind rather than just sort of a blanket you know so that it can be
considered on an individual basis rather than >> yeah clarifying question interject >> when we were writing this section at least the way the question came through from Desi it didn't appear that this was a policy creating answer, but instead a
reporting out of our procedures at the high school. Um because the what we're describing there is based on like our policies like how the high school the procedures at the high school what is um what has to happen for a student to be
considered to have satisfactorily completed coursework and earned full credit and that I believe principal calling pulled from our student handbook. Uh, >> so it wasn't like this is creating that policy, at least the way I'm reading it.
This was more of like reporting out so that it's all in one place. Um, because if you're saying, you know, that the student has to have passed that. This is one of the things that Desi said, you have to like explain your grading requirements for satisfactory
completion of coursework. >> That's a that's a fair point. That said, policy trumps handbooks. So we could adjust if we so decided and then the handbook would be adjusted reflectively there from >> Yeah. But I think I think Dr. Hardy's
point is a good one that which is this this is not >> this is not intended to establish a policy. literally just to explain to Desessie what our you know how we determine whether a student has satisfactory completed coursework and earn full
credit. Um so it doesn't it it shouldn't be read to have the effect of creating some opportunity to get credit that doesn't already exist within the district. >> I would agree with that. >> Okay.
All right. I retract my uh I retract my suggestion then. Thank you. It's helpful. >> Do we Do you want to discuss the 60%. >> Um I I all the ores are are troublesome to me.
Um, I think that the idea that a student could demonstrate mastery by passing one exam at the end of the semester or at the end of the year um
without having maintained a passing grade throughout. Um that that's strikes me as a big loophole. Um I I think I would personally be much more comfortable if
that first or was an and and then make the op the or where you know it could be either be on the final exam you get a 60% or higher or on some kind of capstone or portfolio project. So I
don't necessarily think they all need to be ands, but I feel like those first two should be. >> So So taken together with the next paragraph, I think this is how I'm rationalizing in my head because I think it's it's both, right? They have to demonstrate proficiency or mastery and um satisfactory complete coursework and
earn the credit. Both of those things have to be both of those criteria have to be met. So take this scenario we just we just talked about where you've got a student who um you know had a severe a significant medical situation. We opted to allow them to be graded on a past fail basis. They would get credit for
the course on having been graded on a past fail basis >> and they would have had to demonstrate mastery by one of the things up above. >> Um so in that in that case, you know, that could have been passing the final assessment. It's it's conceivable they might have had a might not have had a
final grade of 60% or above because there was coursework they weren't able to complete during the course of the of the semester. Um but they did pass the final assessment which ostensibly is based on the entirety of the courses uh content >> and they were granted a pass you know
pass on a past fail basis because of the medical incident for in you know for instance >> okay and that makes sense but I would say that that you know if we're saying that those are very limited cases I feel like setting the precedent for everybody that you can clear the bar just by
>> clearing the final exam Well, if yeah, but if you're not if you're not granted that pass fail basis, then you also have to meet the first bullet in the bottom par in the in the bottom section, right? So, you also have to
satisfactory complete coursework, which means you're earning full credit by achieving a passing grade in the course. >> Okay. >> Am I reading that correctly? >> I believe so. >> That is correct. Yeah. There's two sections. There's mastery and there's satisfactory completion. Yeah, they have to do both. They have to satisfy both. Y >> Okay.
Please >> also just to interject too, you know, this is replacing MCCAST, which was also independent from their their um grade in, you know, their English course. Um they could pass MCCAST and fail their English course, which hopefully wouldn't happen. And and then the the final piece
to sort of keep in mind, this is one element of the expectation for students, but they are still in order to graduate have to successfully pass those courses. Um >> I retract my >> Yeah. >> I appreciate it, but you know, I think um we as well talk about this in wanting
to set a high bar for our students. Um but the ors here is just an opportunity. We also don't want, you know, to exclude students in a case where they would have passed B, you know, under the the previous assessment. Um and just to give as many options as possible to pass.
>> That's where I was going initially. Laura was 60%. I want 70%. Tom, you can't do that. Okay. All right. Fair enough. >> Sure. >> I think the other thing that kind of jumped out to me in this section particularly, we're we're using proficiency and mastery kind of
interchangeably of how I'm reading this, which I are two separate things in my mind. So, if you think about the MCAST context being proficient, you could still be in that partially meeting category and be proficient, which is kind of where the 60% thing comes in versus somebody who's really mastered a
a subject or a topic. And I think those are so just being clear in our language about what do we mean by this and in my mind this is about proficiency and not mastery. >> It's it's a technicality of the wording that is required. We have to talk about
the the mastery requirement and we have to talk about satisfactory completing. Uh and to to Sarah's point proficiency is just part of it from a the way the whole thing ties together. Um, mastery was the word I was stuck on Sarah as
well. >> Uh, you know, that to me is a much higher bar than just proficiency, but that's the way the law was written, which is an interesting problem. >> Yeah. >> As it is. Um, so theoretically, one could argue the law is harder now than
MCAST was if we were to implement it to a mastery degree, >> right? >> Yeah. which I think we all would agree that the people who were who were fighting against MCCAST as their graduation requirement were not trying to raise the bar per se
from an intent perspective. >> Yeah, you could also argue we're we're almost using competency interchangeably as well. But again to you know to everyone's point this is sort of the quagmire that we are left with here.
Okay. All right. Anything else for the first reading? This will come back around. So, if folks, you know, reflect on it and want to talk about it more next time around, maybe we'll let Carla read it in full next time and then >> Yeah. And then we'll have the >> popcorn.
>> We'll have another discussion. >> All right. So, we have a motion on the table to accept the first reading. If there are no other comments, we will move to the vote. Uh, I'll start with Tom. >> Yes. >> Laura, >> yes. >> Carla, >> yes. >> Sarah, yes. >> And Sean, yes. Uh, if I'm not mistaken,
that is the end of our agenda. So, is there a final motion? >> Motion to adjurnn. >> Is there a second? >> Second. >> Seconded by Laura. Tom, >> yes. >> Laura, >> yes. >> Carla, >> yes. >> Sarah, yes. >> And Sean, yes. We are journed. Thanks, everyone.